Top Best-selling Music Artists

Who is the World's best-selling music artist? Interesting to know, is it Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Michael Jackson or Garth Brooks?

According to the RIAA ( Recording Industry Association of America ) website the answer is...

1. The Beatles ( 177 million certified units )
2. Elvis Presley ( 134.5m )
3. Garth Brooks ( 134m )
4. Led Zeppelin ( 111.5m )
5. Eagles ( 100m )
6. Billy Joel ( 81.5m )
7. Michael Jackson ( 75.5m )
8. Pink Floyd ( 74.5m )
9. Elton John ( 73m )
10. AC/DC ( 71.5m )

( Barbra Streisand comes in at 11th as the first woman with 71.5 million certified units ).

Is Wikipedia Being Racist ?

Is Wikipedia Being Racist ?

I became interested a little while ago in the recording industry and who has sold what number of records. This came about largely due to my children asking, who has sold the largest number of records? I like to tumble numbers so Google being my friend, I searched for a list of the best-selling artists of all time, and got a Wikipedia list as the first link on the page. Here it is...

Nigel Latta on Education

Nigel Latta on Education

I really enjoyed Nigel Latta's TV documentary on the gap between rich and poor so I was looking forward to his piece on NCEA ( TVNZ series 1 episode 2 Nigel Latta ). Oh dear, not so good. I have written him a letter outlining my concerns. The text you can read below...

New Trucks for NZ Army

OK, some minimal Defense spending from the NZ Government...

NZ go for Rheinmetall MAN


Now how about an Air Force and Navy with some real capability !?

Manufacturing New Zealand

Good news this time, Skellerup are building a new factory making milking machine rubber parts, replacing the factory damaged in the earthquakes. Looks like this part of their business is too valuable and they know if they moved it to China, the IP would just get stolen ( the gumboots are made in China....jicydk)

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/10172109/New-Skellerup-plant-in-Wigram

Reform of NZ Education

What went wrong?

We incentivized Teaching the wrong way, and what we incentivized we got. It's as simple as that. Forget national standards, and the expert teacher status upgrade and all that nonsense, none of it makes a difference. All that these so-called reforms do is entrench the drop. It doesn't even arrest the decline in standards.

The main problem as I see it is - as teachers become better they do less teaching. The more promotion, the more administration, and the less classroom time. In the end, all that are left in the classroom are teachers unable to get promotion, or younger ones with less experience.

NCEA

I've got three daughters, the eldest has been through High School and is now finishing up her BCom on the way to being an accountant, then the middle child is doing NCEA level 1 this year, the youngest being still at Primary School.

Observation - the NZ secondary education system is broken. I'm talking about State schools here, as I have knowledge of them as a parent of children attending State schools.

Basically, NCEA is flawed. Several problems as I see it:-

A contributor to Fortune has 12 reasons why the NZ bubble will burst:-

12 Reasons Why New Zealand's Economic Bubble Will End In Disaster

I'll give you the first three reasons...

1. Ultra-low interest rates
2. Property prices have doubled since 2004
3. NZ the World's most overvalued property market

Please read the rest.