I did some more on the pump shed. Pictures to follow but the attraction to note will be the flying buttresses.
Ab subscribes to the on line version of London Review of Books and she sends me the hard copy version. It gives me great pleasure to read this with lunch (with lunch being a highlight of the day) but I do have to wear my hobby glasses at X3.25
Here's a gem from today written by one David Runciman (no doubt related to the Runciman of Crusaders fame):
Casting around for kindred spirits in the blighted international landscape of the 1930's, Hitler looked fondly towards Dixie. What was not to like? The South was effectively a one party state. In the 1936 presidential election, FDR's Democratic ticket won 97% of the vote in Mississippi, 99% in South Carolina. In some counties no votes at all were recorded for Republican candidates. The figures compare very favourably with the 98.5% the Nazis secured in their own national elections in the same year. The difference was that Hitler used the coercive power of the state to secure an artificially high turnout (99% of the German electorate was reported as having voted) whereas Democrats used coercion to keep the turnout low. The population of Mississippi in the late 1930's was more than two million. Yet the number of people whose votes were counted in the 1938 congressional midterms was barely 38,000. This remarkably limited franchise was achieved by means of electorate rules - including a poll tax - designed to make voting both difficult and expensive; it was backed up by threats of violence to anyone who challenged the status quo. The aim, of course, was to make sure the electorate remained exclusively white. Of the residents of Mississippi nearly half - roughly a million people - were black.
Well, bet you didn't know that - 38K out of 2,000K!!! that's ~1.9% don't you know.
Rednecks corner
Here's the makeup of the Geographic Board which gave you Fonganewi and still on the march.
- Federated Mountain Clubs
- New Zealand Geographical Society
- Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu
- Minister of Māori Affairs
- Minister for Land Information
- Local Government New Zealand.
Here's my submission on name change for North & South Islands (not grabber names I'll admit)
I am utterly opposed to renaming (or alternatively naming) the main two islands of NZ. Just as the absurd “Aotearoa” has crept into use coupled with ‘New Zealand’ and sometimes without ‘New Zealand’, Maori names for the islands will inevitably be used by the politically correct to the detriment of the identification by anyone outside NZ or, indeed, many within it.
NZ struggles to become known to the rest of the world so why put self inflicted barriers in the way of recognition?
Quite aside from the recognition issue, why Maori? There are many other peoples in NZ and if you reject that ‘the Treaty is the founding document’ (which I do) there is no good reason for Maori alternative names or alternative names at all for that matter.
The Board should stop fiddling and should stop trying to find something to do. Get a real job!!
Jeremy Laurenson
Landfall Estate
Renwick
Well there you go. More stimulation tomorrow.
