Posts by Keir Leslie
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Keir -- people often talk about the old boy culture or the old boys club in relation to Christchurch. I'm curious, how do you see this manifesting?
Well, you don't see it manifesting, that's the point. What good is a secret handshake if everybody knows about it?
To be honest, I think there's two kinds of old boy's stuff in Chch; there's the classic `all went to Christ's together' stuff, and then there's the broader mates of mates stuff involving property developers and the good ol' CCC and all that.
And (cheating, a third type) then there's just plain snobbery about schools.
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Nice lumping there, btw. My youngest child attends Riccarton Primary. It's 30% Pakeha.
I am in fact well aware that Riccarton isn't the same as all the rest; likewise I dare say Harrogate isn't the same as Salford and Leeds. (Also, New Brighton is generally not known as Brighton-on-Sea and Linwood is a different stereotype from the rest.)
Grim... btw there's a cool edge to that grim/gothic/colonial history/church of England thing.... Some of our best artists, like the musician Dudley Benson are embracing it rather than being embarrassed about it and creating some of the most original work around.
Yeah, there's a definite Sheffield/Manchester thing you can play with about Christchurch --- especially a lot of the Chch Brutalism stuff. (Something almost Hatherleyite about the whole set up: class conflict, `old' buildings, Brutalism, hollowed out betrayed city centre, etc.)
At the same time, aesthetically speaking grim is interesting, but I am unsure that that makes much difference to most people's lived experiences.
The centre of Christchurch is a complete disaster all of it's very own, thank you mr. Parker & the rest of the incompetents on the CCC, and there's something revealing about the way Christchurch has no good urban public spaces, except shopping malls. (Arcades project reference goes here.) I dunno, I'm not that much of a fan of High Street, it really does feel just like Cuba Street but shit. (Likewise Poplar Lanes and the South-of-Lichfield bits; and again note the preponderance of private space.)
And, of course, the old boy culture. And in terms of art, Ilam etc, and the associated cultural infrastructure.
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No other city in the country has a public space equal to the botanic gardens.
Um, Cuba St?
I dunno, while, yeah, hahaha let's all laugh at Christchurch is a bit dull, nowhere else in New Zealand have I encountered the sheer casual racism and homophobia of Christchurch. Nowhere else have I gone down the supermarket and seen some chap with a swastika tattooed across his shaven head.
(Waltham Sydenham Wigram Brighton-on-Sea Linwood Riccarton Spreydon Are All In The South; It's Grim Down South)
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I dunno, I think Christchurch does public space horribly, Cathedral Square's a godforsaken mess where only tourists dare tread, Hagley Park's good but still, sports fields are only so lovable, and then most of the rest of the parks in Christchurch are blah.
The most lively `public' spaces in Christchurch are the malls, to be honest.
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And the punk bassist's self-conscious appropriation of a good fuck-off dub bass line?
(Obviously PiL being the standard bearers for that sort of thing, but the Clash were hardly a ``white'' band.)
Certainly the Sex Pistols didn't present as black, why should they, they were a bunch of white guys from London. But they didn't try and eliminate black influences or anything from their music.
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Well, there's that, but I take it that they're probably even more afraid of white kids aping teh "black" ways, i.e. getting all jiggy with hip-hop culture. I mean, wasn't this fear of cultural miscegenation a big part of the original, punk-inflected white pride movement in the late '70s? The sense that the one thing worse than a brown kid sporting an afro and saying "I love jah" was a white kid doing the same? Hence the need to create a form of music with all the "black" elements systematically excluded, which is what punk originally was?
Jah Wobble would be rather surprised to hear that.
(In fact punk was music with all the black elements put back in, going back to real rock music before white American suburbia fucked it all up. Or at least that's the narrative and I really rather think it's much closer to the truth than `punk = white music'.)
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We h rmacht.
(Sorry. But pedantry is fun for all the family.)
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Should be noted part of the reason so many people are complaining about the Daily Mail is that the Mail has a history of Whitehouse-esque co-ordinated whinging, and that this really is just them getting a taste of their own medicine.
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As opposed to `Britain was lucky'? I mean, seriously, if you want simplistic analysis, `it was luck' is pretty damn simplistic.
I have suggested causal factors that resulted in Britain and the Allies winning the war: Nazi industrial misallocation, Allied industrial superiority, Allied planning superiority based on the habits and forms of democracy.
Those are reasons, and yes they all involve the Allies being militarily superior than the Axis powers; likewise were I trying to analyse why African nations tended to be beaten by Western powers in the 19th century I would look at things that involved western military superiority.
I mean, why was Churchill PM in '40? You really haven't dealt with that at all, you've only said it was `lucky' and that (paraphrased) `Britain found itself with Churchill as PM'*. That doesn't actually explain what happened, it just says, basically, stuff happens. Whereas saying, no, Churchill was PM, and there were reasons for that, and if you want to talk about history you actually have to deal with the fact that Churchill was PM, that forces us to explain events.
I dunno, I really don't think that's simplistic at all; I think that's the only honest way to do history, by a resolute confrontation with what actually happened. It mightn't be as flashy as what-ifs, but this isn't soc.history.what-if.
* Suggesting the rather laughable image of Fleet Street hacks trotting along every morning to see who answered the door bell at No. 10, just in case the PM had changed in the night and they found themselves with Hore-Belisha or somesuch.