Monday, July 13, 2009

Folic Acid in Bread a bad rap for National Government

If its not Cadbury taking stuff out of my food, its Government morons putting stuff in my food that annoys me. I loathe my food and my health being buggered with.

The Nazi style way the food additive, folic acid was introduced by the previous Labour Government by the former Food Safety Minister Annette King was no surprise because Mein Kampf seemed to be some sort of text book that that Government loosely followed in terms of execution of Labour Party policy but for the present National Government to do nothing to stop the introduction in September of this possible dangerous additive being added to our daily bread is nothing short of hypocritical.

Hypocritical because this mass medication of our food supply was part of the Labour Nanny State that we all got thoroughly sick of that encompassed how long we showered, what we ate, drank, smoked, said, who to like and even debates over the definition of rape in normal relationships, a whole host of other socialist/Nazi style interference and who knows what else had we had the misfortune of another Labour regime.

Do National remember why they were elected?

We wanted this bloody Nanny State crap to come to an end!

National's Kate Wilkinson, Minister of Food Safety, in the face of evidence that folic acid in bread could be a cancer danger, says that she doesn't want the additive but she can do little about it because of a food standards agreement with Australia that we just cant break.

Even if you agreed that folic acid should be added to all our bread so we had no personal freedom to eat this crap, a  pregnant woman would have to eat 11 slices of this bread to ameliorate any folate deficiency in her diet and lessen the possibility that her baby would get spina bifida.

5 kids get this disease every year, not a good reason to put the rest of the population in danger by using a staple food to do so. Best a prospective mother takes a folate supplement if worried, better for her and the rest of us and we will have the freedom of choice to eat what we want.

The additive will add to the cost of bread to consumers and waste millions of plastic bags that have to be re-printed with this muck added to the ingredients list.

Grow some balls Kate and stop the folate, you are in Government now and yes you can do it.

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Still Watching Contact Energy

Contact Energy Ltd [CEN.NZ] is a stock I used to own just before 9-11, in fact I moronically dumped it on that day due to my inexperience in the stockmarket at the time.

I bought in at NZ$3.10 at the IPO and picked more up at $2.66. I had 5000 at one stage for the princely sum of around $12000.00 bucks (you can smell the regret in this reminisce cant you?)

Meanwhile back in the present I think you can still get a relative bargain by buying this company. The share price has dropped around 7% since I last wrote about the company on June 8.

Contact had a 30% drop in half year profit to 31 December 2008, added NZ$550 million in debt through a public bond issue and expects its full year profit for the year ended 30 June 2009 to be down around 30% as well.

This doesn't make good reading but Contact has performed better than most during this recession. Contact's lower profit was to do with higher water levels in dams bringing down their wholesale energy prices. It wasn't recession related at all apart from the shutdown of some of Comalco, a large power user and profit is unlikely to get much worse than this.

That is one reason why I continue to watch this stock closely, its recession proof nature.

One other good reason to buy, if you were looking at this stock over the last year, is that its stock price is near its 52 week low of $5.47, closing at $5.63 last Friday and you cant get a better reason than that.

The company is a good long term bet and even a good short to medium term money maker for those of you with a short attention span. I say this because the share price seems to get good support at current price levels and the company always has the sword of takeover from its Aussie majority owner parent Origin Energy Ltd [ORG.AU] hanging over it.

Keep it on your watchlist too if you have been thinking of adding it to your portfolio.

I am getting my buy finger ready.

Contact @ Share Investor Blog

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Sunday, July 12, 2009

Morgan Dunne-Powell ready for Kristin's 60 Minutes media blitz

I had a couple of threatening emails (I will get my lawyer on to you sort of thing) from Kristin Dunne-Powell's husband, Morgan Powell the other day about a couple of opinion pieces 1 2 that I wrote a few months back and I wasn't going to write about them or post them until I caught an advert on TV3 today on an upcoming 60 Minutes interview to be aired Monday 13 July at 7.30pm, where she apparently "tells the real story" or whatever that means, about what went on with her and Tony Veitch.

Morgan himself alluded in his first email to wanting to spare Veitch any further mental anguish

"The charges were not dropped my wife agreed to a plea bargain to end what had become senseless and to spare Mr Veitch any further mental deterioration".  

He alluded to protecting Veitch again in his second email to me.

"My wife has always been very concerned and mindful of Mr Veitch's mental health, and I have always been very mindful of hers."

"As for Veitch's attempts (at suicide) that is not a new pattern for him, and the reason my wife stayed with him all along.  He needs help, and we hope he gets it".  

So I get it, Morgan didn't want to drag everyone, especially Veitch, through the mud again and I accepted that, so I wasn't going to write anything further.

The 60 Minutes interview tomorrow changes everything.
If he and his wife cared about anyone, including his wife, they wouldn't now be dragging it all through the media once again.

They have done it before and just about drove a man to suicide and now it appears they are going to have another go at him.

I didn't reply to Morgan's second email but if I did I would have said just put it behind you mate and get on with life and let Veitch try and get on with his.

Apparently they just won't let it go.






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Sky City's Current Cinema "Boom" a Horror Story in Disguise

An interview in Granny NZ Herald yesterday with Jane Hastings, general manager of Sky City Entertainment's [SKC.NZ] cinema division prompted me to have another go at this part of the Sky City asset portfolio.

Long term readers of this blog (two years is a long time in the blog world) and the struggling Share Trader chat site will know that I wouldn't touch a movie chain business with a barge pole the length of a CinemaScope screen.

The Herald and its interviewee seem particularly bullish on the movie business at present. Strong attendances, a growing market share for Sky City Cinemas and good product coming up, like the latest Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) movie all look positive.

Add to this the very large capital expenditures that this division has made expanding the business over the last 5 years have been ameliorated of late because of oversupply and you might think you have a business that is a blockbuster ready to print money.

Balance the good news with this though.

Although cinemas are a good cash business, especially during these cash strapped hard economic times, extra revenue doesn't necessarily make for extra profit. Costs have risen along with higher attendance and there will always be more expense to improve technology and modernise facilities.

Recessions like the ones we are currently experiencing are boom times for the entertainment business and cinemas are no exception but investors in Sky City should be aware that the spike in fortunes for their cinema business are fleeting and in the normal cycles of business, the downs are far more frequent than the ups and more often than not the down times are when many cinema operators put up the going out of business sign.

Sustained acceptable returns for the cinema business are simply not the way this sector functions and history is littered with the carcasses of individuals and corporations who have sunk money into cinema that have gone bankrupt or no longer exist.

Best Sky City management use shareholders capital to repay debt as they did earlier last week.

Sky City Cinemas is no different from the rest and I must reiterate dear reader, for the sake of the shareholder, this part of the group's business must be given a Dirty Harry bullet before it drags the rest of the company down with it.

Disclosure I own SKC shares


Visit Sky City Cinemas

Sky City Entertainment Group @ Share Investor

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