There’s optimism . . .

. . .  and there’s over optimism.

Irish bookie Paddy Power is so sure the All Blacks will win Sunday’s Rugby World Cup final he’s paying out already.

I’m optimistic but only cautiously so. On paper the All Blacks are a much stronger team the Les Bleus but anything could happen on the night.

Even when the Wallabies had to score two points a minute in the last seven minutes to even the score in the semi-final I couldn’t relax and even if the All Blacks are well ahead of France in the final I’ll be on the edge of my seat with all digits crossed until the final whistle blows.

Where there’s pigs . . .

Invercargill mayor Tim Shadbolt makes a very amusing story of the day in 1999 when a small group of conservationists came to see if he could help save the Auckland Island pigs which DOC was planning to cull.

Life on the island was hard and there weren’t many of them, but the animals which had been isolated and free of disease for so many generations had potential for use in medical advances.

Tim reckoned the special mayoral fund would cover the cost of 17 pigs but he hadn’t taken into account the population growth that would occur when the pigs moved from Auckland Island’s harsh environment to the balmy climate of Southland.

The annual cost of keeping the pigs went from $3,000 to around $13,000 as their numbers increased, the council wasn’t pleased and took the mayoral fund from him. But Tim was optimistic these pigs would more than repay the investment and now they are.

Their isolation had made them the only pigs in the world that were virus free and so able to be used in cell transplants to people for diabetes treatment. By 2008 each pig was worth $350,000.

Living Cell Technology built its first quarantine unit in Southland a couple of years ago and the company has now announced a multi-million dollar commitment to commercialise a diabetes treatment using the Southland-farmed pigs.

Living Cell Technology announced Otsuka Pharmaceutical Factory, of Japan, had committed $31m to a joint venture to create Diatranz Otsuka, a company that would concentrate on accelerating the commercialisation of Living Cell’s groundbreaking cell implant therapy, Diabecell, to treat diabetes.

Diabecell has been trialled in New Zealand, Argentina and Russia, and is designed to normalise the lives of people with type-1 diabetes. It involves being injected with live cells from the unique Auckland Island pigs, farmed in a special multimillion-dollar piggery near Invercargill.

Where there’s Auckland Island pigs there’s money making opportunities and the potential for better health and quality of life for diabetics.

The rising cost of the pigs cost Tim the mayoral fund, but he thinks it’s ben worth it and the story he tells keeps getting better.

Oil spill serious but in greater scheme not catastrophic

At last some balance on the affect of the oil spill from the MV Rena:

Professor David Schiel, one of the Southern Hemisphere’s top ecologists thinks we’re over-hyping things:

So far I think that the marine environment will cope very well with it . . .

I think there’s very much to hope for, for the locals and for the nation in terms of this so far that it doesn’t turn into an ecological disaster. . .

It’s not as these things go a great deal of oil, but it’s a very big ocean . . .

It’s dose dependent so if you get a lot of oil in a little space and it gets confined for a while without getting dispersed the effects are going to be much larger than if it disperses widely, gets pushed out to sea, the oil weathers and it moves across the sea surface and some of it sinks.

Once it sinks micro-organisms help break it down, converting it so that the eco-system can accomodate it. 

So far it’s not as bad as it could have been and if things go as plan, they get the fuel oil off that vessel and it’s a straight forward boat salvage operation we should be okay.

No oil spill is good and this one could harm the economy.

But the combination of the clean-up effort by people and nature means – at least yet – this is not the ecological catastrophe we’ve been told it is.

 

Peak oil self-perpetuating?

Have you noticed that the people who warn us about peak oil are also the ones who don’t want us to look for anymore?

So what is peak oil? An email from a reader explains:

The thesis of ‘peak oil’ is that demand will significantly exceed supply and ability to find more (hence the peak) which will start a bidding and resource war, leading to the eventual collapse of western civilization as we know it.  There are plenty of charts etc produced to prove that this will happen / or is happening right now. . .

The counter argument is that there is plenty of oil available and yet to be tapped – for example the shales, coal conversion, gas conversion, oil sands, and deep ocean fields.   The price goes up making it economic to extract from these sources, and the peak gets pushed way forward.  In the interim, because of the higher cost of oil/fuel alternative technologies – electric, hydrogen, hybrid etc make much more sense and become more widely adopted.  High speed internet makes travel for communication less of a requirement, and the whole system balances up in some degree.  Let’s say this is the technological progress continuing argument. . .

The consequences of peak oil would be dire. That makes the opposition to further exploration from those who promote the theory so puzzling unless they want to make sure their fears are realised.

Requiring safeguards to protect the environment from exploration and exploitation is eminently sensible. Taking the Luddite’s approach to banning exploration altogether turns peak oil into a self-perpetuating scenario: they say it has happened/will happen and won’t let us find more so it does happen.

 

October 20 in history

1548 The city of Nuestra Senora de La Paz (Our Lady of Peace) was founded by Captain Alonso de Mendoza by appointment of the king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.

1632 Sir Christopher Wren, English architect, was born (d. 1723).

1740 Maria Theresa takes the throne of Austria. France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony refused to honour the Pragmatic Sanction (allowing succession by a daughter) and the War of the Austrian Succession began.

1781 Patent of Toleration, providing limited freedom of worship, was approved in Habsburg Monarchy.

1803 The United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.

1818 The Convention of 1818 signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the Canada – United States border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.

1827  Battle of Navarino – a combined Turkish and Egyptian armada was defeated by British, French, and Russian naval force in the port of Navarino in Pylos, Greece.

1859  John Dewey, American philosopher, was born (d. 1952).

1883  Peru and Chile signed the Treaty of Ancón, by which the Tarapacá province was ceded to the latter, bringing an end to Peru’s involvement in the War of the Pacific.

1904  Anna Neagle, English actress, was born (d. 1986).

1910  The hull of the RMS Olympic, sister-ship to the RMS Titanic, was launched from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast

1932 William Christopher, American actor who played Father Mulcahy in M*A*S*H, was born.

1934 Michiko, empress of Japan, was born.

1935  The Long March ended.

1941 Stan Graham was shot by police after five days on the run.

1941  World War II: Thousands of civilians in German-occupied Serbia were killed in the Kragujevac massacre.

1944  Liquid natural gas leaked from storage tanks in Cleveland, then exploded; levelling 30 blocks and killing 130.

1944 – General Douglas MacArthur fulfilled his promise to return to the Philippines when he commanded an Allied assault on the islands, reclaiming them from the Japanese during the Second World War.

1947 The House Un-American Activities Committee began its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevented some from working in the industry for years.

1950  Tom Petty, American musician, was born.

1951 The “Johnny Bright Incident“  in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

1952 Governor Evelyn Baring declared a state of emergency in Kenya and began arresting hundreds of suspected leaders of the Mau Mau Uprising, including Jomo Kenyatta, the future first President of Kenya.

1967 A purported bigfoot was filmed by Patterson and Gimlin.

1968  Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.

1970 Siad Barre declared Somalia a socialist state.

1971 The Nepal Stock Exchange collapsed.

1973  ”Saturday Night Massacre“: President Richard Nixon fired Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus after they refused to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

1973  The Sydney Opera House opened.

1976  The ferry George Prince was struck by a ship while crossing the Mississippi River. Seventy-eight passengers and crew died and only 18 people aboard the ferry survived.

1977 A plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed in Mississippi, killing lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines along with backup singer Cassie Gaines, the road manager, pilot, and co-pilot.

1979  The John F. Kennedy library was opened in Boston.

1982  During the UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC Haarlem, 66 people were crushed to death in the Luzhniki disaster.

1984 The Monterey Bay Aquarium opened in Monterey Bay, California.

1991 The Oakland Hills firestorm killed 25 and destroyed 3,469 homes and apartments, causing more than $2 billion in damage.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Hard times in Hobbiton

Not recommended for bedtime viewing if you’re prone to nightmares:

Creative director:  Whaleoil

Word of the day

Contumacy –  stubborn refusal to obey authority; wilful contempt of the order or summons of a court.

14/15

14/15 in Stuff’s kids quiz - tricked by the trick question.

Cheaper provincial flights?

We live about an hour and a half from Timaru Airport, two hours from Dunedin Airport and three and a half from Christhchurch.

Although it’s further away we usually fly to and from Christchurch. There are more flights to and from there and they are usually significantly less expensive.

Provincial airports do have a cheaper airfares but there’s never very many and you have to book ages in advance which we aren’t usually able to do.

Air New Zealand decision to buy new and bigger planes for provincial routes might change that:

Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe says the airline has ordered seven  of the planes off the French manufacturer, with an option to purchase a further  five, and says the aircraft will open up regional New Zealand to cheap flights.

“This order potentially doubles the size of Air New Zealand’s ATR fleet  and will put a further two million seats into the New Zealand regional market  annually.

“For our customers that will mean a big increase in the number of  business timed seats and seriously cheap ‘grabaseat’ fares we have on regional  routes every day,” he says.

Improved returns from farming, tourism and technological advances which make working away from cities is helping to reverse the population decline in the provinces.

Being here is great but getting in and out isn’t. The upgraded provincial fleet will help make it a ltitle easier and possibly cheaper.

9/10

9/10 in NZ History Online’s quiz.

Rain gauge overfloweth

Yesterday’s post lamenting too little rain was premature.

When my farmer went to check the rain gauge this morning he found it had overflowed which means we’ve had at least 40 mls and this comment from Raymond reports even more further north.

That’s the first significant rainfall we’ve had since early May and very welcome.

Farmers in the high country who have just started lambing won’t be so happy, especially those who got snow as well.

Silly dam(n) mistake

On Q&A some weeks ago Guyon Espiner asked a Labour MP if he knew which power company he used.

I can’t find the link but I think it was David Cunliffe. Whoever it was struggled to answer as many people will unless they’re the one who pays the household bills.

Many people would also not be sure who owns the power company which supplies them. That’s not surprising when it’s not who owns it but the price they charge and service they provide which concerns most of us.

However, if you’re a party opposing the Mixed Ownership Model for State Owned Enterprises, you ought to know which companies are publicly owned and which ones aren’t, if only to stop you using a photo of one which isn’t to illustrate your campaign.

Whaleoil has a copy of Labour’s brochure campaigning against National’s policy to sell minority shares in a few state owned companies. It’s illustrated with a photo of the Clyde Dam which isn’t owned by the state, it’s owned by Contact Energy.

That’s a silly dam(n) mistake which doesn’t do anything for the credibility of the party or its policy.

Good for unions bad for employees/ers

Labour’s work and wages policy takes employment relations back decades.

Over at Keeping Stock, Inventory 2 puts a very strong case against raising the minimum wage to $15.

None of our employees is on the minimum wage but, as I2 says, increasing it will put pressure on other wages.

It’s a policy which will discourage the employment of the young, unskilled and inexperienced, as will ending the 90 day trial period for new employees.

We employed a manager earlier in the year. She came well recommended but we had some reservations about how well she’d cope with the job. She agreed to a 90-day-trial period, proved herself and we confirmed the position as permanent.

Had we not been able to give her a trial we wouldn’t have employed her.

The policy also includes Industry Standard Agreements which will take us back 50 years.

We don’t need backward looking policies like the one today on industrial relations from the Labour Party, says Kim Campbell, chief executive of the Employers’ and Manufacturers’ Association.

“The Industry Standard Agreements policy is a one size fits all approach that would take us back to 1960′s,” Mr Campbell said.

“People sitting in Wellington can’t decide what’s good for businesses and their employees in Invercargill and Kaitaia. It simply doesn’t work.

“Business wants to work to build an exciting future for all New Zealanders and we all want to get on with it.

“We want to focus on increasing productivity and attracting more investment to lift our business performance.

“But no matter how its dressed up this policy takes us back to system of national awards and it would undermine all the progress made towards flexible workplaces. . .

Kiwiblog has a graph of stoppages and work days lost to strikes which illustrates the danger of returnign to the bad old days.

The policy is pay-back for the financial support unions give the party.

It might be good for unions but it will increase costs without increasing productivity which will be bad for employees and employers.

Fonterra’s biggest ever day; auction price up

Fonterra had its biggest day’s collection last week – 81.2 million litres.

That makes this morning’s news of a 1.7 % increase in the trade weighted index in this morning’s GlobalDariyTrade auction even more welcome after eight successive falls.

The price of whole milk powder increased 5.7% to US$3,503/MT; skim milk powder was up 3%  to US$3,292/MT; anhydrous milk fat was down 1.7% to US$3,645/MT; butter milk powder was down 1.9% to US$3,019/MT; rennet casein dropped 14% to  US$7,040/MT; milk protein concentrate was down  6.4% to US$6,295/MT and cheese dropped 8.4% to  US$3,497/MT.

Labour clouded by SMOG again

All’s not fair in election campaigns but common sense and good taste usually put some things above or beyond politics.

Disasters, natural or otherwise, which kill people head the list.

Labour’s candidate for Rodney, Christine Rose either didn’t know or doesn’t care about that.

She’s photshopped a National Party billboard and uses it to lay the blame for the Pike River mine explosion, Christchurch earthquakes and grounding of the MV Rena on the party.

It’s yet another SMOG (Social Media Own Goal) from Labour.

The party can’t be held responsible for every action of every candidate but this is one in an on-going series of SMOGs and Labour is responsible for not acting to stop them.

 

October 19 in history

202 BC  Second Punic War: At the Battle of Zama, Roman legions under Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal Barca, leader of the invading Carthaginian army.

439  The Vandals, led by King Gaiseric, take Carthage.

1216  King John of England died and was succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry.

1453 The French recapture of Bordeaux brought the Hundred Years’ War to a close, with the English retaining only Calais on French soil.

1466 The Thirteen Years War ended with the Second Treaty of Thorn.

1469   Ferdinand II of Aragon married Isabella I of Castile, a marriage that paved the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain.

1512  Martin Luther became a doctor of theology (Doctor in Biblia).

1789 John Jay was sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States.

1813 The Battle of Leipzig concluded, giving Napoleon Bonaparte one of his worst defeats.

1822  In Parnaíba; Simplício Dias da Silva, João Cândido de Deus e Silva and Domingos Dias declared the independent state of Piauí.

1850  Annie Smith Peck, American mountaineer, was born (d. 1935).

1864 Battle of Cedar Creek – Union Army under Philip Sheridan destroy the Confederate Army under Jubal Early.

1864 – St. Albans Raid – Confederate raiders launched an attack on Saint Albans, Vermont.

1882  Umberto Boccioni, Italian painter and sculptor, was born (d. 1916).

1899  Miguel Ángel Asturias, Guatemalan writer, Nobel Prize laureate, was born (d. 1974).

1904 Polytechnic University of the Philippines founded as Manila Business School through the superintendence of the American C.A. O’Reilley.

1914 The First Battle of Ypres began.

1921 Portuguese Prime Minister António Granjo and other politicians were murdered in a Lisbon coup.

1931  John le Carré, English novelist, was born.

1943  Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, was isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.

1946 Philip Pullman, English writer, was born.

1950 The People’s Liberation Army takes control of the town of Qamdo in what is sometimes called the “Invasion of Tibet”.

1950  Korean War:  China joined the Korean War by sending thousands of troops across the Yalu river to fight United Nations forces.

1954 First ascent of Cho Oyu.

1959  The first discothèque, The Scotch Club in Aachen,  opened.

1966 President Lyndon Johnson, the first NZ president to visit New Zealand,  and his wife, Lady Bird, arrived at Ohakea airfield at the start of a 24-hour visit.

1969  The first Prime Minister of Tunisia in twelve years, Bahi Ladgham, was appointed by President Habib Bourguiba.

1974 – Niue became a self-governing colony of New Zealand.

1976  Battle of Aishiya in Lebanon.

1983  Maurice Bishop, Prime Minister of Grenada, was overthrown and executed in a military coup d’état led by Bernard Coard.

1986 Samora Machel, President of Mozambique and leader of FRELIMO, and 33 others died when their Tupolev 134 plane crashed into the Lebombo Mountains.

1987  Black Monday – the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 22%, 508 points.

1989  The convictions of the Guildford Four were quashed by the Court of Appeal  after they had spent 15 years in prison.

2001 SIEV-X, an Indonesian fishing boat en-route to Christmas Island, carrying over 400 asylum seekers, samk in international waters with the loss of 353 people.

2003 Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope John Paul II.

2004 Myanmar prime minister Khin Nyunt was ousted and placed under house arrest by the State Peace and Development Council on charges of corruption.

2004 – Care International aid worker Margaret Hassan was kidnapped in Iraq.

2005  Saddam Hussein went on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

2005 – Hurricane Wilma became the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record with a minimum pressure of 882 mb.

2007  A bomb explosion rocked Glorietta 2, a shopping mall in Makati. It killed 11 and injured more than 100 people.

Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia

Tamaki shortlist

The National Party has announced the names of the five people on the shortlist for the Tamaki electorate candidate selection.

The five hoping to succeed retiring MP Allan Peachey are: Denise Krum, Toni Millar, Simon O’Connor, Seby Reeves and Mark Thomas.

Selection will take place next Wednesday, October 26.

11/15

11/15 in Stuff’s kids’ quiz - let down by lack of knowledge of sport and entertainment.

Nats to introduce auto enrolment for KiwiSaver

Finance Minister Bill English has announced that National will introduce automatic enrolment for KiwiSaver in 2014/15,  subject to returning to surplus.

“In the current environment, we need to be mindful of the fiscal costs of all programmes. So we will proceed with KiwiSaver auto-enrolment in the same fiscal year in which we return to surplus and start to repay debt,” he says.

“As signalled in the Budget, we believe there is merit in a one-off KiwiSaver auto-enrolment exercise, where people in the workforce not already in the scheme would be signed up with the ability to opt out.”

If National returns to government it will finalise details after considering submissions to a public discussion paper to be issued early next year.

This policy is part of the government’s plan to build genuine national savings. It complements other measures including a return to budget surplus by 2014/51; last year’s tax reductions on work and savings and the plan to provide investment opportunities through the mixed ownership model for state assets.

“These measures are pushing in the same direction households are already moving,” Mr English says.

“Having spent more than $1.10 for every dollar they earned three years ago, households will this year have a positive savings rate for the first time in more than a decade.”

The Government decided against introducing auto-enrolment before 2014/15 because its immediate focus remains on returning to budget surplus.  

“While we’re running deficits in the next two years, that’s money the Government would have to borrow. Borrowing more money to put into KiwiSaver accounts is not real savings – we are applying the same approach to resuming contributions to the Super Fund,” Mr English says.

Reduction of debt is real saving. Borrowing to invest isn’t just not real savings, it’s stupid.

“Depending on the uptake and design, officials estimate a KiwiSaver auto-enrolment could cost the Government up to $550 million over four years – including the one-off $1,000 kick start payments to new members and ongoing annual member tax credits. We intend to fund this from within existing budget allowances.”

This measure will catch people who haven’t got round to enrolling but stops short of compulsion.

The Government agrees with the Savings Working Group that a compulsory savings regime is not warranted, Mr English says.

“Many New Zealanders have already opted out of KiwiSaver because they have valid reasons for not saving for retirement right now – including paying off their mortgage or being members of private savings schemes.”

KiwiSaver is a very generous scheme. If you’re not enrolled now you either don’t need it, don’t understand it, haven’t got round to it or can’t afford it.

Auto-enrolment will catch all of these groups. Those who have better use for their money or cant’ afford it will opt out, but most of those who can’t understand the scheme or haven’t got around to joining will stay in which will help build national savings and ensure more people are providing for their own retirement.

Let’s all say something

Lindsay Mitchell posts on Mana’s welfare policy which includes:

Provide a one off hardship grant of $1,000 for everyone aged 18 and over who is on an income of $30,000 or less, whether on a benefit or in paid work, to be paid by Christmas 2011.

Lift benefits to at least pre-1991 equivalent levels, ensuring people have enough to live on without constantly going into
debt.

Extend the In Work Tax Credit to the children of beneficiary parents.

The economic, financial and social cost of this would be eye-watering.

Lindsay also points to the Electoral Commission’s website which says:

Any attempts at bribery and corruption have two participants – those who offer the bribe and those who accept it. Anyone who knows about the bribe but says nothing is also implicated.

Lindsay has said something, let’s all say something.