Posts by Chris Waugh
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
In yet another reason I wish the Herald would stop relying so much on AP, I'm finding the AP reports of Mandela's memorial service, at least those appearing on the Herald website, to be inappropriately Obama-centric.
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Russell Brown,
predates all the international boycotts.
Even earlier:
In Cape Town we hadd a company of Maori troops. Some of them went together on a tram and were ordered off, as coloured people were not allowed to ride in the streetcars. This made the New Zealand soldiers angry. We were not "political", just ordinary healthy lads and it was unthinkable to us that our friends should be publically shamed because the sun had tanned their skins a richer brown than ours. So many of us went together up the main street of Cape Town and tipped all the trams over. That was quite a to do. My arm was in a sling, so I could not take part except to watch. The fire brigade was brought out to hose water on the soldiers and drive them back to the ship. The soldiers responded by throwing oranges from the stalls on the side of the street, which were piled with them. Anyway, our ship was then taken out into the harbour and anchored for quite a while and we were allowed no more shore leave. That was my first experience of racism in action.
Rewi Alley, An Autobiography, pages 16-17 in this particular edition published by the Foreign Languages Press in 2003 in Beijing, although it was first published by New World Press in Beijing in 1987. He doesn't give a date for this incident, but it would seem to be some time in 1917, as it happened when he was being shipped off to the First World War.
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Russell Brown,
“I was 19 years of age and had lots of other things going on at the time.”
I can't even remember the Tour, let alone whether I was for or against, all I remember is it was something the adults would occasionally talk about in hushed tones later in the eighties. I have an excuse, though - I was 5 years old in '81. I like that John Key is going to the funeral, but if he's not going to be honest about '81, he could at least have the decency to tell a convincing lie.
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Sacha,
Someone remind me what Bolger did that earns him a spot ahead of others?
He was PM at the time Mandela was elected president, the '95 World Cup, and Mandela's visit to NZ at the end of '95. So I don't think he did much to earn his spot, necessarily, but I think he has a claim on it.
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to SteveH,
Both of them labelled him a terrorist.
And it was Bush the Younger who removed him from the US list of terrorists in 2008.
-
Capture: Spring Breaks, in reply to Nora Leggs,
So weary
Already! Poor guy's got another 18 days of this to go....
-
Legal Beagle: John Banks: what next?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Transparency International has declared, once again, that New Zealand is the least corrupt nation in the world, ranked equally with Denmark, is a bit of a joke.
Why is it “a bit of a joke”? It doesn’t declare there’s no corruption.
And it's a Corruption Perceptions Index. So not measuring corruption at all - or at least, only measuring it very indirectly.
-
What next? David Cunliffe, it would seem.
-
Capture: Spring Breaks, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
This baby showed up last month.
This one too. Cousins.
-
Morning, all. Just a little early morning experiment.
