The Silver Fern

Bowls reminds me of an awful joke... In rugby, they have referees. In cricket, they have umpires. What do they have in bowls?

Cereal...

Happy New Year to the Silver Fern and denizens - I hope 2025 is excellent for everyone!

We had an accident 15 years ago, but unfortunately he was stillborn. We were still young and poor, so figured we'd stick with the plan to build a life (house, careers etc) and continued with contraception.

We stopped the contraception after we bought our house in 2013, but no luck since. We're both 40 now, so the odds are pretty low at this stage. Haven't really discussed adoption, but our lives are pretty good without kids and we have plenty of nieces and nephews...

Still over a year to go, but I assume there are a few tragics like me who are involved on club committees, and I'm guessing that most of them would be incorporated societies.

The history is that the Incorporated Societies Act 1908 is finally being replaced by the Incorporated Societies Act 2022. Clubs (and regional/national sports orgs) are required to reregister as an incorporated society by 5 April 2026. Failure to reregister means automatically being deregistered, requiring said clubs to cease operating and be wound up.

The main part of reregistration is agreeing to a modified or new constitution and regulations/bylaws.

Some useful information and resources (including templates) are available courtesy of Sport NZ: https://sportnz.org.nz/resources/incorporated-societies-act-2022-and-regulations/

www.societies.govt.nz is the official page of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which is the government department responsible for incorporated societies (the Companies Office is the part of MBIE that administers all of this). Being the regulator, that page has some good resources and information.

Law firm Parry Field also has a very good information hub online with resources, explanations and occasional webinars (and recordings): https://www.parryfield.com/home/blogs/resources-for-the-incorporated-societies-act-2022/

Not sure how useful that is for anyone, but I've been helping a few places with this, so happy to answer questions (to a point).

Edit: fixed typos

Thanks to the Patreon email for pointing me here.

Thanks everyone, appreciate the kind words and thoughts.

@dogmeat said in Electric Vehicles:

My concern is that rolling out charging infrastructure becomes a closed cycle i.e. because we have built the infrastructure we commit long term to EV. Whereas I think hydrogen is the way forward, much cleaner and needs no costly infrastructure.

For those old enough a bit like VHS V Betamax. The inferior system won out because it became ubiquitous. Car manufacturers now have a vested industry in the EV industry despite it being relatively inefficient and environmentally suspect.

So if porn selects EV over hydrogen, that will be the key difference?

Some good news:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/cricket/126133257/chris-cairns-off-life-support-communicating-with-family-from-sydney-hospital

A few points that seem relevant to the thread so far...

The factors a judge may take into account in sentencing and deciding whether or not to discharge without conviction are laid out in the Sentencing Act. Provocation is not one of them, hence why the judge did not mention it in the sentence.

Family involvement in the defendant's life is a mitigating factor, as is age, as is pleading guilty (the earlier, the better) and as is willingness to participate in restorative justice. Since they are applicable, the judge must consider them as mitigating factors. There were no relevant aggravating factors (violence is an aggravating factor, but not for violent offenses), so he's already going downwards in sentence, not upwards.

The judge must take that into account, must consider whether to discharge without conviction, and must apply the lowest sentence that will achieve the aims of the Act.

The primary focus of discharging without conviction is being satisfied that the direct and indirect consequences of a conviction would be out of all proportion to the gravity of the offense. Impact on a career and earnings is a major factor in that because of the comparison with fines as per previous case law, and also the Bill of Rights Acts (excessive fines are cruel and unusual punishment in the 1688 version and disproportionately severe punishment in the 1990 version).

A discharge without conviction has the effect of an acquittal, so the employer would be hard pressed to do much about it other than, possibly, bringing the employer/sport into disrepute, but even that would be difficult to push given the outcome of the court case. They also couldn't have done much during the case for obvious reasons already stated in this thread.

Any talk of long distance driving in NZ always reminds me of this photo that I took on the way back from the West Coast to Christchurch:

Without Kane as a current comparison, we'd be lauding Ross as arguably the greatest international batsman NZ has ever produced, at least on the numbers. Obviously Crowe and Turner (to name 2) were legitimately world class in their eras, but Ross has NZ records for:

• most international runs
• most test and ODI runs
• most international centuries
• most ODI centuries
• most international 50s and 50+
• most ODI 50s and 50+
• most international catches other than by a keeper
• most international appearances
• only player (for any country) to play 100 internationals in tests, ODIs and T20s

Some of that is longevity, a lot of it is class.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year everyone - hope it's fantastic!

For those of you stuck with morons, just remember that it could be worse - might be one of us...

Bridge is too slow to be an international wing. Reece was fine, Beaunga isn't that bad. Cane should have started but we mostly lost that in the forwards, not the backs.

@voodoo made it through the Northern border fine in the end - was the army assisting police, pulled up like a breath testing checkpoint, said the reason for the trip (going to Auckland Airport to catch a flight home to Christchurch), they asked to see something to show the flight, we showed the Air NZ app, sorted and through. Took about a minute since there were SFA vehicles travelling today. (I'm posting from Wellsford).

@booboo said in Cricket: NZ vs Aus:

So ... reckon we won the day today?

I'd say so. Apparently we need to find more wicketkeeping batsmen called Tom...

I had a good Christmas, lunch with the wife's family, tea with mine - locations not ideal, being Ashburton and Woodend respectively, so a bit of driving involved (we live in Christchurch).

An early controversy (a few weeks ago) was that my wife decided she didn't want to go to my family's for tea (too far after driving to Ashburton so she'd be too tired even though I was driving), and also tried to tell me I wasn't going. I refused to buckle, so by Christmas Day, she'd accepted that I was going (alone), so I figured that was fine (I'm not one for forcing this kind of thing, far too unproductive in my experience).

Then on the day, I got an epic present of my wife's family giving her an earful for not going to said Christmas tea, and then a second earful when I innocently let slip that she originally tried to tell me I wasn't going either. I managed to keep a straight face, but the internal grin was ear to ear...

@No-Quarter said in Indian Cricket Tour of NZ 2020:

That's a pretty incredible win given we're missing all of our best players. We're a seriously good ODI side and deserve to be world champs right now.

Also, Ross is absolutely phenomenal in the longer formats. What a player.

Apart from Ross obviously. Solid argument for best ODI #4 ever - Batting stats for all #4s

@stargazer one of the great NZ politicians, especially as finance minister. He and Sir Bill English deserve a lot of credit for our current ability to weather Covid-19 fiscally.

I repeat my earlier comment - if stadiums made money, private developers would build and operate them, so basically all NZ cases for larger stadiums except maybe in Auckland are shams (according to Eden Park's accounts, they make an operating profit - their issue is depreciation i.e. they don't make enough money to also pay for the asset replacement costs). Councils/ratepayers fund them because locals want them - business cases are just fig leaves. It doesn't help in Christchurch's case that cricket has moved to Hagley Oval, as that would have provided a few extra events. The Council funding is primarily insurance, so had to be spent anyway, but no doubt we could have spent less of the government contribution if we wanted to.

Speaking for myself, I don't want to spend two days and $500 on a trip to Dunedin, or miss out because I didn't book the accommodation as soon as the concert was announced (not when the tickets go on sale - accommodation in Dunedin sold out within hours of Queen being announced). Selfishly, I want a concert venue in Christchurch that will reliably bring the big names if they are going somewhere besides Auckland, and while my costs for a Christchurch concert are much lower than travelling to another concert, I will still spend my money somewhere eventually, and that somewhere will most likely be in Christchurch - that's an implied part of a business case that isn't usually discussed heavily, that locals don't travel and spend elsewhere, so they can spend that money locally.

Practically, we probably only need 20,000 permanent seats for Super Rugby and maybe a few thousand temp seats for finals - anything bigger than that is for tests, which the ABs don't play that many in NZ, and we (Chch) will only ever get 1-2 per season. Realistically, AB tests are as spurious as concerts in the business cases - it just comes back to people wanting them.

Nearly that time of year - Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone has a great day and holidays around it and can spend it with someone special (if that's yourself, no judgement here).