Its Wellington Cup day today. A chance for Wellingtonians to dress up in their finery, get on the train to Hipkins country, hide from the sun (its already pushing 20 degrees) and drink beer and wine from plastic cups. I will be there. I blame geography for my interest in the horses. I grew up a stones throw from Forbury Park in Dunedin. My father and I would sometimes go down in the evening, filled with Presbyterian caution and put $1 each way on number 7 or number 9, his lucky numbers. Just after he passed away last year, I took my brother back there, and an evening of betting on 7 and 9 netted us a healthy return.
Later on I flatted with Terence who thought he had invented the perfect betting system. This was before the days of home computers. The whole thing was on index cards, and took paintstaking effort to keep up. The system eventually fell away, but my interest stuck. I dont get to more than three or four meetings a year nowadays but I still love it. For me it is the only form of gambling that I have any time for. There is some considerable skill and knowledge that you can apply, and there is the thrill of the race itself. Interestingly problem gambling is less associated with racing than other forms of gambling. Though that is not to under-estimate the dangers. I have not shaken the Presbyterian caution, but inflation has caught up!
Cup Day is a great day, one of a number of well attending race meetings in the summer period. But I know the Wellington Racing Club and other clubs would love to see bigger crowds throughout the year. I share my colleagues concerns about the some time unhealthy relationship between the gaming trusts and racing clubs, but I also want to see the clubs survive. Any trip to a summer race meeting this year will have made clear to people that these are great events for bringing communities together. Clubs have gone to great effort to make days family friendly as well.
Anyway time to get ready. If you are looking for a tip for the Wellington Cup (timed to go at 4.42) you can’t go past Red Ruler. With a name like that I have to support it really, but it is also the favourite. And as a bit of an outsider, take a look at Manonamission. But keep that one to yourself 
Posted in Sport, Music and other time wasting activities. |
A raw nerve has been struck very quickly with David Farrar over the commitment in Phil Goff’s speech to cap Public Sector Chief Executive pay at the level of the Prime Minister. He describes the policy as “idiocy”.
I wonder how DPF’s friends in the UK Conservative Party would feel about him calling David Cameron an idiot. Because, as Phil Goff said in the speech today, this is something that the UK Tories are also talking about.
Posted in Public Services. |
I’m in Hamilton for Phil’s speech. A full house of about 200 people are currently listening to a passionate speech from Phil about the importance of spreading the benefits of the recovery to all New Zealanders. He has made a couple specific policy commitments to introduce the bill to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour and to cap the salaries of public sector Chief Executives at the level of the PMs salary (around $400,000). Chief Executive salaries have grown at twice the rate of inflation since 1997, while rank and file workers have only just kept pace with inflation.
Lots more in the speech, well worth a read.
Posted in Low Pay, Labour Party and Public Services. |
Interesting story in the Sunday Star Times today, quoting among others former Afghan Foreign Minister and now Otago University lectuer Najib Lafraie.
Revelations about the SAS in Afghanistan last week suggest Prime Minister John Key broke his promise that the elite force would not fight alongside Afghan commandos, says political scientist Najib Lafraie.
Last year Key said that the SAS would not fight alongside the Afghan soldiers that the SAS would be training. Giving this information was part of Key’s “half-open approach” on the SAS, which he continued this week. Now he has gone silent, but Wayne Mapp has waded on in
“The actions that took place were essentially the domain of the Afghan national army, which, you can see from the photos, were the people actually engaged in the fighting.” The CRU was not directly involved in the action, he said, and neither were the SAS.
The CRU is the part of the Afghan army that the SAS has been training. However those on the ground have a different view
However, Norwegian defence correspondent and author of a book on the Norwegian special forces, Tom Bakkeli, said the CRU “absolutely were involved in the fighting” and “the CRU got a lot of acclaim for their counter-action against the attacking Taliban and suicide bombers”.
The National Government handling of the deployment, and recent events in Afghanistan has been a shambles. Both Key and Mapp on one hand seem to want to tell the world about where the SAS are and what they are doing, but are now regretting the consequences. I do not believe the SAS should be in Afghanistan at the moment, but if they are, surely we need some kind of consistent approach to ensuring their safety.
Posted in Afghanistan and Foreign Affairs. |
The furore over the publication of photos of SAS soldiers in Afghanistan brings to light a couple of issues.
1. The nature of the SAS work in Afghanistan. What is described in the story today is pretty disturbing. Phil Goff outlined Labour’s reasoning for not commiting SAS troops at this time, (emphasis added before howls of “Labour deployed the SAS”) and this story re-inforces that. New Zealanders can be rightly proud of the work our Provincial Reconstruction Team has been doing. However the overall conflict in Afghanistan has gone in a different direction and the SAS appear to be right in the thick of that.
2. The policy around commenting or not commenting on the SAS has been thoroughly compromised in recent times. From my perspective it really is an all or nothing situation. If there is a policy not to comment then leave it at that. If we decide that modern communications and other countries agenda make that impractical then accept that. But having John Key confirm that the SAS were in a particular situation, and then criticise the media for investigating further and publishing photographs is ridiculous.
Actually there is a third matter. The reaction from the New York Times blogger who originally reported the SAS role shows that blogging does not always involve research, and can lead to some shoddy reporting!
Posted in Afghanistan. |
