The Weekender 18/07/2010
Welcome 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
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