Supply and demand in local government : Patea district, 1872-1917 : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University

'Local government' is "that element of the whole structure of government which is concerned essentially with the administration of affairs of a peculiarly local significance,"¹ A.H. McLintock (ed.), An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, three volumes, Wellington, 1966, I, p.841. The definition given in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand broad as it is, identifies certain local institutions as being outside the sphere of local government. These bodies include education authorities, domain boards and cemetery trusts.² ibid. I, however, deviate from this interpretation to include such institutions within the scope of a local government study. Domain boards, cemetery trusts and education authorities, like other units of local government, owe their origin, powers and functions to some New Zealand statute and, thus, cannot be omitted on that count. Also, in many instances, domain boards or cemetery trusts, and territorial local authorities, such as county and borough councils and town boards, were one and the same. This in itself, suggests that domain and cemetery management was an integral part of the local government system. Domains, cemeteries and schools were facets of the social environment to be provided by local authorities and cannot be divorced from local government as such. In the past, local government has not attracted a fraction of the attention from history and political science researchers that central government has. This lack of interest is partially attributable to previous treatment of local government topics by commentators and researchers. Those studies that have been made in the field of local government in New Zealand have been primarily concerned with the powers and functions of local authorities. This has tended to establish a stereo-typed picture of local authorities as dull, almost lifeless, parochial administrative institutions, levying rates on the community in order to perform fundamental but monotonous tasks such as road and footpath formation and maintenance, and the provision of drainage facilities. A chapter or two on local government is invariably found in local histories, which, while important to a total understanding of any country's history, tend to be very parochial and often tedious. Thus, the local government section is usually, likewise, 'bogged down' in local details concerning roads and bridges, reservoirs and rubbish dumps. Only recently have researchers³ K.C. McDonald, City of Dunedin: A Century of Civic Enterprise. Dunedin, 1965; Peter T. Paid, "North Otago – The Electors and the Elect. A Study of Local Government", unpublished M.A. thesis, Canterbury University, 1967; G.W.A. Bush, Decently and In Order. The Government of the City of Auckland. 1840-1971: the Centennial History of the Auckland City Council. Auckland, 1971; K.M. Mooney, History of the County of Hawke's Bay. Part 1, Napier, 1973. turned to another aspect of local government, that is, the personalities involved in local government institutions

The Fisherman\u27s Daughter

A historical fiction short story, The Fisherman’s Daughter seeks to present an imagined life of someone who experienced the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s. Split into two parts, the story presents two snapshots of the protagonist’s life situated around an unseen tragedy. Along with various secondary sources, the most influential primary sources for this piece were Chen Rouxi’s The Execution of Mayor Yin, a collection of short stories, Feng Jicai’s Voice from the Whirlwind, a series of transcribed interviews, and Anchee Min’s Red Azalea, a memoir about the author’s experiences during the Cultural Revolution as well as Ye Weili’s Growing Up in the People’s Republic: Conversations between Two Daughters of China’s Revolution. These sources blend narrative, historical events, and perceptive orientation of experiencing drastic change, and the reading of these texts guided not only the plot events of my story but also the method of recounting personal history. I also consulted secondary sources including Frank Dikotter’s article “Looking back on the Great Leap Forward,” Gail Hershatter’s article “Forget Remembering: Rural Women’s Narratives of China’s Collective Past,” and Zheng Xiaowei’s “Passion, Reflection and Survival: Political Choices of Red Guards at Qinghua University, June 1966-July 1968.” I hope this piece represents an outsider’s attempt to understand this complex mingling of politics and culture while still respecting the people who endured and struggled during this period

Malta's labour movement : a comparison with labour in developing nations

The purpose of this article is to compare certain characteristics of the Maltese labour movement with general features of labour movements in developing nations in order to assess the degree of the Maltese labour movement's development.peer-reviewe

Combinatorics of K-Theoretic Jeu de Taquin

Thomas and Yong [5] introduced a theory of jeu de taquin which extended Schutzenberger's [4] for Young tableaux. The extended theory computes structure constants for the K-theory of (type A) Grassmannians using combinatorial machinery similar to that for cohomology. This rule naturally generalizes to give a conjectural root-system uniform rule for any minuscule flag variety G/P. In this dissertation, we see that the root-system uniform rule is well-defined for certain G/P other than the Grassmannian. This gives rise to combinatorially defined rings which are conjecturally isomorphic to K(G/P). Although we do not prove that these rings are isomorphic to K(G/P), we do produce a ``Pieri rule" for computing the product of a general class with a generating class in the type B combinatorial case. We also investigate some symmetries which support the conjectural isomorphism. Moreover, our results combined with recent work of Buch and Ravikumar [1] imply that this conjecture is in fact true. Lenart [2] gave a Pieri rule for the type A K-theory, demonstrating that the Pieri structure constants are binomial coefficients. In contrast, using techniques of [3], we show that type B Pieri structure constants have no such simple closed forms. References: [1] A. Buch and V. Ravikumar: Pieri rules for the K-theory of cominuscule Grassmannians, arXiv:1005.2605, 2010. [2] C. Lenart: Combinatorial aspects of K-theory of Grassmannians. Ann. Combin. 4 (2000), 67--82. [3] M. Petkovsek and H. Wilf and D. Zeilberger: A=B. A K Peters, Ltd. (1996). [4] M.-P. Schutzenberger: Combinatoire et representation du groupe symetrique. Springer-Verlag Berlin, Lec. Notes in Math. 579 (1977), 59--113. [5] H. Thomas and A. Yong: A jeu de taquin theory for increasing tableaux, with applications to K-theoretic Schubert calculus. Algebra Number Theory 3 (2009), no. 2, 121--148

Bathroom issues

Obscenity is a human manifestation. The toilet has no central nervous system. No level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it\u27s impossible. Lenny Bruce How to Talk Dirty and Influence People Things that make people uncomfortable intrigue me and I find that these same things are very ones that make us laugh the hardest. The fact that sex and bodily functions both make people laugh in addition to making them feel uncomfortable is no accident

The Availability of Organically Reared Livestock in the European Union

The first regulation on organic farming (Council Regulation EEC No 2092/91) was drawn up in 1991, laying down the rules for farmers wishing to claim official recognition of their organic status. Since 1991, this Regulation has been amended on numerous occasions, in particular in August 1999 by Council Regulation (EC) No 1804/1999, which extended its scope to cover organic livestock production. According to this Regulation organic livestock production should take place in organic conditions; namely that livestock must come from production units in the organic production system and throughout their life, this system of production must be applied. However, at the time of implementing these harmonised rules for organic livestock production, the current development of the sector was such that there was not a sufficient range of organically reared livestock species (including both livestock species for production and livestock species for breeding) and breeds available on the market. Section 3 of Part B of Technical Annex I therefore provides a number of derogations to the general principle of organic production, including a derogation that livestock must come from production units in the organic production system (hereafter referred to as ¿the derogation¿). These derogations have been extended and slightly amended on a number of occasions in recent years. However, it is acknowledged that these derogations cannot be extended indefinitely without justification. Moreover, the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming clearly states that end dates of the transitional periods for the derogations should be respected to ensure the integrity of organic agriculture. The aim of this Study was to carry out an economic analysis to assess the availability of organically reared livestock in the EU-25 and to evaluate the impact of the removal of the derogation that livestock must come from production units in the organic production system on the economic sustainability of the organic livestock sector in selected EU Member States. A case study methodology was used to carry out this economic analysis, focusing on pig, egg and broiler production systems in selected EU Member States. The Study found that most countries make full use of the derogation on sourcing non-organic livestock. However, the extent to which this derogation is used was found to vary considerably by livestock species and Member State. The notable exceptions to this general rule were: Organic broiler production. In Austria (virtually) all organic broiler production takes place without using the derogation and the UK a significant proportion of organic broiler production takes place without using the derogation. Organic egg production. In the UK a significant proportion of organic egg production takes place without using the derogation. Organic pig production. In Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, a significant proportion of organic pig production takes place without using the derogation. In Portugal, organic pig production was also found to take place without using the derogation, but significantly the organic replacements used were found to originate from units within the organic production system itself and throughout its life this system of production is applied.JRC.DG.J.5-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Econom

K-theoretic Schubert calculus for OG(n,2n+1) and jeu de taquin for shifted increasing tableaux

We present a proof of a Littlewood–Richardson rule for the K-theory of odd orthogonal Grassmannians OG(n, 2n+1), as conjectured by Thomas–Yong (2009). Specifically, we prove that rectification using the jeu de taquin for increasing shifted tableaux introduced there, is well-defined and gives rise to an associative product. Recently, Buch–Ravikumar(2012) proved a Pieri rule for OG(n, 2n+1) that confirms a special case of the conjecture. Together, these results imply the aforementioned conjecture