jennifer45

[QUOTE=
Hubby still talks about Rainbow Warrior too and how distressing he found that as an incident - and what life was like growing up in a small village on the West Coast looking after 10 chickens and a goat That way of life is still ingrained into him despite having lived here for 12 years - it's a certain attitude and outlook that he has as a New Zealander which is different and I don't know if I could ever quite understand it (but I am a city girl!).

He also bought me some Barry Crump which, try as I might, I just couldn't get into [/QUOTE]

Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J55MNq7Y4gs

Your Hubby sounds great! I still talk about Rainbow Warrior.

Had 9 hens but my father's relatives had most of North Yorks Dales+ the sheep farms.

I was a school holidays farmer- rest of the time a big city girl!


If I were younger by 30 years- but i'm not!

ExKiwilass

If there is a book, I'd love to read it.

I agree. I don't know whether it's because of the small country/isolated thing and needing to get on, but kiwis don't tend to seek out that kind of confrontation because, in such a small country where people are very interconnected and interrelated, that kind of thing can have repercussions. WE tend to look for ways to get on, not ways to argue. We save those discussions for people we know really well.

THe wars are important because of the sense of abandonment many Pakeha felt by the British empire and also the belief that our men were treated as cannon fodder by the British (according to my oldies). All our men were fighting overseas for the UK and we were essentially undefended, and our troops were not allowed to come home. I remember my nana telling me all they had were fake wooden guns in case of japanese invasion of wellington and bunch of elderly,lame and crippled men. The joke was, they'd go up on the hills and shoot the Japanese full of bora (termites). "Never forget, girl, teh English didn't care about us." I think this was a big period of disillusionment in the Empire - the Empire showed that it was more than capable of throwing it's farthest outposts under the bus if necessary, which was not what most of the nzers had been brought up to believe- Britannia was supposed to rule the waves and protect them, and she didn't.

Nana loved the AMericans, she believed they saved us from Japanese invasion and she would never let me forget it. She had no time for the British whatsoever after WW2. It's a generational thing though - I don't know exactly when the Anti-americanism started in NZ, but the no-nukes thing definitely kicked it up another level, because the US was not happy with us.

Just as an aside, I was quite taken aback to visit the UK and find people assumed we colonials never suffered during the wars and we were all lying around eating pineapples or something.

I remember the Bok tour well because my parents supported it - they really believed politics should stay out of sport - and I was the only kid in the class whose parents did, so I kept very quiet. IT was very divisive at the time.

Kiwi toughness is something I miss. I don't miss the parochial attitudes though.

I am very proud of the no-nukes policy A really gutsy thing to do at the time. I studied it in political science - what some don't realise is that if an accident had happened, we in NZ would have been left with the clean up costs by ourselves which would have been an enormous burden for such a small country and economy.

JohnThePom

Found all of your post quite interesting, so please forgive me for selecting only two bits to comment on.

Interesting that the UK/American forces even in those days had 'spheres of influence'. It's quite likely they agreed between themselves that NZ would be primarily defended by the US. The UK had quite a lot of trouble defending places as small as Jersey which was much more local!!!

Don't be too surprised. Public surveys often highlight astonishing ignorance in the population at large, even over contemporary affairs. Many people find it impossible to even name their own Prime Minister...

JohnThePom

Very reasonable requirements! (I take it you've had trouble with farmers...?)

Now give me a couple of years to find it and get settled first and then I'll let you know

In the shorter term, maybe someone else on the forum already lives there and can tell us both

ExKiwilass

The "no farmers in a fifty mile radius" had me stumped

Bo-Jangles

Maybe I am wrong, I assumed he meant Farmers as in the store rather than blokes who tend sheep and plough fields.

Justcol

Well as a fellow manc the least i can do is buy you a beer when we get there

Justcol

Also defending itself, freeing north africa, greece, the low countries, malta,
Fighting in italy and liberating france, belgium and driving the germans back to berlin
from all across europe.
On top of that they also defended the atlantic sea lanes and many mediteranian ports.
The americans were fighting the war in the pacific, they needed strategic
bases around the rim.
Australia, new zealand and hawaii were their main ports of call.
New zealand was never under any threat during the war apart from its
position as a staging post for us troops it was no threat and its position was
of no importance to the japanese unless they decided to invade australia
which was never part of its plans.
Kiwi soilders played a great role during the war but those left behind over
exagerated their coutrys importance and the threat to it.

Rainbow warrior was a tragerdy but again the threat and significance was and still is
over played. The uk was blown up and bombed regularly but people just got
on with it. No one digs it up or talks about it, its done with and we moved on.

Wilester

Amen to that

londonescapee

I just played him that clip, he loved it I was left wondering now what I'm letting myself in for the next few years on the humour front but then I remember Flight of the Choncords and feel reassured again

londonescapee

As I understand it from the New Zealanders I spoke to it had little to do with threat and more to do with the French shafting NZ royally. Show me an English person who hasn't ranted about the French at one point or another in their lifetime.......even if it is just over a rugby game......

londonescapee

Oh and just on the French....a rather entertaining column in the Scotsman on the latest French brainwave - I'm not saying I agree or disagree, just found it, and the comments, rather amusing http://news.scotsman.com/news/Gerald...ils.6425988.jp (apologies for the off topic post but it kind of relates to my last one I am not sure what French/NZ relations are like these days? )

Justcol

The law to ban the burqa ban is an attempt to halt the spread of islam across
europe. The threat from islam is not a terrorist threat as many particulaly in
the media will try to link this move to a wish to rid musllms from european communities.
The fear among eurpean countries is a loss of national identity.
Many muslims settle into communities that do not intergrate and those
communities are growing fast.They do not accept their host nations traditions
and ideals and many see that as a threat.
Personally i dont mind scarfs but i like to see people i talk to and find the
burqa very intrusive. There is also now the growing incidence of the burqa
being worn as a sign of defiance, to cause intimidation. Admitedly this is
probably done by a very small minority but it is very difficultt to differentiate
between the true believer and the annoying idiot when you cant see them.
Having lived around muslims for many years i've never really hada problem with
them on a pesonal level. those i have known as freinds or work mates have
been from the group that intergrates yet retaines their belief and faith.
The other group who we see mainly in the media, the fundamentalists and non conformists
are the ones who create the drastic situations we have now seen in france with
the banning of the burqa and also in switzerland where ilsamic style mosqes
with minerrets have been banned.

It is a little strange when in places like the uk where only around 2% of the population
attend a christian church on a sunday so many complain about muslims bringing their religion to the country.

On a lighter note
I heard a few weeks ago on a phone in show on Newstalk ZB in the waikato
a kiwi guy explaining why he no longer bought chocolate if it had arabic writing
on the wrapper because he said that meant that some of the money from the
cost of the chocolate was being sent to afganistan to support terrorists
I laughed so hard i almost crashed the car

ExKiwilass

Actually, the UK and a lot of people from Canada, Australia, NZ and the US liberated Europe.

I don't think it has anything to do with importance of NZ -it has everything to do with being undefended while the Japanese expanded in the Pacific. At the time, the people left here had no idea what the Japanese plans were. If the US hadn't come in, do you really think the Japanese, who were hungry for land and resources, would have left Aus and NZ alone? ooookay then.

I seem to remember there was a commemoration ceremony recently for the london bombings...I guess people aren't 'done with it' yet. They obviously forgot their stiff upper lips somewhere?

ExKiwilass

Right, and that NZ had done nothing to France to provoke a terrorist act. And, that the Rainbow Warrior was on a peaceful mission of protest - no one was armed. And, that the French were so arrogant they thought they could get away with it.

Unlike the bombings in the UK, which were over Northern Ireland, which the British invaded.