Kiwiblog

For those who are up and multi-tasking.

I am backing the Netherlands, but expecting Spain to win.

UPDATE: Spain wins 1-0 with two minutes left of extra time. They started the tournament as favourites so the bookies will not be as happy as the Spanish.

UPDATE2: This also means that the All Whites can take some pride in being the only team in the World Cup that never lost a game.

The Herald website has given up on that incredibly annoying policy of splitting longer stories over multiple pages.

I guess they finally worked out that few of their readers only want to read part of an article

The Herald says:

John Key struck an odd note when he observed last week that he would be concerned if large tracts of New Zealand land were being sold to foreign investors. “Looking four, five, 10 years into the future, I’d hate to see New Zealanders as tenants in their own country, and that is a risk, I think, if we sell out our entire productive base, so that’s something the Government will have to consider,” he said.

Was this the same Prime Minister who, two months ago, reprimanded his Agriculture Minister for saying the sale of the Crafar family farms to a Chinese company was unlikely to go through? Mr Key has obviously discerned a groundswell of concern about such sales. Yet, as a Weekend Herald investigation revealed, we are already selling large tracts to overseas investors.

Minister Carter’s comments were about a specific sale going through the regulatory process, while the PM has been talking more generally.

Foreign investment involving agricultural land more than twice the size of Auckland City has won regulatory approval over the past five years.

That’s 150,000 hectares which is around 0.6% of total NZ land area.

First, New Zealanders can buy land in most regions, and have done so in the Americas, Australia, South Africa and Europe. Secondly, and most apposite, foreign investment has always been a driver of this country’s economy. Banning the sale of farm land would send entirely the wrong message to potential investors. Thirdly, placing restrictions on such investments is always apt to create considerable difficulties in terms of boundaries and interpretation.

As it is, non-urban land of five hectares or more is deemed sensitive, and applicants must refer their bids to the Overseas Investment Office. It must consider criteria including relevant business experience, financial commitment to the investment and good character. The office decides about 75 per cent of applications, but all those for sensitive land must go to the Ministers of Finance and Land Information. In the end, they must balance the protection of sensitive assets with the need to encourage investment.

I see foreign investment similar to immigration. Both are generally very positive for New Zealand and economic growth. But both need a regulatory pipe which can determine the speed, so it is sustainable. A net migration of 10,000 people a year is good. If you increased it to 100,000 a year it would be bad as our infrastructure could not cope.

Likewise foreign investment is good, but that doesn’t mean one would want to sell off say 50% of farm land in a year.

The contribution to the economy of efficient foreign or multinational ownership has, rightly, been the paramount concern. Indeed, the Government’s confidence in the system has seen it delegating more authority to the Overseas Investment Office. Mr Key may have been stricken by sudden doubt, but there seems no reason for dramatic change. Those spreading wildly alarmist sentiment misunderstand the factors underpinning this country’s farming success story.

I agree dramatic change is not needed.

Richard Boock writes:

I’m sure the save-the-sheds faction are right when they speak of the lovely timbers and structural beams within the buildings, even though the ARC initially described them as cheap and nasty. Chairman Mike Lee said he changed his mind after discussing the issue with friends who were “heritage advocates”. That’s right, before you could say “indoctrinate”, the cheap and nasty had taken on “genuine heritage value”. Not even Paul the Octopus could have seen that coming.

It’s surprising too, that a place apparently to be preserved because of its heritage value has not even been listed with the Historic Places Trust. Its worth has been calculated, not by the official arbiters of such assets, but by a cabal of what sounds like the ARC chairman’s dinner guests. Somehow he was able to be persuaded that a spot of character, rather than an official judgement of historic value, was enough to make a couple of huts sacrosanct. …

As Paul Moon, an Auckland University of Technology Professor of History, wrote in the New Zealand Herald a week or so ago, “to elevate (the sheds) to anything even resembling architectural merit is disingenuous”. He reminded us that the structures were designed purely along functional lines at a time when “aesthetic appeal in industrial buildings was even less important than it is now”. He’s right, you know. We’re being led down the garden path by a collection of snooty zealots.

I’m picking up considerable backlash against the u-turn by the ARC. It may affect Mike Lee’s bid for a seat on the new Auckland Council.

Sunday News reports:

RICH-lister Terry Serepisos is to seek legal advice over claims by controversial blogger Cameron “Whale Oil” Slater. Serepisos – owner of the Phoenix soccer franchise and host of The Apprentice NZ – was angered by claims made about his financial status on a Whale Oil blog posted earlier this week.

The Wellington-based businessman was in Hamilton yesterday watching his Phoenix in their pre-season game against the Brisbane Roar and wouldn’t comment.

But when asked what action Serepisos would take over the posting, the property developer’s spokesman John Mitchell said: “He [Serepisos] will take a look at things on Monday. He will talk to someone if he feels that [sueing] is the appropriate course of action.

“It [seeking action] has got to that point over a number of things. Terry does have a lawyer who looks at these sorts of things and if any action is to be taken.”

Mitchell said Serepisos had already put one media organisation “on notice” about its coverage of his financial affairs.

He said of Slater’s latest posting: “It is just a nasty, silly and spurious rumour.

“Terry is the sort of person who polarises people. There are some people who do not necessarily have it in for him but are very keen to spread these spurious rumours. It is just ridiculous.”

Mitchell said the claims made by Slater “weren’t worth responding to”.

For legal reasons, Sunday News cannot repeat the detail of Slater’s posting.

For the same reasons, please don’t repeat them here.

If Serepisos does sue for defamation, it would be a very high profile court case.

I’m amused that the media predicted a huge crowd would turn out to Auckland Airport to greet Peter Bethune, and i n fact a total of three non-media people turned up.

The question has to be why were the media hyping this up? Did they have any reason to believe there would be a huge crowd, or do they just make it up?

Andrew Cushen’s thesis studying the NZ Political blogosphere has been published and is online. Many (160) bloggers and (789) readers took part.

It is a weighty 252 pages, and has taken a while to get through. I’ve extracted some of the stats I find more interesting:

• 24% of bloggers are aged under 25 and 87% are aged under 50
• 79% of (political) bloggers are male and 21% female
• 23% of bloggers earn more than $100,000 a year and 24% earn less than $20,000 a year. Only 9% earn between $20,000 and $40,000
• Most of the low income bloggers are students (16/25)
• 69% of bloggers have a degree, half being a post-graduate degree
• 32% of bloggers are self employed, 26% work in the public sector, 29% work in the private sector, and 12% work for NGOs
• 69% of bloggers have been a party member or volunteer
• 34% of bloggers are in Wellington, 29% in Auckland, 11% in Canterbury, 6% Otago and 9% are overseas
• 5% of political bloggers blog only on politics. 38% blog between 75% and 100% politics.26% blog between 50% and 75%, 24% blog between 25% and 50%.
• 19% of bloggers explicitly support National, 16% Labour, 12% ACT, 12% Green, 4% Maori Party, 5% Progressive, 17% other parties and 50% do not support a party. Half the others are Libertarianz.
• 46% of bloggers blog under their own names
• 7% of bloggers have been blogging for 5+ years, 30% for under 1 year
• 17% of bloggers update more than once a day, 12% daily, 40% several times a week, 11% weekly and 21% greater than weekly
• There is a clear correlation between posting frequency and readership levels
• 15% of bloggers spend over 10 hours a week blogging, 38% of bloggers spend under two hours a week
• 16% of bloggers make money from advertising on their blogs
• 18% of bloggers have 5,000+ unique readers
• 96% allow comments
• 6% of bloggers feel they have a leading influence upon political discussion, 18% a major influence, 30% average influence and 43% minor influence

And similar data on blog readers:

• 78% of readers are male
• 14% of readers earn under $20K and 21% over $100K. Most earn under $60,000
• 71% of readers have a degree, and again half are post-graduate
• 22% of readers are self employed, 40% work in the private sector and 31% in the state sector
• 43% of readers have been a party member or volunteer
• 36% of readers in Wellington, 28% Auckland, 10% Canterbury, 5% Otago and 7% overseas
• 86% of readers read blogs as they offer alternate viewpoints on news and issues, 60% cite the fact they like the opinion of the author
• 60% of readers read blogs more than once a day and 25% daily
• 28% of readers spend over 5 hours a week reading blogs
• 69% of readers have left a comment on a blog
• In terms of inaccuracy of media types, 14% of readers said blog were inaccurate compared to 45% who said TV news was inaccurate
• 52% of blog readers say blogs are very entertaining, compared to under 5% for all other media types. This is a fascinating stat – people enjoy the blogs far far more.

If you have the time, the full report is worth a read.

An article on Stuff gushes:

New Zealand’s anti-whaling war hero Pete Bethune landed in Auckland this morning, shaken and slightly subdued – but with no regrets.

Excuse me while I vomit.

And people wonder why readers are deserting mainstream media. If this is an example of impartial neutral reporting, then I’d hate to see a biased story.

UPDATE: A few minutes after I posted this, the story was changed from “war hero” to “activist”. Good. But how the hell did such a loaded description get through the sub-editor in the first place?

The Herald has an interesting story on a ruling by Judge David Harvey:

The poker news websites went wild. “New Zealand Court Backs Poker” proclaimed gamblingonlinemagazine.com. “In a groundbreaking ruling a New Zealand court has delivered a huge blow to opponents of online poker, and poker in general,” said pokernewsboy.com.

“Though they may be an ocean away, the nation of New Zealand has fired a shot which could reverberate through the poker landscape,” said flopturnriver.com.

What they were all raving about was a ruling District Court Judge David Harvey delivered on June 23 which found that advertisements for Pokerstars.net and the Asia Pacific Poker Tour run on TV3 and C4 were not promoting online gambling.

The Department of Internal Affairs, which brought the case, has said it will appeal the decision.

The details of the case are interesting. Essentially pokerstars.net is a play money gambling site (which is legal) and pokerstars.com is a proper gambling site (which can not be promoted under NZ law). DIA argued that by advertising one, they were advertising both, essentially.

A feature of the case was the difference between the “dot net” and “dot com” Pokerstars websites. The .net site is for practise poker games using “play money”. The .com site has online poker with gambling for real money. A key plank of Internal Affairs’ case was that the use of the generic word “Pokerstars” in both the.net and .com domain names were two ways of saying the same thing. “It is the prosecution case,” says the judgment, “that the advertisements were de facto advertisements for pokerstars.com, using and emphasising the brand name ‘pokerstars’.”

I’m sceptical of that argument.

Judge David Harvey is widely regarded as New Zealand’s most technologically savvy judge. Appointed to the bench in 1988 he serves in the District Court holding warrants for general, jury and Youth Court jurisdictions. A former chair of the Copyright Tribunal, he lectures part-time in law and information technology at the University of Auckland, has been involved in the introduction of information technology for the Judiciary since 1990, and is the author of internet.law.nz – Selected Issues. A former international Mastermind champion (his speciality was J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings), he writes widely on law and internet topics, is currently completing a PhD and has been active in making submissions on our laws relating to copyright and legislating against spam.

I first met Judge Harvey through the old Internet newsgroups on Usenet. He qualifies as a genuine geek

This time around Judge Harvey appears to have taken an important lesson from his earlier mis-step – that judges must always make the reasons for their decisions abundantly clear. His judgment extends to 47 pages. It’s also New Zealand’s first digital judgment – a 9MB “PDF” digital document, complete with embedded video of the advertisements in question. It sits in the court file, not on paper, but on a CD.

Heh that is quite cool – an embedded video in a court judgement. A pity it does not appear to be online on the decisions of public interest site.

In response to the evidence of prosecution expert witness Professor Sarah Todd, a professor of marketing, Judge Harvey said he had concerns about the basis of her assumption – that there was a high chance those intending to go to the free pokerstars.net site, may in fact, end up on the pokerstars.com by accident. “Internet addresses are unforgiving of errors. A mistake in one letter of a domain name may produce a nil result or may direct a user to a completely different website.”

He then pointed out the sort of mistake suggested involves typing three wrong letters and seemed to overlook the fact the advertising was directed to online poker sites, anticipating an audience with some familiarity in the use of computers and the internet.

The judgment also goes through each of the advertisements – and provides the videos so that people reading the text can see for themselves what was being advertised. The web address shown in each advertisement is always pokerstars.net and often includes the words “this is not a gambling website” or “play for free”. In some of the ads, professional poker players are linked to popular sports – Noah Boeken plays soccer, Daniel Negreanu hockey and Isabelle Mercier boxes. Their commentaries include lines like, “Practise for free at the world’s largest poker site, pokerstars.net and find the pokerstar in you.”

Looks a very reasonable decision to me. Finding TV Works guilty for promoting a legal website on the basis it has a similar name to a website that can not be legally promoted, would set in my opinion an unhealthy precedent.

The Herald reports:

North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams is standing for the Super City mayoralty, promising to inject his own colourful style of politics into the contest.

Mr Williams has started as he means to go on, firing potshots at the two heavyweight contenders Auckland City Mayor John Banks and Manukau Mayor Len Brown, and comparing himself to unconventional mayors, such as London’s Boris Johnson and Invercargill’s Tim Shadbolt.

Comparing himself to Boris Johnson – ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Yesterday afternoon I spent four hours turning into an iceberg, but having a great time, on an award winning Monarch cruise along the Otago Harbour to see the sights, and especially the seal and albatross colonies.

It is a must do if in Dunedin, but do make sure you keep warm. The boat can provide jackets, but gloves are useful also.

The house with the glass house outside is the official residence of the Vice-Chancellor. It comes with the job, and looks very nice I have to say.

UPDATE: I am informed that in fact the VC’s house is slightly to the left, out of sight. The guide said it was the one with the glasshouse, but in fact it is not.

Around halfway along the peninsula, is Port Chalmers. And in the background is the historic Iona Church, built in 1883.

That building is part of Otago University – the Portobello Marine Laboratory. It hosts their Marine Studies Centre and they have the boat also. Now that would be a fun degree.

Shags galore. No Austin Powers jokes please.

The old lighthouse at Taiaroa Head.

A couple of sun bathing seals.

What a wing span, Magnificent.

An adult albatross feeding a baby one. The baby is well fed as almost as big as mum. The guide mentioned that somewhat unusually the baby gets fed by two female albatrosses and the father is missing in action!

A larger group of seals.

The water was rough – the swells got over three metres at one stage, and pretty much everyone at the front of the boat got soaked.

Also saw a penguin in the water, but didn’t manage a photo of it.

A thoroughly worthwhile cruise. I wasn’t sure about doing it, as it would take up an entire half day (so much to see in so little time), but am very glad I did. A great experience.

A friend e-mailed this to me. Heh.

I was meant to go to Otago Museum just for the Aztec chocolate making demonstration. In a fit of good timing, it was bitterly cold and raining, so hot chocolate was most appealing.

To my surprise Otago Museum is radically different from the austere institution it was when I was living in Dunedin. There were great fun exhibits, including an indoor rainforest, and I’d put this down as a must see for anyone with kids or enjoys being a kid!

This game is called mindball and is seriously cool. Both persons put on the headbands with sensors that read your alpha and theta brainwaves. The challenge is to reduce your brain activity, ad the ball in the tube will move towards your opponent.

Now this is quite challenging as if you see yourself losing you will start to think about it, and this will make you lose even faster.

As my mind is normally multi-tasking around five things at once, and I go near suicidal when I am left without stimulus for even a few minutes, I thought I would lose badly at this game.

But it seems I have the ability to pretty much close my brain down – I was basically flat-lining the graph as I thought of nothing but the paint. So after defeating various munchkins, I retired undefeated.

As I said, they had a tropical rainforest indoors. It is kept heated to around 26 degrees which made photos hard as the lens would fog up.

And an indoor waterfall to boot, which you could go behind.

There were scores and scores of beautiful butterflies in the rainforest. You don’t see the colour when they are at rest, but when they fly they have a wonderful blue colouring.

I almost stood on this wee fellow. They don’t get the best of lives – one fell into the pond with the turtles and ended up as, well let us just say the turtles were happy with the variety in their diet.

This was also seriously fun. You use a rope to lift golf balls up the top and there are around six different ways they can travel down, through a great combination of pipes and tunnels. My favourite was when they bounce off the drum.

As I said at the beginning, this is such a cool way of getting kids interested in science, whether it be physics, chemistry or biology.

NZPA report:

For probably his eighth sexual offence against child victims, Christopher John Ball has gone to prison indefinitely with a preventive detention term imposed in the High Court at Christchurch today.

His victims range from a girl aged two or three to a boy aged 14, and the offending was spread over about 11 years.

The 27-year-old invalid beneficiary had admitted two charges of having sexual connection with the 14-year-old boy who was confused about his own sexual orientation at the time.

Justice Christine French noted that Ball had four previous convictions for sexual offending and had made voluntary disclosures of three more offences to the health assessors who prepared reports for his sentencing.

Preventive detention is the right call here. When I first read this article, I wondered how many offences would have been prevented if three strikes had been operating, as this was his fifth conviction.

But what staggered me as I read more closely was this:

He had never before been to prison nor undertaken the Kia Marama programme.

Never been before to prison? And he had four previous convictions? Maybe there were at the “light” end of sexual offending.

Ball has convictions for rape of a small girl, two for sexual connection with a six-year-old boy, and a conviction for anal intercourse with a boy aged under 16.

And none of those got him prison time? You want to know why laws such as three strikes reduce judicial discretion – that is why.

Actually I can’t quite believe that he has never been to prison for such offending. Maybe the lawyer is misquoted? Is there any way to find out?

The Herald reports:

Now, on the same programme, he has this week commented on historic sex allegations against former All Black Robin Brooke, made by two unnamed women, one of whom subsequently laid a complaint with police.

“There’s a bloke called Hugh Grant. He got into a bit of trouble like this and I think if the cheque bounces sometimes, they only realise that they’ve been raped, you know, sometimes,” he said.

Haden said there were two sides to every story.

“It’s an equal society now, some of these girls are targeting rugby players and targeting sportsmen and they do so at their peril today, I think.”

Rape support groups have hit out at the remarks.

Minister responsible for the Rugby World Cup Murray McCully said he was only made aware about the comments last night and was now considering the issue.

The problem with Haden isn’t so much the issues he talks about, but the way he talks about them.

My 2c advice for Murray McCully is to consider whether he really thinks it is possible Andy Haden can go another 13 months without one or more utterances like this.

Do you want to sack him after the third, fourth, or fifth occurrence – or get it over and done with now?

As sad as I am to see the end of Carisbrook, the new Dunedin stadium is exciting. If I was a ratepayer I might have some concerns over the cost, but a well located stadium does make a huge difference to a city.

Wellington would not be the place it it today if the stadium had ended up in Porirua. The location at the Railway Station is perfect.

Likewise the location of the new stadium in North Dunedin, within easy walk of 20,000 students is a big plus.

As most will know, it is going to be a covered stadium (one could do that with the cake tin also if one had a big enough bath plug), and that should help fill the seats on cold winter days.

Dom Post reports:

Wellington property agents are offering two weeks’ free rent and a car park to entice tenants into apartments.

The capital is the only city where supply is outstripping demand, as the rest of the country faces a severe shortage of rental properties.

There were 444 vacant apartments on Trade Me yesterday, with 1099 more being built, or due to be, in the city over the next 18 months.

Excellent news for renters.

Wellington Property Investors Federation president Jackie Thomas-Teague said the recently opened 326-unit Soho apartment block in Taranaki St was offering apartments at “seriously underpriced” rents.

This was “an insult” to longer-established tenants and putting pressure on the wider market. “If Wellington’s not careful it could well end up in a similar situation to [the property crash in] Auckland.”

Oh I love the 1984 type double speak. Cheaper rents are not an insult to tenants. Nothing wrong with being a property investor, but don’t try and portray yourself as speaking on behalf of tenants, and how low rents will be insulting to tenants.

The Press reports:

A Christchurch student serving on the David Bain retrial jury despite a serious dishonesty conviction has highlighted a loophole that criminals can exploit to become jurors.

The female juror, who served on the jury in the three-month Bain retrial last year, was convicted in March 2007 of stealing about $6000 from her Christchurch employer, a retailer.

She was convicted under her maiden name, and then changed her name by deed poll twice.

The jury pool for the Bain trial was vetted by the police, but the woman’s conviction was not discovered and she was under no obligation to declare it.

Anyone sentenced to a prison term of more than three years, or to more than three months in the past five years, is prohibited from sitting on a jury.

The juror was sentenced to community service so was eligible for jury service, but might have been excluded if the Crown or defence had known of the conviction.

So she was eligible to serve, but it is likely the Crown would have objected if they had known. Why didn’t they?

People selected for jury lists are usually vetted by the police by running the names – as they appear on the electoral roll – through the police national intelligence computer. It records all criminal and traffic convictions.

Police spokeswoman Kaye Calder said yesterday the police did not automatically record name changes on their system.

“Deed-poll name changes are registered by the Department of Internal Affairs and a change of name does not automatically show up on our application unless the individual comes to our attention in other ways,” she said.

A department spokesman said it did not have an information-sharing agreement with the police because the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Act did not allow it.

Time to amend the Act then. The Police should automatically be notified of name changes, so they can keep their criminal database accurate.

The juror played an influential role on the jury, and was seen hugging Bain after the verdict last year.

I wonder how they know she played an influential role?

The Herald reports:

The Sea Shepherd group says banning Pete Bethune from its Antarctic anti-whaling missions was just a legal strategy during his trial, and the New Zealand activist is welcome to join them on future trips.

This confirms that Sea Shepherd are liars, and are happy to lie to further their aims. This should be remembered the next time they claim they did not do something.

The Herald reports:

Scientists involved in last year’s “climategate” leaked emails controversy, which added to scepticism about the science of global warming, were not open enough with their data and unhelpful with requests for information, an independent review of the affair found yesterday.

They and their institution, the University of East Anglia, did not embrace the “spirit of openness” enshrined in the Freedom of Information Act, according to a long-awaited report.

However, the review found that the researchers concerned, led by the director of UEA’s Climatic Research Unit Professor Phil Jones, could not be faulted for their “rigour and honesty as scientists”, and there was no evidence that they had behaved in a way that might undermine the conclusions of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The review effectively clears those involved of dishonesty and corruption; it absolves them of the allegation made by climate sceptics that they had manipulated both climate data and the scientific peer-review process to serve their predetermined views that climate change is man-made.

This is largely what I expected.

Nevertheless, the review’s condemnation of the lack of openness at UEA amounted to “significant criticisms”, and its practices needed to change. …

* Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a sceptical think-tank, said the Russell report was a “damning indictment of the university’s handling of freedom of information requests”. “I don’t think the university can just claim this is a vindication.”

* Andrew Montford, a climate sceptic who is conducting a review of how the three Climategate inquiries were set up and carried out, said the Russell review “has picked up some of our concerns on freedom of information” but had “brushed other issues under the carpet”. He said: “Not to ask Professor Jones if he had deliberately deleted emails so they could not be requested is a pretty extraordinary omission.”

* David Holland, a retired engineer and sceptic, one of the principal seekers of information from the CRU, said: “When it was set up 20 years ago the IPCC rules required climate science to be assessed on ‘a comprehensive, open and transparent basis’. Sir Muir Russell’s inquiry has rightly reported that UEA has not lived up to this.”

More transparency is needed. Even basic stuff such as a schedule of adjustments to recorded temperatures which details when an adjustment was made, and why, is not available from most agencies (including NIWA).

Now this does not mean that there is some global conspiracy to convince the world that temperatures have been increasing, when they have not been. Such a conspiracy would require 1000s of scientists to be colluding over the last 100 years.

I am sure adjustments to recorded temperatures series have been done in good faith, for reasons such as the moving of a recording station. However when decisions that may economies billions of dollars are dependent on the integrity of the data, it it reasonable to insist on total transparency.

Back to birds today- a male Australian fig-eater

Hope everyone has a good Friday, replete with lots of coffee.