Someone believes that vitamin C is important at Winter time 🙂

Click for larger, high res image

The white-eyes/tauhou are back and including our place in their foraging area.

Hope everyone enjoys their Friday. It’s a busy one here…coffee will be consumed

This was the view from our apartment in Aldgate in London.

On Monday (Tuesday in NZ) we drove to Cardiff, but stopped off in Bristol for a couple of hour.  It’s a very nice place, and we shopped at the local market, walked through Castle Park, next to the River Avon.

This is the remains of St Peter’s Church. It was originally built is the 12th century and was Bristol’s oldest church. It was destroyed in the Bristol Blitz in 1940.

After Bristol headed back along the M4, and crossed the Second Severn Bridge which is the boundary of Wales and England. It’s a mighty bridge – a full five kms long.

Stuff reports:

The head of the Employers & Manufacturers’ Association has publicly apologised over comments he made on radio this morning about women’s menstruation and its effect on workplace productivity.

Alasdair Thompson, the chief executive officer of the EMA (Northern) and a member of the APEC Business Advisory Council, said he was amazed with the enormous response he’d had via email since making the comment that women get paid less than men because they take sick days ‘once a month’.

Alasdair is only looking at half the picture. Yes, women may menstruate once a month which may distract them from their jobs, but men think about sex around 400 times a month, which surely leads to far more lost productivity.

Meanwhile there is a village in Auckland that wants its idiot back.

Gerry Brownlee says:

residents will be able to visit the www.landcheck.org.nz website and enter their address to find out what zone their property has been mapped into, and download a fact sheet on what it means for them. Residents can also contact the government helpline on 0800 779 997 if they are unable to access the website or they want more information.

There are four zones for the city:

• Red – Fucked – Govt to offer to buy property within 8 weeks. Resident has nine months to sell full property or land only. 5,000 homes
• Green – Fine – can start rebuilding, 100,000 homes
• Orange – Fluctuant – further engineering investigation needed, 10,000 homes
• White – Forthcoming- not yet mapped, mainly CBD and Port Hills non-residential areas.

It’s good to have certainty for the 105,000 in the red and green zones, who can now make decisions. Hopefully the remaining 10,000 will be in the same situation before too long.

A spy has sent in this photo of Phil Goff campaigning in West Auckland yesterday. I am assured it has not been photoshopped.

Captions below please – and as always funny not nasty.

It’s taken 15 years or so, but finally there is a clear process for peope to be able to apply for and create new top level domains such as .com.

ICANN has announced:

ICANN’s Board of Directors has approved a plan to usher in one of the biggest changes ever to the Internet’s Domain Name System.   The Board vote was 13 approving, 1 opposed, and 2 abstaining.

During a special meeting, the Board approved a plan to dramatically increase the number of Internet domain name endings — called generic top-level domains (gTLDs) — from the current 22, which includes such familiar domains as .com, .org and .net. …

ICANN will soon begin a global campaign to tell the world about this dramatic change in Internet names and to raise awareness of the opportunities afforded by new gTLDs. Applications for new gTLDs will be accepted from 12 January 2012 to 12 April 2012.

It will cost around US$200,000 to apply but it is expected hundreds will, maybe thousands. I’d say a .blog TLD is highly likely, and one may even see a .kiwi emerge.

To some degree ICANN was set up to solve the problem of who decides what new top level domains are created, and what the criteria will be. As I said it has taken 15 years to get to this point, where people can apply under a clear policy and process.

The retiring chair of ICANN is New Zealander Peter Dengate-Thrush. It is not a coincidence that this happened on his watch, as Peter has led ICANN through the hazards of opponents of new TLDs – mainly the intellectual property industry and certain Governments.

If .blog is created, I’ll certainly try to get kiwi.blog. Likewise if there is a .kiwi I might try for blog.kiwi 🙂

The Human Rights Commission has published a discussion paper on ways to strengthen our parliamentary democracy. Some of their proposals are:

1. A minimum 12 week period for submissions to select committees
2. Establishing a dedicated Human Rights Select Committee
3. All international reports and recommendations on human rights be tabled in Parliament and referred to this select committee
4. Standing Orders to forbid major legislative provisions by way of Supplementary Order Paper
5. Amend Standing Order 246 to make it a right for dissenting members to publish a minority report

I broadly support (1) as I think a minimum time for submission to be open would be helpful for the public. You would need some mechanism where this could be shortened when absolutely necessary.

(2) and (3) sort of go together. I’d love a focus on how to better protect our right to free speech.

(4) is well intentioned but probably unworkable. I support the principle but I’m not sure who could decide what is or is not major except the House itself.

(5) is a good idea. Minority reports should not need the permission of the majority.

I’d go further than the HRC in some areas. I would like the Attorney-General’s obligation to report on bills which may breach the Bill of Rights Act to not only apply for introduction/first reading but also to apply at second and third readings so NZers can know if an amended bill is deemed a breach of the Bill of Rights Act.

Georgina Stylianou at The Press reports:

A levy should be put on sugary soft drinks to help fund free dental care for all New Zealanders, a Christchurch MP says.

Of course. Jim has yet to meet a problem that a levy can’t fix. So how big a levy does he want?

Progressive Party leader Jim Anderton has released a dental policy that he hopes the Labour Party will adopt as part of its health programme for this year’s election.

Cost and access were still the major hurdles to dental care for most people, Anderton said. “The cost of extending free dental care to all would be around $1 billion a year at current prices.”

We’ve got a multi-billion deficit, and not even that is enough to stop Jim proposing an extra billion dollars of expenditure.

He said funding could come from an ACC-type levy, a reduction in tax cuts or a levy on sugary soft drinks.

Surely Jim wants all three.

I wonder what his billion dollar dream would mean for soft drink prices. We have 1.5m households, so that is around $700 per household he wants, which is an extra $14 a week on their shopping bill. Can’t really see Labour adopting this one, as they try to campaign on cost of living. But I’d say the average household only spends less than $14 a week on soft drinks currently, so Jim’s proposal would be in fact to double the cost of all soft drinks. This will probably excite the Greens!

He supported fluoridation of all drinking water. He said children from affluent families in Christchurch had worse dental health than those from low socioeconomic families in South Auckland because Auckland has fluoride in its water.

I don’t know why anyone would not want their water fluoridated, but each to their own.

The latest Roy Morgan poll almost reverses the one before with National up four and Labour down six.

Over at Stuff, I look at what the long-term trend has been in the Roy Morgan polls:

If you project the polls forward through to the election, the trend suggests National will be just over 50 per cent and Labour will be just under 34 per cent – basically what they got in 2008. The trend since January 2009 has been for the gap between National and Labour to close, but very slowly. National has dropped 2 per cent over three years on the trend, and Labour has increased 3 per cent, so the gap is reducing by around 5 per cent over the projected three years. If that rate continued it would not be until almost 2020 that Labour outpolled National.

Comments and feedback can be made at Stuff.

The way Labour go on, you would think the only people who got tax cuts in the last three years were the despised “rich pricks”. Now of course when you cut taxes, those who pay more tax get a larger tax cut. Just like how a bank which pays 5% interest on your investment pays mroe money to someone with $10,000 invested than $2,000 invested.

What I thought would be interesting is to look again at the percentage reduction in personal income tax from September 2008 to October 2010.  These include the IETC for people not on WFF.

Anyway you can see how those earning up to $50,000 had had a massive 30% reduction in the income tax they pay thanks to Labour’s last minute grudging October 2008 tax cut and National’s 2009 and 2010 tax cuts.

And you’ll also see the filthy rich pricks earning over $100,000 have had percentage tax cuts of less than 20%.

The Dom Post reports:

Lawyers for jailed former MP Taito Phillip Field have begun their submissions in the Supreme Court this morning.

Field is serving a six-year jail term after he was found guilty of 11 bribery and corruption charges as an MP. It related to having Thai nationals carry out work on his properties in return for immigration assistance between November 2002 and October 2005.

He was also found guilty of 15 of 23 charges of wilfully attempting to obstruct or pervert the course of justice.

This morning his lawyer Helen Cull, QC, opened his appeal to the country’s highest court.

Cull said Field’s actions did not amount to bribery, and that New Zealand law lacked the provision to properly deal with illegal gratuities accepted by MPs in their official capacities.

She argued something more than a link between a reward offered as a “thank you” and something he had done in his role as an MP, was required to prove corruption.

She said some improper or illicit action was required, and his processing the Thai workers’ immigration applications in the usual way did not amount to this.

I don’t think you can call the processing the usual way. The stats showed that Field’s ministerial colleagues basically rubber-stamped any application he put forward.

NZPA report:

Thousands of people who signed an early childhood education petition have had their email addresses added to a Labour Party database, with leader Phil Goff saying it was solely to let people know the outcome of the campaign.

The email addresses, taken from a New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) postcard campaign against cuts to early childhood education, were added to a database of about 18,000 people that could be freely downloaded from Labour’s website until the problem was fixed last weekend.

Right-wing blogger Cameron Slater, who obtained a copy of the database, said on his website that NZEI national secretary Paul Goulter had written to petition signatories to explain why their addresses had been added to the database.

The letter said the postcards were given last year to Labour early childhood education spokeswoman Sue Moroney, who had agreed to present them to Prime Minister John Key because no Government MPs would do so.

Mr Key has not yet accepted the postcards.

Mr Goff today said people who signed the postcards wanted to know outcome of the petition and Ms Moroney had written back to a number of people.

It’s purely about early childhood education, there’s a letter that’s gone out to some of those people,” he said.

The NZEI in its letter said only some campaign signatories had received Ms Moroney’s letter.

NZEI had made it clear to the Labour Party that it was “very concerned” about the database breach and had asked for the addresses to be deleted.

This is blatant spam. If the petition was a Labour Party petition then you could argue there is inferred consent. But it was an NZEI petition and no reasonable person could infer that signing an NZEI petition would land you on the Labour Party e-mail database.

Sadly Labour can not be prosecuted for spamming, as only commercial spam is an offence under the law. The Privacy Commissioner should be concerned though about Labour’s attitude towards privacy.

Drove from London to Cardiff today. Took 90 minutes to get out of London onto the M4, and only slightly lomger than that to get to Cardiff once we were on the M4. I do like decent motorways.

Anyway I was happily cruising on the M4 and there were these helpful signs about speed cameras ahead. I figured I should slow down to the legal limit but didn’t actually know what it was – just that it was probably less than 96 m/h.

So I asked Anna to grab the iPad from the glove box and to google for the UK speed limit on motorways. She grabs the iPad and opens Sarfari.

Then just as she starts typing she starts giggling and asks why my last Google search was for “clitoral orgasm”. I start pissing myself with laugher because there was in fact an absolutely innocent, yet complicated, reason for why I had googled that term. It took me several minutes to explain why that term had been googled recently (and no I am not going to detail it here) and once again I got one of those stares.

Inccidentially for those wondering the speed limit is 70 m/h.

Belinda McCammon writes:

Former Auckland City councillor Paul Goldsmith, who has written biographies on John Banks and Don Brash, says he will contest the National Party nomination for Epsom.

Goldsmith said he had decided over the weekend to contest the nomination, which will pit him against former councillor Aaron Bhatnagar.

Both served on the now defunct Auckland City Council after being elected in 2007.

Goldsmith’s declaration comes after he unsuccessfully sought the North Shore nomination this year, with delegates selecting broadcaster Maggie Barry.

Goldsmith also stood unsuccessfully as the National Party candidate in Maungakiekie in 2005.

At least three people are known to be standing for selection in Epsom, with the National Party deputy regional chairman for Auckland, Denise Krum, also confirming she’d seek the nomination.

I know Aaron, Paul and Denise. All would be good MPs.

Aaron is the former City Councillor for the ward which covers most of the electorate and has just stood down as the Epsom Electorate Chair.

Paul is also a former City Councillor, the biographer to Don Brash and John banks and before that Press Secretary to Phil Goff and Simon Upton.

I’ve blogged on Denise before, who is very active in National in Northern Region.

It will be very interesting to see if anyone else stands, and then the selection itself.

Stuff reports:

Allan Hubbard’s supporters have vowed to fight on for the 83-year-old financier facing 50 charges of fraud.

Yesterday the Serious Fraud Office laid the charges against Hubbard after a year-long investigation into his investment company, Aorangi Securities.

Aorangi has about 400 investors in the South Island who are owed $96 million and Hubbard has pledged up to $60 million of his own assets to help pay them back.

The charges come exactly a year after Hubbard and his wife Margaret, known as Jean, and their investment company Aorangi Securities and seven charitable trusts were placed in statutory management by the Government. Two other companies and two more trusts were added to the statutory management three months later.

The charges were laid under three sections of the Crimes Act which deal with theft by a person in a special relationship, false accounting and false statements by a promoter.

It’s very sad news. There is little doubt that Allan Hubbard is a compassionate, caring and modest man who has done a lot of good for many people.

But as I said to someone the other day, good people can do bad things. It doesn’t make them a bad person, just flawed (as we all are to varying degrees). The Serious Fraud Office has obviously concluded that Allan Hubbard broke the law, and that the offences were serious enough to warrant charges. The fact Hubbard is a nice well intentioned man is a factor in sentencing (if found guilty) rather than guilt.

I blogged a while back about how invaluable I found Bryce Edward’s NZ Politics Daily. Bryce e-mails out around 5 pm every day a pdf of all the political news and blog stories from the last 24 hours. It’s a great resource.

Bryce (or one of the other editors) also does a summary of the major issues of the day, and particular stories he feels are must reads.  I do recommend interested people either check his website out with the summary, or ask to be put on the e-mail list for the full document.

Now putting it together is a big chore, and Bryce has a couple of guest editors who help put it together who have to be paid. He sought sponsorship for it, and I agreed to have Curia pay for a third of the cost, along with Matthew Hooton’s Exceltium and the Public Service Association.  

My motivation is primarily to support a good political resource, but also saw an opportunity to get the Curia brand out amongst key political people.

There is no editorial input due to the sponsorship. And ironically the main guest editor is Gerard Hehir, the President of the UNITE union. Bryce and Gerald decide which stories get included, and which ones to highlight.

Anyway if you do wish to receive it by e-mail, contact Bryce on [email protected], and you can see the smaller summary at his Liberation website. The NZPD can not be used for commercial purposes, only for research purposes.

The flight to Auckland was very amusing as I was in Row 1, which has no screens to view the Richard Simmons safety video on. So we got assigned a stewardess to talk us through the safety demo (not that I need it). Anyway we convinced here not to do the boring safety briefing but to emulate the Richard Simmons video, and she did. It was hilarious as she did all the moves and recited the words off by heart.

It turned out she was one of those who starred in the video, so no wonder she knew it well. It is one of the things I like about Air NZ, that their staff are friendly, and have personality.

Very happy to have my standby upgrades confirmed in Auckland. Slept most of the flight to Hong Kong. Had 90 minutes in Hong Kong, most of which was spent in the Thai Air lounge massage chair. Those things are seriously good.

Didn’t sleep on the flight to London from HK, but got to see five movies and four TV episodes – plus emptied my e-mail inbox which had several hundred e-mails to file or reply to. There are some advantage to having no calls or incoming e-mails to distract your for a day.

At Heathrow had a stroke of luck as Anna’s plane landed at the same time as mine (was meant to land three hours earlier but was delayed), and we ran into each other in the luggage hall. As both our cellphones had flat batteries locating each other in the main terminal could have been challenging.

I had booked the rental car through Economy Car Rentals as they were so much cheaper. Basically 16 days rental for 450 pounds, including GPS. Their local partner was Easirent. We found out that they do not have an office at the airport. They send a car for you and take you to their office around 8 miles away. Office is not quite the right word – imagine a small piece of land, with a fence, and one of those portacom buildings in the corner of it. I started to work out how they get to rent for such a low price – almost no overheads.

Despite the cheapness of the lot, the car was fine. In fact it was brand new – only 300 miles on the odometer. The car was a Prius, which Anna (who votes Greens) was very happy about, while my focus was on more practical matters such as the fact there is no ignition key.

It takes a while to get used to a car with no ignition key – you just push the start button. It would be a bad key to leave unlocked somewhere. But once I got used to that, I have to say it handles very nicely and the built in GPS is excellent – even tells you which lane of traffic to be in for intersections.

Headed into Aldgate, staying at the Marlin Apartments there. Nice view from the 12th floor.

Caught up with Shane and Erica (whose wedding we have come over for) and after dinner went to two local pubs. The first was the Captain Kidd pub in Wapping, which has a garden bar next to the Thames. Very pleasant. Sadly the UK is third world with its closing times and despite being Saturday it closed around 11 pm.

We then popped into the Town of Ramsgate pub for a further hour. Both pubs are those classic English old pubs in neat brick buildings.

On Sunday went to Islington to try and arrange local connections for my Blackberry, iPad and laptop as paying roaming charges would bankrupt me quickly. Was planning to go to a Three store, but it was by a Vodafone store so I thought I would try them first as I was with Vodafone NZ for all three.

The store manager was brilliant, and he gave me just what I needed, for far less than I expected to pay.

For just 10 pounds I got a local sim card for the Blackberry which not just gives me free data for a month, but local prices for calls and texts. It is actually cheaper for me to call phones back in NZ from my cellphone in the UK, than it would be if I was back in NZ. A good reminder of how outrageously high local mobile charges are.

The iPad only cost 5 pounds to get me a mini-sim with 500 Mb of data. Compare that to $10/MB roaming charges.

The laptop was a bit more complex, as using a local sim would mean deleting my software for Vodafone NZ mobile connection back home. I decided to leave it as is, and just use hotel wireless.

If you are travelling to the UK in future for more than a few days, I absolutely recommend getting local sims. It will save you heaps.

People trying to contact me should note that my NZ phone number is effectively turned off for the next two weeks – calls and texts will not get through. If you need to call or text me, then e-mail me for the UK phone number.

Had a nice walk around Islington. They had a flea market operating so I hit the second hand bookseller’s stand. Islington is a very nice suburb – hadn’t been to it before.

Now back in Aldgate. A quiet dinner tonight and off to Cardiff tomorrow. We deliberately haven’t planned the trip in advance (apart from the wedding) – we choose each new location from the one before. So probably in Cardiff for a couple of nights and then might head to elsewhere in Wales.

Annette King proposed on 21 May that NZ should set up a Ministry of or for Children. However she is not the first MP to propose this.  She got beaten to it by 23 years by Ross Meurant. In a high profile column in Truth, Ross Meurant said he did not want to be Prime Minister or Police Minister, but wanted to be Minister of Children’s Affairs.

Now just because Meurant first proposed it, doesn’t mean it is a bad idea. Mind you statistically there could well be a correlation!

But what happened to his idea back in 1988. Did anyone oppose a Ministry for Children? Yes a Government Minister did.

Which Minister – well Annette King by coincidence.

Hansard records Meurant responding to Annette King:

“A while ago, when I floated the concept of a children’s ministry, I recall that the member … castigated me,”

In his book Beat to the Beehive, Meurant also noted that Annette King had ridiculed him for his proposal.

So Labour’s big new policy idea, is one taken from Ross Meurant 23 years, which was ridiculed by their spokesperson at the time. Can’t wait for their next policy – I guess it will be something else they have ridiculed in the past like bringing in certain food exemptions for GST – oh wait ….

An e-mail alleging some sort of conspiracy involving Fletchers, CERA and the Reserve Bank has been circulating for a few weeks. I’ve received it multiple times.
The e-mail alleges the Government through the Reserve Bank is a shareholder in Fletchers and hence awarding contracts to itself. The situation is:

This anonymous email’s author has discovered the Reserve Bank’s custodial service and drawn the conclusion that the Reserve Bank, and hence the government, owns the shares held in it. In reality this is a nominee company through which local and international institutions hold shares in a range of companies, one of which is Fletcher Building. It is an absolutely standard structure, common worldwide, and which has been in place for over 20 years.

This link http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/payment/nzclear/ to the Reserve Bank website sets the NZClear system out in very simple terms.

In brief, NZClear is a real-time settlement system which members access from their premises. Each member has a security account on the system which records the securities “lodged with New Zealand Central Securities Depository Limited” (NZCSD), a custodian, fully owned by the RBNZ. NZCSD becomes the legal owner of the securities on the relevant register and holds securities on behalf of the member, the beneficial owner. The inventory of securities held in the depository currently stands at around NZD92 billion.

So it’s very clear, the government is not “the beneficial owner” of Fletcher Building shares or any other shares held under the NZClear system.

The e-mail also asks some questions. The responses to them are:

Q. Who appointed RCP (Resource Coordination Partnership Ltd) as Project Managers for the management of ‘critical buildings’ following the February 22nd earthquake?

Christchurch City Council appointed RCP to help project manage the demolition process.

Q . Who appointed Fletcher Building to manage the demolition works and then, reconstruction works?

Fletchers have not been appointed to any such role.

Q . Who called for the tenders for the demolition of the Grand Chancellor?

Originally the owner, then Civil Defence was working through the tender process. Since its establishment, CERA has been coordinating the tender process.

Q . Who was/is to be the Principle to the demolition Contract (i.e. the Payer)

CERA is the principal. However, all costs associated with the Grand Chancellor demolition will be recovered from the owner.

Q . Who assessed the Tenders for the Demolition of the Grand Chancellor?

Initially Civil Defence appointed engineers in association with the owner’s engineers. It then went to CERA appointed engineers in association with the owner’s engineers. A recommendation was then made to CERA and the owner before a final decision was made.

Q . Who has been awarded the Grand Chancellor job (at whatever price and/ or conditions)?

Fletcher Construction Company. The contract is worth in excess of $10 million – this was stated openly by the owner of the Hotel Grand Chancellor when the contract was awarded.

Q . Who has been blind-sided?

The tender process was, and is, an open tender process. It was done with all due care and with impartiality. The preferred contractor was awarded the contract based on the best deconstruction solution for the Grand Chancellor. The ultimate decision was the owner’s.

This public service announcement was brought to you by the letter N and the number 8.

Tracy Watkins at Stuff reports:

Labour will introduce a bill preventing the sale of key strategic assets without a clear public mandate, says Labour leader Phil Goff.

Goff said the bill would require any future proposal to partly or wholly privatise a State-owned enterprise or Crown entity to gain support from 75 per cent of Parliament, or from a majority of voters in a referendum.

This is hilarious, because Labour is ensuring such a bill will never get drawn from the members’ ballot because they are filibustering the VSM bill.

A journalist should ask Labour if they will stop filbustering the VSM bill, in order to allow more bills to be drawn in a ballot, and giving their anti-privatisation bill a chance to be drawn.

I bet you the answer is no.

So what does that mean? It means that Labour value protecting compulsory student associations from voluntary membership more than they value stopping asset sales. Their number one parliamentary priority is stopping VSM at all costs.

Incidentially turning to the substance of their silly bill, I’ll support a law which requires a referendum to sell any asset, so long one also needs a referendum for teh Government to buy any asset (over a non trivial value).