Botany selection tweets – Jami-Lee Ross wins

Progress on National’s candidate selection for the Botany by-election is on Twitter.

It’s gone to the fourth ballot and is now between Maggie Barry and Jamie-Lee Ross.

Update: Jami-Lee Ross has won.

Word of the day

Giddhom – the frantic galloping of cows when plagued by flies.

The Physiotherapist’s Piano

This Tuesday’s poem is The Physiotherapist’s Piano by Jenny Powell.

Other Tuesday Poems linked in the sidebar include:

Robert Burn’s poem O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast chosen by Kathleen Jones who includes a link to a reading of the poem.

Liberty by Edward Thomas.

Growing is Forever by Karlie Markle – an audio visual celebration of nature.

Broken Arm by Emma Barnes.

The Picnic by Sarah Jane Barnett.

Blackberry Picking written and read by Seamus Heaney.

Will You Dance with Me by Renee Liang.

Haiku “spring rain” by Kobayashi Issa.

Poetry is Fun by Susan Landry.

I Saw A J0lly Hunter by Charles Causley.

Clarity by Mary McCallum.

There are more – if you click on the first link you can find the rest yourself.

Love in the Early Winter by Jenny Powell.

Thursday’s quiz

1. What does a manometer measure?

2. It’s agneau in French, agnello in Italian, reme  in Maori and cordero in Spanish, what is it in English?

3. Who said: “I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humour.”?

4. Who wrote The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency?

5. What are warp and weft?

Learning from history

Edmund Burke said,  “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

The National Party does know its history and has no intention of repeating the mistakes made by the then-Labour government (in which were current Labour leader Phil Goff and Act MP Roger Douglas) when it sold state assets in the 1980s.

The proposal to sell minority stakes in a few State owned Enterprises, announced by John Key yesterday,  is a very moderate response to the very real danger posed by New Zealand’s high level of debt.

The left are scaremongering that this will mean overseas ownership but it won’t.

The government will retain a majority share and New Zealanders will be first in the queue for shares.  Among them could be Kiwi Saver providers, the Superannuation Fund and Iwi with Treaty Settlements none of which were possible buyers a couple of decades ago.

Even if they then on-sold to foreigners, and it is most unlikely all of them would, the government would still have a majority holding.

Funny how the people who oppose overseas ownership of land, (which can’t be taken away and use of which is subject to domestic laws) and minority shares in businesses, don’t seem to mind being highly indebted to foreign banks.

You don’t have to know much about history to realise that poses a far greater danger to our economy and sovereignty than selling a minority share in a few assets.

Attributes of a good MP

Trusty, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind.

Those are the virtues a Guide or Scout should possess. They’re a a good start for an MP too but the successful one needs much more than that.

MPs require intelligence, confidence, common sense, diligence, flexibility, humility, versatility, energy, patience, perseverance, stamina versatility, vision and wisdom.

They must be adaptable, compassionate, decisive, dependable, fair, honest, honourable, innovative, open, polite, reasonable, tolerant and tough. They need the ability to find solutions to difficult problems and stressful situations without becoming emotionally involved and the strength to say “no” when they can’t help.

The position requires MPs to work with all sorts of people regardless of their abilities, backgrounds and views without fear or favour.

MPs need to learn how to not take personal attacks personally. A well developed sense of humour, including the ability to laugh at themselves, is essential.

They must be able to admit mistakes and apologise for them.

They need the support of family and friends who will lift them up when they’re knocked back and keep the grounded  if they start getting carried away with their own importance.

They need to be articulate, enthusiastic and persuasive. They require the ability to read quickly, understand complex and sometimes contradictory information and to sort what’s important and right from what’s not.

 MPs need to know what they believe in. They must be sure about what they will tolerate and what they won’t; what they stand for and what they stand against.

They must support the philosophy and principles of the party for which they are standing and not be like  Marilyn Waring who told Chris Laidlaw she stood for the National Party so she could get into parliament, not because she believed in it.

Supporting the philosophy and principles of the party doesn’t mean they’ll agree with every policy. They must be able to accept the need to promote policies they might not agree with and choose very carefully the rare occasions when they will not be able to do that.

Tonight 60 members of the National Party will be choosing one of five nominees who will be the candidate for Botany.

They are:  Maggie Barry, Aaron Bhatnagar, Darron Gedge, Jami-lee Ross and Edward Saafi.

I don’t know any of them well enough to have a view on who will be the best candidate.

The list of attributes isn’t exhaustive and none of the five will have all the ones I’ve mentioned. But I hope s/he has most of them because the man or woman who wins the selection will almost certainly be the next MP for the electorate.

January 27 in history

On January 27:

1186 Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, married Constance of Sicily.

1343 Pope Clement VI issued the Bull Unigenitus.

1606  Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators began, ending with their execution on January 31.

1695 Mustafa II became the Ottoman sultan on the death of Ahmed II. Mustafa rules until his abdication in 1703.

1756 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer was born  (d. 1791).

1785 The University of Georgia was founded, the first public university in the United States.

1825 The U.S. Congress approved Indian Territory clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the “Trail of Tears“.

 

1832  Lewis Carroll, English author, was born (d. 1898).

 

1888 The National Geographic Society was founded in Washington, D.C..

1908 William Randolph Hearst, Jr., American newspaper magnate, was born (d. 1993).

 

1921 Donna Reed, American actress, was born (d. 1986).

1933  Mohamed Al-Fayed, Egyptian billionaire businessman, was born.

1939 First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.

1941 Beatrice Tinsley, New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist , was born  (d. 1981).

1944  Nick Mason, English drummer (Pink Floyd),was born.

1944 The 900-day Siege of Leningrad was lifted.

 I

1945 – World War II: The Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

1951 Brian Downey, Irish musician (Thin Lizzy), was born.

  1951 Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site began with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat.

1962 Peter Snell broke the world mile record  on grass at Cook’s Garden, Wanganui, in a time of 3 mins 53.4 secs.

 1967 Apollo 1 – Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire during a test of the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Centre.

1967 – More than 60 nations signed the Outer Space Treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.

1968 Mike Patton, American singer (Faith No More), was born.

1973 Paris Peace Accords officially ended the Vietnam War. Colonel William Nolde was killed in action becoming the conflict’s last recorded American combat casualty.

 Signing the peace accords.

1974 The Brisbane River flooded causing the largest flood to affect Brisbane City in the 20th Century.

1979 Daniel Vettori, New Zealand cricketer, was born.

1981 Tony Woodcock, New Zealand rugby union player, was born.

 1983 Pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel, the world’s longest sub-aqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō, broke through.

1984 Pop singer Michael Jackson suffered second and third degree burn on his scalp during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in the Shrine Auditorium.

1996 Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposed the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane, in a military coup.

1996 Germany first observed International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

2006 Western Union discontinued its Telegram and Commercial Messaging services.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia