Monthly Archives: September 2022

Sir Sanford Fleming has a lot to answer for. Dont get me wrong, Im sure he thought he was being all high-tech and avant garde when he came up with his fancy idea on dividing the world into 24 different time zones.

As a Scottish-born Canadian, he must have been familiar with the European-American issue of midnight Zooming or whatever the late nineteenth century equivalent was. No doubt he thought his sums about time zones being 15 degrees longitude apart because planet earth rotates 15 degrees every hour made sense.

Well, he clearly hadnt factored in Rally New Zealands return to the WRC calendar and the hour-based head scratching it could mean for a Seattle-based website, manned largely out of the UK reporting on an event in Auckland.

We know Thursday nights Auckland Domain stage the first competitive WRC action in Aotearoa for a decade kicks off at 1808. Thats great if you happen to be watching the action live downtown in the City of Sails.

See more here:

How to follow New Zealand from the US and Europe DirtFish - DirtFish

But he hadnt been at his imperious best in New Zealand. Approaching a tightening right-hander with a narrow bridge at the exit, Loeb lost the rear on corner entry and slid into the side of the bridge that crossed an underlying railway line.

The contact hadnt done too much damage, other than to Loebs door which wouldnt close properly. With just a remote service after the stage, Loeb tried valiantly to fix it even stopping his Citron C4 WRC on-stage at one point but eventually gave up. He lost over 1m20s.

It was a tactic not to be first on the road tomorrow, he smiled.

But joking aside, a good road position meant Loeb was king on Saturday. Quickest on all six of the eight stages, he rose from seventh place overnight all the way up to second with just four stages remaining on Sunday.

Read more:

Ogier's "unfinished business" on Rally New Zealand DirtFish - DirtFish

The Ports of Auckland is Aotearoa's trade link to the world - vulnerable to market volatility.

But our tumbling dollar is not a concern for Aucklanders Newshub spoke to on the waterfront on Tuesday.

"Not me personally, I don't have a lot of financial happenings," one person said.

"No, it hasn't really crossed my mind at the moment," said another.

But it will likely impact their lives because a weak Kiwi dollar means importing is more expensive.

"While we do expect inflation rates to slowly fall from here, the longer the New Zealand dollar remains low, the slower it will take for those inflation rates to fall," ASB senior economist Mark Smith said.

Six months ago the New Zealand dollar was US68.9c - now it's at US56.6c, a fall of 18 percent.

Aotearoa's dollar is suffering because the US dollar is being pumped up by the US Federal Reserve lifting interest rates to tackle inflation.

"Interest rates globally are going up, and when rates are going up, generally people tend to look to where their money will be safest, and at the moment it's certainly the US economy," said Smith.

And Aotearoa's currency is not alone, the British pound took a significant hit overnight after the new Liz Truss administration announced its tax cut plan.

But Finance Minister Grant Robertson sees two sides to this coin.

"Clearly this will have some impact on imported goods coming into New Zealand, it actually has the opposite effect for exporters."

But timber exporter at Tropex Export Joe McLeod said exporters have their own set of challenges.

"We were starting to see a little bit of cost come out of the freight rates but that will quickly turn around because of the other currencies strengthening against the Kiwi [dollar]."

So, more money to be made selling our products abroad, but still more expensive to fill our shelves at home.

More:

Warning over inflation and import costs as New Zealand dollar drops to lowest value against US dollar since 2020 - Newshub

WELLINGTON, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- The opening reception of New Zealand Chinese Language Week 2022 was held on Monday evening at the Grand Hall of Parliament Buildings in Wellington.

During this week, New Zealand will host a series of traditional Chinese cultural activities.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern extended her congratulations to the event in a video speech starting with greetings in Chinese.

"Since 2014, New Zealand Chinese language week has helped promote and encourage Chinese language learning here in New Zealand," she said.

Ardern encouraged more New Zealanders to learn the Chinese language. "Our country is home to more than 240,000 Chinese New Zealanders who all play a significant role in contributing to our diverse culture. Communicating with someone in their language let you see things from a different perspective. So even if it is as simple as learning a new greeting, I encourage you to give Chinese a go this week."

Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand Wang Xiaolong said that the rising popularity of the Chinese language in the wider New Zealand society is a reflection of the ever closer relations between the two countries.

"This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of our diplomatic relations," Wang said, noting that over the past 50 years, both sides have been open and inclusive enough to appreciate and learn from each other, in that process promoting practical cooperation for mutual benefits and win-win outcomes.

"From what we have seen today eight years after its inauguration, New Zealand Chinese Language Week has grown into a signature brand of the multi-layered and multi-faceted people-to-people links between our two countries, which have underpinned the growth of our overall friendship, culminating in the evolving comprehensive strategic partnership between our two countries," Wang said.

Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives Adrian Rurawhe, Minister for Diversity, Inclusion and Ethnic Communities Priyanca Radhakrishnan and Ambassador Wang presented the 2022 Youth Ambassadors and Mandarin Superstars with honorary certificates together.

The New Zealand Chinese Language Week was first held in 2014. It is another language week held in New Zealand after the Maori Language Week and the Pacific Island Language Week.

See the original post:

Chinese language week starts in New Zealand to promote Chinese language learning - Xinhua

What if Rovanper finishes fifth?

If the following combinations of result occur, Rovanper wins the title in New Zealand.

Rovanper is fifth overall and finishes first on the powerstage:Tnak is seventh overall and fifth or lower on the powerstageTnak is eighth overall and third or lower on the powerstage

Rovanper is fifth overall and finishes second on the powerstage:Tnak is seventh overall and scores no powerstage pointsTnak is eighth overall and fourth or lower on the powerstageTnak is ninth overall and second or lower on the powerstage

Rovanper is fifth overall and finishes third on the powerstage:Tnak is eighth overall and scores no powerstage pointsTnak is ninth overall and fourth or lower on the powerstageTnak is 10th overall and second or lower on the powerstage

Rovanper is fifth overall and finishes fourth on the powerstage:Tnak is eighth overall and scores no powerstage pointsTnak is ninth overall and fifth or lower on the powerstageTnak is 10th overall and third or lower on the powerstageTnak finishes outside the top 10 and finishes second or lower on the powerstageNeuville first overall and second or lower on the powerstage

Rovanper is fifth overall and finishes fifth on the powerstage:Tnak is ninth overall and scores no powerstage pointsTnak is 10th overall and fourth or lower on the powerstageTnak finishes outside the top 10 and finishes third or lower on the powerstageNeuville first overall and third or lower on the powerstage

Rovanper is fifth overall and does not score powerstage points:Tnak is ninth overall and scores no powerstage pointsTnak is 10th overall and fifth or lower on the powerstageTnak finishes outside the top 10 and finishes fourth or lower on the powerstageNeuville first overall and fourth or lower on the powerstage

If the following combinations of result occur, Rovanper wins the title in New Zealand.

Rovanper is sixth overall and finishes first on the powerstage:Tnak is eighth overall and fifth or lower on the powerstageTnak is ninth overall and third or lower on the powerstageTnak is 10th overall and second or lower on the powerstage

Rovanper is sixth overall and finishes second on the powerstage:Tnak is eighth overall and scores no powerstage pointsTnak is ninth overall and fourth or lower on the powerstageTnak is 10th overall and third or lower on the powerstageTnak finishes outside the top 10 and finishes second or lower on the powerstageNeuville first overall and second or lower on the powerstage

Rovanper is sixth overall and finishes third on the powerstage:Tnak is ninth overall and fifth or lower on the powerstageTnak is 10th overall and fourth or lower on the powerstageTnak finishes outside the top 10 and finishes third or lower on the powerstageNeuville first overall and third or lower on the powerstage

Rovanper is sixth overall and finishes fourth on the powerstage:Tnak is ninth overall and scores no powerstage pointsTnak is 10th overall and fifth or lower on the powerstageTnak finishes outside the top 10 and finishes fourth or lower on the powerstageNeuville first overall and fourth or lower on the powerstage

Rovanper is sixth overall and finishes fifth on the powerstage:Tnak is 10th overall and scores no powerstage pointsTnak finishes outside the top 10 and finishes fifth or lower on the powerstageNeuville first overall and fourth or lower on the powerstage

Rovanper is sixth overall and does not score powerstage points:Tnak finishes outside the top 10 and scores no powerstage pointsNeuville first overall and scores no powerstage points

Continue reading here:

How Rovanper can wrap up the title in New Zealand DirtFish - DirtFish

Internal pain points, change-adaptability, enhanced performance capability and the overlaying of certain planning provisions: these are the bewildering, often-enraging spectres of government gobbledegook that haunt official documents.

Now, the New Zealand government is attempting to drawing a thick red line through the worst offenders, with a new law demanding bureaucrats use simple, comprehensible language to communicate with the public.

The controversial bill passed its second reading last month, after colourful parliamentary debate, but still faces a final vote before becoming law.

I wandered lonely as a cloud, That floats on high oer vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils, MP Sarah Pallett quoted in the House. Beautiful, she continued. Basically: I was feeling sad. I went for a walk. I saw a lot of beautiful daffodils, and they cheered me right up good old Wordsworth. But that is the place for flowery, inaccessible language in poetry and literature, and not in government legislation.

The Plain Language Bill will require government communications to the public be clear, concise, well-organised, and audience-appropriate. For the countrys anti-gibberish brigade, its a victory: they say clear language is a matter of social justice and a democratic right.

People living in New Zealand have a right to understand what the government is asking them to do, and what their rights are, what theyre entitled to from government, says MP Rachel Boyack, who presented the bill.

Advocates say theres vast room for improvement in New Zealand government communications. By way of example, the country has an annual plain language award which includes a best sentence transformation trophy. This offering, from the governments statistics department, recently took the prize:

Over the year we tested the innovation readiness and change-adaptability of the organisation, made significant changes to our prioritisation and investment approaches, moved to activity based working and seen teams across Stats respond by making time to focus on tackling customer and internal pain points.

It became:

We tested how ready our organisation was to innovate and make changes. We also changed our approach to setting priorities and to investing, and moved to a flexible working style for our staff. In response, staff focused on solving their own, and customers, irritations.

Another effort came from the NZ Transport Authority:

Where it has been identified and is possible to update this it has been undertaken ensuring future band allocation is correct.

Transformed to:

Where possible, weve identified and updated affected sub-models to make sure theyre assigned the correct levy band going forward.

Bad sentences are more than an aesthetic concern, says Lynda Harris, who launched the awards and directs plain language consultancy Write Ltd. Government communications decide the most intimate and important parts of peoples lives: their immigration status, divorce papers, entitlements to welfare payments or ability to build a home. When people send in letters of that nature, they describe their frustration tears, anger, because theyve just tried to get a thing done, she says.

When governments communicate in ways that people dont understand, it can lead to people not engaging with services that are available to them, losing trust in government and not being able to participate fully in society, says Boyack. Those most affected are people who speak English as a second language, have not attended university, have disabilities, or are elderly.

The bill is not universally supported. Advocates say some parts lack clear-enough definitions. New Zealands opposition argue it will add further layers of bureaucracy and cost, in the form of plain-language-monitoring officials, without actually improving communication with the public. Let me speak with extremely plain language, said National MP Chris Bishop. This bill is the stupidest bill to come before parliament in this term. National will repeal it.

Labours lawmakers argue that ultimately, it will pay off via higher tax compliance, less time spent by call centres and staff dealing with a bewildered public, and increased trust in government.

Can clearer sentences really achieve all that? Possibly not. But advocates say plain language is a boon for accountability as well as comprehension. The language is a vehicle. Its just a means to an end, says Harris: it should tell people what happened, who was responsible, and what can be done.

In an ideal world, that would mean an end to artefacts such as mistakes were made: a sentence structure where errors float unencumbered by responsible parties, leaned upon by politicians and bureaucracies to obscure responsibility. One political commentator has called it the past exonerative tense and it crops up reliably in the phrasing associated with police shootings: The officers encountered a male suspect at which time an officer-involved shooting occurred, reads one Los Angeles Police Department example gathered by the Washington Post.

Language is not an objective view of reality, says linguist Dr Andreea Calude. We all use language to try and frame the kind of scene that were describing in the way that suits us. Plain language may leave a little less room for manoeuvre, she says but simpler sentences arent an automatic pathway to transparency.

I dont think plain language can really solve that problem. As long as humans are creative and playful and inventive, I think theyll find ways around it.

Excerpt from:

New Zealand hopes to banish jargon with plain language law - The Guardian

Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver

New Zealand has added another 19 individuals to its sanctions regime over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In a statement this afternoon, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta confirmed they included Federal Ministers, non-permanent members of Russia's Security Council, relatives of Putin, and Chechen Republic President Ramzan Kadyrov.

Those listed were part of a network of influence around Putin, and had used their positions to threaten Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, Mahuta said.

She also criticised the referendums over whether to join Russia, held by Russia in occupied areas of Ukraine as a breach of the fundamental rules of international law. Some media reports suggested armed Russian soldiers were going door to door to collect votes.

The Russia Sanctions Act allows the government to freeze assets, instate travel bans or prohibit financial dealings. To date, New Zealand has imposed sanctions on more than a thousand individuals and entities.

Continued here:

New Zealand imposes further sanctions against Putin-linked individuals - RNZ

Gerald OBrien lived a very public life he was a New Zealand MP, anti-war activist and president of the World Peace Council, but not even those closest to him knew of his secret, all-consuming lifelong art project, which resulted in a vast and complex imaginary world.

Hidden in the late politicians basement were OBriens hand-painted and written imaginings, obsessively created from the time he was a toddler through to his years in parliament and beyond.

Until OBriens family began clearing out his Wellington house after his death in 2017, his intricate work had been concealed from the world including his wife of 60 years, Fausta.

The whole thing is a mystery and nobody knew anything about it, his nephew Lucien Rizos tells The Guardian. How complete a picture he created overall, from such an early age, is sort of incomprehensible.

Inside the many chaotic drawers and boxes of OBriens basement, Rizos unearthed cut-outs of 700 or more characters, all meticulously painted, with individual outfits and facial features.

Each were given names or titles some, such as King Charles III of Escotia and Fidel Bistro, were influenced by the real world; others, including H.R.H Prince Jupiter Squashyspeck and Katesmart Bigglesbum, were more inventive. As OBrien aged, so too did his project, and while his style retained an artistic consistency, his rendering became more sophisticated and the stories more elaborate.

The continuation of the magnificent illustrations go way into his adulthood, Rizos says, something written on the back in 1974 would then be crossed out in 1993 so he was still referring to these figures.

OBrien also created maps of fictional countries such as Escotia, Andamia and Gaston; copious hand-written newspapers reporting events, with communiqus over battles, politics and monarchies; history books recording major occasions, and lists of army personnel and administrative leaders that would undergo revisions as the wars and elections of a state evolved.

OBrien was born in Wellington in 1924 and grew up in a world blighted by war. Unsurprisingly, his imaginary world was heavily focused on battles and armies, but he later became an ardent pacifist and vocal critic of the Vietnam war. He held many roles during his long life he had been a radar operator in the airforce, a businessman, a city councillor, a politician, and eventually the president of the World Peace Council.

He was a man of many interests and talents, Rizos notes, and was, from an early age, enamoured of politics. He joined the Labour party in his early 20s and in 1969 was elected to parliament as the MP for Wellingtons Island Bay electorate a position he held until 1978.

Rizos spent an enormous amount of time with OBrien during his final years, discussing his life and the decisions that led to his career in politics. At one point, OBrien mentioned to Rizos a comic book character he had encountered as a child called Geraldi Rebel of the Hills a sort of cowboy Robin Hood who set him on the path of wanting to do good and getting into politics.

Later, when Rizos was sifting through the secret cut-out figurines, he came across one that looked uncannily like his uncle, named Anthony Geraldi Rebelly.

I talked to him for a year about all sorts of things, but [the imaginary world] never came up and it pisses me off that I didnt know, he says. He didnt say knowing he was dying youre going to find this.

OBrien and Fausta, who now lives in full-time care after she suffered a significant stroke following her husbands death, were like parents to Rizos. OBrien was a giant and highly cultured, responsible for introducing Rizos to music, art and books. Rizos, who last year retired as a violinist with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra after 46 years, is also a documentary photographer. So, when he came across the copious documents, paintings and booklets, in OBriens home, he felt compelled to preserve them.

As the country went into lockdown, he began the arduous task of scanning every single piece of paper he could find. Two-and-a-half years later, he had a collection of 65 booklets compiled into a catalogue titled Everything.

The catalogue is separated into three categories OBriens imagined world, his political life including details of the political scandals that shook his career, and finally his more general public life, including letters, business cards and photographs and will be exhibited for the first time in October at Victoria University of Wellingtons Adam Art Gallery.

I see it as a very human project, Rizos says of his uncles collection. This is humanity and all its faults as well.

Rizos is reluctant to theorise why OBrien created his imaginary hidden world, but believes he was ambivalent about it staying hidden after his death. Knowing he was dying from Parkinsons disease, OBrien asked Rizos to buy him a shredding machine to get rid of everything that he didnt want anybody to read. Had he wanted his imagined world destroyed, he would have requested it, Rizos concludes.

The catalogue could be viewed as a continuation of OBriens unfulfilled dream of writing an autobiography, while also preserving an interesting piece of New Zealand history, Rizos says.

Ultimately, however, it is a grieving nephews solitary labour of love. I was going back to that house again and again, reliving memories while it was empty for two years and I think grief sustained the effort, he says.

But it couldnt have been done without the gift, the treasure he left me, to get to grips with who he was. It almost feels like a message from the grave.

Read the original:

Secret life of Gerald: the New Zealand MP who spent a lifetime crafting a vast imaginary world - The Guardian