Pervicacious – stubborn, willful, obstinate, refractory.
Simpler rules for ag vehicles welcome
09/08/2012The government has made some welcome changes to simplify rules for agricultural vehicles.
Associate Transport Minister Simon Bridges says changes to the rules for agricultural vehicles will reduce compliance costs while still ensuring safety. . .
The changes establish a two tier system for agricultural vehicles based on a 40km/h operating speed. Vehicles operating below this speed will be exempt from warrant of fitness and work time requirements.
A new licence endorsement will allow car licence holders to drive a greater range of agricultural vehicles once they prove they have the skills to do so. Other changes will improve and simplify the rules on pilot vehicles, work time variation schemes, hazard identification and vehicle visibility.
“Safety remains a key factor. The changes include a requirement that agricultural vehicles use a flashing amber beacon. This will better alert other road users to the presence of agricultural vehicles and associated hazards.
“The changes also reflect the Government’s focus on better and less regulation by improving compliance and providing greater operational flexibility for agricultural vehicle owners.
“Farmers and contractors sometimes work long and irregular hours. For instance, crops need to be harvested when they are ready and when the weather is right. The laws on the use of agricultural vehicles need to be fit for purpose and the proposed changes better reflect the needs of this very important industry.”
These are commonsense changes which will save time and money without compromising safety.
More information on the planned changes is here.
Thursday’s quiz
09/08/20121. Who said: Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” ?
2. Which was Margaret Mahy’s first published book?
3. It’s amitié in French, amicizia in Italian, amistad in Spanish and whanaungatanga in Maori, what is it in english?
4. Who is the longest serving Prime Minister in the Pacific, and from which country?
5. Who won New Zealand’s 100th Olympic medal and in which sport ?
Accountability requires good information
09/08/2012Education Minister Hekia Parata announced that achievement education for schools will be publicly available on a Ministry of Education website, Education Counts,.
It will allow parents to see how their child’s school is performing and will allow the Government to see how well the system is doing as a whole in order to raise achievement for all learners.
Public Achievement Information will include National Standards data, Education Review Office (ERO) reports, schools’ annual reports and NCEA data. Over time other relevant national and international reports will be added.
National Standards data, reported for the first time this year, will be published on the website in September in the format that schools’ submitted it.
“I accept that the data is variable. It is the first year, and no consistent format was required so that was to be expected. It can only get better and better both in quality and its use over time and we want to work with schools to do this,” says Ms Parata.
Using a variety of data is a good idea because it will give a much fuller picture of a school’s performance than just one source, especially if that was reports on National Standards which the Minister admits is inconsistent.
Business New Zealand has welcomed the announcement:
BusinessNZ Chief Executive Phil O’Reilly says more accessible information is
essential to improve school performance.
“Accountability for performance requires good information. . . “
Unions and the left are painting this as an assault on schools and teaching. It’s not, it’s merely a tool to improve transparency and accountability.
Families different and diverse
09/08/2012New Zealand families today: a brief demographic profile published by the Families Commission is a summary of facts about New Zealand families which reveals significant changes in our social fabric.
The Commission’s Chief Research Analyst, Dr Jeremy Robertson said the statistics reveal trends over several decades including fewer people marrying with more of those who do so marrying later and living together first.
“. . . The facts also correct some common misconceptions. For example, despite the belief that divorce is on the rise, there has actually been a recent fall in divorce rates, with the rate declining since 2003.”
He says, “With the increasing age of the population we are seeing a reduction in the proportion of households with children. Couple-only and one person households appear to be the fastest growing household type.”
More children are living with one parent. In 1976 10% of children were living with one parent, but by 2006 the figure was 28%. It is estimated that over a third of children will have lived in a sole parent family by the time they reach the age of 17.
Dr Robertson says. “Our household composition is changing and our experiences of family life are changing. Past patterns of family formation and child bearing have changed, with a wider diversity of pathways into family relationships. Children are also experiencing a greater range of living situations than the past.”
“These kinds of changes have implications for business, social policy, family services and local government” he says. It’s important to know what’s really happening in families today so we can provide the education, health and other social services that families, whānau and their children really need to prosper.” . . .
Key findings:
Over the past 20 years couple-only and one person households have become more common.
• The rate of growth in the proportion of households headed by a sole parent may be levelling off.
• An estimated third of children will have lived in a sole parent family for a period of time by age 17.
• In 2006 57% of all adults aged 16 and over were living with a partner. The majority of these were married (76%), however a growing proportion of New Zealanders now live together without formally legalising their relationship.
• Since the early 1970s there has been an almost uninterrupted decline in the general marriage rate.
• Evidence that some people are delaying marriage is seen in the increasing median age of those who marry. The median age of women who married for the first time has risen from 20.8 years in 1971 to 28.2 years in 2010. The median age for men marrying for the first time has increased by about 7 years.
• Divorce rates have increased until recently (there has been a drop-off since the mid 2000s). The proportion of people who marry for a second time has increased.
• The median age for women giving birth is now 30 years, compared with 26 years in the early 1960s and just under 25 years in the early 1970s. Fewer New Zealand women in their teens are having a child compared with the 1960s.
• The proportion of ex-nuptial births is now nearly 50%.
• Between 1991 and 2012 the proportion of women holding a post-school qualification increased from 32% to 50%. The gender gap has been steadily closing – from 12 percentage points in 1991 to 3 percentage points in 2012.
• The average weekly hours spent by children in licensed ECE settings has increased from 13.3 hours in 2000 to 20.4 hours in 2011.
The full report is here.
Provincial wooing won’t work
09/08/2012Labour leader David Shearer is trying to woo the provinces.
He can make all the promises he wants but it won’t work with anyone who thinks seriously about what a Labour-led government would deliver:
* A capital gains tax.
* A much lower commitment to reducing public spending.
* A divided caucus.
* Coalition partners which are anti-irrigation, anti-business and anti-imigration.
Labour did very badly in the provinces in last year’s election. Nothing has changed in the party since then to make it or its policies any more appealing.
August 9 in history
09/08/201248 BC Battle of Pharsalus – Julius Caesar decisively defeated Pompey at Pharsalus and Pompey fled to Egypt.
378 Gothic War: Battle of Adrianople – A large Roman army led by Emperor Valens was defeated by the Visigoths. Valens and more than half his army were killed.
681 Bulgaria was founded as a Khanate on the south bank of the Danube.
1173 Construction of the Tower of Pisa began.
1483 Opening of the Sistine Chapel.
1631 John Dryden, English Poet Laureate, was born (d. 1700).
1814 Indian Wars: The Creek signed the Treaty of Fort Jackson, giving up huge parts of Alabama and Georgia.
1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty was signed, establishing the United States-Canada border east of the Rocky Mountains.
1854 Henry David Thoreau published Walden.
1862 Battle of Cedar Mountain – General Stonewall Jackson narrowly defeated Union forces under General John Pope.
1877 Battle of Big Hole – A small band of Nez Percé Indians clash with the United States Army.
1892 Thomas Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph.
1896 Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist, was born (d. 1980)
1899 P. L. Travers, Australian author, was born (d. 1996).
1902 Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark were crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom.
1908 The Great White Fleet – 16 American battleships and their escorts, under the command of Admiral C. S. Sperry – arrived in Auckland.
1922 Philip Larkin, English poet, was born (d. 1985).
1925 Kakori train robbery.
1930 George Nepia played his last test for the All Blacks.
1936 Games of the XI Olympiad: Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal at the games becoming the first American to win four medals in one Olympiad.
1942 Mahatma Gandhi was arrested in Bombay by British forces, launching the Quit India Movement.
1942 Battle of Savo Island – Allied naval forces protecting their amphibious forces during the initial stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal are surprised and defeated by an Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser force.
1944 The United States Forest Service and the Wartime Advertising Council release posters featuring Smokey Bear for the first time.
1944 Continuation war: Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive, the largest offensive launched by Soviet Union against Finland during Second World War, ended in strategic stalemate. Both Finnish and Soviet troops at Finnish front dug to defensive positions, and the front remained stable until the end of the war.
1945 The atomic bomb, “Fat Man“, was dropped on Nagasaki. 39,000 people were killed outright.
1949 Jonathan Kellerman, American writer, was born.
1961 John Key, Prime Minister of New Zealand, was born.
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1963 Whitney Houston, American singer and actress. was born.
1965 Singapore seceded from Malaysia and gained independence.
1965 A fire at a Titan missile base near Searcy, Arkansas killed 53 construction workers.
1969 Members of a cult led by Charles Manson brutally murdered pregnant actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Polish actor Wojciech Frykowski, men’s hairstylist Jay Sebring, and recent high-school graduate Steven Parent.
1971 Internment in Northern Ireland: British security forces arrested hundreds of nationalists and detain them without trial in Long Kesh prison. Twenty people died in the riots that followed.
1974 Richard Nixon became the first President of the United States to resign from office. His Vice President, Gerald Ford, became president.
1977 The military-controlled Government of Uruguay announced that it will return the nation to civilian rule through general elections in 1981 for a President and Congress.
1993 The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan lost a 38-year hold on national leadership.
1999 Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, and for the fourth time fired his entire cabinet.
1999 The Diet of Japan enacted a law establishing the Hinomaru and Kimi Ga Yo as the official national flag and national anthem.
2001 US President George W. Bush announced his support for federal funding of limited research on embryonic stem cells.
2007 Emergence of the Financial crisis of 2007-2008 when a liquidity crisis resulted from the Subprime mortgage crisis.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia