Word of the day

Gracile – of slender build; attractively slender; slight or thin; graceful; of, relating to, resembling, or being a relatively small slender australopithecine (genus Australopithecus) characterised especially by molars and incisors of similar size that are adapted to a diet including both plant matter and animal flesh.

Thatcher thinks

It is always important in matters of high politics to know what you do not know. Those who think that they know, but are mistaken, and act upon their mistakes, are the most dangerous people to have in charge. pic.twitter.com/E5NIFAP1VR

— Margaret Thatcher (@MrsMThatcher) August 15, 2019

Rural round-up

Government policy, rule changes are hitting farmers in the pocket – Hayden Dillon:

A capital crunch is starting to impact farmers as the banks get more cagey about lending to dairy and the sheep and beef sectors, writes Hayden Dillon, head of agribusiness and a managing partner at Findex.

Things are looking okay externally. The big picture for our safe, efficiently produced protein is still strong, as shown by good commodity prices. But three domestic drivers have converged to cause difficulties for farmers, particularly those with a lot of debt or wanting capital to grow.

Firstly, changes imposed by the Overseas Investment Office have affected the value of and demand for land. We no longer have the same foreign capital coming in for our biggest farming sector – sheep, beef and dairy and our productive assets there. . .

More farmland goes into trees – Pam Tipa:

A large foreign-financed but New Zealand owned investment company has brought a big station in the Wairarapa for forestry development.

Social, employment and environmental sustainability issues will be included in plans to ensure a stable local rural community, it claims.

Kauri Forestry LP, a forestry business built, managed and governed by Craigmore Sustainables, has purchased Lagoon Hills Station in Wairarapa. . .

Could India be the next big thing for New Zealand sheep meat? – Jamie Gray:

Hopes are running high that India could be the next big thing for New Zealand sheep meat exports if the two countries form closer economic ties.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) involves 16 countries – the 10 members of ASEAN, plus the six countries with which ASEAN has free trade agreements—Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand.

The meat industry has expectations that RCEP will form a platform that will allow New Zealand access to India, which at the moment imposes high tariffs on imported goods.

“My personal view is that India is the next big prize,” Tim Ritchie, chief executive of the Meat Industry Association, said. . .

Standing on top of the Ohau Canal watching the ewes come home for shearing. #BenOhau #Mackenzie #Merino #RuralNZ pic.twitter.com/AUoj2YfQeJ

— Riley Kennedy (@JournoMan) August 29, 2019

 

Online training platform Tahi Ngātahi: A ‘game-changer’ for wool harvesting industry:

Shearing stalwart Jock Martin is the driving force behind online training platform, Tahi Ngātahi, which is revolutionising the way the wool harvesting industry trains its workforce.

Martin has been part of Otago and Southland’s wool harvesting scene for over 30 years and is a second generation shearer.

Passionate about improving skills and safety, he believed new e-learning platform Tahi Ngātahi was the ‘game-changer’ the industry has been waiting for.

Keeping workers injury-free in a physically demanding occupation is a big issue for the wool harvesting industry. . .

From vegan interns to visiting preschoolers, all are welcome at the ECO School – Rebecca Black:

“Do you mind goat’s milk in your tea?” Dani Lebo is a considerate host, though she quickly admits goat’s milk is really the only option because there are no other milking animals on her farm.

So goat’s milk it is, fresh and delicious.

The goats, like everything on five-hectare Kaitiaki Farm, are a deliberate choice. They’re lighter on the steep clay-heavy hills than cattle or sheep. . .

Springtime is migration time for nomadic families in Mongolia, and many have to help carry their animals across the rivers. The babies especially need an extra hand. https://t.co/iqrenwaM8p pic.twitter.com/Vwh5G6vEwl

— RoundSquareAdventure (@roundsquareadv) August 16, 2019

Time to move the ‘meat vs plant’ debate beyond crude headlines – Joanna Blythman,:

After all those months of BBC News regurgitating the bandwagon ‘reduce red meat to save the planet’ script, what a refreshing change it was to hear a thoughtful discussion on the Today programme with Patrick Holden, director of the Sustainable Food Trust, arguing convincingly for more, not less, red meat consumption.

While Vicki Hird from Sustain stuck to the ‘less but better meat’ mantra, Holden moved on this stale and overcooked debate. He argued persuasively that every country should align its diet to the productive capacity of its land. In other words, what’s on our plates should reflect the ecology of the country we live in. Two-thirds of UK land is grass, so red meat and dairy should form a significant proportion of our diets. When these foods come from fully pasture-fed animals, we can eat them, as Holden put it, sustainably, and with a clear conscience. In terms of climate effects, any methane produced by livestock is short-lived and offset by the benefit of the carbon that is sequestered in the permanent pastures they graze. . . 

Higher expectations of husbands than fathers

Jim Rose has a post at Utopia on research by Kathryn Edin showing women are choosier about their husbands than the fathers of their children:

Far from eschwing marriage as an institution, she found poor women idealised it to such an extent that it became unattainable. they didn’t believe that a marriage born in poverty could survive.

In a society that increasingly saw marriage as a choice, not a requirement, low-income women were embracing the same preconditions as middle-class women. They wanted to be ‘set’ before marrying, with economic independence to ensure a more equitable partnership and a fallback should things go bad. They also wanted men who were were mature, stable and who had mortgages and other signs of adulthood, no just jobs.

“People were embracing higher and higher standards for marriage,” edin explains. From a financial standpoint alone, “the men that would have been marriageable [in the 1950s] are no longer marriageable now. That’s a cultural change.” The low-income women in Edin’s study reported that decent, trustworthy, available men were in short supply in their communities, where there were often major sex imbalances thanks to high incarceration rates. This, Edin found, was why low-income women were willing to decouple childbearing from marriage: They believed if they waited until everything was perfect, they might never have children. And children, says Edin, “are the things in life you can’t live without.” As one subject explained, “I don’t wanna big trail of divorce, you know. I’d rather say, ‘Yes I had my kids out of wedlock’ than say ‘I married this idiot’. It’s like a pride thing.”

Marriage was so taboo among her subjects that Edin discovered two couples in her sample who claimed they were unmarried at the time of their babies’ birth but were actually not. One of the women had even been chewed out by her grandmother for marrying the father of one of her children.

The research centred on low-income women but this mindset can also be found among women with more means.

I can understand the strong desire to have children but how sad is it that the standards women set for fathers of their children are lower than those they expect in husbands; that men are acceptable as sperm donors but not to play the important parenting role in their children’s lives?

Women don’t want to marry ‘this idiot’ but they accept them to father their children.

Marriage used to be the institution that provided stability and security for families, for better for worse, for richer, for poorer . . .   now it’s an optional extra if an ideal man can be found and fathers don’t matter much.

Quote of the day

There certainly was discrimination. They used to look at you and say she is married, or she has got children and if you were not married, they were expecting you to get married. – Dame Dr Beulah Bewley who was born on this day  in 1929.

September 2 in history

44 BC  Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declared her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion.

44 BC  The first of Cicero’s Philippics (oratorical attacks) on Mark Antony.

31 BC  Final War of the Roman Republic: Battle of Actium – off the western coast of Greece, forces of Octavian defeated troops under Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

1649  The Italian city of Castro was completely destroyed by the forces of Pope Innocent X, ending the Wars of Castro.

1666  The Great Fire of London broke out and burned for three days, destroying 10,000 buildings including St Paul’s Cathedral.

1752  Great Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe.

1789  The United States Department of the Treasury was founded.

1792  During what became known as the September Massacres of the French Revolution, rampaging mobs slaughtered three Roman Catholic Church bishops, more than two hundred priests, and prisoners believed to be royalist sympathisers.

1807  The Royal Navy bombarded Copenhagen with fire bombs and phosphorus rockets to prevent Denmark from surrendering its fleet to Napoleon.

1812  – William Fox, English-New Zealand lawyer and politician, 2nd Premier of New Zealand, was born (d. 1893).

1833  Oberlin College was founded by John Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart.

1856  Tianjing Incident in Nanjing, China.

1862  American Civil War:  President Abraham Lincoln reluctantly restored Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope’s disastrous defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

1867 Mutsuhito, Emperor Meiji of Japan, married Masako Ichijō.

1870  Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Sedan – Prussian forces took Napoleon III of France and 100,000 of his soldiers prisoner.

1885  Rock Springs massacre:  150  miners, who were struggling to unionize so they could strike for better wages and work conditions, attacked their Chinese fellow workers, killing 28, wounding 15, and forcing several hundred more out of town.

1898 Battle of Omdurman– British and Egyptian troops defeat ed Sudanese tribesmen and establish British dominance in Sudan.

1901  Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt uttered the famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick” at the Minnesota State Fair.

1925  The U.S. Zeppelin the USS Shenandoah crashed, killing 14.

1929 – Beulah Bewley, English physician and academic, was born  (d. 2018).

1935  Labor Day Hurricane  hit the Florida Keys killing 423.

1937 Derek Fowlds, British actor, was born.

1945 World War II: Combat ended in the Pacific Theatre: the Instrument of Surrender of Japan was signed by Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and accepted aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

1945 Vietnam declared its independence, forming the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

1946  Interim Government of India was formed with Jawaharlal Nehru as Vice President.

1947 – Jim Richards, New Zealand race car driver, was born.

1948 – Christa McAuliffe, American educator and astronaut, was born (d. 1986).

1954  – Gai Waterhouse, Scottish-Australian horse trainer and businesswoman, was born.

1957 President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam became the first foreign head of state to make a state visit to Australia.

1958 United States Air Force C-130A-II was shot down by fighters over Yerevan, Armenia when it strayed into Soviet airspace while conducting a sigint mission. All crew members were killed.

1959 Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil, was born.

1960  New Zealand enjoyed perhaps its greatest day at an Olympic Games. First Peter Snell won gold in the 800 m, and then within half an hour Murray Halberg won the 5000 m to complete a remarkable track double in Rome’s Olympic Stadium.

1960 The first election of the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration. The Tibetan community observes this date as Democracy Day.

1967 The Principality of Sealand was established, ruled by Prince Paddy Roy Bates.

1972 – New Zealand’s rowing eight won gold in Munich.

1979 –  Ivan Mauger won his sixth world speedway title.

1990  Transnistria was unilaterally proclaimed a Soviet republic; the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev declared the decision null and void.

1992  An earthquake in Nicaragua killed at least 116 people.

1996  A peace agreement was signed between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation FrontinMalacañang Palace.

1998  Swissair Flight 111 crashed near Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia. All 229 people on board were killed.

1998 The UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Jean Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide.

2013 – The new eastern span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opened to traffic, being the widest bridge in the world.

2018 – The National Museum of Brazil was destroyed by a fire, with the loss of over 90% of the museum’s collection.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia