Miss Clark called Mr Key at 11pm to concede defeat.

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Election Night Stats

• Results for National 59 seats and ACT 5. United Future leader Peter Dunne adds 1 seat, making a total of 65.

• Labour has 43 seats, the Greens 8, and they are joined by Progressive Party leader Jim Anderton for a total of 52.

• The Maori Party has 5 of the 7 Maori seats but does not hold the balance of power in Parliament.

It is expected that the Maori party will swing towards National with a vote of confidence  some time today

M

DR Cullen -  there is “quite significant deterioration” in the books compared with the Budget in May.

A weak Economy and a higher then expected take up on the likes of Kiwi saver and the governments commitment to provide 20 hours a week of free early child-hood education, While treaty of wiatangi will bring even more anticipated expenditure “The debt track is not a pretty picture, I think one would say,” Doctor Cullen said.

Now the Books are deteriorating Doctor Cullen appears to be uncomfortable with knowing that his government has conceded that the debt target of under 20% will be exceeded indicating tight times for any ruling political party in power over the next three year term

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New Zealands Current Accounts

The Balance of Payments statements set out a country’s transactions with the rest of the world. The current account balance is the sum of the balances of trade in goods and services, current transfers, and investment income. More simply, the current account measures what a country saves minus what it spends or invests. The graph shows that since 1990, New Zealand has been a net borrower. Thus, the current account deficit has reflected the amounts of other countries’ savings that New Zealand has had to borrow, in order to finance spending. The last time that New Zealand was a net saver – that is, had a current account surplus – was 1973.
Data from 1970 is available in Excel by selecting the download data

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The red ink in the Current account books is going to spark  further debate as to wether National can still offer its promised taxs cuts under this new deteriorating global economy, Labour has been accusing National of preparing to loan monies to pay for tax cuts, But the way things have panned out will probably mean labour also will have to borrow monies to effect their own tax cuts promised ( Labours growing list of broken promises ) Although in typical cullenl style he has to try to take pressure from him self by passing comments such as ‘National is doing its best to sound as if it were fully prepered for this down turn in global economy.”

Leader John Key said yesterday it had been factored into the National parties long tem strategy ( it has to be said that this was not that sudden and could be seen on the horizon for years) Asked if he was worried with about extending the current account deficiet by another 2 % he said no as this was part of a long term growth stratergy

“New Zealand Has a growth problem, We need to address that and one of the ways out of that growth problem is to have an ifrastructure which will allow us to grow”

Numbers Going Down

New Zealand Accommodation tourism businesses face a tough winter as industry bosses warn of flat trading as the high kiwi dollar and economic woes thump global visitor spending.

Tourism Minister Damien O’Connor and Tourism New Zealand boss George Hickton were in Christchurch yesterday to prepare traders for what lies ahead, because of the world-wide credit crunch.

“I think it will be tougher. It would be hard to pick at this stage but I’d certainly be surprised if we got any growth in the winter,” Hickton said before the briefing.

“The ski season is lining up OK, and next year we’ll probably have a reasonable summer again … but I think we’ll get one or two months this winter which are a bit tough,” Hickton said.

Negatives included the continued fall in visitors from Japan and South Korea, and higher demand for aircraft around the world constraining the number of seats to New Zealand.

Higher oil prices and falling house prices were reducing discretionary spending of consumers, particularly in North America and Europe.

Most traders were expecting a flat season, with competition getting more intense, O’Connor said. “They are concerned about whether they should plan for growth or whether they should try and make better use of the (visitor) numbers they are currently getting.”

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Businesses needed to pay more attention to yield — getting more dollar out of each visiting tourist, O’Connor said.

Hickton said small tourism firms could use the internet for better marketing and to target overseas wholesalers, rather than expecting visitors “to come automatically”.

Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism chief executive Christine Prince said the region had performed above the national average for gaining more Australian visitors.

Yesterday the tourism bosses were looking ahead to the 2011 Rugby World Cup as a way to target visitors, particularly from Europe.

By November, O’Connor said a decision on where teams would be based around New Zealand, would allow more strategic marketing initiatives.

Prince said she hoped the English team would be based in Canterbury for pool games — providing a drawcard to the high spending UK supporters.

New Zealand Tourism Going Down

New Zealand Tourism Going Down

The most recent figures from Statistics New Zealand show in February 2008 there were more than 280,500 visitors to the country, up 4.8 per cent from February 2007.

To balance falling numbers from South Korea — down 16.8% in February from the year earlier — and Japan (down 13.4%)- TNZ would now focus on Australia, China and the United Kingdom.

“New Zealand  Backpacker Markets like Japan and Korea won’t be growing next year,” Hickton said.

In China, TNZ would chase higher spending Chinese wanting to visit New Zealand, Hickton said.

He hoped to see further growth in competition on the important trans-Tasman market to draw even more Australian visitors, given that fares on that route had recently gone up. “That could well change. You’ve got Emirates possibly introducing the A380 from the beginning of next year to Auckland. But it will still have some (wider) impacts in terms of volumes.”

Alan Wood – The Press

Useful Travel Links

www.Newplymouthmotel.co.nz – New Plymouth Backpackers

www.newplymouthmotel.co.nz – New Plymouth Motel

www.newzealandmotel.co.nz – New Zealand Motel

www.accommdationfinder.co.nz – New Zealand Accommodation

I saw a great Headline the other Day it went Like this

500 Billion Dollars and 3000 days what could you do with that!

Cullen

Well I know I wouldn’t be 14 billion in debt!

Labour has failed to deliver on many of its election Promises

Cheaper Housing, Better Health, Better Education, Honesty, More Employment Tougher Sentencing, The Criminal Proceeds Bill, which was promised before the 2005 election. The Corrections Amendment Bill, which was introduced in June 2007 by their fifth Corrections Minister. The Legal Services Amendment Bill, which Justice Minister Annette King said would be introduced in May and passed soon after, but which is still to have its first reading. Electronic bail legislation, which Helen Clark announced in June, but which has yet to appear before Parliament. The amendment to the Domestic Violence Act, which Annette King said would be introduced in July but which also has not appeared.

A fair review of M M P which is still to happen but why would that Happen before their last election they need all the support of all the hangers  on even if they don’t hold a seat in parliament

In the famous qoute from Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli ” THERE’S LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS”

a quick lesson on how to temporarily reduce the work Unemployment situation, Create a social welfare programme and call it a course or even create a Wānanga

Labour is Addicted to Power No matter what the cost!

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This Photo says it all

The evil tax collector Addicted To power

our very own new Age robin Hood Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, Government Workers paid 20% more then the private sector a massive investment into State Owned Assets and an exploding Government  workforce, Labour  is hell bent on building Liability when now is the time to build physical Infrastructure or repair the ones that are there! this will be the Last time Oil will be this cheap!.

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Some Interesting Facts 2007  Stats  Via  CIA World Fact Book

World Rank Order – Current account balance

174   New Zealand     $ -10,380,000,000

World Rank Order – GDP – real growth rate

169   New Zealand        3%             2007

World Rank Order – GDP – per capita (PPP)

46   New Zealand      $ 27,200      2007

World Rank Order – Unemployment rate

42   New Zealand         3.60%        2007

World Rank Order – Public debt

96   New Zealand        20.70%       2007

Not that Pretty a Picture

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Addicted to power no matter what!

Its Like a nightmare that wont go away for Winston Peters now, In a damning report released late last night, the privileges committee found by a majority that Peters had knowingly provided false or misleading information on a return of pecuniary interests.

The committee has recommended that Parliament today formally censure Peters for providing the false return.

And the committee has recommended that Peters be ordered to file, within seven days, amended returns for the past three years that include every gift, debt, or payment he has not already disclosed.

See full article here

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Brian Henry changes story

The master of ducking and weaving

Winston Peters’ lawyer has changed his story to Parliament’s Privileges Committee.

Brian Henry concedes Mr Peters was the client he referred to in an email to Owen Glenn, something he had previously denied.

Mr Henry remains positive however he solicited the $100,000 donation. He says he thought of doing so in a phone call with Mr Peters after he told him he had talked with Mr Glenn.

“That jogged my memory and then sent an email to try and jog Mr Glenn’s memory in the hope we’d get a donation.”

When asked if it was pure coincidence, Mr Henry replied “that’s just what happened”. Mr Henry says Mr Peters never mentioned money in the phone call. Story Here

Here is Report of the Privileges Committee

http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/5B0AE983-1849-4113-B6D8-34B07AE474DE/93673/DBSCH_SCR_4211_6254.pdf

But no doubt Wnston will come out fighting as he always does Just do us all a favor Winston get your self a new Career based on this last Smoke screen Im sure you have got your reserves all lined up
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This site examines the phenomenon of Wikipedia. We are interested in them because they have a massive, unearned influence on what passes for reliable information. Search engines rank their pages near the top. While Wikipedia itself does not run ads, they are the most-scraped site on the web. Scrapers need content — any content will do — in order to carry ads from Google and other advertisers. This entire effect is turning Wikipedia into a generator of spam. It is primarily Google’s fault, since Wikipedia might find it difficult to address the issue of scraping even if they wanted to. Google doesn’t care; their ad money comes right off the top.

Another problem is that most of the administrators at Wikipedia prefer to exercise their police functions anonymously. The process itself is open, but the identities of the administrators are usually cloaked behind a username and a Gmail address. (Gmail does not show an originating IP address in the email headers, which means that you cannot geolocate the originator, or even know whether one administrator is really a different person than another administrator.) If an admin has a political or personal agenda, he can do a fair amount of damage with the special editing tools available to him. The victim may not even find out that this is happening until it’s too late. From Wikipedia, the material is spread like a virus by search engines and other scrapers, and the damage is amplified by orders of magnitude. There is no recourse for the victim, and no one can be held accountable. Once it’s all over the web, no one has the power to put it back into the bottle.

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Plagiarism by Wikipedia editors

by Daniel Brandt

Here are the results of the first study of plagiarism in Wikipedia that has ever been undertaken. I started with a list of 16,750 Wikipedia articles. They came from a partial list of Wikipedia biographies of persons born before 1890. There was no reason for this, other than the fact that the list was available and the size was manageable.
The next task was to download the XML version of each Wikipedia article and try to extract between one and five clean sentences. They have to be clean (i.e., “de-wikified”) or there is no hope of using them in a search engine. That’s because the entire sentence is searched inside of quotation marks. Each search looks like this:

-wikipedia -wiki “this is a complete sentence from an article”

When the sentence is inside of quotation marks, any little variation inside the sentence can mean the difference between a hit or no-hit. The cleaner the sentence, the better. The reason for the exclusion terms in front is that I don’t want mirrors of Wikipedia. I’m looking for plagiarism that goes the other direction — in other words, for articles that existed prior to the Wikipedia article. Wikipedia Watch

Take Note Parliment

If you’re drunk in Ireland, this is for you: On-the-spot fines for being drunk.

New regulations allow gardaí to issue a fixed-penalty notice to anyone who has committed a public order offence.
The offender then has the option of either facing prosecution through the courts or of paying a one-off fixed fine.

This is 100 euro for being drunk in public or 140 euro for being drunk and disorderly.

Once issued with a fine, offenders have up to 28 days to pay.

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Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said that the policy would hit offenders “in the pocket – where it will really hurt”.

The legislation follows a series of measures introduced last month to tackle public disorder in which gardaí were given the power to confiscate alcohol if public disorder was feared.

The aim of the new measures is to save Garda time by removing the necessity for public order offenders to be prosecuted in court.

The regulations, which Mr Ahern claims will allow gardaí to make more efficient and effective use of their resources, also enable them to direct a person to leave an area peacefully if they have become a nuisance.

Its become very intense with 3 of the the western worlds biggest financial organizations on the verge of Collapse, One might refer to this a one Hundred year storm

Lehman Brothers founded in 1850, is one of the few currently important companies that is older than McCain, just filed for Bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch, another American icon was forced to be acquired by Bank of America to avoid a certain global economic collapse.

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What is the White House hiding? I mean, is Jeff Gannon visiting? Or is it the PM of China?

This is ridiculous something this wide spread and White house are under cloak and Dagger

this Countries leaders is starting to Shape up more Like Russia s everyday  it now looks like the Bush administration is starting to prepare their exit plan and boy they are stripping the cupboards bear

What a bunch of cowards these people are certainly not leading from the front In one sense I feel for the real American here but in the same breath they voted these clowns into power