July 2010
The Weekender 25/07/2010
Submitted by darrenh on Sun, 25/07/2010 - 21:01Here we go then. It's been quite a good week weather wise, some lovely sunny winter days - but the wind has been cold!
Sport
Sam Warriner won her third half ironman this year. This time the win was in Racine Wisconsin.
Daniel Vettori has been rated the second-best test all-rounder in the ICC's latest rankings.
The Warriors were aiming for their sixth win in a row but it was one step too far as they lost 38-28 to South Sydney.
The NZ men's hockey team, the Black Sticks, have beaten France 4-2 in the first of three internationals in Paris.
Julian Dean had his second second in the Tour de France in the 18th stage. That wasn't his only drama recently. In a case of mistaken identity a policeman crash-tackled him to the ground when he was warming up for the 16th stage!
The Wellington Phoenix the junior team from a formerly top Argentine club side Boca yesterday, winning the A-League warm-up 2-1. The Boca Juniors beat the A-League champions Melbourne Victory 1-0 last week.
Fifteen year old Jack Gill from Takapuna Grammar became the youngest winner of a junior title at the under 20 world junior shot put champs. If he was 10 days younger he would have been ineligible to enter as too young!
The All Blacks had a weekend off in the tri-nations, but Australia thrashed the Springboks 30-13. Australian Quade Cooper was banned for two tests for a dangerous tackle and Springbok Jaque Fourie was banned for four weeks for a dangerous tackle.
NZ News
Three directors of a Hawke's Bay company that employed illegal workers in orchards have been jailed for three years. They admitted a charge of conspiring to aid and abet foreign nationals to work and stay in NZ illegally.
The film of a group of long-boarders (longish skateboards), boarding down the Bombay Hills hit the internet this week. It's an interesting one to watch as they hope they don't need to stop suddenly!
Gun killings in NZ have declined dramatically. A US publication said NZ had "the most pronounced decline in firearm homicide over the past two decades".
The government has responded to the overwhelming public opinion on mining DOC land and have said they won't be reclassifying land, however Northland and West Coast councils say they would welcome mining lower-value conservation areas. Northland alone has more than $20b in minerals.
New Zealand domain names will from tomorrow be allowed to use macrons enabling te reo Maori to be correctly used.
There have been two news stories hanging around all week & I've left them till last. The first is how Auckland council has been fining people for using bus lanes when turning. Legally they are allowed to use a bus lane for 50m, however many people have said that is not enough time, many (including a former builder & spatial design lecturer) have said estimating 50m is difficult, meanwhile anyone stuck in Auckland traffic is willing to risk a fine to make it to that corner a bit quicker. The council has issued $4.2m worth of infringement notices over the past 12 months.
The second ongoing story is another change the government wants to make to the labour laws. They have announced that employers can ask for (& pay for) medical certificates from staff whenever they are sick. Although there is no documented proof apparently employers up & down the country have been asking the government for that option to help prevent staff "throwing sickies". The current law requires an employee to be sick for three consecutive days before the employer can request a medical certificate. I guess that makes it easy to take every Monday off (hangover Monday?) without any proof of any actual sickness.
3: murders only, in Counties-Manukau so far this year - attributed to an increase in police staff and new policies
3: year contract was won by Massey University to teach members of Brunei's armed forces a diploma course in defence and strategic studies
39: was the median age of a constable last year, it was 34 in 1999 and is expected to be 43 by the year 2019
80: new jobs have been added to a Canon call centre in Auckland after they closed down the Sydney call centre
1,200: parents dropped out of the work force due to Labour's $1.5b Working for Families package - achieving the opposite of it's aim, but it has reduced child poverty
6,000: $ shoplifting spree by some Australian schoolboys in Queenstown just before they flew home
20,000: $ fine for a North Canterbury farmer who made written threats against the Prime Minister
1m: $ in cash & a Lotus Elise have been seized from a man at the top of an organised crime ring importing & distributing P
68m: $ worth of new plane for Sir Peter Jackson after he upgraded to a Gulfstream G550
72m: $ in white-collar crime for the first half of this year - more than for all of 2008
Finance NZ Dollar
GBP 0.4720 (+0.0071)
EUR 0.5639 (+0.0137)
USD 0.7278 (+0.0167)
AUD 0.8130 (-0.0060)warmup
The
Weekender NZer of the week
Frances Alda
INTERNATIONAL DIVA
Born Christchurch in 1879, grew up in Melbourne, to Europe in 1902. Sang at La Scala, and triumphed at the New York Metropolitan Opera. A proud New Zealander, recorder of traditional Maori songs. Famous across America as an opera star, showered with widespread tributes on her death in 1952.
http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/alda.html
Air Boss
Activated from the Army Reserves for a joint service Arctic exercise, I was assigned to the air reconnaissance section.
Although I had recently been promoted, I was feeling rusty, and wanted to get started learning my duties so as not to appear too "green."
I confided to the Air Force lieutenant colonel who greeted me that I was anxious to meet the Air Boss right away.
"Don't worry, son," he said reassuringly, "the Air Boss is a real professional, knows his stuff cold and works well with his people. Great guy."
"Terrific!" I replied. "What's his name?"
Looking through the roster, the welcoming officer replied, "O'Hara."
"Oh, no," I groaned. "That's me."
Check
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Darren Harrison:
darren@harrison.gen.nz
The
Weekender: mailed weekly (Sunday nightish)
Website:
www.dunwich.co.nz/weekender/
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The Weekender 18/07/2010
Submitted by darrenh on Sun, 18/07/2010 - 20:31Welcome to the week that was.
Sport
Well the Football World Cup is over. The worlds biggest sporting event has finished and little old NZ came out as the only unbeaten side. With the Netherlands losing the final, all teams in the competition lost at least once - except for the All Whites with their three draws. The All Whites - Unbeatable!
In other ratings, captain fantastic Ryan Nelsen was named by ESPN in the "World Cup Best 11" for his "defiant" and "heroic" defence, while the Sunday Times in Britain rated the All White's game against Italy as "the match of the World Cup".
Ricky Herbert, legendary All Whites coach, has finally announced that he will be staying in NZ as coach for the Wellington Phoenix. Talks about his role with the All Whites are continuing.
Everyone was a little surprised when Shane Smeltz announced he was leaving for the Chinese Super League. However after only five days he has returned to the A-League. Clearly there was an issue but he isn't yet saying what it was. And now fellow All White Ivan Vicelich is heading to China! Ivan has signed a four month contract with Shenzhen Ruby FC.
Finally, the new FIFA rankings are out and NZ has jumped 24 spots to be ranked 54th in the world. They were ranked 47th in 2002.
Rowing regattas continue, and NZ continues to do well. This time at Lucerne in Switzerland, we got six medals including three golds. Mahe Drysdale got bronze with golds for women's pair Rebecca Scown & Juliette Haigh, men's pair Hamish Bond and Eric Murray and lightweight double scull duo of Peter Taylor and Storm Uru.
Is shearing a sport? Napier shearer John Kirkpatrick won the open final at the Lakeland Shears in England. David Fagan & Cam Ferguson finished second & third in the machine shearing, and blade shearers Brian Thomson and Allen Gemmell finished first and second.
In the Cothi Open at the Royal Welsh Show, David Fagan put in his best performance in 20 seasons to win. I think that means he now has his 600th open-class title!
I've got the game recorded & all ready to watch but Ron & Rachel's wedding was more important than watching the All Blacks live this week. For the second week in a row the All Blacks hammered the Springboks, this time 31-17 for a second bonus point win. Everyone expected the boks to bounce back & while the second test was a more even contest the end result was never in doubt.
The Springboks continued to play "their" game with the yellow card coming out after only a few minutes and wing Jean de Villiers being suspended for two weeks.
The Warriors are on a hot streak, this time beating the troubled Melbourne Storm 13-6. The win pushes the Warriors into the top 5. Melbourne's fall out from their salary cap problems look to continue, first this week with the final announcement that the salary breaches totalled $3.17m, much much bigger than previously estimated $1.7m, and star Greg Inglis looks set to sign with the Brisbane Broncos.
Thomas Saunders won the hotly contested Laser Radial class in the youth sailing world champs and Alexandra Maloney and Sam Bullock won silver in the Open 20ers skiff class.
Julian Dean was in the Tour de France news again this week - but not for his excellent finishing. Australian rider Mark Renshaw took exception to Dean and illegally head-butted him in the final sprint on the 11th stage. Dean was leading the pack & Renshaw apparently didn't want him there - Renshaw was "removed from the competition for a particularly serious case" - perhaps he watched the Aussie vs All Whites pre-world cup game for inspiration?
NZ News
Two police officers were shot & injured and a police dog was killed during a routine call-out in Christchurch this week. The dog handler Senior Constable Bruce Lamb was shot in the jaw and Constable Mitchel Alatalo was shot in the upper thigh. They both managed to escape and call for back up. The armed offenders squad arrested a 34 year old man.
Peter Bethune arrived home last week after five months in jail, after the anti-whaling incident in the southern ocean. Unfortunately he's not also anti-whining after he came back complaining about everyone & everything, saying things like "I remain disgusted with the way Murray McCully has treated us from day one" & claiming NZ had "become a fat little lap dog" to Japan. Prime Minister John Key quickly responded that Bethune was "downright ungrateful" for the large amount of support he received from NZ officials. Obviously it would have been inappropriate for NZ to intervene in the Japanese judicial process. John Key noted that Mr Bethune had got himself into the situation and that "he had a letter that said 'I do not want to be taken off the boat under any circumstanced and I do want to be taken to Japan' and he was". Mr Bethune received a two year sentence suspended for five years.
The government is set to extend the 90-day trial scheme to all companies. The basic idea is that companies can employ people and fire them with the first 90 days without the workers allowed to bring a personal grievance case against the employer (unless on discriminatory grounds). For anyone in a small business who has to hire new people, it used to be a nightmare. It is almost impossible to fire bad employees, regardless of the damage they might be doing to your business. So as with most things, National is on one side & Labour on the other. Businesses call it a "safety belt", a "brilliant idea" & 87% of employers thought the trial period worked "very well" or "quite well". Forty percent of employers said they would not have hired the worker if the scheme wasn't available. But on the other side the Unions (& Labour) are being vocal about the changes & are upset at the moves suggesting that the survey was rigged - simply because they were refused a request of the copy of methodology and the questionnaire.
You may remember a story from back in May about a four year old boy "roughed up" in Whakatane for wearing a red shirt - the colours of the rival to a local gang. Well it turns out the Police now think the story was made up. The fathers story was inconsistent and the alleged assailant had a fairly good alibi.
-6.8: degC overnight temperature for Taumarunui - the coldest since records began in 1947, Queenstown had -7.2C, it's third coldest in 139 years
2: % drop in food prices for the past year - the biggest annual fall on record (50 yrs worth)
5.3: richter scale earthquake near Wairoa
99: penalties against the Warriors for the first 18 rounds of the NRL - more than any other team, do the Aussie refs target the Warriors unfairly?
240: bed new $40m ward for Middlemore Hospital has been opened to cope with the population boom in South Auckland
60,000: $ fines for two BOP farmers for dirty dairying
5.2m: $ deal for Massey University to train 250 Asian public health workers in bio-security for the World Bank
Finance NZ Dollar
GBP 0.4649 (-0.0074)
EUR 0.5502 (-0.0128)
USD 0.7111 (-0.0002)
AUD 0.8190 (+0.0080)
The
Weekender NZer of the week
Eric Batchelor
One of NZ's most highly decorated World War 2 soldiers died in Waimate this week. He was twice awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.
Follow the link below to read more about the man, who with three others captured 19 prisoners when they attacked a house, only to find about 30 Germans inside.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10658266&ref=rss
Flight Observation
On a recent flight, an elderly passenger kept peering out the window. Since it was totally dark, all she could see was the blinking wing-tip light. Finally, she rang for the flight attendant.
"I'm sorry to bother you," she said, "but I think you should inform the pilot that his left-turn indicator is on and has been for some time."
Check
out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42
Darren Harrison:
darren@harrison.gen.nz
The
Weekender: mailed weekly (Sunday nightish)
Website:
www.dunwich.co.nz/weekender/
{If
these just fill up your junk mail, then send me an email & I'll
take you off the list | The Weekender is not a verified news source,
sometimes it's even just an opinion}
The Weekender 11/07/2010
Submitted by darrenh on Sun, 11/07/2010 - 22:12Welcome to the week that was!
Sport
In probably the best sporting news for years, Vevuzelas have been banned at Eden Park and in Christchurch!
Julian Dean will be back on the bike for the third stage of the Tour de France. He was among three of his teams riders to be taken to hospital after crashes. He is well off the pace but can hopefully get some time back.
Update: The team has since got a fourth the next day, followed by a fifth and second - Julian got onto the podium with a second!
Mahe Drysdale retained his single sculls title & Eric Murray and Hamish Bond won the doubles by 15 seconds, at the Henley rowing regatta in London.
The NZ Warriors put in a huge defensive effort to beat the Penrith Panthers 12-6. Table: Dragons/Panthers 26, Wests Tigers 24, Roosters/Titans/Warriors 22, Rabbitohs/Sea Eagles 20, Broncos/Knights 18, Bulldogs/Eels*/Raiders 16, Sharks 14, Cowboys* 12, Storm 0 (* 15 games vs 16)
In Origin football, Queensland won 23-18 for the first 3-0 whitewash for their first time in their five-straight series wins.
The Waikato/BOP Magic couldn't quite make the final step and were well beaten by the Adelaide Thunderbirds in the ANZ trans-tasman champs tonight. The Thunderbirds kept ahead almost the entire match to win 52-42.
Well the Springboks were supposed to be the form team this year. After the Super14 they were supposed to have all the options. But it didn't look like it on the scoreline at the end of the first Tri-nations match. The All Blacks won 32-12 getting a bonus point win, and the Springboks couldn't even get a try. I'd like to mention all the players who had great games, but that would be most of the team, a really outstanding complete performance! Bakkies Botha has got himself a 9 week ban for head butting due to his history of offending.
In other rugby, Southland retained the Ranfurly Shield with a 48-3 win over North Otago last night.
Shane Smeltz is the first All White to move on after the Football World Cup. The A-League's best scorer will be moving to a Chinese club in the Chinese Super league.
NZ News
I don't know what to say - nothing really stood out for national news this week. There are a few below in the numbers game, and it was a rather cold weekend. My wife & I went caravanning for a few days and woke to frozen everything while staying at Tongariro National park on Saturday morning. It was a beautiful clear day but everyone everywhere had frosts like they hadn't seen in a long time.
2: year jail term for a Kerikeri man on his 20th drink-driving conviction (& 35th for driving while disqualified)
3: c/L drop in petrol from Shell & BP
30: boy racers arrested in Christchurch
53: % support for National in the latest Roy Morgan poll, up 2.5%, Labour is down four to 29%
1.5m: $ donated for the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Appeal
Finance NZ Dollar
GBP 0.4723 (+0.0186)
EUR 0.5630 (+0.0145)
USD 0.7113 (+0.0223)
AUD 0.8110 (-0.0078)
The
Weekender NZer of the week
Tex Morton
BOUNDARY RIDER
Tex Morton lived a life of breath-taking achievement, attaining mastery, fortune and international fame as a recording star, stage artist, circus entrepreneur, Hollywood screen actor and world authority in hypnotherapy. He was a first original antipodean voice. Tex is a legend from the edge.
http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/morton.html
Leaky Pipe
A lady answered her front door to find a plumber standing there. "I'm here to fix the leaky pipe," he announced.
"I didn't call a plumber," said the lady.
"What?" huffed the plumber. "Aren't you Mrs. Frobisher?"
The Frobishers moved out of this house over a year ago," explained the lady.
"How do you like that," grunted the plumber. "They call you up and tell you it's an emergency and then they move away!"
Check
out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42
Darren Harrison:
darren@harrison.gen.nz
The
Weekender: mailed weekly (Sunday nightish)
Website:
www.dunwich.co.nz/weekender/
{If
these just fill up your junk mail, then send me an email & I'll
take you off the list | The Weekender is not a verified news source,
sometimes it's even just an opinion}
The Weekender 04/07/2010
Submitted by darrenh on Sun, 04/07/2010 - 20:20Welcome to this week, I hope you are all going well!
Sport
The accolades for the All Whites continue! English news paper the Guardian posted some performance rankings for the top 10 performances during the pool play at the Football World Cup. And New Zealand had four spots. Ryan Nelsen was placed third for the Italy game and fifth for the Paraguay game, and Mark Paston was ranked seventh & tenth for the same two games.
The White Ferns beat England by nine runs in their third & final Twenty20 cricket match to wrap up the series 2-1 this week.
The NZ men's rowing eight knocked out the Cambridge crew from the Grand Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta yesterday. The kiwis dominated the race & will face the British number one eight in the semi final.
Steve Price requires more surgery and the icon of NRL will not be able to play at all in his final season. He hasn't made it onto the field this year at all so far, so maybe it's just as well he wasn't supposed to be captain! He played a total of 313 NRL matches - 91 for the Warriors.
The Waikato/BOP Magic beat the Southern Steel in the ANZ champs minor semifinal in Auckland this week. They now face the NSW Swifts who crashed to a 52-38 defeat - a huge shock for the Swifts who were unbeaten for the entire regular season.
UPDATE: News just in, the Magic have also beaten the NSW Swifts and are through to their second grand final appearance. The title favourite Swifts were beaten 54-49.
The NZ Warriors got their third consecutive win thrashing the Parramatta Eels 34-6 today.
NZ News
This week the suggestion floating around the political arena is that MP's travel entitlements should be scrapped, however John Key has dampened those suggestions saying that a equivalent 10% pay rise to compensate for stopping the perks, would be an outrage to the public.
The stand-off between schools and the government over the national standards policy continued this week. Education Minister Anne Tolley met with 550 principals in Queenstown this week pleading with them to get on with implementing national standards instead of "going to the media" and "making threats". The general view (according to the Principal's Federation vice-president) was that national standards were not working and there was need for change. The standards were introduced this year and Canterbury, Auckland and Southland are now refusing to participate in training (which surely must make it hard for them to know how to implement them properly?). The Labour-friendly unions have been completely against national standards since it was announced & seem more interested in making sure it fails than even giving it a fair hearing.
The first section of John Key's NZ-long cycle way was opened this week. A 200km track from Ruapehu to Wanganui will take four to six days going through Tongariro & Whanganui National Parks & past the 'Bridge to Nowhere'.
The government is planning a ban on smoking in prisons. One warden who contacted the media said banning lighters in prisons would have benefits that would far outweigh threats of violence which have been reported will occur if there is a ban. He said "I'm not a mean dude but, at the end of the day, they get a cell with underfloor heating, a fully supply of bedding, three meals a day, free healthcare and free courses. The inmates get whatever they want, whenever they want, and there are no consequences. We shouldn't treat them like princes."
Tainui is teaming up with Hoyts to build a multimillion-dollar cinema complex at The Base in Hamilton. The new complex will be the first purpose-built, fully digital cinema venue in New Zealand.
New Zealand is now officially Aussie mozzie free! We are the first country in the world to wipe out the southern salt-marsh mosquito after an 11-year eradication programme. The mozzie carries the Ross River Virus.
A British conman was told by a judge that he should "consider taking up work as an actor" as he wept while being jailed for two years after conning kiwis out of nearly $70,000.
Cadbury made enough mistakes this year for the company to drop down the list of NZ's most trusted brands. Bad publicity around their brief replacement of cocoa butter with palm oil, and moving production of our favourite chocolate bars to Australia have put their "trustedness" into free-fall & after six years at number one, this year they dropped to 36th equal. Food producer Watties claimed the number one spot this year. Toyota came in second place and won the car category. Sony came third and won both electronics and computer categories. As if Cadbury's drop wasn't bad enough for the company, their rival, Kiwi chocolate company Whittaker's debuted at number five on the list.
The Readers Digest also polled NZ's most trusted & least trusted people. SAS hero Willie Apiata took out the number one most trusted person spot for the third year in a row. As far as the jobs we trust the least, at the bottom was telemarketers, closely followed by politicians! The top ten professions are Firefighters, Ambulance officers, Pilots, Nurses, Doctors, Pharmacists, Veterinarians, Armed forces, Police officers & Teachers.
Greenpeace has been denied charitable status by the Charities Commission (I bet Auntie Helen didn't see that coming when she set it up!) They have appealed but they were initially turned down because Greenpeace's promotion of "disarmament and peace" was political rather than educational.
1: # voted vege is the spud. Potatoes were closely followed by tomatoes - silver-beet and spinach were in both the top ten and the most disliked 10
3: c/L increase in fuel due to the newly introduced Emissions Trading Scheme - the AA warns a 7c increase due to GST in October will have more of an impact
5.1: richter scale earthquake for Fiordland this week
7.4: out of 10 rating for NZ in the happiest country in the world Gallup poll - that puts us eighth in the world
8: % increase in renewable electricity from 2008 to 2009
50: year ban from watching league for an angry fan who knocked out a linesman during a junior league match in Sydney (just spotted that was Australian news, but there was no bad NRL news this week so I'll keep it in!)
50: years of TV news had people voting on the biggest stories in the past 50 years - runaway winners were September 11 followed by Princess Diana's death
19,000: $ for a lock of hair cut from French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in an Auckland auction this week - it was sold to a private collector from London
50,000: extra homes have been insulated after the initial target of 27,500 homes started last July
100,000: $ has been pledged by the government towards NZ hosting of the taekwaon-do world champs next March
100,000: $ bonus per player for the All Blacks if they win next years World Cup - I wonder what the All Whites would have got?
15m: $ Government research grant for scientists to study in Antarctica over the next four years
9.7b: $ aviation industry in NZ has been growing strongly in recent years & is set to continue expanding
Finance NZ Dollar
GBP 0.4537 (-0.0208)
EUR 0.5485 (-0.0293)
USD 0.6890 (-0.0254)
AUD 0.8188 (+0.0010)
The
Weekender NZer of the week
Peter Jackson
MADE IN NEW ZEALAND
NZEdge presents a personal account of the Peter Jackson story by filmmaker Costa Botes (written May 2002). His account of Jackson's journey is a steadfastly idiosyncratic case study of innovation, focus and energy from the edge. "In giving himself something to watch, Peter Jackson has given the rest of us good cause to shake off complacency and start thinking about how to realise a few other 'impossible' goals."
http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/jackson.html
Dewey Check
I walked into my sister's kitchen and found my nephew, Dewey, having a snack.
"Where's your mother?" I asked.
"She said she was going to have a shower. Just a second, I'll see."
Dewey went to the kitchen tap and turned the hot water on full blast.
An indignant yell came from above.
Dewey calmly turned off the tap and said, "Yep, she's in the shower."
Check
out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42
Darren Harrison:
darren@harrison.gen.nz
The
Weekender: mailed weekly (Sunday nightish)
Website:
www.dunwich.co.nz/weekender/
{If
these just fill up your junk mail, then send me an email & I'll
take you off the list | The Weekender is not a verified news source,
sometimes it's even just an opinion}
