Feeling a little crowded lately?

Statistics New Zealand has just announced that visitor arrivals to New Zealand were 2.501 million in the June 2010 year, the first time 2.5 million has been surpassed.
"This milestone was almost reached in 2008, but the global economic downturn contributed to a decline in visitor numbers after a peak of 2.497 million in the March 2008 year," Population Statistics manager Bridget Hamilton-Seymour said.

The 2 million visitor mark was reached in the November 2002 year, and the 1 million mark in the April 1992 year.

Visitors from Australia accounted for 1.119 million or 45 percent of all visitors in the June 2010 year. A further 25 percent of visitors came from four countries; the United Kingdom (248,900), the United States (194,000), China (105,200), and Japan (83,600).

Visitor arrivals in the June month were 145,800, up 8 percent from June 2009. There were more visitors from Australia, and visitor numbers from China, Japan, and Korea recovered after the H1N1 pandemic affected arrivals from those countries in June 2009. Fewer visitors arrived from the United Kingdom and the United States.

Statistics NZ also notes that net migration continues to decrease.

Net permanent and long-term migration (arrivals minus departures) was 100 (rounded figure) in June 2010, the lowest monthly figure since the series briefly went below zero in November 2008. This series has been decreasing steadily since January 2010 (1,800). On an unadjusted basis, there were 500 fewer arrivals of non-New Zealand citizens and 900 more departures of New Zealand citizens compared with June 2009.

The annual net migration gain was 16,500 in the June 2010 year, down from the recent peak of 22,600 in the January 2010 year. The main inflows of migrants were from the United Kingdom, India, and China. There was a net outflow of 15,900 migrants to Australia, well down from 28,700 in the June 2009 year.

Good and Evil

Umair Haque has written an article entitled, The Case for Being Disruptively Good.

In it he discusses the way in which businesses who used to get away with bad practice are now far more exposed than they used to be, due to the information age - news travels fast, in other words. Purely from a shareholding viewpoint, he notes: being a good guy pays. The best corporate citizens list, which includes Hewlett-Packard, Intel, General Mills, I.B.M. and Kimberly-Clark, had a total return on shareholder value of 2.37 percent over three years. But the 30 worst had a negative 7.38 percent return".

But this is far more than an article about shareholders. It's about the fact that big businesses that are thriving are doing so more because they have decided to follow 'good' practices more than 'evil' ones. But even those who are doing good vary in the extent to which they're doing good.

He lists a ladder with five steps and shows how various well-known companies are learning the ropes of doing good: Pepsi's on the bottom rung, having done a "marginal bit of good"; Nestle is on the next rung, having got itself a 'black eye' for not being as open and honest as it claimed (thanks for Facebook!).

Google's just got itself back on the third rung by pulling out of China, avoiding the compromises that would have been required of it, if it had stayed. Apple's on the fourth rung - though Haque doesn't seem convinced it'll stay there, and Wal Mart (surprise!) is on the fifth rung due to its Sustainability Index which 'lays down new rules for every single supplier in its vast, globe-spanning ecosystem.'

Haque doesn't see anyone on the top rung as yet, but is waiting.

The ladder image is only part of what he has to say. Check out the rest: the historic viewpoint, the revolutions, the changes.

China and the Olympics

Dave Gibbons asks:
Did you see the group of children representing the 51 different cultures of China? China, like so many other places today, is multi-cultural. A group of young people is emerging that some call Third Culture—a wave of people who will lead the missiological movement because of their ability to adapt to different cultures. Being comfortable moving between cultures all of their lives, these people will be more equipped to become all things to all men.

This quote is from a short post talking about the way in which China is changing.

Chinese Good Samaritan

An article appeared in the Otago Daily Times World Focus last Monday about a man who spends a good deal of his free time stopping people from committing suicide on the Nanjing Bridge, which flows over the Yangtze River. So far he has managed to stop some 144 people from jumping to their deaths.

The article says the man's motivation is the feeling of guilt he was left with after an older man who had encouraged him when he was down and out subsequently committed suicide because of troubles he hadn't been able to share.

The full article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and can be accessed here.

It's well worth reading for an example of how God works to save lives by a modern day Samaritan, who appears to have no Christian motivation.