Monthly Archives: February 2006

What New Zealand’s Economic Transformation Is About

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on by .

Paper to a breakfast session of New Thinking ‘06 a conference promoting New Zealand’s latest biotech, creative and technological capabilities. Lead sponsor: New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. Auckland 27 February- 2 March, 2006.

Keywords: Growth & Innovation;

David Skilling’s presentation is pessimistic because its message was known twenty and more years ago and little seems to have changed. [1] Then we had poor global connectedness with an overemphasis on resource exports. Twenty years later we still have poor global connectedness with too high a proportion of resource based exports.

Sovereignty Under Siege: Globalization and New Zealand a Review

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on by .

Editors: Robert Patman and Chris Rudd. Published by: Critical Security Series, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Aldershot. England. 258pp. $US99.95/£55.00.

NZIIA, May/June 2006, p.28.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

Much of the public’s anxiety about globalisation is concerned with sovereignty. However its understanding of the previous sentence’s last two nouns is vague and imprecise, for each requires careful definition. Patman and Rudd’s introduction defines sovereignty by tracing back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia as ‘a sovereign state … exercises supreme legal unqualified and exclusive control over a designated territory and its population’, claiming that there are ‘close to 200 sovereign states’ (which almost resolves their question, since if they exist what is the problem?). They are less sure of giving a ‘precise meaning to the term globalisation’, broadly defining it as ‘the intensification of interconnections between societies, institutions, cultures and individuals on a worldwide basis’. Note the first definition involves a situation, the second a process, which complicates the coupling of the two.

Janice Gill: Artist Of the Narrative and the Marginalised

This entry was posted in Literature and Culture on by .


Keywords: Literature and Culture;

The first paintings I saw by Janice Gill were at an exhibition at the Gallerie Legard on Kelburn’s Upland Road. I was particularly taken by one based on her previous opening. It looked from across the street through the gallery window at the guests sipping wine, talking to one another, but not looking at the paintings. The exception is the gallery director – presumably the much-loved Kay Roberts, for you can only see her back – looking at the wall with Gill’s paintings across them. Someone is walking through the door: a friend says it was John Drawbridge, although Janice tells me she did not have anyone specifically in mind. Anyway, let’s say it is a fellow artist, who is looking at the street in front, where one of the bag ladies – a painting of another is a part of the exhibition – walks along the pavement. She is oblivious to the ‘beautiful people’ inside, they oblivious to her, or to the painting about her.

Alcohol – Socioeconomic Impacts (including Externalities)

This entry was posted in Health on by .

Draft for “The Encyclopedia of Public Health”

Keywords: Health; Regulation & Taxation;

Depending on the cultural context and particular circumstances, the same drink of alcohol can generate a feeling of benign prosperity, or moroseness, or stupor. The immediate health benefits for the individual may also be benign (or even beneficial), or the drink may result in injury or death – in the short run from accident or in the long run from one of the diseases alcohol can precipitate. The consequences for others may also be benign or beneficial, or damaging or mortal from violence or collateral accident. Someone may be born as the result of intentional or unintentional impregnation. The loss of production due to poorer workplace productivity or non-attendance from drinking alcohol may cause financial loss to the drinker and possibly to others. Among the many sectors of the economy alcohol may, or may not, especially generate additional costs in the criminal system, in the health system, and in the transport system. The national budget probably gains from the specific tax it levies on alcoholic beverages, but these levies may, or may not, cover its costs from the consumption of alcohol.

Ethnicity and the Census: Statistics New Zealand Asks ”’whaddarya?”

This entry was posted in Listener, Literature and Culture, Maori, Statistics on by .

Listener: 25 February, 2006

Keywords: Literature and Culture; Statistics;

March 7 is Census Day, the day on which Statistics New Zealand (like Foreskin) asks “Whaddarya?” The Census may not cover all the questions you think important, but a good quality Census response makes the surveys that ask such questions cheaper and you are surveyed less often.