Niaiserie – simplicity, silliness or an instance of this.
Very little of this in #gigatownoamaru.
Niaiserie – simplicity, silliness or an instance of this.
Very little of this in #gigatownoamaru.
Good point:
Hat tip: Capitalism.
#gigatownoamaru becoming the Southern Hemisphere’s fastest town will provide opportunities for employment.
Federated Farmers president Bruce Wills puts the case for irrigation:
The challenge with agriculture is that our industry is heavily reliant on factors that are out of our control. The weather, exchange rates and commodity prices are all very important parts of our business, but they are things we have little or no control over. The erratic nature of farming means an unpredictable economy for all New Zealanders. What the industry needs is the ability to harness the things we can control, to make the unpredictable more predictable.
I am talking about harnessing water. When the droughts come, it is tough on our industry; farmer’s battle dust and moisture deficits and the financial scars of serious droughts can be slow to heal. Even in town it is tough. Weather patterns are changing we are told so we need to look at ways we can minimise the impacts of what may become increasingly regular dry spells.
After returning from World Water Week in Stockholm, where 2700 attendees came from across the globe, I quickly realised how lucky we are in New Zealand. As much rain falls here in a year as on the whole of Australia and we receive 2.5 times the rainfall of the United Kingdom, yet we let 95 percent of this flow out to sea unused by man or animal. This astounded conference attendees who were envious of the quantity and overall quality of our water.
So why is it that harnessing and storing one of the very things that can save our bacon, when times are dry, is seen as a threat by some New Zealanders? Having a reliable source of water just makes sense and equally so, storing water in times of plenty and using in times of shortage is surely good business practice. In fact councils all over New Zealand do this to ensure reliable water for their urban residents. We have seen how it has turned provinces around, where water has created jobs and grown communities. Certainty and reliability makes for good business. It concerns me to watch rural communities struggle during droughts as well as the lost opportunity of all this water running out to sea.
This year’s drought saw a trade deficit for the August quarter, a near one and a half-billion dollar fall in exports compared to the previous year. With farming earning well over half of New Zealand’s total export receipts all New Zealanders suffer when farming suffers. There is a trade off in everything we do and if trade declines we are all the poorer for it. As a trading nation we are dependent upon a hungry world to buy our food.
What keeps me awake at night is the uncertainty around whether we are able to keep up our food production with a world population expected to hit 9.3 billion in the year 2050. Water is a key part of New Zealand meeting this growing demand for food.
It is critical that we maintain our reputation as reliable food producers and having reliable water sources is a key part of New Zealand harnessing a sustainable future.
North Otago used to suffer from the boom and bust cycle dependent on the weather.
Now we’ve got a critical mass of irrigation it’s not just farmers who are benefiting. It’s created more jobs on farm and in businesses which supply and service them and in the wider district and of course in Oamaru*.
Soils which used to blow away in nor westers are more stable too.
The wider economy has gained from increased export earnings.
It’s also enabling us to provide more food for a hungry world.
*That’s – #gigatownoamaru which is seeking to be the fastest town in the Southern Hemisphere.
Damien Grant says inequality isn’t the fault of the rich:
A recent book edited by Max Rashbrooke, Inequality; a New Zealand Crisis, portrays an alarmist view of an unfolding dystopian disaster. However, Rashbrooke and many of those concerned at rising inequality fall for the zero-sum fallacy; the idea that there is a set amount of cash in the economy.
The fallacy goes that if Bob has made an extra dollar then he must have taken it off someone else; the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
The easiest way to dismantle this illusion is to imagine two farmers. The first is content with his lot but the second works extra hours to build himself a new cow shed, making his farm more valuable. He has become richer but not at the expense of his neighbour. . . .
Not only has the farmer not become richer at the expense of his (or her) neighbour, s/he may well have helped increase someone else’s income by using more goods and services and/or employing more people.
Economic growth is driven by innovative entrepreneurs adding to the total economy. They sometimes become rich by retaining some of the extra wealth they created. Equally, a surgeon who works long hours will derive a large income, but only as a result of repairing the lives of his patients; both benefit from the transaction. We can reduce inequality by restricting the amount of operations he performs, and rising income tax has that effect.
However, that will not reduce poverty, it will exacerbate it. The rich will buy the reduced number of operations and the poor will miss out. . .
The focus on inequality is driven by the belief that life isn’t fair; that those with more have taken advantage of those with less and that there’s little or nothing those with less can do about it without state intervention – higher and more taxes and more redistribution.
Life isn’t fair but the easiest way to reduce inequality is to make the rich poorer which doesn’t help anyone.
The problem isn’t that some people have more than others, it’s that some people don’t have enough.
The causes for that are many. The state has a role in helping address some of those including poor education and health either directly through its own programmes or indirectly in funding other groups to help.
It also has an obligation to do so in a way that tackles the real problem of poverty, not one that merely addresses the symptom of inequality.
#gigatownoamaru is seeking to provide opportunities for entrepreneurs by becoming the fastest town in the Southern Hemisphere.
Before he lost the Labour leadership, David Shearer announced he’d quashed the party’s man-ban:
Mr Shearer yesterday announced Labour’s council had agreed to his request to withdraw a proposal to allow some electorates to open candidate selections to women only, saying it was distracting from issues people wanted Labour to talk about.
The party’s got a new leader and policy is back in effect if not exactly as it was earlier proposed:
The Labour Party has voted to introduce a gender quota system to ensure half its MPs are women.
The new party rule means Labour’s men may have to give up spots in parliament, earned on merit, to female MPs.
Labour’s caucus is currently 42 percent female, but the quota means that number will have to rise to 45 percent by 2014, and 50 percent by 2017.
It means Labour’s party list will be stacked if required, with women put ahead of men to meet the quota.
The party grassroots lost a battle to introduce a so-called “man-ban” on men in electorate seats earlier this year when former leader David Shearer had it struck out.
This time party president Moira Coatsworth won, with a man-ban in drag.
“Women have missed out. This is about getting women equality,” she says.
Are you really equal if you’re more equal than people who might be better able to do the job than you; if you’re there for the cause of equality rather than your merit?
David Farrar analysed previous elections to show which male MPs would have been sacrificed for women had the quota been in place:
1996 Lose
Joe Hawke
Jonathan Hunt
Mark Gosche
Dover Samuels
1996 Gain
Helen Duncan
Verna Smith
Suzanne Sinclair
Sue Moroney
1999 Loss
Joe Hawke
Jonathan Hunt
Michael Cullen
1999 Gain
Lynne Pillay
Lili Tuioti
Brenda Lowe-Johnson
2002 Loss
Ashraf Choudary
Dave Hereora
Graham Kelly
Jonathan Hunt
Michael Cullen
2002 Gain
Moana Mackey
Lesley Soper
Carol Beaumont
Gill Boddy-Greer
Louisa Wall
2005 Loss
Dave Hereora
Russell Fairbrother
David Parker
Shane Jones
Ashraf Choudary
Rick Barker
Mita Ririnui
2005 Gain
Lesley Soper
Louisa Wall
Denise MacKenzie
Leila Boyle
Jennifer McCutcheon
Linda Hudson
Marilyn Brown
2008 Loss
Stuart Nash
Rick Barker
Ashraf Choudary
Kelvin Davis
Charles Chauvel
2008 Gain
Judith Tizard
Louisa Wall
Lesley Soper
Erin Ebborn-Gillespie
Josephine Bartley
2011 Loss
Raymond Huo
Rajen Prasad
Shane Jones
Andrew Little
Charles Chauvel
2011 Gain
Carol Beaumont
Carmel Sepuloni
Deborah Mahuta-Coyle
Steve Chadwick
Kate Sutton.
. . . In 1996, 1999 and 2002 Labour would not have been able to give any male MPs a winnable list place. . . .That means they would have lost Michael Cullen. Ironically, one of the MPs who would have been elected in his place is Lesley Soper. Soper is the only pro-life woman in the Labour Party, and quite hated by most Labour women. . .
There’s equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.
The former ensures everyone has the same chance and the best candidate wins.
The latter puts gender ahead of merit.
A quota will leave women MPs open to the criticism that they’re there in parliament because of who they are rather than their skills.
If not having enough women in parliament is a problem, serious consideration needs to be given to what’s stopping them getting there rather than manipulating the list.
That is using a second-best band-aid to cover the symptom without addressing the cause.
#gigatownoamaru is getting there on merit.
1333 The River Arno flooding caused massive damage in Florence.
1429 Joan of Arc liberated Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier.
1576 Eighty Years’ War: Spain captured Antwerp.
1677 The future Mary II of England married William, Prince of Orange.
1737 The Teatro di San Carlo was inaugurated.
1783 W.A. Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 was performed for the first time.
1791 The Western Confederacy of American Indians won a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash.
1825 The Erie Canal was completed with Governor DeWitt Clinton performing the Wedding of The Waters ceremony in New York Harbour.
1839 The Newport Rising: the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain.
1852 Count Camillo Benso di Cavour became the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia.
1861 The University of Washington opened in Seattle, Washington as the Territorial University.
1864 American Civil War: Battle of Johnsonville – Confederate troops bombarded a Union supply base and destroyed millions of dollars in material.
1889 Menelek of Shoa obtained the allegiance of a large majority of the Ethiopian nobility, paving the way for him to be crowned emperor.
1890 London’s first deep-level tube railway opened between King William Street and Stockwell.
1916 Ruth Handler, American businesswoman and inventor of the Barbie doll, was born (d. 2002).
1918 World War I: Austria-Hungary surrendered to Italy.
1918 The German Revolution began when 40,000 sailors took over the port in Kiel.
1921 The Sturmabteilung or SA was formed by Adolf Hitler.
1921 Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi was assassinated in Tokyo.
1921 The Italian unknown soldier was buried in the Altare della Patria (Fatherland Altar) in Rome.
1922 In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men found the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun‘s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming was elected the first female governor in the United States.
1930 Phar Lap won the Melbourne Cup.
1937 Loretta Swit, American actress, was born.
1939 World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.
1942 Second Battle of El Alamein – Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel led his forces on a five-month retreat.
1944 World War II: Bitola Liberation Day.
1950 Charles Frazier, American author, was born.
1952 The United States government established the National Security Agency.
1955 After being totally destroyed in World War II, the rebuilt Vienna State Opera reopened with a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
1956 James Honeyman-Scott, English guitarist (The Pretenders), was born (d. 1982)
1956 Soviet troops entered Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union.
1957 Tony Abbott, Australia politician, Liberal leader, was born.
1962 In a test of the Nike-Hercules air defense missile, Shot Dominic-Tightrope was successfully detonated 69,000 feet above Johnston Island – the last atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States.
1966 Two-thirds of Florence was submerged as the River Arno flooded with the contemporaneous flood of the Po River which led to 113 deaths, 30,000 made homeless, and the destruction of numerous Renaissance artworks and books.
1970 Genie, a 13-year-old feral child was found in Los Angeles, California having been locked in her bedroom for most of her life.
1973 The Netherlands experienced the first Car Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis.
1979 Iran hostage crisis began: a group of Iranians, mostly students, invaded the US embassy in Tehran and took 90 hostages.
1993 A China Airlines Boeing 747 overran Runway 13 at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak International Airport while landing during a typhoon, injuring 22 people.
1994 First conference that focused exclusively on the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.
1995 Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an extremist Orthodox Israeli.
2002 Chinese authorities arrested cyber-dissident He Depu for signing a pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress.
2008 Barack Obama became the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.
2008 Proposition 8 passed in California, representing the first elimination of an existing right to marry for LGBT couples.
2011 – The Hellenic Parliament rejected a no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou following a failed attempt to hold a referendum on a Eurozone bailout.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
#gigatownoamaru hoping to make history as Southern Hemisphere’s fastest town.