Friday, September 23, 2005
Many commentators have noted that there were two elections on Saturday. The provincial hinterland voted National; ie they voted for a change of government. Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin and Palmerston North voted for no change. There is a simple reason for this. About 45% of New Zealand workers earn their living in the tradeable sector of the national economy. The remaining 55% belong to the non-tradeable sector. A greater proportion of the provincial population identifies, in particular,
with the export economy. The non-tradeable sector however thrives on cheap imports.
(The whole of this article is not yet online, but presumably will be in the next day or two at http://rankinfile.co.nz/)
If only employment law applied, rues ousted ACT MP Stephen Franks. "I could demand reinstatement and personal grievance damages from you as my employers. Did you give me formal warning of dissatisfaction? Shouldn't you have a duty to guide and retrain me? You knew I didn't have a safe working environment, in which I've been subject to harassment and personal insults. You've showed no interest in protecting me from stress. Judge Coral Shaw might order damages because I got no consoling poroporoaki (farewell). Instead the sacking occurred on national television. All that is as it should be. The ability to sack rulers is the defining strength of our democracy. It would never work if rulers could entrench themselves like dud employees behind tricky process rules, or the need to prove that dismissal is fair."
The number of new immigrants or New Zealanders returning home in the year ended August fell 66 per cent compared to the previous year, Statistics New Zealand said today. For the year ended August there were 78,900 permanent and long term arrivals, down 3600 or 4 per cent on the previous August year. Departures rose 9100 or 14 per cent to 72,300. This led to a net migration gain of 6600 in the August year, 66 per cent lower than the 19,300 people in the previous August year.
Germany has been plunged into what may prove to be its worst political crisis since its founding as a democratic republic in 1949 - and Europe will be part of the collateral damage. This is a very full and helpful look at the situation there.
Delaying babies defies nature, according to IVF specialists writing in the British Medical Journal. "Women want to 'have it all,' but biology is unchanged; deferring defies nature and risks heartbreak. If women want room for manoeuvre they are unwise to wait till their 30s," say three London fertility experts. They speculate that "the availability of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) may lull women into infertility while they wait for a suitable partner and concentrate on their careers and achieving security and a comfortable living standard." The article in the BMJ lists many disadvantages of trying to become pregnant after 35, both physical and psychological. "It is ironic that as society becomes more risk-averse and pregnant women more anxious than in the past, a major preventable cause of this ill health and unhappiness is unacknowledged. Public health agencies target teenagers but ignore the epidemic of pregnancy in middle age," they say. Although most fertility specialists have been issuing similar warnings for years, many women resent being told that that they should try to start a family earlier in life. The medical editor of New Scientist, Clare Wilson, responded with a personal letter to the BMJ complaining about the authors' "inflammatory language" and dismissing the suggestion that women use IVF as a safety net.
A Danish entrepreneur is studying the possibility of anchoring "fertility ships" in international waters to help people evade restrictive laws. Ole Schou, the founder of Cryos, the biggest sperm bank in Europe, wants to supply anonymous sperm to Britons unable to have IVF or artificial insemination because there are not enough sperm donors in the UK. He plans to employ professionals from the local country to provide medical services. His brainstorm is modelled upon the Dutch ship which tried to anchor off Ireland and Portugal to provide abortions.
When you thought TV had gone as low as it could go: The country that unleashed Big Brother on an unsuspecting world has taken reality television a step further: a late-night talkshow whose presenters will consume drugs and engage in sex acts on air, then discuss their experiences afterwards.
Latest current account figures show New Zealand is headed for "banana republic" levels of debt faster than anyone expected, ANZ economist John McDermott said yesterday. In the year to June, foreign investors hoovered more profits out of the country while strong demand for imports and higher oil prices saw even more cash pumped offshore. That pushed our current account - which measures all our dealings with the rest of the world, including investments and trade - to a deficit of $11.89 billion, close to 8 per cent of GDP.
The Christchurch City Council has lost a bid to keep its controversial brothel bylaw in place until an Appeal Court hearing is held on its validity.
Don't be fooled by this week's snow. Changes in the Pacific Ocean are plunging New Zealand into a new climate cycle that will result in warmer temperatures, less rain and severe easterly weather for up to 30 years, scientists warn.
TVNZ is cutting another top frontperson from its line-up after deciding not to renew Kim Hill's interview programme as part of a review of the shows in its news and current affairs stable. Of more worry, the network is also cancelling its sole international affairs show, Foreign Correspondent, which alternated with Hill in the Wednesday 10pm timeslot. There's not much current affairs left on TV these days.
Parents of Downs Syndrome children are labelling the Government's guidelines on embryo selection (referred to as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD) as abhorrent. "They may be just embryos, but they are saying, 'These are the good ones ... and these are the ones that we don't want,' says Bridget, the mother of one such child. Bridget questions the basis for such thinking. The miracle of medical science under scrutiny here is an in-vitro fertilisation technique where laboratory-grown 5-day-old embryos are tested for chromosome abnormalities and gene disorders. Unaffected embryos are then transferred back to the mother's uterus. Those in favour say the technology is a remarkable advance that gives people with genetic disorders the opportunity to have children who are free of conditions that have devastated generations. Those against argue that embryo selection is simply a more humane means of culling undesirables from the population - as Hitler did in the Holocaust.
Research confirms what we have long suspected: emailing makes you dumber. A study by the University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry revealed constant emailing and text messaging reduces mental ability by an average of 10 IQ points. That is more than double the effect of smoking high-potency marijuana and almost equivalent to the IQ loss from watching 15 minutes of Britney Spears. The problem is people allow email and text messaging to interrupt other tasks.
The Dutch government will begin tracking every citizen from cradle to grave in a single database, opening a personal electronic dossier for every child at birth with health and family data, and eventually adding school and police records.
Future computers will be small, shrinking to electronic crumbs as tiny as a grain of sand. Without human intervention, the tiny but smart processors will wirelessly connect to each other to create an invisible network of whispering electronic dwarfs.
Increasingly popular online role-playing games have created a shadow economy in which the lines between the real world and the virtual world are getting blurred. More than 20 million people play these games worldwide, according to Edward Castronova, an economics professor at Indiana University who has written a book on the subject, and he thinks such gamers spend more than $200 million a year on virtual goods. One site, GameUSD.com, even tracks the latest value of computer-game currency against the U.S. dollar, an exchange-rate calculator for the virtual world.
with the export economy. The non-tradeable sector however thrives on cheap imports.
(The whole of this article is not yet online, but presumably will be in the next day or two at http://rankinfile.co.nz/)
If only employment law applied, rues ousted ACT MP Stephen Franks. "I could demand reinstatement and personal grievance damages from you as my employers. Did you give me formal warning of dissatisfaction? Shouldn't you have a duty to guide and retrain me? You knew I didn't have a safe working environment, in which I've been subject to harassment and personal insults. You've showed no interest in protecting me from stress. Judge Coral Shaw might order damages because I got no consoling poroporoaki (farewell). Instead the sacking occurred on national television. All that is as it should be. The ability to sack rulers is the defining strength of our democracy. It would never work if rulers could entrench themselves like dud employees behind tricky process rules, or the need to prove that dismissal is fair."
The number of new immigrants or New Zealanders returning home in the year ended August fell 66 per cent compared to the previous year, Statistics New Zealand said today. For the year ended August there were 78,900 permanent and long term arrivals, down 3600 or 4 per cent on the previous August year. Departures rose 9100 or 14 per cent to 72,300. This led to a net migration gain of 6600 in the August year, 66 per cent lower than the 19,300 people in the previous August year.
Germany has been plunged into what may prove to be its worst political crisis since its founding as a democratic republic in 1949 - and Europe will be part of the collateral damage. This is a very full and helpful look at the situation there.
Delaying babies defies nature, according to IVF specialists writing in the British Medical Journal. "Women want to 'have it all,' but biology is unchanged; deferring defies nature and risks heartbreak. If women want room for manoeuvre they are unwise to wait till their 30s," say three London fertility experts. They speculate that "the availability of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) may lull women into infertility while they wait for a suitable partner and concentrate on their careers and achieving security and a comfortable living standard." The article in the BMJ lists many disadvantages of trying to become pregnant after 35, both physical and psychological. "It is ironic that as society becomes more risk-averse and pregnant women more anxious than in the past, a major preventable cause of this ill health and unhappiness is unacknowledged. Public health agencies target teenagers but ignore the epidemic of pregnancy in middle age," they say. Although most fertility specialists have been issuing similar warnings for years, many women resent being told that that they should try to start a family earlier in life. The medical editor of New Scientist, Clare Wilson, responded with a personal letter to the BMJ complaining about the authors' "inflammatory language" and dismissing the suggestion that women use IVF as a safety net.
A Danish entrepreneur is studying the possibility of anchoring "fertility ships" in international waters to help people evade restrictive laws. Ole Schou, the founder of Cryos, the biggest sperm bank in Europe, wants to supply anonymous sperm to Britons unable to have IVF or artificial insemination because there are not enough sperm donors in the UK. He plans to employ professionals from the local country to provide medical services. His brainstorm is modelled upon the Dutch ship which tried to anchor off Ireland and Portugal to provide abortions.
When you thought TV had gone as low as it could go: The country that unleashed Big Brother on an unsuspecting world has taken reality television a step further: a late-night talkshow whose presenters will consume drugs and engage in sex acts on air, then discuss their experiences afterwards.
Latest current account figures show New Zealand is headed for "banana republic" levels of debt faster than anyone expected, ANZ economist John McDermott said yesterday. In the year to June, foreign investors hoovered more profits out of the country while strong demand for imports and higher oil prices saw even more cash pumped offshore. That pushed our current account - which measures all our dealings with the rest of the world, including investments and trade - to a deficit of $11.89 billion, close to 8 per cent of GDP.
The Christchurch City Council has lost a bid to keep its controversial brothel bylaw in place until an Appeal Court hearing is held on its validity.
Don't be fooled by this week's snow. Changes in the Pacific Ocean are plunging New Zealand into a new climate cycle that will result in warmer temperatures, less rain and severe easterly weather for up to 30 years, scientists warn.
TVNZ is cutting another top frontperson from its line-up after deciding not to renew Kim Hill's interview programme as part of a review of the shows in its news and current affairs stable. Of more worry, the network is also cancelling its sole international affairs show, Foreign Correspondent, which alternated with Hill in the Wednesday 10pm timeslot. There's not much current affairs left on TV these days.
Parents of Downs Syndrome children are labelling the Government's guidelines on embryo selection (referred to as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD) as abhorrent. "They may be just embryos, but they are saying, 'These are the good ones ... and these are the ones that we don't want,' says Bridget, the mother of one such child. Bridget questions the basis for such thinking. The miracle of medical science under scrutiny here is an in-vitro fertilisation technique where laboratory-grown 5-day-old embryos are tested for chromosome abnormalities and gene disorders. Unaffected embryos are then transferred back to the mother's uterus. Those in favour say the technology is a remarkable advance that gives people with genetic disorders the opportunity to have children who are free of conditions that have devastated generations. Those against argue that embryo selection is simply a more humane means of culling undesirables from the population - as Hitler did in the Holocaust.
Research confirms what we have long suspected: emailing makes you dumber. A study by the University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry revealed constant emailing and text messaging reduces mental ability by an average of 10 IQ points. That is more than double the effect of smoking high-potency marijuana and almost equivalent to the IQ loss from watching 15 minutes of Britney Spears. The problem is people allow email and text messaging to interrupt other tasks.
The Dutch government will begin tracking every citizen from cradle to grave in a single database, opening a personal electronic dossier for every child at birth with health and family data, and eventually adding school and police records.
Future computers will be small, shrinking to electronic crumbs as tiny as a grain of sand. Without human intervention, the tiny but smart processors will wirelessly connect to each other to create an invisible network of whispering electronic dwarfs.
Increasingly popular online role-playing games have created a shadow economy in which the lines between the real world and the virtual world are getting blurred. More than 20 million people play these games worldwide, according to Edward Castronova, an economics professor at Indiana University who has written a book on the subject, and he thinks such gamers spend more than $200 million a year on virtual goods. One site, GameUSD.com, even tracks the latest value of computer-game currency against the U.S. dollar, an exchange-rate calculator for the virtual world.
Monday, September 19, 2005
The opinion polls before the election didn't get it very right, did they!
Only one company (TNS, contracted to TV3) got anywhere near. The others were way off-course, including AC Nielsen who claimed before the day to be the most accurate. It was hard to choose between Herald-DigiPoll, TV1-Colmar Brunton and NBR-Phillip Fox for who was most inaccurate. I feel a bit sorry for NBR - the company they contracted prior to the 2002 election (UMR) gave them frightful service, and they didn't fare much better with Phillip Fox this time. I know the electorate was volatile, but I think the survey companies are going to have to ask themselves some hard questions regarding methodology.
The overall vote for centre-left parties, including the Maori Party, dropped from 51.1 per cent to 48.8 per cent. The centre-right, defined broadly to include New Zealand First and United Future, climbed from 46.9 per cent to 50.2 per cent.
A couple of random thoughts re the also-rans:
Destiny gained the highest vote of any party not represented in Parliament. The Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party polled twice as many votes as Christian Heritage. Alliance (once headed and then deserted by Jim Anderton) managed only 0.07% of the vote - surely they must be dead and buried now.
I have been doing some number crunching regarding special votes.
If National is to gain parity with Labour (ie, 40%), it needs to garner 98,651 or 45.3% of the special votes. To remain at 5%, the Greens need 9,923 of the special votes, or 4.6%. Less than that, and they are out completely, which would destroy Helen Clark's chances of forming the government. In previous elections, the Greens have done well in the specials, but it would appear that previous elections are not a good guide to this one. For instance, it has been pointed out that the last two elections were held in the university holidays, so many students would have been casting special votes. As the Greens pick up many votes among students, they might be down in the specials this time round. National's fortunes may also depend on what kind of person votes overseas. For instance, if there is a higher than usual percentage of disgruntled kiwis who left NZ because of Labour (and they bother to vote), National could do better in the specials this time round.
All the above might be way off beam if Rodney Hide's prediction is accurate. He says a very large number of the 218,000 specials to be counted will prove to be invalid. Voters not on the roll who turn up to vote are given a special vote. If they do not have a late valid enrolment the vote is not counted. He doubts that there are more than 120,000 valid votes to count, unlikely to change the result.
Nonetheless, Helen Clark can't count her chickens yet.
Whoever forms the government has a major economic challenge just around the corner. Slowing exports and rising oil prices look set to push up New Zealand's second-quarter current account deficit to levels not seen for 20 years. Statistics New Zealand will release the latest current account figures, also known as the balance of payments, on Wednesday. The data measures all of the country's transactions with the outside world. The March quarter deficit was $1.42 billion, which amounted to 7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Ten economists polled by Dow Jones forecast the median quarterly deficit for June would swell to $2.6 billion, or 7.5 per cent of GDP for the June quarter. The last time the current account deficit was higher as a proportion of GDP was in March 1986, when it was at 8.9 per cent. Any level above 5 per cent of GDP is usually an alarm signal to international investors. Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard says this is not sustainable.
Voters also plunged Germany into political limbo on Sunday, splitting their ballots between Angela Merkel's conservatives and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats so closely that both claimed victory.
Relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina demonstrate the US Federal government’s growing handover of responsibility to faith groups, The Independent says. Church shelters mushroomed across Louisiana and Texas to cater for evacuees unable to afford motel accommodation. In the coastal Mississippi resort of Waveland the first significant relief came from Life Christian Church of Orange Beach, Alabama. Sixty volunteers served three meals a day to 4,000 people and even fed members of the police, National Guard and Fema (Federal Emergency Management Agency), pastor Rick Long said. The Independent suggested this was fulfilling a goal set by President Bush’s first Fema director.
A British delegation led by Labour MP David Drew has met Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to urge repeal of the country’s discriminatory blasphemy laws. The visit to Pakistan was organised by Christian Solidarity Worldwide in order to secure greater protection for religious minorities, against whom the laws and "Hudood Ordinances" have often been unfairly used. CSW director Stuart Windsor said "This has been the most important visit we have made to Pakistan … We urge the international community to put the repeal of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan higher on the agenda." UCB this week reported that Younis Masih, aged 27 from Lahore, has been arrested on blasphemy charges after he asked a neighbour to turn down the volume of loud Islamic music he was playing.
Are we losing touch with the classic literature of our childhood (by "our", I mean in this instance people over the age of about 45)? Today's English curriculum ignores what used to be the standard fare of the baby-boomers and before. Well, there's one group helping to preserve their popularity: home-schoolers. Home-schoolers are a growing force in the educational world, and they are still reading books from days of yore.
Grave-less new world: Mobile telecommunications are set to revolutionise traditional burial processes, the Church of England Newspaper predicts. London architect Giles Lovegrove has won an award for a new concept in remembering people after they have died. Rather than a cemetery grave, "You choose a location that is close to your heart. People visit the spot with a mobile phone and only then does it activate a stream of information about the deceased person... words, pictures or even songs. It is a kind of digital obituary." The concept will use GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) that will be integral to the next generation of phones.
Tail-out: Ken Sinchar, 41, had met Lori Sherbondy, 42, at the drive-through at a McDonald's restaurant in Pittsburgh, Penn., so the couple thought it was fitting to get married there. Sherbondy took up her familiar position at the drive-through window and Sinchar sat in his minivan outside as they said their vows. A judge performed the ceremony as the couple held hands through the window and her parents sat inside. "It's really meant for us," the blushing bride said.
Only one company (TNS, contracted to TV3) got anywhere near. The others were way off-course, including AC Nielsen who claimed before the day to be the most accurate. It was hard to choose between Herald-DigiPoll, TV1-Colmar Brunton and NBR-Phillip Fox for who was most inaccurate. I feel a bit sorry for NBR - the company they contracted prior to the 2002 election (UMR) gave them frightful service, and they didn't fare much better with Phillip Fox this time. I know the electorate was volatile, but I think the survey companies are going to have to ask themselves some hard questions regarding methodology.
The overall vote for centre-left parties, including the Maori Party, dropped from 51.1 per cent to 48.8 per cent. The centre-right, defined broadly to include New Zealand First and United Future, climbed from 46.9 per cent to 50.2 per cent.
A couple of random thoughts re the also-rans:
Destiny gained the highest vote of any party not represented in Parliament. The Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party polled twice as many votes as Christian Heritage. Alliance (once headed and then deserted by Jim Anderton) managed only 0.07% of the vote - surely they must be dead and buried now.
I have been doing some number crunching regarding special votes.
If National is to gain parity with Labour (ie, 40%), it needs to garner 98,651 or 45.3% of the special votes. To remain at 5%, the Greens need 9,923 of the special votes, or 4.6%. Less than that, and they are out completely, which would destroy Helen Clark's chances of forming the government. In previous elections, the Greens have done well in the specials, but it would appear that previous elections are not a good guide to this one. For instance, it has been pointed out that the last two elections were held in the university holidays, so many students would have been casting special votes. As the Greens pick up many votes among students, they might be down in the specials this time round. National's fortunes may also depend on what kind of person votes overseas. For instance, if there is a higher than usual percentage of disgruntled kiwis who left NZ because of Labour (and they bother to vote), National could do better in the specials this time round.
All the above might be way off beam if Rodney Hide's prediction is accurate. He says a very large number of the 218,000 specials to be counted will prove to be invalid. Voters not on the roll who turn up to vote are given a special vote. If they do not have a late valid enrolment the vote is not counted. He doubts that there are more than 120,000 valid votes to count, unlikely to change the result.
Nonetheless, Helen Clark can't count her chickens yet.
Whoever forms the government has a major economic challenge just around the corner. Slowing exports and rising oil prices look set to push up New Zealand's second-quarter current account deficit to levels not seen for 20 years. Statistics New Zealand will release the latest current account figures, also known as the balance of payments, on Wednesday. The data measures all of the country's transactions with the outside world. The March quarter deficit was $1.42 billion, which amounted to 7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Ten economists polled by Dow Jones forecast the median quarterly deficit for June would swell to $2.6 billion, or 7.5 per cent of GDP for the June quarter. The last time the current account deficit was higher as a proportion of GDP was in March 1986, when it was at 8.9 per cent. Any level above 5 per cent of GDP is usually an alarm signal to international investors. Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard says this is not sustainable.
Voters also plunged Germany into political limbo on Sunday, splitting their ballots between Angela Merkel's conservatives and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats so closely that both claimed victory.
Relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina demonstrate the US Federal government’s growing handover of responsibility to faith groups, The Independent says. Church shelters mushroomed across Louisiana and Texas to cater for evacuees unable to afford motel accommodation. In the coastal Mississippi resort of Waveland the first significant relief came from Life Christian Church of Orange Beach, Alabama. Sixty volunteers served three meals a day to 4,000 people and even fed members of the police, National Guard and Fema (Federal Emergency Management Agency), pastor Rick Long said. The Independent suggested this was fulfilling a goal set by President Bush’s first Fema director.
A British delegation led by Labour MP David Drew has met Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to urge repeal of the country’s discriminatory blasphemy laws. The visit to Pakistan was organised by Christian Solidarity Worldwide in order to secure greater protection for religious minorities, against whom the laws and "Hudood Ordinances" have often been unfairly used. CSW director Stuart Windsor said "This has been the most important visit we have made to Pakistan … We urge the international community to put the repeal of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan higher on the agenda." UCB this week reported that Younis Masih, aged 27 from Lahore, has been arrested on blasphemy charges after he asked a neighbour to turn down the volume of loud Islamic music he was playing.
Are we losing touch with the classic literature of our childhood (by "our", I mean in this instance people over the age of about 45)? Today's English curriculum ignores what used to be the standard fare of the baby-boomers and before. Well, there's one group helping to preserve their popularity: home-schoolers. Home-schoolers are a growing force in the educational world, and they are still reading books from days of yore.
Grave-less new world: Mobile telecommunications are set to revolutionise traditional burial processes, the Church of England Newspaper predicts. London architect Giles Lovegrove has won an award for a new concept in remembering people after they have died. Rather than a cemetery grave, "You choose a location that is close to your heart. People visit the spot with a mobile phone and only then does it activate a stream of information about the deceased person... words, pictures or even songs. It is a kind of digital obituary." The concept will use GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) that will be integral to the next generation of phones.
Tail-out: Ken Sinchar, 41, had met Lori Sherbondy, 42, at the drive-through at a McDonald's restaurant in Pittsburgh, Penn., so the couple thought it was fitting to get married there. Sherbondy took up her familiar position at the drive-through window and Sinchar sat in his minivan outside as they said their vows. A judge performed the ceremony as the couple held hands through the window and her parents sat inside. "It's really meant for us," the blushing bride said.
