Did you know

SUMMER’S Australian bushfires covered an area 80% of the size of England. 6,000 buildings were destroyed, 34 people died. Also killed were 90% of the wildlife; 3 billion Koala, Kangaroos, birds frogs and reptiles. 

AUCKLAND IS now the fourth least affordable housing market in the world. In 1990 a house cost 4 times the median wage. It is now 9.7 times. Last year the average Auckland house value rose $83,000. Auckland’s average wage is $46,880. 

“ LISTEN HONEY, you’re soliciting yourself either way – one’s just for votes the other’s for money. One advertises on billboards the other in the back pages of the Dominion Post” Georgina Byer explaining to a fellow MP.

THE LATEST WORD from the IRD – ‘hypothecation’. Which means ‘the practice of recycling revenue from a tax or levy towards a particularly earmarked purpose or segregation’. 

SIX AND A HALF million tyres are imported every year. Three million of the used tyres each year are unaccounted for:  buried, stacked up somewhere or just dumped. The new Golden Bay cement works at Whangarei will use old tyres instead of coal as fuel burning three million tyres a year. 

“MANY ARE  shocked at the Lego Movie not nominated for best animated picture. Shocked because  , when you think about it, the Academy has a long tradition of humouring plastic people with frozen faces” TV host Conan O’Brien 

GOVERNMENT WAGE subsidies to  Fletcher building, Sky City and The Warehouse totalled $170 million. They pocketed the money but decided to sack 2,700 workers any way – Newsroom 

HAVING PLACED heavy tariffs on Australian  beef and  barley the Chinese government is now eying Australian wine. One third of Australian wine produced, valued at Aus $1.200.000.000 dollars, is exported to China. 

THE NUMBER of appointed Lords in the British parliament (669) exceeds the number of elected members (650) in the House of Commons. 

UNITED NATIONS’ Climate change watch lists Australia as having the world’s highest per capita climate changing gas emissions. More than the USA and double those of China, three times as high as the UK and ten times greater than Indonesia.  

Deadline for the October edition; 4pm Wednesday Sept 30  th