Hmmm, I seem to have lost the final couple of sentences. I am not sure what happened there. Here they are:
To give charity to people who wanted to work was unsound as well as humiliating. "The purchasing power of our own people" Savage contended, "must be the basis of our prosperity." Retrenchment could only worsen the Depression because "Unless the people of this country are in a position to pay for what is produced...we cannot go on producing..."
That is simple economics and I understand that, plus I understand the surplus refrigerator which went to other, overseas or foreign markets. (I produced three refrigerators, and I sold two in New Zealand and sent one to Australia and Australia paid me and with that money I bought stuff from Australia I couldn't get here.)
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Michael Joseph Savage 1872-1940
Michael Joseph Savage, the Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1935-1940 (he died in Office) was the best loved politician and statesman this country has ever had. I would like to begin the story as it is told - from the end of his life. Most of the information I have used is from 'From the Cradle to the Grave' by Barry Gustafson (Reed Methuen 1986) a thoroughly well written and researched book.
Savage was the man responsible for the introduction of old age pensions, state housing and many other so-called 'socialist' inventions into New Zealand society. I will be investigating the social and economic climate before and after Savage's two terms in Parliament to see whether socialist, communist, liberal or democrat best describes the Government and the changes made during this time.
His name is remembered where the names of many more recent (but inferior) Prime Ministers are forgotten.
-------------------------------------------------------------
'Four days after his sixty-eighth birthday and a little more than twenty-four hours after learning of Lee's defeat, Savage died at 3.15am on the morning of Wednesday, 27 March 1940...Later that morning when conference met at 10.30, Fraser announced the Prime Minister's death. One delegate recalled that 'a deep silence, broken only by the sound of subdued sobbing, filled the conference hall.' p 269
'...Savage would have been deeply moved by the unprecedented tribute from hundreds of thousands of ordinary New Zealanders of all ages who stood silently in the streets as a last gesture of respect and affection. The body lay in state in the vestibule of Parliament for two days, during which some 50,000 people filed past. (Don't forget this was then a country of 2 million people. Jude) A solemn Requiem Mass was conducted at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart...The purple and black draped train took a slow twenty-eight hours to reach Auckland. At twenty stops along the 720 kilometre route, crowds of up to 12,000 people gathered, as bands played the hymns 'Abide with Me' and 'Lead Kindly Light'. Radio bulletins described in detail Savage's last journey home to Auckland.' p 271
'It was estimated that some 200,000 Aucklanders met the train or lined the twelve kilometres from the railway station to Savage's resting place at Fort Bastion...'p 271
'...the Savage Memorial, with its large mausoleum, towering column, reflecting pool, sunken gardens, and located on one of the most beautiful sites in New Zealand was certainly the most spectacular and expensive memorials ever erected to honour a New Zealand politician.' p 271
Now then...
Many homes had a framed portait of Savage hanging up in a room. There was no compulsion for this. People loved him. I can remember my parents speaking about him in worshipful tones. Even 'til this very day, if someone makes a demeaning remark about Michael Joseph Savage it will be met with cold stares and silence, for he was a good man and the following comments will prove this true.
Savage was born in Australia of Irish immigrant parents and was the youngest of seven children. There had been eight, but the first born girl had died in infancy. The family had a small holding but floods and drought (common in Australia, it seems to be one or the other) made it impossible to take a decent living from the land. Savage's mother died when he was five (probably from exhaustion) and his elder sister Rose had to leave school to help in the house. Another brother, Joe, had been dropped as a baby and was crippled as a result of the fall.
Savage left school at fourteen also and began work. He worked at labouring jobs for low wages until in 1907 aged 35, he finally washed up in New Zealand which, in the early 1900s was looking more prosperous than Australia.
Savage's mother had died when he was a child, his crippled brother Joe died in 1891 aged 21, and Rose, his only sister died in childbirth aged 31. Another brother Hugh died of typhoid when he was 29. Savage didn't have too much time for doctors all his life as a result of these young deaths. I agree with him. Where do doctors get their vanity from? They are supposed to be providing a service, not grooming their egos. The engineer who designs a town sewage treatment plant, the plumber who fixes drains, even the man who collects the rubbish bins - these are equally as valuable as any doctor, perhaps moreso.
It seems to me that Britain exported millions of its 'excess' population either in convicts chains or as settlers, and then dumped them. Little provision was made for the welfare of settlers. It was sheer chance if they had enough teachers or doctors where they were sent. Natural disasters, famine or disease wiped out thousands, but more thousands of the 'indigent' were sent out to replace the human animals. Their own people the British sent to countries 13,000 miles away, packed like cattle into ships, yet now they bring in to their home countries immigrants of different languages, different colours, different (very different) behaviours, and they make a fuss of them and feed them and house them in luxury as though they (the British) are primitive tribes welcoming gods.
This little anecdote - make up your own mind about these people:
In later years as Prime Minister of New Zealand Michael Savage went to Britain to be present at the coronation of King George VI.
'The weeks after the coronation saw Savage attending a bewildering range of meetings and functions including a reception at the Duchess of Sutherland's, part of the booze, women and invitations to stately homes' treatment Savage said was accorded state visitors. He was greatly offended and annoyed when, after he declined the offer of the company of a high class female prostitute, British officials misinterpreted his lack of interest and his bachelor status and offered to satisfy any homosexual needs.' p 207
Savage saw much poverty and grief from the poor, and much avarice and greed from the rich in his early years. His hard labouring work for little money also made him interested in unions and he became active in the Labor Movement in Australia. When he arrived in New Zealand he continued to work with the unions, and became chairman of the Socialist Party as well as chairman of the Red Feds. He was a good speaker and, although short and somewhat shabby, with poor eyesight, he was absolutely charismatic. By 1933 he was Leader of the Opposition. The Depression starting in 1929 had seriously affected New Zealand (the birthrate dropped to below replacement, in Australia one third of young people never married) and Socialism's time had come.
'New Zealand, "one of the most fertile countries on earth", Savage argued, should be able to insulate its economy to the extent that production, employment, internal purchasing power and domestic living standards were only marginally influenced by external factors. Every man and woman who wanted to work had an inherent right to work and should be given the opportunity to work. Unemployment was not only a denial of that right but a waste of productive resources and a reduction in normal spending power through lost wages and potential consumers. To give charity to people who wanted to work was unsound and potentially humiliating.
"The purchasing power of our own people' Sav
Savage was the man responsible for the introduction of old age pensions, state housing and many other so-called 'socialist' inventions into New Zealand society. I will be investigating the social and economic climate before and after Savage's two terms in Parliament to see whether socialist, communist, liberal or democrat best describes the Government and the changes made during this time.
His name is remembered where the names of many more recent (but inferior) Prime Ministers are forgotten.
-------------------------------------------------------------
'Four days after his sixty-eighth birthday and a little more than twenty-four hours after learning of Lee's defeat, Savage died at 3.15am on the morning of Wednesday, 27 March 1940...Later that morning when conference met at 10.30, Fraser announced the Prime Minister's death. One delegate recalled that 'a deep silence, broken only by the sound of subdued sobbing, filled the conference hall.' p 269
'...Savage would have been deeply moved by the unprecedented tribute from hundreds of thousands of ordinary New Zealanders of all ages who stood silently in the streets as a last gesture of respect and affection. The body lay in state in the vestibule of Parliament for two days, during which some 50,000 people filed past. (Don't forget this was then a country of 2 million people. Jude) A solemn Requiem Mass was conducted at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart...The purple and black draped train took a slow twenty-eight hours to reach Auckland. At twenty stops along the 720 kilometre route, crowds of up to 12,000 people gathered, as bands played the hymns 'Abide with Me' and 'Lead Kindly Light'. Radio bulletins described in detail Savage's last journey home to Auckland.' p 271
'It was estimated that some 200,000 Aucklanders met the train or lined the twelve kilometres from the railway station to Savage's resting place at Fort Bastion...'p 271
'...the Savage Memorial, with its large mausoleum, towering column, reflecting pool, sunken gardens, and located on one of the most beautiful sites in New Zealand was certainly the most spectacular and expensive memorials ever erected to honour a New Zealand politician.' p 271
Now then...
Many homes had a framed portait of Savage hanging up in a room. There was no compulsion for this. People loved him. I can remember my parents speaking about him in worshipful tones. Even 'til this very day, if someone makes a demeaning remark about Michael Joseph Savage it will be met with cold stares and silence, for he was a good man and the following comments will prove this true.
Savage was born in Australia of Irish immigrant parents and was the youngest of seven children. There had been eight, but the first born girl had died in infancy. The family had a small holding but floods and drought (common in Australia, it seems to be one or the other) made it impossible to take a decent living from the land. Savage's mother died when he was five (probably from exhaustion) and his elder sister Rose had to leave school to help in the house. Another brother, Joe, had been dropped as a baby and was crippled as a result of the fall.
Savage left school at fourteen also and began work. He worked at labouring jobs for low wages until in 1907 aged 35, he finally washed up in New Zealand which, in the early 1900s was looking more prosperous than Australia.
Savage's mother had died when he was a child, his crippled brother Joe died in 1891 aged 21, and Rose, his only sister died in childbirth aged 31. Another brother Hugh died of typhoid when he was 29. Savage didn't have too much time for doctors all his life as a result of these young deaths. I agree with him. Where do doctors get their vanity from? They are supposed to be providing a service, not grooming their egos. The engineer who designs a town sewage treatment plant, the plumber who fixes drains, even the man who collects the rubbish bins - these are equally as valuable as any doctor, perhaps moreso.
It seems to me that Britain exported millions of its 'excess' population either in convicts chains or as settlers, and then dumped them. Little provision was made for the welfare of settlers. It was sheer chance if they had enough teachers or doctors where they were sent. Natural disasters, famine or disease wiped out thousands, but more thousands of the 'indigent' were sent out to replace the human animals. Their own people the British sent to countries 13,000 miles away, packed like cattle into ships, yet now they bring in to their home countries immigrants of different languages, different colours, different (very different) behaviours, and they make a fuss of them and feed them and house them in luxury as though they (the British) are primitive tribes welcoming gods.
This little anecdote - make up your own mind about these people:
In later years as Prime Minister of New Zealand Michael Savage went to Britain to be present at the coronation of King George VI.
'The weeks after the coronation saw Savage attending a bewildering range of meetings and functions including a reception at the Duchess of Sutherland's, part of the booze, women and invitations to stately homes' treatment Savage said was accorded state visitors. He was greatly offended and annoyed when, after he declined the offer of the company of a high class female prostitute, British officials misinterpreted his lack of interest and his bachelor status and offered to satisfy any homosexual needs.' p 207
Savage saw much poverty and grief from the poor, and much avarice and greed from the rich in his early years. His hard labouring work for little money also made him interested in unions and he became active in the Labor Movement in Australia. When he arrived in New Zealand he continued to work with the unions, and became chairman of the Socialist Party as well as chairman of the Red Feds. He was a good speaker and, although short and somewhat shabby, with poor eyesight, he was absolutely charismatic. By 1933 he was Leader of the Opposition. The Depression starting in 1929 had seriously affected New Zealand (the birthrate dropped to below replacement, in Australia one third of young people never married) and Socialism's time had come.
'New Zealand, "one of the most fertile countries on earth", Savage argued, should be able to insulate its economy to the extent that production, employment, internal purchasing power and domestic living standards were only marginally influenced by external factors. Every man and woman who wanted to work had an inherent right to work and should be given the opportunity to work. Unemployment was not only a denial of that right but a waste of productive resources and a reduction in normal spending power through lost wages and potential consumers. To give charity to people who wanted to work was unsound and potentially humiliating.
"The purchasing power of our own people' Sav
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Excerpts from Tom Wolfe
Before I take the book 'Hooking Up' (Picador 2000) by Tom Wolfe back to the library there are some little gems I must record here so I don't lose or forget them:
______________________________________________________
'The term itself, "convergence" as used here in the digital age, was coined by a Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Another ardent Roman Catholic, Marshall McLuhan, broadcast the message throughout the intellectual world and gave the digital universe its first and most memorable name: "the global village". Thousands of dot-com dreamers are now busy amplifying the message without the faintest idea where it came from. p 68
______________________________________________________
'Since so many theories of convergence were magical assumptions about the human mind in the digital age, notions that had no neuroscientific foundation whatsoever, I wondered what was going on in neuroscience that might bear uponn the subject. This quickly led me to...Edward O Wilson.
Wilson's life is a good argument for his thesis which is that among humans, no less than among racehorses, inbred traits will trump upbringing and environment every time." p 77
______________________________________________________
"...Wilson compressed his theory into one sentence during an interview. Every human brain, he said, is born not as a blank slate waiting to be filled in by experience, but as an "exposed negative waiting to be slipped into developer fluid." The negative might be developed well, or it might be developed poorly, but all you were going to get was what was on the negative at birth.
In one of the most remarkable displays of wounded Marxist chauvinism in American academic history...two of Wilson's well-known colleagues at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and geneticist Richard Lewontin, joined a group of radical activists called Science for the People to form what can only be called an 'Antiseptic Squad'.
pp 80-81
_______________________________________________________
As Freud once said "Many enemies, much honour".
p 81
_______________________________________________________
'Marx said social class determined a human being's destiny; Freud said it was the Oedipul drama within the family. Both were forces external to the newborn infant. Darwinists, Wilson foremost among them, turned that all upside down and proclaimed that the genes the infant was born with proclaimed its destiny.'
p82
_______________________________________________________
'The influence of genes was absolute. Free will among humans, no less than among ants, was an illusion. The "soul" and the "mind" were illusions too, and so was the very question of a "self."
p82
(Religions must have been arming themselves against this. Jude)
________________________________________________________
'"Fascism" was, in fact, a Marxist coinage. Marxists borrowed the name of Mussolini's Italian party, the Fascisti, and applied it to Hitler's Nazis, adroitly papering over the fact that the Nazis, like Marxism's standard-bearers, the Soviet Communists, were revolutionary socialists. In fact, "Nazi" was (most annoyingly) shorthand for the National Socialist German Workers' Party.'
pp 118-119
______________________________________________________
'"Cultural genocide" was inspired, but in this entire opera bouffe of fascism racism and fascist-racist genocide, the truly high note was hit by one Susan Sonntag. In a 1967 article for Partisan Review entitled 'What's Happening to America', she wrote: "The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone - its ideologies and inventions - which eradicate autonomous populations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself."
The white race is the cancer of human history? Who was this woman? Who and what? An anthropological epidemiologist? A renowned authority on the history of cultures throughout the world, a synthesiser of the magnitude of Max Weber, a Joachim Wach, a Sir James Frazer, an Arnold Toynbee?
Actually, she was just another scribbler who spent her life signing up for protest meetings and lumbering to the podium encumbered by her prose style...Perhaps she was exceptionally hell-bent on illustrating McLuhan's line about indignation endowing the idiot with dignity...
p 120
_________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
'The term itself, "convergence" as used here in the digital age, was coined by a Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Another ardent Roman Catholic, Marshall McLuhan, broadcast the message throughout the intellectual world and gave the digital universe its first and most memorable name: "the global village". Thousands of dot-com dreamers are now busy amplifying the message without the faintest idea where it came from. p 68
______________________________________________________
'Since so many theories of convergence were magical assumptions about the human mind in the digital age, notions that had no neuroscientific foundation whatsoever, I wondered what was going on in neuroscience that might bear uponn the subject. This quickly led me to...Edward O Wilson.
Wilson's life is a good argument for his thesis which is that among humans, no less than among racehorses, inbred traits will trump upbringing and environment every time." p 77
______________________________________________________
"...Wilson compressed his theory into one sentence during an interview. Every human brain, he said, is born not as a blank slate waiting to be filled in by experience, but as an "exposed negative waiting to be slipped into developer fluid." The negative might be developed well, or it might be developed poorly, but all you were going to get was what was on the negative at birth.
In one of the most remarkable displays of wounded Marxist chauvinism in American academic history...two of Wilson's well-known colleagues at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and geneticist Richard Lewontin, joined a group of radical activists called Science for the People to form what can only be called an 'Antiseptic Squad'.
pp 80-81
_______________________________________________________
As Freud once said "Many enemies, much honour".
p 81
_______________________________________________________
'Marx said social class determined a human being's destiny; Freud said it was the Oedipul drama within the family. Both were forces external to the newborn infant. Darwinists, Wilson foremost among them, turned that all upside down and proclaimed that the genes the infant was born with proclaimed its destiny.'
p82
_______________________________________________________
'The influence of genes was absolute. Free will among humans, no less than among ants, was an illusion. The "soul" and the "mind" were illusions too, and so was the very question of a "self."
p82
(Religions must have been arming themselves against this. Jude)
________________________________________________________
'"Fascism" was, in fact, a Marxist coinage. Marxists borrowed the name of Mussolini's Italian party, the Fascisti, and applied it to Hitler's Nazis, adroitly papering over the fact that the Nazis, like Marxism's standard-bearers, the Soviet Communists, were revolutionary socialists. In fact, "Nazi" was (most annoyingly) shorthand for the National Socialist German Workers' Party.'
pp 118-119
______________________________________________________
'"Cultural genocide" was inspired, but in this entire opera bouffe of fascism racism and fascist-racist genocide, the truly high note was hit by one Susan Sonntag. In a 1967 article for Partisan Review entitled 'What's Happening to America', she wrote: "The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone - its ideologies and inventions - which eradicate autonomous populations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself."
The white race is the cancer of human history? Who was this woman? Who and what? An anthropological epidemiologist? A renowned authority on the history of cultures throughout the world, a synthesiser of the magnitude of Max Weber, a Joachim Wach, a Sir James Frazer, an Arnold Toynbee?
Actually, she was just another scribbler who spent her life signing up for protest meetings and lumbering to the podium encumbered by her prose style...Perhaps she was exceptionally hell-bent on illustrating McLuhan's line about indignation endowing the idiot with dignity...
p 120
_________________________________________________________
New Zealand has no Constitution
I have copied this excerpt from Wikipedia so you can click on highlighted words. (Saves me a lot of time.) All it means is - New Zealand has no Constitution. The Government can create any Act it wants or rescind what it wants. The people of New Zealand have no protection against their own Government.
The constitution of New Zealand consists of a collection of statutes (Acts of Parliament), Treaties, Orders-in-Council, Letters patent, decisions of the Courts and unwritten constitutional conventions. There is no one supreme document — the New Zealand constitution is not codified or entrenched. New Zealand's constitution is thus similar to that of the United Kingdom and Israel.
New Zealand has the Westminster system of Parliament and recognises the monarchy. It has a Governor-General who is the representative of the Queen but this now means nothing. It is a purely ceremonial position which costs the taxpayer a pretty penny.
I am glad we have the Rule of Law. No matter how many crooked wretches bend it, it still seems to spring back and often hits the crooks in the face. Hard. I am glad I was born in a country which inherited the Westminster system, rather than being born in a Muslim or African country. I am glad we have democracy. Even if it isn't the best system it is way ahead of anything else I can see in the world and I am glad I was born white, even if I am left handed and have red hair.
The constitution of New Zealand consists of a collection of statutes (Acts of Parliament), Treaties, Orders-in-Council, Letters patent, decisions of the Courts and unwritten constitutional conventions. There is no one supreme document — the New Zealand constitution is not codified or entrenched. New Zealand's constitution is thus similar to that of the United Kingdom and Israel.
New Zealand has the Westminster system of Parliament and recognises the monarchy. It has a Governor-General who is the representative of the Queen but this now means nothing. It is a purely ceremonial position which costs the taxpayer a pretty penny.
I am glad we have the Rule of Law. No matter how many crooked wretches bend it, it still seems to spring back and often hits the crooks in the face. Hard. I am glad I was born in a country which inherited the Westminster system, rather than being born in a Muslim or African country. I am glad we have democracy. Even if it isn't the best system it is way ahead of anything else I can see in the world and I am glad I was born white, even if I am left handed and have red hair.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Dodge Dart Pioneer V8 Powerflite 1960 model
Oh How I would Love one Now!
This is a little bit of Kiwiana - things that could only happen in New Zealand.
My first job was in a car sales which also ran quite a large garage and lube bay. There were probably thirty men working there, including about eight apprentices. Apart from other office tasks, I also did the car registrations which meant filling in a form in triplicate, taking it to the Post Office and getting the plates. I remember this particular car because I always had a helluva job fitting the title into the space provided.
The farmers were the only ones who could buy new cars. The were the only ones with overseas funds (export meat and dairy produce), and they loved the Dodge Dart - it had a huge boot to fit the newborn lambs in.
Of course other people could buy new cars if they had overseas funds - that basically meant a bank account in Britain - then the sterling was transferred into dollars, and there was always a mad scramble to buy foreign currency at outrageous prices as the New Zealand dollar was worth nothing, but most people couldn't afford a second hand car in the 1960s, much less buy a brand new yank tank. (Other people usually meant politicians and importers/exporters.)
Yup, the farmers would drive that monster over the paddocks during lambing. The V8 engine gave it plenty of power. Motherless lambs were packed into the back and brought home for hand feeding. No quad bikes in those days.
The farmers in New Zealand were a privileged lot, on welfare all the time. They weren't allowed to fail. Successive governments propped the agricultural system up, and it is still happening today.
Early Settlement In New Zealand
New Zealand was the last major landmass to be settled by humans. The Maori arrived about 1300AD, and the European settlement properly began in the 1840s when nearly 10,000 settlers arrived under company schemes from Britain.
Settlement was carried out efficiently, and Canterbury provides a case study in settler capitalism;...unlike Auckland, which began from Sydney, the southern settlement of Christchurch was to be a transplanted England. It was to have a college and a cathedral. Like other commercial cities in New Zealand, Christchurch had plenty of flat ground and a separate port. The scheme succeeded because of its colonists, geography, timing and planning.
Things were shifting around quite a bit in the early days (from 1840 to 1900) due to constant settler arrivals, Maori irritation at land grabs, an imbalance of male to females (which always seem to bring its own problems) and the discovery of gold. The colony was a minimally organised society between 1850 and 1880, primarily because of the lightning expansion of the frontier. Gold seekers came from California to Victoria in Australia and then to New Zealand, brought boom times, towns and gold fever. I will digress here to tell a little story:
A friend of mine married a large, very blond man named Owen and gave birth to four daughters, also very blonde. Owen has been dead for twenty years or more now, but my friend often used to tell me how his great-grandmother was the half-caste daughter of an American Indian. Investigation proved this to be true. The Indian was a huge specimen of a man who had arrived during the gold rush, stayed, married, and had three huge sons plus a daughter.
Gold brings unusual playmates to a country.
Another planned wave of migrants during 1860-1890 brought 100,000 people. The second half of the nineteenth century had a natural increase (births minus deaths) generated most of the population increase. Families were large, ten and twelve children were not unusual, and families stayed large until the depression.
New Zealand was most dependent on Britain. Seventy five per cent of its exports went to Britain and it bought at least 50 percent of its imports from Britain. New Zealand was the Empire's dairy farm. During the two World Wars exports to the UK kept New Zealand rich. But trouble was appearing in the balance of payments as early as 1925 culminating in 1939 and disappearing with the advent of WWII when Britain needed food from her little dairy farm again..
Women bore the brunt of hardship, as always, the most telling indicator coming from 109 married women who died from septic abortions between 1931 and 1935. If somebody went without, it was the woman. They were useless if they couldn't work like men as well as doing the cooking and cleaning when they were pregnant, which was pretty well constantly.
Abortion was illegal in New Zealand until well into the 1970s. A wealthy woman had no trouble. She could fly to Australia where safe, legal abortion was available. The contraceptive pill was available in 1962, but only given to married women who had one child. I estimate that somewhere in the vicinity of at least 200/300 babies per year were adopted or brought up in foster homes or orphanages during the period 1950/1960. Women were wise to avoid Catholic doctors for delivering babies as doctrine was (and I think still is) the baby's life came first if a choice had to be made between saving either.
There was a baby boom from 1945-1962 (as was to be expected) but assisted migration resumed in 1947 with Dutch and British making up the majority of the new arrivals. New Zealand's intake during this period was another 88,000 people. There were a few Greeks, Italians, Chinese, and Indians, but they lived mainly in Auckland and Wellington. New Zealand in 1970 was still very much a European country.
Britain's turning away from the Commonwealth towards Europe brought Australia and New Zealand closer together. Australians and New Zealanders are pretty much the same British stock, although huge numbers of Germans emigrated to Australia. Australia is a much richer, but much crueller country than New Zealand. It has snakes, huge spiders, huge mosquitoes, crocodiles, and a hot, dry climate. I was told when I was over there to just stamp my feet when walking and the snakes get away from the sound pretty quickly. Sound? Well, they are deaf but extremely sensitive to vibration. They don't want any trouble so they slide away. If you want to catch one, you tiptoe up behind it because the peripheral vision is not too good. You have to grab it behind the head. I was not the slightest bit interested in that sort of exercise, needless to say. When it rains in the 0utback Aussies stand on the verandahs and watch it. They can't get enough of it. Water!
New Zealand, on the other hand, is green and wet and cool with no snakes and only one poisonous spider which is hardly ever seen.
When Australia divided itself into states, it made provision for New Zealand to become a state of Australia because it was obvious even in the 19th century that New Zealand, sitting right out on the edge of the Southern Ocean, with no natural resources, would ultimately need a hand. New Zealand politicians, looking after their own skins, turned down the invitation to join, but I have recently heard it mooted again, twice in this year. So many Kiwis live in Australia already, and so many leave each year to live there and never to return here (about 34,000) and they are replaced with Somalis, Afghanis, Zimbabweans and such like, that the country is hardly likely to pick itself up and get into any sort of international running ever again. It has become a dumping ground for the United Nations leftoevers, courtesy of Helen Clark, PM, who signed up to anything Kofe Annan put forward in the hope that she would be offered a cushy seat in the UN. Didn't happen. Country is stuffed.
The funny thing is, the brown and black imports don't want to stay here either. As soon as they get the Kiwi passport, they're off elsewhere. They don't like the trapped feeling of living in such an isolated country. I may be wrong, but I think I read somewhere recently the net population gain for one year is about 6,000. That is after bringing in 50,000 p.a.
New Zealand's Nuclear Free Policy and the Decline of ANZUS:
June 1984 - Nuclear free New Zealand Bill introduced and passed in Parliament.
1985 - New Zealand refused a request from the United States for a visit from the old USS Buchanan on the grounds that it could carry nuclear weapons.
The US stuck rigidly to its principle of neither confirming nor denying whether its vessels were nuclear powered or armed and NZ stated that US ships were welcome provided they were not nuclear powered or armed.
And that is where it still stands.
I don't care one way or another about nuclear power. I think we will have to have nuclear power stations eventually but whether there will be anyone smart enough left in the country to run one properly is debateable.
Half of Maori marriages have been with a European since 1960. It is common to see blond haired and blue eyed children claiming Maori heritage. This is just the way it goes. If there is money somewhere in it, they go that way. When the money dries up and it is more profitable to claim European heritage, they will go the other way.
I think the new arrivals from Somalia and Afghanistan and elsewhere are frightened of the Maoris. Black people like to play the race card but the Maoris aren't having any of that. New Zealand is their country, always was, always will be, and anyone tries to mess with that comes right up against a big, tattooed, fist. When the imports complain, they are told to behave themselves. Very amusing.
That is a very rough outline of the economic and social history of New Zealand. What happened up until 1970 is gone, finished, kaput. From 1970 onwards (we will call these the 'modern times') New Zealand has been a social laboratory.
Domestic violence, alcoholism and child abuse was endemic in New Zealand. It was the hidden (and sometimes not so hidden - I have seen and experienced some dreadful things) disease of this country. Under the guise of Christianity - priests and pastors and ministers advocated the continuance of the 'Christian' way and turned their heads away from the problems they knew existed. The rates of illegitimate births were off the scale - often to under-age girls from incest, and rape, or blackmail or threats to force consent to sex were common.
Who brought these things into the open?
The Women's Movement.
Have things improved?
Yes, yes, yes!
Is the place now perfect?
Far from it, but it is better.
Will it improve further?
Quien sabe muchacha?
Settlement was carried out efficiently, and Canterbury provides a case study in settler capitalism;...unlike Auckland, which began from Sydney, the southern settlement of Christchurch was to be a transplanted England. It was to have a college and a cathedral. Like other commercial cities in New Zealand, Christchurch had plenty of flat ground and a separate port. The scheme succeeded because of its colonists, geography, timing and planning.
Things were shifting around quite a bit in the early days (from 1840 to 1900) due to constant settler arrivals, Maori irritation at land grabs, an imbalance of male to females (which always seem to bring its own problems) and the discovery of gold. The colony was a minimally organised society between 1850 and 1880, primarily because of the lightning expansion of the frontier. Gold seekers came from California to Victoria in Australia and then to New Zealand, brought boom times, towns and gold fever. I will digress here to tell a little story:
A friend of mine married a large, very blond man named Owen and gave birth to four daughters, also very blonde. Owen has been dead for twenty years or more now, but my friend often used to tell me how his great-grandmother was the half-caste daughter of an American Indian. Investigation proved this to be true. The Indian was a huge specimen of a man who had arrived during the gold rush, stayed, married, and had three huge sons plus a daughter.
Gold brings unusual playmates to a country.
Another planned wave of migrants during 1860-1890 brought 100,000 people. The second half of the nineteenth century had a natural increase (births minus deaths) generated most of the population increase. Families were large, ten and twelve children were not unusual, and families stayed large until the depression.
New Zealand was most dependent on Britain. Seventy five per cent of its exports went to Britain and it bought at least 50 percent of its imports from Britain. New Zealand was the Empire's dairy farm. During the two World Wars exports to the UK kept New Zealand rich. But trouble was appearing in the balance of payments as early as 1925 culminating in 1939 and disappearing with the advent of WWII when Britain needed food from her little dairy farm again..
Women bore the brunt of hardship, as always, the most telling indicator coming from 109 married women who died from septic abortions between 1931 and 1935. If somebody went without, it was the woman. They were useless if they couldn't work like men as well as doing the cooking and cleaning when they were pregnant, which was pretty well constantly.
Abortion was illegal in New Zealand until well into the 1970s. A wealthy woman had no trouble. She could fly to Australia where safe, legal abortion was available. The contraceptive pill was available in 1962, but only given to married women who had one child. I estimate that somewhere in the vicinity of at least 200/300 babies per year were adopted or brought up in foster homes or orphanages during the period 1950/1960. Women were wise to avoid Catholic doctors for delivering babies as doctrine was (and I think still is) the baby's life came first if a choice had to be made between saving either.
There was a baby boom from 1945-1962 (as was to be expected) but assisted migration resumed in 1947 with Dutch and British making up the majority of the new arrivals. New Zealand's intake during this period was another 88,000 people. There were a few Greeks, Italians, Chinese, and Indians, but they lived mainly in Auckland and Wellington. New Zealand in 1970 was still very much a European country.
Britain's turning away from the Commonwealth towards Europe brought Australia and New Zealand closer together. Australians and New Zealanders are pretty much the same British stock, although huge numbers of Germans emigrated to Australia. Australia is a much richer, but much crueller country than New Zealand. It has snakes, huge spiders, huge mosquitoes, crocodiles, and a hot, dry climate. I was told when I was over there to just stamp my feet when walking and the snakes get away from the sound pretty quickly. Sound? Well, they are deaf but extremely sensitive to vibration. They don't want any trouble so they slide away. If you want to catch one, you tiptoe up behind it because the peripheral vision is not too good. You have to grab it behind the head. I was not the slightest bit interested in that sort of exercise, needless to say. When it rains in the 0utback Aussies stand on the verandahs and watch it. They can't get enough of it. Water!
New Zealand, on the other hand, is green and wet and cool with no snakes and only one poisonous spider which is hardly ever seen.
When Australia divided itself into states, it made provision for New Zealand to become a state of Australia because it was obvious even in the 19th century that New Zealand, sitting right out on the edge of the Southern Ocean, with no natural resources, would ultimately need a hand. New Zealand politicians, looking after their own skins, turned down the invitation to join, but I have recently heard it mooted again, twice in this year. So many Kiwis live in Australia already, and so many leave each year to live there and never to return here (about 34,000) and they are replaced with Somalis, Afghanis, Zimbabweans and such like, that the country is hardly likely to pick itself up and get into any sort of international running ever again. It has become a dumping ground for the United Nations leftoevers, courtesy of Helen Clark, PM, who signed up to anything Kofe Annan put forward in the hope that she would be offered a cushy seat in the UN. Didn't happen. Country is stuffed.
The funny thing is, the brown and black imports don't want to stay here either. As soon as they get the Kiwi passport, they're off elsewhere. They don't like the trapped feeling of living in such an isolated country. I may be wrong, but I think I read somewhere recently the net population gain for one year is about 6,000. That is after bringing in 50,000 p.a.
New Zealand's Nuclear Free Policy and the Decline of ANZUS:
June 1984 - Nuclear free New Zealand Bill introduced and passed in Parliament.
1985 - New Zealand refused a request from the United States for a visit from the old USS Buchanan on the grounds that it could carry nuclear weapons.
The US stuck rigidly to its principle of neither confirming nor denying whether its vessels were nuclear powered or armed and NZ stated that US ships were welcome provided they were not nuclear powered or armed.
And that is where it still stands.
I don't care one way or another about nuclear power. I think we will have to have nuclear power stations eventually but whether there will be anyone smart enough left in the country to run one properly is debateable.
Half of Maori marriages have been with a European since 1960. It is common to see blond haired and blue eyed children claiming Maori heritage. This is just the way it goes. If there is money somewhere in it, they go that way. When the money dries up and it is more profitable to claim European heritage, they will go the other way.
I think the new arrivals from Somalia and Afghanistan and elsewhere are frightened of the Maoris. Black people like to play the race card but the Maoris aren't having any of that. New Zealand is their country, always was, always will be, and anyone tries to mess with that comes right up against a big, tattooed, fist. When the imports complain, they are told to behave themselves. Very amusing.
That is a very rough outline of the economic and social history of New Zealand. What happened up until 1970 is gone, finished, kaput. From 1970 onwards (we will call these the 'modern times') New Zealand has been a social laboratory.
Domestic violence, alcoholism and child abuse was endemic in New Zealand. It was the hidden (and sometimes not so hidden - I have seen and experienced some dreadful things) disease of this country. Under the guise of Christianity - priests and pastors and ministers advocated the continuance of the 'Christian' way and turned their heads away from the problems they knew existed. The rates of illegitimate births were off the scale - often to under-age girls from incest, and rape, or blackmail or threats to force consent to sex were common.
Who brought these things into the open?
The Women's Movement.
Have things improved?
Yes, yes, yes!
Is the place now perfect?
Far from it, but it is better.
Will it improve further?
Quien sabe muchacha?
Friday, July 13, 2007
Isn't She Lovely?
The DUNEDIN (1876-1882) was the first ship to successfully transport a cargo of frozen meat from New Zealand to the UK. She departed February 1882 and arrived in London 98 days later.She was a full sailing ship originally made for carrying 400 passengers.
Frozen meat and dairy exports from New Zealand to Britain from then on formed the backbone of New Zealand's economy until Britain entered the EEC (European Economic Community) in 1974. New Zealand's produce was then excluded.
Farmers were being urged to diversify from sheep and dairy for several years prior to the British move but it is not easy to change well established farming practices. The farming families knew nothing other than sheep and cows. Plus there was the cost. It isn't easy to convert 400 acres into a vineyard. But most of all there is the weather. Practically all of New Zealand's arable land is coastal with the concomitant changeable and cold weather. Fruit and vegetables grow prolifically only inland. There is also a small but thriving wine industry in the areas protected from the salty winds. Very little other than sheep and cows will grow south of Christchurch. It is just too cold!
One thing New Zealand does have is a multi-million dollar fishing industry. Include salmon and mussel and oyster farms in that. Nevertheless, most of the fish go off-shore, and New Zealanders pay export prices for seafood. We have no home market.
Those who think investment of humans and capital in technology would be the path for New Zealand to follow need to live here for a year or two. About two percent of the population is capable of innovation, with another ten percent capable of working with it.
After 1970 many dairy farmers went out of dairying and into sheep, counting on the wool clip, but here we are nearly forty years later with huge dairy herds everywhere again. Some herds are 800-900 cows. (One milking is just finished and it is time to start another.) Milk in New Zealand is more expensive than petrol.
However, all things seem to even out over time and we now have Exxon and a couple of other international oil companies preparing to explore the Great South Basin where it is thought there could be the largest offshore oil field in the world. The poverty stricken south of the South Island may yet give this little country riches. This will be an exciting experience for the oil men working in the new oil fields if stories of experienced fishermen are true. They say they sail home in front of huge following seas - they fill themselves full of beer and marijuana, and are still too frightened to look behind them. They are never sure if the next giant wave will swamp them. Every family in the fishing community of Bluff has lost a family member by drowning.
The one single thing which prevents New Zealand from being anything other than what it is, is the geographical distance from other countries. We are so isolated, and this shows particularly in economics and culture. As a people we have grown in on ourselves, without fresh ideas or new blood. I remember my seafaring husband saying to me many years ago when I thought of going teaching at Pitcairn Island. "Don't do it!" he said, aghast. "The shipping company has given us orders not to sail within a certain distance of the island. If we do, the people there launch all sorts of little boats and row out to make contact. They are desperate to speak with anybody new. They go crazy with loneliness."
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Early Settlers
New Zealand has had European settlement only for the past 150 years. There were Europeans here before that but they were transients - sealers and whalers predominantly. The Maori race has been in New Zealand probably as early as the 10th or as late as the 13th century. It is thought they came from South East Asia because the Maori language has similarities with Japanese. They never moved out of the stone age. Life for them in pre-European times was nasty, brutal and short. They practised cannibalism, probably to enhance a diet which was based on fish, birds, and the kumara (a type of sweet potato). Inter-tribal warfare was constant. A man was old at 50 if he managed to escape being clubbed to death by marauding tribes. Although some Maoris look back on pre-European times as some sort of idyllic existence, it wasn't. Far from it. I studied pre-European Maori history at University and they lived on the brink of extinction all the time - usually from each other. They were all the same people, but they had divided themselves into tribes and fought each other. There had been another race in new Zealand before the Maoris arrived. They were called Morioris but the Maoris ate most of them.
When the Europeans began arriving they found a land which looked not unlike Britain, from whence most of them came, and thinly populated with stone age people. I myself had a grandfather from Cavan, in Ireland, a grandfather from Berwick in Scotland, a great-grandmother from England, and another great-grandmother from Scotland - I don't know where. So I am sort of a third generation New Zealander. The settlers came by sailing ship and although there were many ships wrecked with tragic loss of life all around New Zealand's coastline, these wrecks were the exception. Hundreds of sailing ships arrived and departed New Zealand's shores each year, year after year. Many of the ships made regular voyages for years, bringing their quotas of British families to settle in this faraway land. When the settlers disembarked at their port of arrival, they then set out for their final destination, often by bullock train. New Zealand still has the little settlements on each main road, each one separated by the distance it took a bullock train to travel in one day.
My Scottish grandfather arrived in port of Dunedin with his widowed mother and his brother. Both young men (20 and 22) had been given grants of land to take up. William (my paternal grandfather) went to Winton. I know very little about how he set about building a house, buying stock, farm implements, and how he lived generally in the early days. He died when I was only three years of age so I never got to ask him. I do know that he married the daughter of a neighbour and she died after delivering six children, (I suspect from a miscarriage that turned to a haemorrhage) so he went back to the same neighbour and got another of his daughters (my grandmother) who had another six children to him. The odd thing is that the first family was two girls and four boys and so was the second family. My maternal grandparents had eleven children. All grandparents children married and had children and at one count I had 42 aunts and uncles and heaven knows how many cousins.
All my grandparents worked hard. They were working class and expected to do nothing else. But now the odd details creep in. All grandparents and my parents were staunchly Labour (left-wing) voters but ferociously in favour of private property. All had left Britain to get away from a system where they could never advance financially or own property, but all were staunch monarchists. Standing for the National Anthem (God Save the Queen), saluting the flag, and fighting for King and Country was a given, even though they lived 13,000 miles away from the home country for which they were prepared to lay down their lives. Up until 1970, when Britain dumped New Zealand in favour of the Common Market, all New Zealanders were the same. They loved a country they had left and would never return to, or a country they would never see or live in. When I was a child and went to the pictures (as we call the movies here) God Save the King (later God Save the Queen) was played before the pictures started and EVERYONE stood. When I started school the Union Jack was raised on the flagpole each morning. New Zealand was a little England. The early settlers left their homeland and crossed the sea and brought their homeland with them - every last little bit of it - except the class system. That, they left behind and that, they refused to see erected again in their new country. Egalitarianism was the new cry - everybody equal! There were to be no Lords and Ladies and Dukes and Duchesses owning vast tracts of land and being landlords to the peasants. There was to be no forelock pulling, no bowing before inbred and chinless aristrocrats, no workhouse, no enclosures, and there was to be enfranchisement (of the men at first) which meant all had a say in the building of the new country.
There was to be free education, free public libraries, and free health care. Those things which were not to be had back home these free men and women were going to build for themselves. And they did. There was to be a minimum quarter acre section for each home so the men could keep a garden to grow fresh vegetables for their rosy cheeked children. And they did. There were to be playgrounds for the children, ante-natal care for mothers-to-be, and a full fourteen days in hospital when the first child was delivered. Infant mortality was the lowest in the world. Life was good. People who mattered came to visit New Zealand from all around the world, to view for themselves this little land where everyone had everything. Up until 1969 New Zealand had world class roads, safe bridges, cheap electricity, practically no crime rate worth mentioning, very little disease (the TB hospitals had not been used for years), a reasonably good education system, an excellent health system and full employment. The Government employed one in every five people and the jobs were until 65, then retirement on a Government pension. Santa came every year, the church bells rang on Sunday, and it seemed the good life would go on forever. Then Britain joined the Common Market, the EU as it is now known, and little New Zealand had to begin searching for new markets for her sheepmeat, wool and dairy products. And the new markets were tough.
When the Europeans began arriving they found a land which looked not unlike Britain, from whence most of them came, and thinly populated with stone age people. I myself had a grandfather from Cavan, in Ireland, a grandfather from Berwick in Scotland, a great-grandmother from England, and another great-grandmother from Scotland - I don't know where. So I am sort of a third generation New Zealander. The settlers came by sailing ship and although there were many ships wrecked with tragic loss of life all around New Zealand's coastline, these wrecks were the exception. Hundreds of sailing ships arrived and departed New Zealand's shores each year, year after year. Many of the ships made regular voyages for years, bringing their quotas of British families to settle in this faraway land. When the settlers disembarked at their port of arrival, they then set out for their final destination, often by bullock train. New Zealand still has the little settlements on each main road, each one separated by the distance it took a bullock train to travel in one day.
My Scottish grandfather arrived in port of Dunedin with his widowed mother and his brother. Both young men (20 and 22) had been given grants of land to take up. William (my paternal grandfather) went to Winton. I know very little about how he set about building a house, buying stock, farm implements, and how he lived generally in the early days. He died when I was only three years of age so I never got to ask him. I do know that he married the daughter of a neighbour and she died after delivering six children, (I suspect from a miscarriage that turned to a haemorrhage) so he went back to the same neighbour and got another of his daughters (my grandmother) who had another six children to him. The odd thing is that the first family was two girls and four boys and so was the second family. My maternal grandparents had eleven children. All grandparents children married and had children and at one count I had 42 aunts and uncles and heaven knows how many cousins.
All my grandparents worked hard. They were working class and expected to do nothing else. But now the odd details creep in. All grandparents and my parents were staunchly Labour (left-wing) voters but ferociously in favour of private property. All had left Britain to get away from a system where they could never advance financially or own property, but all were staunch monarchists. Standing for the National Anthem (God Save the Queen), saluting the flag, and fighting for King and Country was a given, even though they lived 13,000 miles away from the home country for which they were prepared to lay down their lives. Up until 1970, when Britain dumped New Zealand in favour of the Common Market, all New Zealanders were the same. They loved a country they had left and would never return to, or a country they would never see or live in. When I was a child and went to the pictures (as we call the movies here) God Save the King (later God Save the Queen) was played before the pictures started and EVERYONE stood. When I started school the Union Jack was raised on the flagpole each morning. New Zealand was a little England. The early settlers left their homeland and crossed the sea and brought their homeland with them - every last little bit of it - except the class system. That, they left behind and that, they refused to see erected again in their new country. Egalitarianism was the new cry - everybody equal! There were to be no Lords and Ladies and Dukes and Duchesses owning vast tracts of land and being landlords to the peasants. There was to be no forelock pulling, no bowing before inbred and chinless aristrocrats, no workhouse, no enclosures, and there was to be enfranchisement (of the men at first) which meant all had a say in the building of the new country.
There was to be free education, free public libraries, and free health care. Those things which were not to be had back home these free men and women were going to build for themselves. And they did. There was to be a minimum quarter acre section for each home so the men could keep a garden to grow fresh vegetables for their rosy cheeked children. And they did. There were to be playgrounds for the children, ante-natal care for mothers-to-be, and a full fourteen days in hospital when the first child was delivered. Infant mortality was the lowest in the world. Life was good. People who mattered came to visit New Zealand from all around the world, to view for themselves this little land where everyone had everything. Up until 1969 New Zealand had world class roads, safe bridges, cheap electricity, practically no crime rate worth mentioning, very little disease (the TB hospitals had not been used for years), a reasonably good education system, an excellent health system and full employment. The Government employed one in every five people and the jobs were until 65, then retirement on a Government pension. Santa came every year, the church bells rang on Sunday, and it seemed the good life would go on forever. Then Britain joined the Common Market, the EU as it is now known, and little New Zealand had to begin searching for new markets for her sheepmeat, wool and dairy products. And the new markets were tough.
Monday, July 09, 2007
An Investigation of Political Ideologies
I have tried to be, for most of my adult life, responsible and well balanced, and I have taken seriously my privilege of living in a democratic society. I vote whenever a vote is called for and to the best of my ability, I vote for what I see as the public good. I have never been called upon to serve as a juror but I can assure you that if I was, I would be the most conscientious juror on the bench. I am an assiduous record keeper. My personal accounts are impeccable and I never get into debt. I do not practise civil disobedience. If the sign says not to walk on the grass, I walk on the footpath. I put my groceries into an environmentally safe re-usable bag. I have never sullied my mind by watching pornography or wanton violence. I am polite and quiet and well behaved. I have never taken drugs. I have never been in jail, or a court of law for that matter either. I have been a good girl.
I was not well-educated at school but I went to university when I was older and got a Bachelor's degree in English. I then went to Teacher Training College and got a Diploma in Secondary Teaching. I have always been a great reader (one is never alone when one has a good book) and I married and have a batch of daughters.
However, as the Greeks said an unexamined life was not worth living, I have decided at this late stage to do some examining, to see whether my exemplary record of obedience and yea-saying is going to reward me with a crown of virtue - or even a pat on the back - from those authorities who have made all the rules for me to follow.
To do this examining has meant quite a lot of peripheral reading because when I dipped into the meanings of words like 'democracy' and 'public good' and 'civil disobedience' - not to mention the host of other words which appeared to be connected to these terms - I found that I had actually fallen into an area called 'Philosophy' and I wasn't sure at all if I should be there. Not only was it called philosophy, but there were sub-terms called 'ethics' and 'morals' and 'logic' and I thought 'Oh boy! Why weren't we taught things like this at school, when my brain was young and fresh and absorbent?'
At school we spent ages studying the feudal agricultural system in medieval England and nothing, it now seems, about the world we actually lived in. In my defense, I thought I knew what was going on for most of my life, but now it appears I missed practically everything. I wasn't even a cog in the machine. I think I was a very insignificant spare part stored away somewhere just in case. Of course I can blame quite a lot of my ignorance on the fact that it is common here in New Zealand, the Land of the Long White Shroud. Nobody really knows anything.
Let me re-phrase that. They used to know nothing, and then the internet came along!
There are certain salient facts you need to know about New Zealand before I can really get down to the task of sorting out political ideologies in my mind.
1. New Zealand is not a Pacific island with hula dancing women and an idyllic lifestyle. It is three islands in the edge of the Southern Ocean, which is COLD.
2. New Zealand is the windiest place in the world and Wellington is the windiest place in New Zealand. When I say wind, I mean at best a cold, uncomfortable, stiff breeze and at worst gale force winds when you just stay at home.
3. New Zealand has 4 million people but until 1990 it had 3 million people, two thirds of which lived in the top half of the North Island. Of the 1 million people who lived in the South Island, one third of these lived in Christchurch. Things haven't changed much since 1990. One can travel for miles here on marvellous country roads without seeing another car.
4. New Zealand is a primary producer - beef, dairy products, (for some reason milk here is dearer than petrol) sheepmeat and fruit. It is in competition with all other countries who produce such goods but is much further away. Nobody really wants New Zealand goods. There is also something about transport costs here which I must look into.
5. It is said that we have a Labour (cf Socialist) government here in New Zealand. I can remember many successive National (cf Republican or Conservative) governments which were absolutely no different to what we have now. Even now, National agrees with Labour on most issues and votes along with them.
6. New Zealand's favourite building materials are corrugated iron and number 8 wire. I kid you not.
7. Last but not least, (as I must finish this post and get on to the next one which begins to specifically detail the rise and why of political ideologies in New Zealand) a little story dating back to 1967.
I was staying in Wellington with Andrew and Marie Rogers. Andrew was 40, an ex merchant seaman with one eye (lost the other in a fight) who had been around the block more than once. He grew up in the Gorbals in Glasgow, at the time one of the roughest places in Scotland. Food was short, jobs were scarce, living conditions were harsh, and education was a luxury. Andrew liked New Zealand and decided to stay here, married Marie, and had been working for two or three years as a chef. One day Andrew said to me "You know Jude, there is something wrong with this country. I don't know what it is. People have everything - telephones, washing machines, schools with sports fields, playgrounds for children, good health care, everything is free - but there is something terribly wrong here and I can't work out what it is. The Gorbals was a terrible place to live but I would almost rather be back there than here. People in the Gorbals seemed to be happier and better people."
I had not been out of New Zealand at that time but when I did begin to travel I saw what Andrew meant. The odd thing is, things are even worse now than they were in 1967. This fact requires investigation as well.
Please bear with me anyone who reads this blog. I am trying to work things out for myself and I may make statements which, as I progress, I have to refute or re-phrase. I intend analysing different political ideologies ONLY in connection with New Zealand, as then I can give a first-hand (albeit personal) opinion. Let's see then, how it goes aye?
I was not well-educated at school but I went to university when I was older and got a Bachelor's degree in English. I then went to Teacher Training College and got a Diploma in Secondary Teaching. I have always been a great reader (one is never alone when one has a good book) and I married and have a batch of daughters.
However, as the Greeks said an unexamined life was not worth living, I have decided at this late stage to do some examining, to see whether my exemplary record of obedience and yea-saying is going to reward me with a crown of virtue - or even a pat on the back - from those authorities who have made all the rules for me to follow.
To do this examining has meant quite a lot of peripheral reading because when I dipped into the meanings of words like 'democracy' and 'public good' and 'civil disobedience' - not to mention the host of other words which appeared to be connected to these terms - I found that I had actually fallen into an area called 'Philosophy' and I wasn't sure at all if I should be there. Not only was it called philosophy, but there were sub-terms called 'ethics' and 'morals' and 'logic' and I thought 'Oh boy! Why weren't we taught things like this at school, when my brain was young and fresh and absorbent?'
At school we spent ages studying the feudal agricultural system in medieval England and nothing, it now seems, about the world we actually lived in. In my defense, I thought I knew what was going on for most of my life, but now it appears I missed practically everything. I wasn't even a cog in the machine. I think I was a very insignificant spare part stored away somewhere just in case. Of course I can blame quite a lot of my ignorance on the fact that it is common here in New Zealand, the Land of the Long White Shroud. Nobody really knows anything.
Let me re-phrase that. They used to know nothing, and then the internet came along!
There are certain salient facts you need to know about New Zealand before I can really get down to the task of sorting out political ideologies in my mind.
1. New Zealand is not a Pacific island with hula dancing women and an idyllic lifestyle. It is three islands in the edge of the Southern Ocean, which is COLD.
2. New Zealand is the windiest place in the world and Wellington is the windiest place in New Zealand. When I say wind, I mean at best a cold, uncomfortable, stiff breeze and at worst gale force winds when you just stay at home.
3. New Zealand has 4 million people but until 1990 it had 3 million people, two thirds of which lived in the top half of the North Island. Of the 1 million people who lived in the South Island, one third of these lived in Christchurch. Things haven't changed much since 1990. One can travel for miles here on marvellous country roads without seeing another car.
4. New Zealand is a primary producer - beef, dairy products, (for some reason milk here is dearer than petrol) sheepmeat and fruit. It is in competition with all other countries who produce such goods but is much further away. Nobody really wants New Zealand goods. There is also something about transport costs here which I must look into.
5. It is said that we have a Labour (cf Socialist) government here in New Zealand. I can remember many successive National (cf Republican or Conservative) governments which were absolutely no different to what we have now. Even now, National agrees with Labour on most issues and votes along with them.
6. New Zealand's favourite building materials are corrugated iron and number 8 wire. I kid you not.
7. Last but not least, (as I must finish this post and get on to the next one which begins to specifically detail the rise and why of political ideologies in New Zealand) a little story dating back to 1967.
I was staying in Wellington with Andrew and Marie Rogers. Andrew was 40, an ex merchant seaman with one eye (lost the other in a fight) who had been around the block more than once. He grew up in the Gorbals in Glasgow, at the time one of the roughest places in Scotland. Food was short, jobs were scarce, living conditions were harsh, and education was a luxury. Andrew liked New Zealand and decided to stay here, married Marie, and had been working for two or three years as a chef. One day Andrew said to me "You know Jude, there is something wrong with this country. I don't know what it is. People have everything - telephones, washing machines, schools with sports fields, playgrounds for children, good health care, everything is free - but there is something terribly wrong here and I can't work out what it is. The Gorbals was a terrible place to live but I would almost rather be back there than here. People in the Gorbals seemed to be happier and better people."
I had not been out of New Zealand at that time but when I did begin to travel I saw what Andrew meant. The odd thing is, things are even worse now than they were in 1967. This fact requires investigation as well.
Please bear with me anyone who reads this blog. I am trying to work things out for myself and I may make statements which, as I progress, I have to refute or re-phrase. I intend analysing different political ideologies ONLY in connection with New Zealand, as then I can give a first-hand (albeit personal) opinion. Let's see then, how it goes aye?
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Totalitarianism
Now why, I asked myself, would anyone in their right mind want to inflict totalitarianism (via any ideological or religious system) onto humanity? It has been proven by the USSR, China and Korea, to deaden human creativity and intellect. Although I must admit, all Russians I have met - who were brought up under Socialism - were well versed in opera, ballet, classic literature, history - albeit a bit slanted but then isn't ours? - and politics. Not so now that they havc a steady diet of Western rubbish, but there is a reason for that and it has to do with what I see as treasonous actions by Russian traitors. Russians don't miss standing in line to buy brown synthetic suits, but they do miss the cheap power which gave them warmth in their flats - if they were lucky enough to get one. Sometimes I think the Russian State would have had a perfectly happy population if they had just arranged massive imports of the latest blue denim jeans from USA for their young people.
Look at all the left-wing proponents throughout the world. In history even. All they want, it seems, is to reduce all people to the same level - economically, intellectually, and even (as I have noticed lately) racially. They don't really want diversity or multiculturalism, although these are cried on their banners. They want everyone to be brown, poor, and stupid. Then, it appears, we will all be happy. Because we are the same people in a global village there will be no more wars, no more competition. Eveyone will be happy, well fed, and have a job. There will no longer be rich and poor, (we will all be poor) sick and healthy, (baffled about how they will fix that - make a law against being sick?) weak and strong, (we will all be weak) clever and stupid (we will all be stupid), and marching in formation to enriching and fulfilling work each day. Heaven knows what sort of work we will be marching to! Possibly, as George Orwell predicted, the more literary of us will be re-writing history. (Vale, Cordus!)
What about religion? Christianity won't be much of a problem, (bend your neck to the yoke, render unto Caesar etc) but Jews and Muslims - now there's a problem. One lot wants time off to pray five times a day with obligatory washing, half of them can't work because of the clothes they wear, another lot won't work on Friday, all the holy days they are half stunned with hunger from fasting, some won't work with others...I suppose the Christians will have to pull double their weight but hang on, will there even be religion? Will the State permit it?
Have the left-wing proponents of the uni-race global village thought this whole plan through properly?
Do they really think millions of people are going to give up their languages, customs, identities and religions to become some sort of mono-man?
Valerie Morse (who burnt the New Zealand flag on ANZAC day - if my father had been there he would have re-arranged her teeth for her) has been sucking at the public tit for a long time. The woman is a professional agitator who spends her spare time doing university degrees at the taxpayers' expense. She applies for, and gets grants. I suspect a lot of agitators do the same. They seem to have an enormous amount of spare time on their hands to travel, print off their little agitprop leaflets and tracts, socialise with other agitators, and just generally agitate. It's a living I guess.
I suspect the proponents of a future socialist heaven think their natural talents for leadership and ideological guidance for the masses will propel them into leadership positions so they will never have to be bound by their own totalitarian philosophies. Poor silly creatures. Those who don't know about history are bound to repeat it. They are hoist by their own petards.
So my conclusion about all this left-wing nonsense of freedom for all is that they will (if we don't do something about it) have us end up in chains. If people like Valerie Morse and her kind think they will somehow be exempt, I can assure them (and probably will as we pass each other on the way to the cornfield with our sickles) they will not.
Look at all the left-wing proponents throughout the world. In history even. All they want, it seems, is to reduce all people to the same level - economically, intellectually, and even (as I have noticed lately) racially. They don't really want diversity or multiculturalism, although these are cried on their banners. They want everyone to be brown, poor, and stupid. Then, it appears, we will all be happy. Because we are the same people in a global village there will be no more wars, no more competition. Eveyone will be happy, well fed, and have a job. There will no longer be rich and poor, (we will all be poor) sick and healthy, (baffled about how they will fix that - make a law against being sick?) weak and strong, (we will all be weak) clever and stupid (we will all be stupid), and marching in formation to enriching and fulfilling work each day. Heaven knows what sort of work we will be marching to! Possibly, as George Orwell predicted, the more literary of us will be re-writing history. (Vale, Cordus!)
What about religion? Christianity won't be much of a problem, (bend your neck to the yoke, render unto Caesar etc) but Jews and Muslims - now there's a problem. One lot wants time off to pray five times a day with obligatory washing, half of them can't work because of the clothes they wear, another lot won't work on Friday, all the holy days they are half stunned with hunger from fasting, some won't work with others...I suppose the Christians will have to pull double their weight but hang on, will there even be religion? Will the State permit it?
Have the left-wing proponents of the uni-race global village thought this whole plan through properly?
Do they really think millions of people are going to give up their languages, customs, identities and religions to become some sort of mono-man?
Valerie Morse (who burnt the New Zealand flag on ANZAC day - if my father had been there he would have re-arranged her teeth for her) has been sucking at the public tit for a long time. The woman is a professional agitator who spends her spare time doing university degrees at the taxpayers' expense. She applies for, and gets grants. I suspect a lot of agitators do the same. They seem to have an enormous amount of spare time on their hands to travel, print off their little agitprop leaflets and tracts, socialise with other agitators, and just generally agitate. It's a living I guess.
I suspect the proponents of a future socialist heaven think their natural talents for leadership and ideological guidance for the masses will propel them into leadership positions so they will never have to be bound by their own totalitarian philosophies. Poor silly creatures. Those who don't know about history are bound to repeat it. They are hoist by their own petards.
So my conclusion about all this left-wing nonsense of freedom for all is that they will (if we don't do something about it) have us end up in chains. If people like Valerie Morse and her kind think they will somehow be exempt, I can assure them (and probably will as we pass each other on the way to the cornfield with our sickles) they will not.
Freedom of Speech
A.D. 25 TACITUS Annals IV
Next year, a completely novel type of charge was levelled against the historian Cremutius Cordus: that in his Annals he had eulogised Marcus Brutus and referred to Gaius Cassius as the last of the Romans.
...
(Cordus was on a trumped up charge of treason, brought by dependents of Sejanus, the man who was a favourite of Tiberius, and gave a speech in the senate in his defence - some excerpts are below in quote marks.)(Jude)
...
'The poems of Furius Bibaculus and Catullus are literally packed with insults aimed at Julius Caesar and Augustus, and they are still read today. Both rulers, however, tolerated these writings and let them alone, showing moderation, or perhaps I should say statesmanship. People lose interest in things that are ignored, but think there must be some truth in those which provoke anger.'
'I am saying nothing about the Greeks. Not only did they enjoy a freedom of speech without fear of punishment, but one might even call it a licence. In the case of objection, words were met with words.'
'Surely my speeches are not therefore inciting people to civil war? It is seventy years since Brutus and Cassius died; yet their statues are still to be seen. Not even their conqueror banned these.'
'Posterity gives each man his due; if I am condemned there will be people who will remember me just as Brutus and Cassius are remembered.'
After his speech Cordus left the Senate and starved himself to death. Even so, by senatorial decree, the aediles were instructed to burn his books. These survived underground, however, and were republished.
The episode leaves one amazed at the stupidity of those who believe that the political leaders of one generation can starve the next of memories. On the contrary, if you take action against writers it enhances their standing. Foreign monarchs and those who imitate their cruelty only succeed in glorifying the reputation of those whom they try to suppress, and in bringing dishonour upon themselves. (Tacitus)
A.D. 2007 JUDE (post on blog)
There has been a law passed named 'Holocaust Denial' and anyone who denies that the Holocaust took place can now be jailed. I think this law is active in Austria but am not sure where else. One old guy named David Irving was jailed in Austria, I read it in the BBC news some weeks ago.
For fifty years I have never doubted that the Holocaust took place. I don't think anyone I have spoken to doubted what they saw as a fact. Now, however, I have heard murmurs asking the question - Why pass a law? Will things get to the stage where I could be jailed for asking why it was necessary to pass a law?
People lose interest in things that are ignored, but think there must be something in things which provoke anger.
Socialism/Communism/Fascism
I have not, for most of my life, been a particularly political creature. I did not have the time. I worked (mostly full-time) and raised three children. However, in my autumn years I now have the leisure in which to view the world, historically, politically, and economically (economics are SO boring). I read left wing blogs and right wing blogs and have come to the conclusion that I am a centrist, with no ideological or religious beliefs that can fire me up whatsoever.
(It is generally accepted that most young people are inclined to the left but that as they grow older and wiser, they incline more to the right. I was too busy to incline either way when young, and now I am too old and too lazy.)
Fascism seems to me to be a good thing - patriotism, nationalism and a policy of independence - which I have noticed all countries aspire to or practise, but the Germans, the best known Fascists in the modern world, have been punished for being Fascists for the last 62 years.
Socialism seems to me to be a good thing. I live in a socialist country. We have a pretty good welfare system (which originated in Germany) which I think is a good thing in a country which is only good at growing grass and is situated on the edge of the Southern Ocean. If we didn't have a welfare system I think most of us would have to move or starve to death. However, the national flag is flown at all important ceremonies (and burnt this past ANZAC day by one Valerie Morse, a woman with a strong American accent) and patriotism and nationalism is called into play whenever it suits the politicians.
Communism seems to have been a good thing - to the Russians I know who lived under it. They call themselves Socialists but most of them also practise traits recognised as Fascist i.e. patriotism (they love Mother Russia), nationalism (they think Russians are the best people in the world), and they would love to have a policy of national independence. However, during their 'socialist' period, young Russians would sell State secrets for a pair of blue denim jeans.
Religion seems to be a good thing to those frightened people who hope for eternal life, but a bad thing for those who see it as hypocritical indoctrination of a belief system used for control of minds. I mean, if one believes in angels and devils (as religions tell you to), why shouldn't one believe in fairies and leprechauns? (Because religions tell you not to.)
Fascism, Socialism and Communism are not compatible with 'open' and 'democratic' societies. They are (or must become) totalitarian. Theocracies are in their very essence totalitarian. I think these ideologies descend into totalitarianism because there are flaws, (often nonsensical), in all of these systems and people must be discouraged from questioning these flaws. Totalitarianism demands the entire subservience of the individual to the State, which will tell you what to think and what to say. If you do not say and do what the State, or the religious person wants you to say and do, you will be jailed, or killed, to protect the system.
People lose interest in things which are ignored, but think there must be something in things which provoke anger.
The one thing a democratic society has which sets it apart from all other idealogies is freedom of speech. When someone interferes with that freedom of speech and puts someone in jail for saying something outside the accepted political or religious line, I (and many like me) sit up and take notice. Words must be met with words! If I was living in a totalitarian society, I would expect such occurrences, but I do not. I live in a democracy - or do I?
Vale Cordus - you are remembered.
Next year, a completely novel type of charge was levelled against the historian Cremutius Cordus: that in his Annals he had eulogised Marcus Brutus and referred to Gaius Cassius as the last of the Romans.
...
(Cordus was on a trumped up charge of treason, brought by dependents of Sejanus, the man who was a favourite of Tiberius, and gave a speech in the senate in his defence - some excerpts are below in quote marks.)(Jude)
...
'The poems of Furius Bibaculus and Catullus are literally packed with insults aimed at Julius Caesar and Augustus, and they are still read today. Both rulers, however, tolerated these writings and let them alone, showing moderation, or perhaps I should say statesmanship. People lose interest in things that are ignored, but think there must be some truth in those which provoke anger.'
'I am saying nothing about the Greeks. Not only did they enjoy a freedom of speech without fear of punishment, but one might even call it a licence. In the case of objection, words were met with words.'
'Surely my speeches are not therefore inciting people to civil war? It is seventy years since Brutus and Cassius died; yet their statues are still to be seen. Not even their conqueror banned these.'
'Posterity gives each man his due; if I am condemned there will be people who will remember me just as Brutus and Cassius are remembered.'
After his speech Cordus left the Senate and starved himself to death. Even so, by senatorial decree, the aediles were instructed to burn his books. These survived underground, however, and were republished.
The episode leaves one amazed at the stupidity of those who believe that the political leaders of one generation can starve the next of memories. On the contrary, if you take action against writers it enhances their standing. Foreign monarchs and those who imitate their cruelty only succeed in glorifying the reputation of those whom they try to suppress, and in bringing dishonour upon themselves. (Tacitus)
A.D. 2007 JUDE (post on blog)
There has been a law passed named 'Holocaust Denial' and anyone who denies that the Holocaust took place can now be jailed. I think this law is active in Austria but am not sure where else. One old guy named David Irving was jailed in Austria, I read it in the BBC news some weeks ago.
For fifty years I have never doubted that the Holocaust took place. I don't think anyone I have spoken to doubted what they saw as a fact. Now, however, I have heard murmurs asking the question - Why pass a law? Will things get to the stage where I could be jailed for asking why it was necessary to pass a law?
People lose interest in things that are ignored, but think there must be something in things which provoke anger.
Socialism/Communism/Fascism
I have not, for most of my life, been a particularly political creature. I did not have the time. I worked (mostly full-time) and raised three children. However, in my autumn years I now have the leisure in which to view the world, historically, politically, and economically (economics are SO boring). I read left wing blogs and right wing blogs and have come to the conclusion that I am a centrist, with no ideological or religious beliefs that can fire me up whatsoever.
(It is generally accepted that most young people are inclined to the left but that as they grow older and wiser, they incline more to the right. I was too busy to incline either way when young, and now I am too old and too lazy.)
Fascism seems to me to be a good thing - patriotism, nationalism and a policy of independence - which I have noticed all countries aspire to or practise, but the Germans, the best known Fascists in the modern world, have been punished for being Fascists for the last 62 years.
Socialism seems to me to be a good thing. I live in a socialist country. We have a pretty good welfare system (which originated in Germany) which I think is a good thing in a country which is only good at growing grass and is situated on the edge of the Southern Ocean. If we didn't have a welfare system I think most of us would have to move or starve to death. However, the national flag is flown at all important ceremonies (and burnt this past ANZAC day by one Valerie Morse, a woman with a strong American accent) and patriotism and nationalism is called into play whenever it suits the politicians.
Communism seems to have been a good thing - to the Russians I know who lived under it. They call themselves Socialists but most of them also practise traits recognised as Fascist i.e. patriotism (they love Mother Russia), nationalism (they think Russians are the best people in the world), and they would love to have a policy of national independence. However, during their 'socialist' period, young Russians would sell State secrets for a pair of blue denim jeans.
Religion seems to be a good thing to those frightened people who hope for eternal life, but a bad thing for those who see it as hypocritical indoctrination of a belief system used for control of minds. I mean, if one believes in angels and devils (as religions tell you to), why shouldn't one believe in fairies and leprechauns? (Because religions tell you not to.)
Fascism, Socialism and Communism are not compatible with 'open' and 'democratic' societies. They are (or must become) totalitarian. Theocracies are in their very essence totalitarian. I think these ideologies descend into totalitarianism because there are flaws, (often nonsensical), in all of these systems and people must be discouraged from questioning these flaws. Totalitarianism demands the entire subservience of the individual to the State, which will tell you what to think and what to say. If you do not say and do what the State, or the religious person wants you to say and do, you will be jailed, or killed, to protect the system.
People lose interest in things which are ignored, but think there must be something in things which provoke anger.
The one thing a democratic society has which sets it apart from all other idealogies is freedom of speech. When someone interferes with that freedom of speech and puts someone in jail for saying something outside the accepted political or religious line, I (and many like me) sit up and take notice. Words must be met with words! If I was living in a totalitarian society, I would expect such occurrences, but I do not. I live in a democracy - or do I?
Vale Cordus - you are remembered.
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