Such sophistication; it could have been made by Hillary herself. For all I know, it probably was.

Labels: politics

[February 7th]

Our spot in the press today:

Tags: dunedin, otago, ordinarystorm.

Labels: dunedin, music, newzealand, theatre, travelling

Nannying, that is.

Tags: drinking, alcohol, nannystate.

Labels: politics

[February 6th, Waitangi Day]

Today is Waitangi Day in New Zealand — a public holiday, which used to be known as "New Zealand Day" until the 1970s. It is still a source of some controversy, mainly, I learn, in the north of the country. Some of the controversy apparently concerns the payments that Maoris receive from the state (in a similar way to, for example, German minorities in Italy). Opposition comes from some Maoris, who view the subsidy as patronising, as well as some settlers, who view it as unfair.

In the midst of these largely civilized disagreements, I read the following very sober leader piece in the Otago Daily Times today. Surely those arguing about multiculturalism in Britain could consider the words of former Prime Minister Norman Kirk:

It was Norman Kirk who promised, during the 1972 general election campaign, to create a national holiday set down on the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, on February 6, and to be called New Zealand Day. It was a step along the road of nationhood, the beginning of a self-conscious embracing of a bicultural entity in which each contributing culture was to be respected for its inherent qualities. As he put it in 1974: "We are not one people; we are one nation. The idea of one people grew out of the days when fashionable folk talked about integration. So far as the majority and the minority are concerned, integration is precisely what cats do to mice."

Tags: dunedin, newzealand, waitangi, waitangiday, travelling.

Labels: dunedin, newzealand, politics, racism, travelling

[February 4th]

Went and sang Evensong yesterday (Wesley, Thou wilt keep him; Sumsion in A; Neary Responses), which was really fun. I've still not got over the fact that here you can just rock up to places and people will be friendly, warm, inviting, non-suspicious, as a matter of course. It's refreshing, and creates virtous circles of trust so quickly.

Tags: newzealand, dunedin, cathedral.

Labels: dunedin, music, newzealand, politics

No one ever has a right to do something; he only has a right that some one else shall do (or refrain from doing) something. In other words, every right in the strict sense relates to the conduct of another.

—Glanville Williams, "The Concept of Legal Liberty"

Discuss.

Tags: liberty, rights, glanvillewilliams.

Labels: politics

Ronnie O'Sullivan, n.: bad loser.

After losing 9-8 from an 8-5 lead in the Welsh Open final last night, Ronnie blames... wait for it... Mark Selby's style of play! I may be biased, but if y'all weren't convinced that O'Sullivan is a total prannock before, you should be now:

"I got away with it early on but Mark was very tactical.

"I don't know if Mark's talented; he plays a very negative game. He doesn't take a ball on unless he's going to leave it safe.

"It makes him tough to play because you know you're in for long frames and long bouts of safety.

Two points: first, there is nothing illegitimate about playing a negative game. Selby described last night's play as his "Plan B" because he wasn't playing as well as usual. Knowing when to attack and when to defend, in the interests of victory, is one of the most essential and subtle aspects of successful sportsmanship. We shouldn't be surprised at Ronnie's ignorance here, however, because he has never mastered this aspect of the game.

Second, if Ronnie could look further than his self-pity about his own poor performance last night, he would see that Selby is a long way from being a negative player of the Ebdon or McManus type. He has compiled a formidable number of century breaks in the last eighteen months, and ran away with the Masters final last month with high quality safety play and heavy scoring.

Time to go for another run, Ronnie.

Tags: snooker, osullivan, selby.

Labels: snooker

[February 3rd]

Maoris and Music

Urgh. I went to bed at 5pm yesterday for a "snooze", and slept through till 2am. I thought I'd avoided the jetlag, but obviously not. I spent the small hours practising on the ridiculously antiquated keyboard I've installed in my room, sent a few text messages, and then decided to head back to the botanic gardens at 6am for the dawn chorus and sunrise. The birdsong was really beautiful.

At 10am I went to the Eucharist at St Paul's Cathedral in The Octagon (the central "square" in Dunedin). It reinforced an impression that has already been made quite strongly upon me: that New Zealand as a nation has done a very good job of reconciling and integrating "white" and "indigenous" "cultures".* And what's more, they seem to have done so without the patronising romanticism in which "outsiders" try to "preserve" (sometimes by cynical, even forceful, methods) "native" traditions. Such a romantic outlook often pretends that there was some time of pure, "unspoilt", heritage. But indigenous traditions can only be understood as "heritage" once there is some kind of threat -- and threat did not originate with Western colonial invasions. We are never without threats -- but without threats there is no change, and without change there would be no life. New Zealand seems to have got the balance right: a balance, that is, between the dignity of freedom and respect for the history people want to live from.

How is this achieved? Maori culture and history has a constant public face here. In the cathedral, many of the liturgical lines are delivered in English and Maori together. On the doors in the university, all the room names are translated into Maori. There are postcards of "traditional" looking Maori families, but they are photos set against the backdrop of a modern nation state, not some ridiculous hut put up for gawping tourists. New Zealand seems to me to be setting an example here far superior to anything I've experienced before. Of course there are problems here, more pronounced in the north of the country, but there is nevertheless a genuine difference in attitude: a welcoming of your friend and neighbour on his own terms.

After the morning service, I was cornered (in a pleasant way) by a member of the choir. The cathedral is a very open place -- perhaps because they seem to be a community of English and Australian ex-pats themselves, and perhaps, also, because the cathedral community experienced its share of unrest about ten years ago. Somehow, though, they figured out I am a musician! We went for coffee and they've invited me to go and sing at Evensong tonight, which is kind. They were also trying to persuade me to stay and be their organ scholar (their last one apparently went back to Britain (or was it America?), got a girlfriend and never returned). But I suggested the commute to university in Manchester might be a little difficult.

* Eventually every utterance on this blog will be "in" "inverted commas".

Tags: dunedin, newzealand, music, cathedral, stpauls, maori, integration.

Labels: dunedin, music, newzealand, politics, travelling

[February 2nd]

After arriving yesterday and checking in to my accommodation, it immediately began to rain. Auckland was hot, heavy and humid at 6.30am, but Dunedin by midday was pretty cold. I wandered off towards what I thought was the Humanities building, but I was actually going in the opposite direction. Happy accident though, as I found the city's beautiful botanic gardens instead, full of New Zealand's amazing, diverse, and very noisy birds. I phoned home, hopefully quite cheaply thanks to Vodafone having an NZ service, then got more and more lost and soaked by the rain. (At least I'd had the sense to take my sandals off before I set out.) Eventually found my way back to campus, and into a cafe, looking completely ridiculous.

Crashed to sleep at 7pm, woke up today at 5am and went wandering around the city. Was surprised to find some dodgy streets ("LOCALZ ONLY" graffitied down a 300m stretch -- I walked quickly). Spent the rest of today working on music, about which I am still very apprehensive...

Tags: dunedin, newzealand, auckland

Labels: dunedin, music, newzealand, travelling

I feel like Larry David in episode 1.6 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, because, like him, I have lost my pad.

Update

I found it. But I didn't have to give anyone any money.

The first two things, that is, that I noticed on my return to Britain:

• Everyone is stressed, miserable, and rude;
• The coffee is shit.

There has been lots of unrealistic overreaction to Rowan Williams' comments on Shari'a law in the last few days. Although, mercifully, there has not been much genuine misrepresentation of his remarks; any authentic misinterpretations are down to his own convolution of expression, and cannot really be attributed to the malevolence of the media. My short response is that Williams is right to raise the issue, but in my view deluded about the nature and direction of the liberal (secular) state. Since I can't be bothered to express myself in more detail, I here reproduce some remarks from a recent email exchange of mine (which is, you will notice, hastily written and inarticulate).

An email to me:

From what has been said here while you were on the other side of the world, it seems that people are picking up on three issues, at least one of which, as you say, doesn't actually have much to do with anything he said, though I confess I haven't had time to read it in detail.

i) A 'thin end of the wedge' fear that this could set a precedent for adoption into criminal law - which is a bit silly, frankly.
ii) The potential for coercion of women - which seems to me a valid issue, though I don't know how different it is from other 'communities' as matters stand at the moment.
iii) Concern over some such phrase as 'it is dangerous for everyone to be treated equally under the law', which has probably been misquoted, but if not was phenomenally stupid.

Of course, the whole affaire has now ensured that any discussion of this or similar issues is dead in the water for many years to come. I think that was definitely not what the Archbish intended!

And my reply:

i) The kind of "argument" that is insurmountable in its unintelligence -- safe to be dismissed.

ii) For me, this is a real issue. There are so many liberal/left people who ignore the horribly unreformed attitudes to women in certain Islamic traditions on the fallacious and amoral grounds of cultural sensitivity. Cultural sensitivity should be at play, but so should genuine appraisal of the facts, which cannot be ignored in countries such as Afghanistan and Iran. Equally, the conservative/evangelical line on women's treatment in Islam is equally fallacious in my view, failing to account adequately for the voluntarism with which a good number of women "submit" (this is the right word Islamically, but the wrong word, in terms of human behaviour, it seems to me) to Islamic law. I think Rowan Williams has taken the right stand here, ie, one of qualified judgement on other traditions rather than blind relativism. If you want to know about his thinking on this, read his chapter "The Judgement of the World", ch. 3 in "On Christian Theology" (there's a good chunk of it on Google Book Search)

iii) If I remember correctly, he asserted that it is unrealistic (or words to that effect) for people to be treated "equally", that is, without differentiation, before the law, in the light of their different religious traditions and the different demands they make of law. He asserted that it is a question of human dignity that their religious choices be respected in this regard. I think he is wrong, because a good legal system should be able to deal with people's different identities and negotiate between them more or less equitably. If it cannot, that is already a problem with the legal system itself, but one which should be overcome through the resources of the liberal state, and not through a recourse to religious law, which would clearly solve none of the above problems, but more likely exacerbate them. (Williams seems to have forgotten why there was a Revolution in France.) Nevertheless, for an interesting take on this issue, read Derrida's essay "Before the Law", which is a study of Kafka's short story of the same name. Very interesting. There is a secondary account of it in Nicholas Royle's introduction to Derrida.

It's worth bearing in mind that Levinas, a radical thinker in terms of the relationship between politics and religious tradition, was nonetheless a great apologist for the French Republic, declaring ambiguously, "...it is necessary to fight for the Republic..." His sympathy for this model of statist liberalism certianly comes from his experience of the Holocaust and of exile, and the possibility of this escape to the Republic is something I think should be carefully considered before secular models are abandoned altogether.

Tags: archbishop, canterbury, rowanwilliams.

Labels: levinas, politics, religion

Due to an official secrets pact, these posts are only being released now.

[February 1st]

It was an epic journey, but I've arrived in Dunedin. This was my itinerary, after a missed connection in Auckland:

Wednesday January 30th

• 0644 Train from Stockport to London Euston
• 1010 Train from London Paddington to Heathrow Airport
• 1425GMT Flight to Los Angeles

Thursday January 31st

• 0200GMT Arrive Los Angeles
• 0400GMT Flight to Auckland

Friday February 1st

• 0545 NZ time Arrive Auckland
• 0800 NZ time Flight to Dunedin via Wellington
• 1100 Arrive Dunedin Airport
• 1130 Shuttle to Dunedin City
• 1215 Arrive

That's a good forty hours of continuous travelling. The worst part was the effect of cabin air on my already deteriorated skin; I'm frantically covering myself in emollients and steroids and things are beginning to improve. The second worst part was, on reflection, the airline food, although I had thought it fairly okay at the time. The third worst part was the chaos at Auckland domestic departures. The fourth worst part was opening up my free Air New Zealand bag on the Dunedin flight (which contained: Red Bull, bottle of water, indigestion tablets, mints, safety information, adverts, sunscreen, sunscreen lipstick, and... A SACHET OF TOMATO KETCHUP) only to realize that the tomato ketchup had exploded, covering everything. (They had no more bags, but did give me some tissues.)

The best part was chatting to a Year 12 exchange student from Lübeck. He was good fun - he broke a seat on the final connection to Dunedin, to which the flight attendant's response was to give him more Red Bull and a children's comic. He had a very good sense of humour, considering his age and the fact he's spent his whole life in a very quaint upper-middle class town in northern Germany. The second best part was swapping seats with a seven foot tall guy on the flight to Auckland. I only realized once I arrived here and saw him in the newspaper that he is an American basketball star, whose name I can't remember. But why was he flying economy?!

Tags: dunedin, newzealand, flight

Labels: dunedin, newzealand, travelling