Year in which…

It was announced that Kiwi households will be paying $2,890 extra next year; that only 26 per cent of voters believed that the Labour party would govern after the next election; NZ was ranked third to other OECD countries in rate of teenage fertility; scientists were conducting experiments which aimed to change the sexuality of homosexual sheep; a proposal for a $20 million dollar marine education center on Wellington’s south coast was scuttled at a taxpayer cost of $400,000; it took 20 hours for an average Kiwi e-mail account to collect 100 spam emails; Mayor Kerry Prendergast spent $39,860 of taxpayer money on travelling costs; New Zealand was ranked second in peacefulness compared with 121 other countries; our government spent an extra 44 per cent on each New Zealand man, woman and child since 2000; 7.5 per cent of Kiwi children lived in poverty; 21 WINZ staff received a benefit while working since 2002; 75 per cent of Kiwis preferred to buy products made in New Zealand; 80 per cent of newly registered doctors were overseas-trained; there was a 123 per cent increase in cell phone ownership for 10-year-old Kiwi kids; it was announced that the median age of a Kiwi woman giving birth last year was 30; prices of meat, poultry, fish, fruit and vegetables increased by 9.5 per cent; one out of four Kiwi women couldn’t remember what they did while drinking; 50 per cent of Kiwis thought it was okay to get drunk; 26 per cent of Kiwis had group sex, according to the Durex company; 50 per cent of Kiwis had group sex according to John Haig, Clint Rickard’s lawyer; it was concluded that an advertising stunt in which Hell Pizza gave out free condoms was the most offensive Kiwi advertisement of all time; there were 750 deaths caused by hospital errors; a typical Kiwi adult had sex 122 times; 27 per cent of Kiwis supported Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking Bill; former women’s rights officer Clelia Opie spent 14 hours on psychic and tarot hotlines before being fired; 17 police officers involved in cases of police misconduct were still serving in the force; 0.27 per cent of New Zealand gross national index was donated to development aid; $30,000,000 of New Zealand taxpayer contributions went towards the America’s cup; 38 per cent of New Zealand’s net worth was owned by the richest 5 per cent; Helen Clark said that George Bush was a clever and smart man four days after meeting him; 48 per cent of Kiwis couldn’t do without a cell phone; 95 per cent of Kiwis said they belonged to the middle class; Kiwis spent 724 hours watching TV; the average hourly wage for a Kiwi in the public sector was $26.40, compared with $19.07 for the private sector; it cost an extra $25 to fill a Toyota Corolla with unleaded petrol today compared with 2002; 25 per cent of New Zealand inmates re-offended within 12 months of leaving prison; 1,297,104 Kiwis had no religion; 21 per cent of Kiwis thought that climate change is hype and not happening (and probably haven’t considered the following); drought crazed camels rampaged through a village in Australia; a manatee swam past Chelsea Piers in New York City’s Hudson River; the Netherlands announced that its famous Elfstedentocht ice-skating race might have to be postponed forever; armadillos reached northeast Arkansas; wolves ate dogs in Alaska; fire consumed 50 million acres of Siberia; Greenland lost a hundred gigatons of ice; the Inuit got air-conditioning units; polar bears lurched toward the endangered species list; India’s Ghoramara Island was mostly lost to the Bay of Bengal; Papua New Guinea’s Malasiga village was mostly lost to the Solomon Sea; Alaska’s Shishmaref village decided to evacuate before being lost to the Chukchi Sea; Canadian scientists reported that the forty-square-mile Ayles ice shelf had broken off Ellesmere Island and had formed a rapidly melting island of its own; a European satellite showed a temporary crack in the ice pack leading from northern Russia all the way to the North Pole; the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration announced that last winter was the warmest since it began keeping records, which was in 1880; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that eleven of the last twelve years were the warmest in human history: 2007