Merry Christmas from New Zealand - 26/12/06

LOCAL

Brent Todd, former League player, was back in the news, this time for defrauding money from a pokie machine fundraiser. He hasn't had a great year, having been declared bankrupt and charged with drug offenses.

Police are investigating the sale of cellphones to inmates by their guards. Apparently the prisoners are miffed about the warranty terms.

New Zealand is now hosting the Netb all World Champs in November instead of Fiji in July. Other than that, the whole Fiji Coup thing now seems quite dull, the army continues to run things.

Cricket boss Martin Snedden, who has proven himself to be quite a capable administrator in times of crisis, has taken the job to run Rugby World Cup 2007.

Former small-time tv person Peter Verschaffelt has been charged with manufacturing P. What a git.

There was a massive swoop on gun collectors and dealers, although it sounds like they were all pretty shady, the initial reports suggested they had targetted people that were licensed but had obtained items their licenses didn't cover. I have a friend who runs a gun store, he was not impacted (although it did sound like he might have been).

A couple who were filmed in the aftermath of a car accident sued TVNZ for damages and failed. It seems that privacy does not extend particularly far in the face of the publics need to know. The footage was used in a reality show about firefighters. I would have thought their faces could be obscured or something.

There was a nasty drink driving accident in Dunedin where a car hit a pole so hard the its front and back touched when it wrapped itself around it. Neither person in the car survived.

WORLD NEWS

Scientists excavating in Spain have found fossilised remains of a new species of dinosaur called Turiasaurus riodevensis, a sauropod like Apatosaurus and brachiosaurus.

Iran is now being subjected to sanctions by the UN for it's work on enriching uranium. As the resolution was unanimous, this suggests North Korea agreed with them.

REAL SPORT

There was none to speak of, don't feel less busy because of it though.

SPORT

Not a lot of sport this week. Don't remember if the Aussies had already won the third test last Monday but they did. Ashes are now lost.

Shane Warne and Glen McGrath have both announced they will be retiring at the end of the Ashes series.

Man Utd won 3-0 over Villa, Arsenal beat Blackburn 6-2 (quite bizarre), Newcastle had 3-1 win over Spurs, Liverpool beat Watford 2-0, Chelsea beat Wigan 3-2 (Heskey did the damage for Wigan).

MY SAD LIFE

Forgot to mention Rory's school prizegiving, which was on the Wednesday we flew down to Nationals. Rory got prizes for Science, English, and PE, not very sure exactly what (biggest effort, most ejections, who knows). There is a rumour he also got a dance prize (although he didn't actually do dancing). Regardless, we haven't actually been told so who knows what he might have got. No sign of his NSW medal, either.

We saw the Goodins and Charles briefly on Wednesday and exchanged a few presents with the kids. Thomas recognised the shape of his, and was very excited. Was pretty cute and you do sort of forget what younger kids are like with presents.

Olwyn and Dave took off for Singapore on Friday to spend Christmas with Ben and Alex (although there are rumours that Roger and Shin might be there too).

On Saturday we drove down to Matarangi to stay near Penny, Craig, and the lads. Sunday we went to Cathedral Cove. Quite a drive from where we were, nice enough spot. Not entirely sure I see the appeal in random geological formations, but there you go. The kids made a row of over 100 sand castles from two buckets then kicked them over in 8.2 seconds.

Hannah, and to a lesser extent Rory, have been riding bikes down here a lot.

I got an email from Ian Mallinson in England, this morning. Nice to hear from you. Paul mentions what you are up to a fair bit. Hope everyone is keeping well in your part of the world..

Off to the Tucker house in a minute to go mad with present opening. Hope you all have a good Christmas. Be safe, relax, have fun. This is what we work for all year.