The Weekender 04/07/2010
Welcome 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
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