Earthquake off Vanuatu

Crikey another big Shake-up for the Pacific.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/2944170/Two-earthquakes-off-Vanuatu
While it’s great that we know when a wave might hit NZ it’s also equally important to know when one might hit islands closer to the epicentre.  Perth Now reports that a tsunami, if there is one, should hit Vanuatu within an hour of the quake http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,26181623-5005521,00.html
That was about [...]

Tree + Car = ….

We had spent most of the night helping people on the Napier Taupos and were driving home.  Unfortunately due to all the rain a LARGE Redwood had fallen across the road …
Everyone OK This why people in the who live in the country drive 4×4’s

No tax cuts; that’s good

I will looking with interest at the comments surrounding Bill English’s announcement that tax cuts are deferred.  Handing out money in the form of tax cuts, in the current economic climate, would be as wrong as not giving tax cuts when the economy was good.  Both actions, giving tax cuts in a recession and not [...]

How to peeve people off….

Just received this email from a trusted source.
Hi folks, we’ve just found out about NZ Post’s “PO Box Direct List” – which they’ve told us they are selling for direct marketing purposes. When we asked them, they said it was a case of PO Boxholders opting out, rather than them asking [...]

Well that’s a bloody shame

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business//2379814/4000-land-agents-lose-jobs
4000; how many were there to begin with?  Did they increase at the same rate as Labours bureaucracy? How many used car salesmen are now redundant? So many questions.

The D Word

Someone has finally used the D word,Depression, and I’m not talking about the sort that can be fixed with pink and purple pills. No this Depression was used to express Japan’s economy.
This article states that Japan’s economy shrunk by an annualised 12.7% over the December quarter (interestingly they didn’t use the work annualised on [...]

The NCEA Blues

Child number two has recently received her NCEA level 2 results and while she passed everything it took us a long time to figure out the actual outcome of the results.
English was the bugbear. She ended up with 12 credits and out of a possible 24; so she passed 50 percent of the unit [...]

Humour in HB

Heh

Apparently some consultant from MWH doesn’t find it amusing…..http://www.stuff.co.nz/4818532a4560.html
Yeah watch out if this keeps happening a wave of smiles may spread across New Zealand.
I’m afraid I have to put this in the Very Well Done basket.

NCEA encouraging minimum targets?

Stuff has just reported that “thousands of students will pass without… entering the exam room”
This sounds fine on the face of it but in actual fact there is a growing trend for the students to do just enough to pass because that is all you need; that’s what NCEA encourages.
These quotes from the Chairman of the Canterbury-Westland [...]

Summer’s/Life’s Quirks

We have just spent another fabulous week at the Blue Lakes in Rotorua. It has been a short family tradition that for the past 4 years hubby’s family has descended on the Top 10 Holiday park, all 26 of us, and played on the lake. Every year it has rained and has been [...]