Taking things for granted...

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Taking things for granted...

My daughter, my son and I flew back to Wellington from Christchurch at 7:40 am this morning. My brother's funeral was attended by many relatives and friends down there, some coming from the surrounding Canterbury district and Australia. Richard's service was held in the Buddhist monastery on the outskirts of Christchurch City. He converted to Buddhism when he married his Thai wife many years ago. Everybody was made extremely welcome by the abbot and the monks there. He had both a Buddhist and a Christian service. A lovely complex, but the temple is out of bounds until it is inspected by assessors because of the recent earthquake.

It was great to meet up with many of my relatives I hadn't seen for many, many years. But that is the way of funerals. We all need to find some other reasons to meet up, don't we? We as a family will all meet up again at a later date to scatter Richard's ashes at place yet to be decided. Thats the way he wanted it.

During the last few days we have witnessed at first hand some of the difficulties being experienced by Christchurch residents since the earthquake nearly a fortnight ago. Apart from the damage and horrible mess, and the smell of liquefaction, it has been the loss of electricity, water and sewerage that has inconvenienced people down there. Most have water, nearly all have electricity but a great many have had to resort to some basic toilet facilities better known in generations past - a hole at the back of the garden. Many portaloos - portable toilets have been distributed around the eastern suburbs. Can you imagine walking down the street to visit a portaloo, which is something the size of a telephone box? And perhaps even wait in line? We couldn't get into the CBD yet, because that is still a no-go area. Search and rescue has now been replaced by recovery. And the death toll count has continued upwards.

In civil tragedies such as earthquakes in New Zealand, or floods in Australia recently,and many other countries, it is the things you take for granted that can be denied you. People were still without sewerage on their properties months after the first earthquake last September - five months ago.

Christchurch is a sad, sad place, but the people battle on bravely and support one and another. There have been instances of unacceptable and despicable behaviour, but with about 300 Australian police in Christchurch at the moment, their chances of avoiding being apprehended are much less than usual. Catch you all again later!

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Unsolved NZ murders - The Ward Parcel-bomb Murder, Dunedin, 1962

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Unsolved New Zealand murders: The Ward Parcel-Bomb Murder, Dunedin, 1962

At 9 a.m. on 5 February 1962 James Patrick Ward a well-known Dunedin barrister, received a parcel in his office. A few minutes later the building was shaken by an explosion. Ward was rushed to the Dominican Tertiary Hospital, where he died six hours later. Although the police, in the course of their investigations, established the method by which death was inflicted, they were unable to discover any motive for the crime or to gather sufficient evidence to justify an arrest. From an examination of the debris in Ward's office, the police found that the parcel had been posted in Dunedin during the preceding weekend. It contained a roughly made wooden box in which were two torch batteries, a pull-through switch, an electric detonator, a quantity of explosive, electrical wiring, and pieces of tin. Apparently the opening of the parcel completed an electrical circuit which detonated the explosive.

An incident similar to the Ward case occurred in 1937 when a bomb was thrown at R. A. Singer, an Auckland lawyer. The Singer case has never been solved.

Acknowledgements:
Written by Ronald Jones, Journalist and Script Writer, New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, Wellington

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Australia could have a Kiwi first lady...

Image via WikipediaAustralia could have a Kiwi born first lady...




If Tony Abbott is elected as prime minister, Australia could have a Kiwi first lady, from my neck of the woods here in the Hutt Valley, just a few miles outside of the New Zealand capital, Wellington City.



Margie Abbott was born, raised and educated here in Lower Hutt city. By all accounts she was an excellent scholar and enjoyed sports during those days. She moved to Sydney in 1983 and met her future husband, Tony Abbott,in a pub there. He was born in England and moved to Australia as a youngster. The Abbotts have three daughters who get their fair share of Kiwi cultural education, including the Maori haka.



Known as the 'Mad Monk' by his political opponents and a minister in the John Howard administration, Tony Abbott is on the verge of becoming prime minister of Australia, if the pundits have it right. If not he will continue as the leader of the opposition there in Canberra, because he has brought his party close to election as government this time.

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Follow up to my Kiwi starvation story...

Image via Wikipedia

This is a follow up to my recent kiwi starvation story, which had some ethicacy issues:




The disabled Wellington women, Margaret Page, has now not eaten for two weeks and has only drunk a very small amount of water, since declaring her intention to starve herself to death.



The sixty year old New Zealander suffered a cerebral haemorrhage 20 years ago and has been living at the St John of God care home in Wellington City since 2006. Last night a spokesman for the home said her condition had not changed.Original story

Quote of the day...

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Quote of the day...


Quote of the day from the Dominion Post, Wellington, NZ:



"There are times when a minister says something so maddening, so death-defyingly stupid, that I am glad not to be in the same room in case I reach out, grab his tie, and end what is left of my political career with one almighty head-butt."



London Mayor Boris Johnson on British Children's Secretary Ed Balls, who does not see much of a future for Latin in schools.

The Hutt River clean up kicks off New Zealand's campaign to clean up its waterways...

The Hutt River clean up kicks off New Zealand's campaign to clean up its waterways...

The Hutt River clean up in the Hutt Valley district of Wellington kicks off New Zealand's national campaign.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman, plans to raft and kayak down some of NZ's most polluted rivers to raise water quality issues

A New Zealand national campaign to clean up the country's waterways gets underway at the Hutt River this morning.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman is planning to raft and kayak down some of the country's most polluted lowland rivers to raise awareness of water quality issues.

He says the Hutt River is a special part of the landscape but it is badly polluted by stormwater, agricultural and urban run off.

"Our rivers are those wild places held in common for everybody in the lowlands. Everyone can get access to the Hutt River. You just need to make sure it's clean enough so that everyone can use it."

Mr Norman says the Hutt River is a classic example of the problems waterways are facing as it starts out as one of the cleanest rivers in the country but ends up ranked in the bottom ten for water quality.

Hutt River clean up