The Weekender 12/07/2009

Welcome to another week of New Zealand.

Sport

The Warriors took on a weakened (due to Origin duty) Canterbury Bulldogs in Auckland today - and lost 14-18. So now they are saying the loss is a "potentially fatal hit" to their playoff chances. So perhaps they have a mathematical chance but they haven't looked like making the playoffs all season!

The Melbourne Vixens confirmed their top billing in the first of the semi finals when they beat NZ's top hope the Waikato/BOP Magic 58-43 in Melbourne this afternoon. The Magic have a second chance, but would have to play the Vixens again in the final in Melbourne.

Bay of Plenty, Chiefs and NZ Maori rugby player Glen Jackson has taken up the whistle and will become a ref next year.
Wellington had another successful defence of the Ranfurly Shield with a 61-6 win over Wanganui, but were held to 6-26 until midway through the second half.
Some more good news from the final Lions vs South Africa match (other than the Lions won!), the South African's will be charged for misconduct after the Springboks all wore armbands in their final game marked with "Justice 4 Bakkies" in protest of the two week suspension for Bakkies Botha from the previous match. I can understand armbands if someone dies but degrading it to a protest about the disciplinary process was very wrong.
Finally the All Black coaches of Graham Henry, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen have been reappointed through until the end of 2011 - giving them a second shot at a World Cup. Not everyone is happy but it's not surprising with all our other top level coaches having already left for overseas.

A group of four NZers (expat Britons) were competing in the charity rowing race across the Indian Ocean when the organisers didn't hear from them on their regular phone call. Their emergency beacon hadn't gone off but it was quite a worry for the families. But they turned up in Mauritius and finished second overall. Half of the twelve boats had retired due to the huge storms. The Rowing for Prostate crew took 81 days for the trip - the winners finished in 68 days.

The Junior Tall Blacks finished the under-19 world basketball champs on a high with a 62-54 win over Angola to get 13th place out of 16 teams.

Hayden Roulston did his job in the third stage of the Tour de France, helping his team mate Thor Hushovd to a win on the stage.

NZ's newest professional golfer Danny Lee finished the PGA tournament in Maryland in a tie for seventh - his first top 10 finish.

NZers won four gold medals at the Henley rowing regatta this week. Mahe Drysdale in the men's singles sculls, Nathan Cohen and Matthew Trott in the doubles, Hamish Bond and Eric Murray, and women's singles sculler Emma Twigg.

NZ News

The residents around Tekapo and Mt Cook are working to make their area a world night-sky reserve. I'm very keen on protecting the night sky. There are a lot of lights unnecessarily pointing upwards - and there aren't many people walking or driving higher than street level.

There is a mystery going on in Christchurch. You may have read last week about the measles outbreak. Well now there are 15 confirmed cases and six of those had been immunised. Health authorities are working to trace the vaccine to see if it was faulty.

Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Ramsden has become the first NZer to receive Nato's Meritorious Service Medal. He received the medal for superior leadership during his six-month deployment to Afghanistan.
The US is constantly asking NZ to increase our military presence in Afghanistan. Currently there are 140 serving in NZ's Provincial Reconstruction Team and the US are so impressed with them that they want more. The government is also considering whether to send the SAS back who have been there three time already.

Ok, it's time to abuse the media headlines again. The headline said "NZ Post cuts 400 jobs". But then they ruin their self serving headline with facts. There were 237 redundancies, 86 jobs went through attrition and 61 fixed contracts weren't renewed. So adding those up is 384. That's not 400. But they really only cut 237 jobs. And they also created 90 new jobs. But it gets worse (and I almost stopped reading!). They have 10,000 permanent staff, and 72% of those redundancies were voluntary. So out of the actual redundancies less the new jobs - there are 80 jobs cut, for a grand total of 0.8% of their staff.

John Key has been touring the South Pacific and has promised to help the Pacific counties to cope with the swine flu.

Two men were arrested near Morrinsville after a couple of bank robberies in the Waikato. In fact there have been quite a number of bank robberies in the past month - and I believe the police have arrested suspects for all of them.

The Numbers Game

7: deaths due to Swine flu in NZ so far
138: th most expensive city to live title for Auckland out of 143 cities, down from 78th in 2008 - Auckland is getting cheaper! (Sydney 66, Melbourne 92, Wellington 139)
163.9: cents/L for 91-octane after a four cent drop
1,500: $ fines from the council for Hamiltonians who watched the V8's on their roofs - have been withdrawn
9,500: people were without power on the Coromandel Peninsular after the weekends storms, north of Auckland saw roofs off houses & flooding
1m: $ to be paid by the NZ government to Air NZ, to support flights to the Cook Islands
18m: $ of aid for Tonga (up from $12m) by 2011

Finance NZ Dollar

GBP 0.3875 (0.0015)
EUR 0.4508 (-0.0002)
USD 0.6280 (-0.0023)
AUD 0.8064 (0.0148)

The Weekender NZer of the week

Hugh Millar
Highly decorated World War 2 airman Wing Commander Hugh Miller, survivor of a ditching in the North Sea after a horror bombing operation before winning plaudits for dramatically cutting accident rates at training units, has died in Blenheim.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid;=10583224&ref;=rss

Joke of the Weekender

Missing Bags
I couldn't find my luggage at the airport baggage area so I went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that my bags never showed up. She smiled and told me not to worry because they were trained professionals and I was in good hands.
"Now," she asked me, "has your plane arrived yet?"

Weekender Photos

This week I have a couple of photos of my new nephew Ethan Allessandro Harrison, born 9:52am Tuesday 7 July, 3.57kg to Craig & Edelweiss.
Check out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42/EthanHarrison

Darren Harrison: darren@harrison.gen.nz
The Weekender: mailed weekly (Sunday nightish)
Website: www.dunwich.co.nz/weekender/
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