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Obituaries

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nitpicker1
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« Reply #350 on: August 26, 2014, 10:31:06 am »




   (click on the picture to read the news story)


https://nz.entertainment.yahoo.com/news/article/-/24809931/social-media-tributes-mistakenly-flow/

Oh dear!  nemmind, the story did invite yas to "share this story on facebook"
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« Reply #351 on: September 07, 2014, 07:34:32 pm »

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/10468041/An-unsung-musical-hero
         
Johnny Cooper, musician, b 1928, Wairoa; d Septemer 2014, Lower Hutt. 

Johnny Cooper, who died in Lower Hutt this week, may have not only been one of the most unsung, but also one of the most modest heroes New Zealand popular music has ever had.

As a country singer in the early 1950s, billing himself as "The Maori Cowboy" he had big hits, and one, "Look What You've Done", which he wrote himself, became the quintessential Kiwi party song until "Ten Guitars" arrived. It's the song Jake and Beth Heke duet on in the movie "Once Were Warriors."

In 1955, with a group of Wellington jazz men, he became the first singer outside the United States to record a rock and roll song, cutting "Rock Around The Clock" in HMV's Lower Hutt studios.

His follow-up, "Pie Cart Rock and Roll", wasn't such a big hit, despite the magic chorus "Rockin' to the rhythm of the pea, pie and pud".

He turned his hand to promoting talent quests, where his discoveries included the country's first rock and roll idol, Johnny Devlin, Midge Marsden (who played in Bari and The Breakaways as a backing band for contestants) and the Fourmulya, whose song "Nature would be judged the greatest New Zealand rock song of all time.

Johnny himself was a friendly, deeply modest man, with a beautiful Billy T James laugh, and a good line in self depreciation. His pie cart song, he'd claim, was written in the hopes of free feeds while he was living in Whanganui.

As a promoter, working in a field not famous for people with generous spirits, he was decent and honest. Those of us who had any dealings with him hold fond memories, and mourn his loss.




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« Reply #352 on: September 08, 2014, 08:01:46 am »



TY, Akadaka
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« Reply #353 on: September 08, 2014, 12:16:36 pm »


From Radio New Zealand's sound archives (you can download and listen to the programmes in MP3 format)....

 • Sounds Historical with Jim Sullivan — Sunday, 31st August 2014 (Johnny Cooper is featured in the first hour at 8:18pm)

 • Johnny Cooper: The Māori Cowboy — Saturday, 6th September 2014 (featuring several of Johnny Cooper's recorded tracks, plus a link to a programme broadcast in 2001)



from The Dominion Post....

Maori Cowboy a Kiwi rock'n'roll pioneer

By Fairfax NZ staff reporters | 5:00AM - Saturday, 06 September 2014

COUNTRY CROONERS: Johnny Cooper, left, and his band the Range Riders, formed in 1952. — Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library.
COUNTRY CROONERS: Johnny Cooper, left, and his band the Range Riders, formed in 1952.
 — Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library.


A KIWI rock'n'roll pioneer has died, estranged from the world to which he gave so much and far from the giddy heights of his 1950s heyday.

Johnny Cooper, known as the Maori Cowboy, was the first person to record a rock'n'roll track in New Zealand — by some accounts he was the first to do so outside the United States — when he covered Rock Around The Clock in 1955.

His good friend and fellow musician Midge Marsden said the rocker died at his Lower Hutt home this week, aged 86, suffering from Alzheimer's disease and without a notifiable next of kin.

“It's one of those stories that's a bit sad in the end.”

It is not known exactly when Cooper died. Police were alerted to the fact he might be ill only when his doctor raised concerns on Thursday, Marsden said.

Originally a country singer, Cooper balked at the thought of recording his groundbreaking rock'n'roll track when HMV Records told him he had to.

“I remember him telling us he absolutely hated doing it,” Marsden said. “He said, ‘What's this rubbish? I'm not singing that’.”

But in the end he gave in, and the recording forever etched his name into New Zealand music history.

He was a man well ahead of his time. He started X-Factor-style talent shows in the late 1950s, including Give It A Go!, where Marsden first met Cooper and got his start in the industry.

He also coached and encouraged a young Johnny Devlin, later to become known as New Zealand's Elvis.

“To be fair I didn't really know much about him,” Marsden said of that first encounter. “He had a huge career before I met him, but he didn't really talk about it - he was a pretty humble character.”

Cooper also recorded New Zealand's first original rock'n'roll song, Pie Cart Rock'n'Roll, in 1955.

Younger people might recognise his song Look What You've Done My Baby, which featured in the film Once Were Warriors.

His musical talents took him around the world, leading three concert tours during the 1950s to entertain Kiwi troops in Japan and Korea.

During the last one, in 1956, he and his group were asked by a photographer to “pose beside the beautiful native trees of Tokyo”.

While Cooper sold thousands of records in his prime, he moved more into entertainment promotion in the 1960s, and became less prominent.

He did not so much fall from the limelight as ease himself into the shadows, Marsden said.

“His private life was exactly that — private. He was a transient in later life.”

Kerry Clout, who was Cooper's neighbour in Naenae for more than 30 years, said that, until a few years ago, he was a pillar of the community, always tidying the area and mowing lawns for free.

In recent years, he had begun to suffer from Alzheimer's but was still able to take care of himself.

But Clout said he rarely left the house over those years, and she did not see any family visiting him.

He would always greet her with a smile, and thoroughly enjoyed the time she took him hundreds of tributes and messages from fans and friends from as far afield as England for his birthday earlier this year.

Although it was a sad end, it was important to focus on all the good he did during his life, Clout said.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/10466516/Maori-Cowboy-a-Kiwi-rock-n-roll-pioneer



from The Dominion Post....

An unsung musical hero

Johnny Cooper, musician, born 1928, Wairoa; died Septemer 2014, Lower Hutt.

By PHIL GIFFORD | 10:52AM - Saturday, 06 September 2014

INTO THE LIMELIGHT: Cooper in the early 1950s. He grew up on a farm in Wairoa, and played guitar to the shearing gangs. — Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library.
INTO THE LIMELIGHT: Cooper in the early 1950s. He grew up
on a farm in Wairoa, and played guitar to the shearing gangs.
 — Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library.


JOHNNY COOPER, who died in Lower Hutt this week, may have not only been one of the most unsung, but also one of the most modest heroes New Zealand popular music has ever had.

As a country singer in the early 1950s, billing himself as “The Maori Cowboy” he had big hits, and one, “Look What You've Done”, which he wrote himself, became the quintessential Kiwi party song until “Ten Guitars” arrived. It's the song Jake and Beth Heke duet on in the movie “Once Were Warriors”.

In 1955, with a group of Wellington jazz men, he became the first singer outside the United States to record a rock and roll song, cutting “Rock Around The Clock” in HMV's Lower Hutt studios.

His follow-up, “Pie Cart Rock and Roll”, wasn't such a big hit, despite the magic chorus “Rockin' to the rhythm of the pea, pie and pud”.

He turned his hand to promoting talent quests, where his discoveries included the country's first rock and roll idol, Johnny Devlin, Midge Marsden (who played in Bari and The Breakaways as a backing band for contestants) and the Fourmulya, whose song “Nature” would be judged the greatest New Zealand rock song of all time.

Johnny himself was a friendly, deeply modest man, with a beautiful Billy T James laugh, and a good line in self depreciation. His pie cart song, he'd claim, was written in the hopes of free feeds while he was living in Whanganui.

As a promoter, working in a field not famous for people with generous spirits, he was decent and honest. Those of us who had any dealings with him hold fond memories, and mourn his loss.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/10468041/An-unsung-musical-hero
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« Reply #354 on: September 12, 2014, 12:53:20 pm »


from The Southland Times....

Wanaka pilot dies in Reno race

By CHE BAKER | 5:00AM - Friday, 12 September 2014


Lee Behel at the 2012 Reno Air Races.

A JET PILOT who competed at the first Gigatown Wanaka jet race has been killed in a plane crash in Nevada.

San Francisco jet pilot Lee Behel, 62, who was a guest racer at this year's Warbirds Over Wanaka event, died after the single-engine experimental GP5 jet he owned crashed at the Reno national championship air races on Tuesday. The CBS 13 news station in Sacramento reported the plane Behel was flying fell apart in the air, as it was flying low through an obstacle course during the qualifying stage of the championships.

Warbirds Over Wanaka general manager Ed Taylor said Behel's death was a shock.

“Lee was a top pilot, a great ambassador for his country and a thoroughly nice guy. He told me that racing at Warbirds Over Wanaka was one of the best times he had had during his long aviation career.”

“I have been in touch with the other US pilots who raced here earlier this year and they are of course still coming to terms with the fact that Lee is no longer with us.”

Behel was a retired air force pilot and recorded two world records as part of the Nevada Air National Guard.

When speaking with The Southland Times at Warbirds, Behel said he began his jet racing career at the first ever jet race at the Reno championships.

“It's very exhilarating. It demands of lot of concentration and skill,” he said.

Jet racing is expected to return to the 2016 Warbirds Over Wanaka event.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/10483950/Wanaka-pilot-dies-in-Reno-race
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« Reply #355 on: September 14, 2014, 12:29:06 am »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Ian Paisley dies at 88; Northern Ireland firebrand turned peacemaker

By HENRY CHU | 7:41AM PDT - Friday, September 12, 2014

Ian Paisley attends a round of peace talks in St. Andrews, Scotland, on October 12th, 2006. — Photo: James Fraser/EPA.
Ian Paisley attends a round of peace talks in St. Andrews, Scotland, on October 12th, 2006. — Photo: James Fraser/EPA.

IAN PAISLEY, the thundering Protestant preacher who helped fan the sectarianism of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” but went on to lead a power-sharing government that included some of his most bitter Catholic enemies, died on Friday in Belfast. He was 88.

His wife, Eileen Paisley, announced his death in a statement. He had been in declining health.

Paisley was one of Northern Ireland’s most prominent figures of the last 50 years and one of its most polarizing, a big-jawed, stentorian-voiced leader who vowed “no surrender” in the fight to maintain British rule in the province.

He denounced peace-minded reformers as traitors, railed against the pope as the Antichrist and made himself a thorn in the side of British prime ministers from both major political parties during a conflict that claimed the lives of more than 3,500 people.

But in a remarkable turnaround, Paisley eventually came to accept the so-called Good Friday agreement in 1998 that ended armed conflict between Protestant loyalists and Catholic republicans. Nine years later, in a scene many thought they’d never witness, the octogenarian Paisley was sworn in as first minister of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing assembly, with a longtime leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, at his side as his deputy.

Once sworn enemies, Paisley and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness developed such a startling rapport that commentators soon dubbed them the Chuckle Brothers.

“We had the ability to sit down and talk to one another about the way forward, and we were agreed on how we should move forward,” McGuinness later recalled.

The two men worked well together until Paisley stepped down less than a year into the job, in 2008, partly because of his party’s concern over his growing closeness to McGuinness. That same year Paisley gave up his post as moderator of the breakaway Free Presbyterian Church that he had founded more than 60 years ago, and in 2010 he declined to run again for the seat in the British Parliament that he occupied for four decades. (His son won it instead.)

But Paisley remained a charismatic figure to his supporters and a commanding speaker. In early 2012, he delivered a farewell sermon at his Martyrs Memorial Church in Belfast, the Northern Irish capital.

“I am exceedingly happy that I’ve had the privilege of being the preacher here for 65 years, and that’s a long time,” he told his admiring congregants. “We have seen a miraculous work done, and we have seen a great change in our city in many ways.”

He was born Ian Richard Kyle Paisley on April 6th, 1926, in Armagh, the son of an independent Baptist pastor and a religious Scottish mother. He grew up in County Antrim, part of which he would later represent as a member of Parliament, and as a young man felt a calling to follow his father’s footsteps into Christian ministry.

Paisley’s theological training reinforced a fierce and inflammatory Protestantism that gave no quarter to the Roman Catholic Church, which he professed all his life to hate. He had no qualms about describing it as “the mother of all harlots” while insisting he had nothing against individual Catholics.

In 1963, his booming voice, imposing presence and religious invective catapulted him into the public eye when he led protests against a decision to lower the British flag on government buildings in Belfast upon the death of Pope John XXIII.

Paisley’s hard-line religious views were part and parcel of his strident unionism. A year later, his insistence that the Irish flag be removed from display in a Sinn Fein office in Belfast led to riots. And in 1969, Paisley was thrown in jail for heading an illegal counter-demonstration against Catholic civil-rights protesters demanding nondiscrimination in housing and employment.

He entered the British Parliament in 1970 and the European Parliament in 1979, where he created a stir several years later by interrupting a speech by Pope John Paul II, denouncing him loudly as the antichrist and getting himself ejected from the chamber.

Paisley initially viewed the 1998 power-sharing accord as a profound betrayal.

“The British government, in cahoots with Dublin, Washington, the Vatican and the IRA, are intent to destroy the province,” he wrote earlier that year. “The scene is set and the program in position to demolish the province as the last bastion of Protestantism in Europe.”

Yet by the middle of the next decade, Paisley, by then in his late 70s, had begun to mellow. The transformation was partly spurred, perhaps, by a spell of bad health in 2004, when he underwent tests for an undisclosed illness and later acknowledged that he had “walked in death’s shadow”. He appeared gaunt and frail in public.

His health improved, however. He once told an interviewer that his secret was “a glass of cider vinegar with some honey in it every morning. You should try it.”

In 2007, with his Democratic Unionist Party as the largest loyalist grouping in Northern Ireland’s regional assembly, Paisley became the province’s most powerful leader, its first minister. He was 81.

At his swearing-in, he invoked the Bible, saying that there was “a time for love and a time for hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”

“From the depth of my heart, I can say Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace. How good it will be to be part of a wonderful healing in this province,” he declared. “Today, we are starting the road which I believe will take us to everlasting peace in our province.”

It was a speech his younger self may have had trouble imagining. Only a few years before, Paisley had declared in an interview: “All I can say is that I’ll not be changing. I will go to the grave with the convictions I have.”

In 2010, he was given a peerage and elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Bannside.

Besides his wife, Paisley is survived by three daughters, two sons and grandchildren.


http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-ian-paisley-dies-20140912-story.html
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« Reply #356 on: September 14, 2014, 12:29:59 am »


from The Guardian....

Ian Paisley, the Dr No of Ulster politics, dies aged 88

Tributes to DUP firebrand turned Northern Ireland peacemaker
pour in amid critcs' calls not to rewrite his history.


By HENRY McDONALD - Ireland correspondent | 6:58PM BST - Friday, 12 September 2014

Ian Paisley has died at the age of 88. — Photo: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images.
Ian Paisley has died at the age of 88. — Photo: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images.

IAN PAISLEY — the Dr No of Ulster politics who eventually said yes to sharing power with his Irish republican enemies — has died aged 88. His widow, Eileen, confirmed the political veteran, whose name was synonymous with the Troubles and sectarianism, died on Friday morning.

Prime ministers and Irish premiers past and present, political allies, foes and a former IRA chief of staff paid tribute to Paisley's more recent role in securing devolution and power-sharing at Stormont.

Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister and one-time head of the Provisional IRA — which once debated internally whether to assassinate Paisley — was one of the first to warmly recall their time in government.

Minutes after Paisley's death was announced, he tweeted: “Very sad to learn that Ian Paisley has died. My deepest sympathy to his wife Eileen and family. Once political opponents — I have lost a friend.”


Eileen Paisley, here with Ian at the National College of Ireland in Dublin, confirmed the death of her husband. — Photo: Barbara Lindberg/Rex Features.
Eileen Paisley, here with Ian at the National College of Ireland
in Dublin, confirmed the death of her husband.
 — Photo: Barbara Lindberg/Rex Features.


In a statement by his family, Paisley's wife said: “My beloved husband, Ian, entered his eternal rest this morning. Although ours is the grand hope of reunion, naturally as a family we are heartbroken. We loved him and he adored us, and our earthly lives are forever changed.”

Mrs Paisley said the funeral would be a private family occasion even though her husband had been Northern Ireland's first minister. However, it is understood a public memorial service will be held later this year. Paisley, or Lord Bannside as he was known in his later years, had a remarkable political journey. It started with him opposing mild reforms to the unionist-dominated Northern Irish state in the late 1950s and early '60s, and led to sharing power with his one-time mortal enemies, Sinn Féin, in the 21st century.

David Cameron described him as “one of the most forceful and instantly recognisable characters in British politics for nearly half a century”. The prime minister said Paisley's decision to enter a power-sharing government with Sinn Féin in 2007 had “required great courage and leadership, for which everyone in these islands should be grateful”. Paisley's successor as leader of the Democratic Unionists — the party Paisley founded in the early '70s — and as first minister, Peter Robinson, said: “It can truly be said of Ian that he was the founding father of the new Northern Ireland.”


Ian Paisley leaves polling station after casting his vote in the referendum on historic peace agreement. — Photo: Andrew Cutraro/AFP/Getty Images.
Ian Paisley leaves polling station after casting his vote in the referendum on
historic peace agreement. — Photo: Andrew Cutraro/AFP/Getty Images.


Robinson recalled being attracted to Paisley's politics from the late 60s. “I was drawn towards politics by the strength of Ian's message and by his charisma.”

He added: “A long and glorious period of Ulster history has now closed and already the province seems a little less colourful. Ian has taken his place in history alongside the greats of unionism, making our heritage even richer.”

“To have known him and stood alongside him for so many years has been one of the greatest privileges of my life.”

His long-time political rival and fellow MEP, the Nobel peace prize winner John Hume, said Paisley's overstated outbursts often overshadowed his understated constituency work for the people.

“History will record his political career as a journey – one which took [him] from the politics of division to a place where he accepted agreement as a solution, the need for power-sharing and respect for diversity — but history will also ask if he should have reached this point sooner.”


Ian Paisley, of the Free Presbyterian church of Ulster, leads demonstration outside Canterbury Cathedral. — Photo: Ronald Spencer/Associated News.
Ian Paisley, of the Free Presbyterian church of Ulster, leads demonstration
outside Canterbury Cathedral. — Photo: Ronald Spencer/Associated News.


For other former political opponents Paisley's use of loyalist paramilitary muscle in a general strike to bring down the previous power-sharing government in 1974 resulted in more years of carnage and political deadlock.

John Cushnahan, a one-time leader of the centrist Alliance party, accused commentators on Friday of rewriting Paisley's history. Cushnahan said the “courageous and imaginative” power-sharing experiment of 1974, set up under the Sunningdale agreement, had been destroyed by a combination of IRA violence and the Paisley-led “fascist” Ulster Workers' Council strike.

“Tragically thousands more people were to lose their lives or suffer serious injury before Sinn Féin and the DUP embraced what [was] already on offer in 1974. The belated conversion of both should not result in an attempt to naively rewrite history,” he said.

Tony Blair, who was involved in the 1998 Good Friday agreement, said the Paisley he dealt with “began as the militant … He ended as the peacemaker.”

The former prime minister said: “Over time I got to know him well. He could be an uncompromising, even intransigent opponent. But he was also someone who loved Northern Ireland and its people.”


Northern Ireland's first minister Peter Robinson has paid tribute to Ian Paisley. — Photo: Charles Mcquillan/Getty Images.
Northern Ireland's first minister Peter Robinson has paid tribute to Ian Paisley.
 — Photo: Charles Mcquillan/Getty Images.


Blair's co-partner in pushing the Irish peace process forward, the former taoiseach Bertie Ahern said: “In my younger days I found him a very difficult character but we ended up very good friends. He was a valuable character in the peace process.”

He told RTE radio: “I grew to admire him. The more I got to know him, the more I grew to like him.”

Ahern said Paisley paid a high price politically and personally in his later years after some of his associates of the previous decades deserted him.

Many loyalist paramilitary veterans have been scathing about Paisley's record in using them and then disowning them in an attempt to distance himself and his party from violence by the UVF and UDA paramilitary groups.


(L-R) Martin McGuinness, Dr Ian Paisley, Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, in London, May 5th, 2007. — Photograph: Niall Carson/PA.
(L-R) Martin McGuinness, Dr Ian Paisley, Prime Minister Tony Blair
and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, in London, May 5th, 2007.
 — Photograph: Niall Carson/PA.


They labelled him the “Grand Old Duke of York” who led them nowhere except to jail or the cemetery in his quest to become the leading force of unionism.

As the political world was coming to terms with his passing, followers of the Free Presbyterian church he founded were gathering at a makeshift shrine to their spiritual leader in East Belfast.

Dozens of people placed flowers at the Martyrs Memorial on Friday afternoon. It was a poignant spot for a Paisley memorial: after a final sermon in 2011 he was ousted in an internal coup by elders opposed to his political compromises. Paisley never preached in the church again.


http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/12/ian-paisley-dies-aged-88-northern-ireland
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« Reply #357 on: September 14, 2014, 12:30:50 am »


from The Telegraph....

Lord Bannside — obituary

Lord Bannside was, as Ian Paisley, the firebrand
leader of Protestant oppositon to a united Ireland.


By Telegraph reporters | 1:54PM BST - Friday, 12 September 2014

Dr Ian Paisley, the former Democratic Unionist Party leader. — Photo: PA.
Dr Ian Paisley, the former Democratic Unionist Party leader. — Photo: PA.

LORD BANNISDE, who has died aged 88, was better known as the Reverend Ian Paisley, a towering figure who founded Northern Ireland’s Free Presbyterian Church and Democratic Unionist Party.

He took an uncompromising sectarian line before, during and after the “Troubles” — for the outbreak of which he bore some responsibility — yet ended his political life as First Minister sharing power with his old enemy, Sinn Fein.

Paisley was often dismissed by commentators outside the Province as a bigot and a buffoon. His political career was repeatedly written off, yet by its end he had outmanoeuvred his moderate Unionist rivals to become Ulster’s elder statesman, the spokesman for a majority of Unionists and undisputed leader of the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Few could have imagined such an outcome in the Sixties, when the young, uncouth firebrand first led working-class Protestants in vociferous opposition to the genteel Unionism of Terence O’Neill, then prime minister of Northern Ireland.

His fiery blend of sectarian preaching and political oratory, which drew heavily on the book of Revelation and the spicier parts of the Old Testament, proved highly potent during the 1974 Ulster Workers’ Strike, when Loyalists — enraged by plans for an all-Ireland dimension to their government — brought down the power-sharing administration established under the Sunningdale Agreement.

At the core of Paisley’s being was a visceral loathing of the Roman Catholic Church, which would have done credit to a 17th-century Ranter. He liked to whip his audiences into a frenzy with his rhetoric about “Old Red Socks” (the Pope); the “great whore... with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication” (the Roman Catholic Church); and about those who “breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin” (its adherents).

He once tried to ban a school production of The Sound of Music because crucifixes were to be carried on stage. As an MEP, he described the EU as a “beast ridden by the Harlot Catholic Church” and part of a plot against Protestantism.

Woe betide the Catholic who incurred Paisley’s wrath: “Priest Murphy,” he apostrophised a cleric who objected in 1958 to his holding meetings in Ballymoney Town Hall, “speak for your own bloodthirsty, persecuting, intolerant, blaspheming, political-religious papacy, but do not dare to be a spokesman of free Ulster men.”


Ian Paisley addressing a meeting in Belfast in 1972. — Photo: Getty Images.
Ian Paisley addressing a meeting in Belfast in 1972. — Photo: Getty Images.

In Paisley’s version, the story of Ulster was a long catalogue of betrayal by Unionists and Westminster politicians. True Unionists were obliged to fight for themselves: “Come ye out from among them and be separate” had been the dominant biblical text of his childhood and was the essence of his message to his flock. For more than 40 years the self-styled “Voice of Protestant Ulster” articulated the instinctive fears of its grassroots that compromise and conciliation would lead inexorably to a united Ireland. To them, Paisley had saved the Province from this terrible fate.

The inflammatory force of Paisley’s rhetoric was intensified by his physical presence. At 6ft 4in and burly until his later years, he was “the Big Man” to his supporters. Yet he possessed both humour and warmth. As an MP at Westminster and Strasbourg, and later as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, he scrupulously served his Catholic constituents as faithfully as his Protestant ones.

In the European Parliament, he co-operated amiably on Northern Ireland matters with his fellow Euro-MP, the nationalist John Hume. “I am anti-Roman Catholic,” he told his supporters, “but God being my judge, I love the poor dupes who are ground down under that system.”

In fact, Paisley held views on abortion and divorce and on the arrogance of the English political class that differed little from those of his Catholic counterparts. When in 1968 he met the Nationalist Bernadette Devlin at a secret tea party, they found themselves in broad agreement about the common grievances of the Protestant and Catholic working classes.

But there was never any hope of uniting in a common cause, for — as Paisley told Devlin — in the last analysis he would rather be British than fair. And since loyalty to the Union and to the Protestant religion were inextricably intertwined in Paisley’s mind, he persisted in his divisive fulminations about the Catholic Church.

Paisley’s anachronistic quality fascinated and appalled English observers, who seemed rarely to speak his name without the precursor “that dreadful man”. In Northern Ireland, however, the view of Paisley — among both Protestants and Catholics — was more complex. In his earlier years, his tireless exploitation of inflammatory rhetoric seriously damaged the image of Unionism abroad, and drove frightened Catholics closer to the IRA. The IRA leader Daithi O Conaill, asked about a rumour that there were plans to assassinate Paisley, replied that it would never happen: “Paisley is the best recruiting sergeant we’ve got.”


Ian Paisley at a rally in Belfast. — Photo: Camera Press.
Ian Paisley at a rally in Belfast. — Photo: Camera Press.

Moreover, while Paisley condemned Loyalist attacks on Catholics throughout his career, in the Eighties he flirted with the prospect of Protestant “people’s militias” and once conveyed journalists to a hillside in County Antrim at night to witness 500 men in military formation brandishing firearms licences. Loyalist paramilitaries criticised him for inciting them to violence, then distancing himself when it occurred.

The bulk of Unionists felt alienated from the rigidity of Paisley’s massive certainties. But when any whiff of compromise was in the air, his intransigence became a reassurance to people unable to break free from their history. He remained the most popular man in Ulster politics, topping the poll in every European Parliament election from 1979 to 1999.

In the 2003 Assembly elections, Unionists rejected the moderate Unionism of David Trimble and voted for Paisley and his party, not because they cared about his views on the Sabbath, but because they believed Paisley would not “sell out” to the Republic or Sinn Fein.

Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, the younger of two sons, was born on April 6th 1926 in the Catholic section of Armagh. His father, whose family was descended on both sides from early 17th-century Scottish settlers at Sixmilecross, County Tyrone, had served in Carson’s Ulster Volunteer Force during the 1912-13 Home Rule crisis. Later, James Paisley became a drapery store assistant and Baptist pastor who formed his own breakaway church at Ballymena, where Ian attended the Model School and the Technical High School.

In 1942 Paisley enrolled in the Barry School of Evangelism of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, a small sect that had broken with the mother Church in the 17th century. He was ordained by his father in 1946 and appointed minister at the Ravenhill Evangelical Mission Church in Belfast. He became active in the National Union of Protestants, which campaigned for the election of fundamentalist Loyalists to the Stormont Parliament.

In 1951 Paisley was invited to conduct a mission at Crossgar, County Down, where his uninhibited preaching split the congregation; in consequence he founded the Free Presbyterian Church, with himself as moderator: “We in Crossgar,” he declared, “are going back to the old standards and to preach the faith of our fathers.” Despite the opening in Belfast in 1969 of Martyr’s Memorial, one of the largest modern Protestant churches in Europe, the Free Presbyterian Church remained a minority faith with no more than 10,000 followers by 1981.


Ian Paisley. — Photo: PA.
Ian Paisley. — Photo: PA.

The foundation of his Church handicapped Paisley’s political career in that it was never recognised by the Orange movement. Paisley had joined the Orange Order after the war, and by 1951 was chaplain of two of its lodges. But the Orange Grand Lodge refused to recognise his ministry, and he made himself unpopular by launching an attack on a Grand Master who would not condemn the advertising of alcohol. Though he remained in demand as a preacher, Paisley finally left the Order in 1962 in protest at the attendance of the Lord Mayor of Belfast at a Requiem Mass.

Paisley’s dedication to the Lord never inhibited his appetite for publicity. In 1958 he denounced the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret for “committing spiritual fornication with the anti-Christ” by visiting Pope John XXIII. In 1962 he handed out Protestant pamphlets in St Peter’s Square and accused the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, of “slobbering on his slippers” when he met the Pope. In 1963, after John XXIII’s death, he expressed his satisfaction that “this Romish man of sin is now in Hell”.

Also in 1962, Paisley resigned from Ulster Protestant Action, which strove to keep jobs in Protestant hands and resist the “dark sinister shadow” of Dublin, to “concentrate on Church affairs”. But during the 1964 general election he provoked riots by objecting to an Irish tricolor outside the Republican headquarters in Belfast and sloganising against an ice cream shop of “Italian Papists on the Shankhill Road”.

The next year Paisley headed the opposition to the meeting in Belfast of O’Neill and the Taoiseach, Sean Lemass: “No Mass, No Lemass” read the placards, and “IRA murderer welcomed at Stormont”. In 1966 Paisley’s appeal for a “renewal of the spirit of Carson” resulted in the re-formation of the UVF, which is said to have carried out bomb attacks designed to look like IRA outrages, though Paisley was never directly implicated.

In July 1966, after several attempts, Paisley achieved a modest martyrdom by getting sent to jail for three months after insulting Presbyterian dignitaries for their “Romanising tendencies”. While inside he wrote an “exposition” on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which won him an honorary doctorate from Bob Jones University in South Carolina; he took up the title of “Doctor” with enthusiasm.

Out of prison, Paisley agitated against O’Neill with a renewed intensity, attracting an eclectic range of followers including the pederast John McKeague (despite Paisley’s later campaign to “save Ulster from Sodomy”). O’Neill compared the rise of Paisley to the rise of Hitler, doing Paisley little harm with his more enthusiastic followers.

The foundation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in 1967, and signs of the IRA’s resurrection, intensified Protestant alarm. In October 1968 Paisley reacted to a civil rights march planned for Armagh by forcibly occupying the city centre. Three months later Loyalist thugs ambushed a civil rights march between Belfast and Derry at Burntollet Bridge, and at the end of January 1969 Paisley was sentenced to another three months in prison for his part in the Armagh fracas.

But it was O’Neill who suffered the consequences. On his release from prison, Paisley pressed him close at Bannside in elections for Stormont. When, that April, O’Neill agreed to universal suffrage in local elections his government began to fall apart, and a series of explosions in Belfast blew him out of office.

The province descended into near anarchy, and in August British troops were sent in to restore order. The British government’s hopes that support for Paisley was not widespread were dashed the next year when, on O’Neill’s elevation to the peerage, Paisley won his seat and went on to take North Antrim at the June 1970 Westminster election.

Paisley turned his fire first on James Chichester-Clark, who had succeeded O’Neill as Prime Minister, and then on his successor, Brian Faulkner. When Faulkner, with the support of Edward Heath’s government, resorted to the catastrophic policy of internment, Paisley denounced it as “the best bonus the IRA ever received”.

The imposition of direct rule in 1972 and the Provisional IRA’s bombing of the Four Step Inn in the Shankill Road gave Paisley the boost he needed to make the final break with moderate Unionism. He established the DUP to unite religious and political fundamentalism, institutionalising the split in Unionism that had long been inherent in his activities.

In March 1973, after a White Paper proposed a new Ulster assembly in which Catholic nationalists would be proportionately represented, Paisley got himself elected to the new body by promising to wreck it. He was as good as his word. The following January, a month after the establishment of a power-sharing executive under Faulkner, Paisley and his followers paralysed proceedings by occupying the seats reserved for it. It took eight policemen to remove him from the chamber. In May, a general strike of Protestant workers brought about the collapse of the executive and a return to direct rule.

Paisley’s rejection of any kind of power-sharing guaranteed political deadlock for the rest of the decade, and in 1979 his intransigence was vindicated when he topped the poll in the first European elections. His tactics were to list the number of Catholics in each member state and present himself as the Protestant champion who would cleanse the Romish “whorehouse” of Strasbourg.

He professed great hopes of the incoming Margaret Thatcher; so when she initiated talks with the Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, on “possible new institutional structures”, he was appalled. “Every man in Ulster,” Paisley bawled, “is now to declare himself whether he is on the side of the lying, treachery and betrayal of the British government, or whether he stands ready to defend, to the last drop of blood, his British and Irish heritage.”

Paisley could not prevent the signing of the 1985 Hillsborough Agreement, under which an Anglo-Irish conference was set up. Unable to sway the two governments, he turned his tactical gifts to undermining their potential allies in the official Ulster Unionists (UUP) under James Molyneaux.

At first Paisley and Molyneaux were united in opposing the Anglo-Irish Agreement and signed a joint declaration to the effect that “Ulster says No”. In 1986 they called a Loyalist strike that ended in a wave of violence. “Mrs Thatcher,” bellowed Paisley, “has declared war on the Ulster people. I have news for the Prime Minister. God is in his heaven. The day of glory for Margaret Thatcher is over. The day when she was hailed in robes of glory has passed. The robing of this woman is going to be the robes of shame, for God will take her in hand.”

That February, in the midst of this abuse, Mrs Thatcher invited Molyneaux and Paisley to Downing Street for a “chat”. It was typical of Paisley that when he emerged, he professed himself impressed by her sincerity — only to revert to polemics when he got home. As unrest escalated, the pact with Molyneaux came under increasing strain. By 1989 the UUP had agreed a policy of forging better relations with the Republic and the pact was broken.

Paisley’s tactics of alternating negotiation and walkout continued to obstruct progress under Mrs Thatcher’s successor John Major. In 1990, and again in 1992, Paisley agreed to join inter-party and inter-government talks, only to quit in protest at what he saw as the Republic’s territorial ambitions in the Province. The Downing Street Declaration of 1993 brought predictable accusations from Paisley that a “secret deal” had been done with the IRA. “You have sold Ulster,” he told Major, “to buy off the fiendish Republican scum.”

After the IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries declared a ceasefire in 1995, however, the British government sensed the tide turning in its favour; and when Paisley went to see Major he got a less friendly reception. Their brief conversation ended with Paisley being summarily ejected from Downing Street.

In deciding to go over the heads of the DUP and negotiate with the UUP under Molyneaux and later David Trimble, Major banked on Paisley misreading the public mood in the Province. And when in 1998, under the new Labour government, the people of Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly in favour of ratifying the “Good Friday” Peace accord, it seemed the tide had turned decisively.

But it was too soon to dismiss Paisley, who took every opportunity to stir up Protestant fears of plots and secret deals, aided by the IRA’s endless procrastination over decommissioning . Devolved government was tried, and collapsed, four times, sitting for 30 months in total. As they felt the ground slipping from under them, the language of Trimble’s UUP and David Hume’s SDLP became more immoderate, but they were out-outraged by Paisley’s DUP and Gerry Adams’s Sinn Fein.

In the 1998 Assembly elections, hopes at Westminster for a poor showing by the DUP were confounded when the party came within an ace of toppling Trimble’s UUP as the largest party. The DUP took two seats in the power-sharing executive (Paisley, like the leaders of the SDLP and Sinn Fein, chose not to become a minister), but its ministers refused to attend meetings of the Executive Committee (cabinet) in protest at Sinn Fein’s participation. The Executive was suspended after the IRA was found to be using Sinn Fein’s Stormont office to track potential targets.


Ian Paisley. — Photo: REX.
Ian Paisley. — Photo: REX.

In the 2003 Assembly elections, the DUP overtook the UUP, achieving 30 seats to the UUP’s 27, and in the 2005 general election it very nearly wiped out the UUP, taking nine seats to the UUP’s one.

In October 2005 Paisley was sworn of the Privy Council, an honour to which he became entitled as leader of the fourth largest political party in the British Parliament.

Paisley was disarmingly honest about the strategy that had served him so well since his arrival on the political scene: “I may be in the driving seat, but I don’t necessarily have to drive,” he said. “I can sit in that seat with a poker and give Tony Blair a poke in the ribs, but I don’t need to come up with any formula or solutions. The government created this mess and the onus is on Blair to come up with the solution.”

Having established himself as both the key and the main obstacle to any return to power-sharing, Paisley continued to conduct his adversarial Punch and Judy show with Gerry Adams. Yet there were signs that he was mellowing, which coincided with a bout of serious illness in 2004; that autumn he travelled to Dublin for an amicable meeting with the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern.

When, in September 2005, a group under the Canadian General John de Chastelain confirmed that the IRA had finally decommissioned its arsenal, Paisley refused to accept their verdict, insisting: “You can’t build the bridge of trust with the scaffolding of lies and underhand deals.” And in July 2006 he told a rally in Portrush that Sinn Fein would join the government of Northern Ireland “over our dead bodies”.

Yet that October Paisley was party to the St Andrew’s Agreement — involving both the British and Irish governments — in which all parties agreed to fresh Assembly elections and a resumption of power-sharing in return for Sinn Fein accepting the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The elections confirmed him as leader of the province’s largest party, and on May 8th 2007, at the age of 81, he took office as First Minister, with Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, a self-confessed former IRA commander, his deputy. Power-sharing was resumed with remarkably few difficulties, Paisley and McGuinness even attending events together until Paisley stepped down as First Minister on June 5th 2008, handing over to Peter Robinson, who would prove more intransigent.

Paisley retired as an MP at the 2010 election, being created a life peer as Lord Bannside, and in 2011 he stood down from the Assembly. That November he gave up the leadership of the Church he had headed for two-thirds of his life, retiring from the pulpit in January 2012. Yet he continued to insist: “I’ll not be changing. I will go to the grave with the convictions I have.”

Ian Paisley married, in 1956, Eileen Cassells. They had two sons, Kyle, a churchman, and Ian, MP for North Antrim and a former DUP assemblyman, and a daughter, Rhonda, a former Belfast councillor and television presenter.

Lord Bannside, born April 6th 1926, died September 12th 2014.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11092046/Lord-Bannside-obituary.html



from The Telegraph....

Ian Paisley was willing to sacrifice his beliefs for peace

By NORMAN TEBBIT | Friday, 12 September 2014

Dr Ian Paisley, the former Democratic Unionist Party leader. — Photo: PA.
Dr Ian Paisley, the former Democratic Unionist Party leader. — Photo: PA.

FEW PEOPLE were so willing as Ian Paisley at the end to sacrifice so much of his beliefs to achieve a settlement in Northern Ireland.

Although many accused him of sacrificing principles for office, I think that it was a genuine acceptance on his part that unless sacrifices were made on both sides, there could be no settlement and only enduring strife in Northern Ireland. One hopes his political heirs will be as subtle as he eventually proved to be.

He will long be remembered as one of the builders of the settlement which is still probably the best thing that could have happened in the province.


• Lord Tebbit is one of Britain's most outspoken conservative commentators and politicians. He was a senior cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government and is a former Chairman of the Conservative Party. He has also worked in journalism, publishing, advertising and was a pilot in the RAF and British Overseas Airways.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/normantebbit/100286218/ian-paisley-was-willing-to-sacrifice-his-beliefs-for-peace



from The Telegraph....

Ian Paisley is dead — the old hypocrite

By RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS | Friday, 12 September 2014

Dr Ian Paisley. — Photo: PA.
Dr Ian Paisley. — Photo: PA.

IN TUNE with the always reliably amoral musings of Peter Hain, commentators have been lining up to hail the Reverend Ian Paisley, the man of peace.

They do admit that it took him a while to move from the path of negativity to accepting the embrace of Martin McGuinness. But that, we are told, was because circumstances had changed and he had seen the light.

Paisley was born in 1926 and didn’t become a man of peace until in 2005 it suited him to become one in exchange for a peerage, international acclaim, and the right to have it on his tombstone that he was the First Minister of Northern Ireland.

A thundering bigot and a force for ill almost all of his life, he was never targeted for assassination by the IRA leadership because they were smart enough to realise he was their best recruiting sergeant.

As a Northern Irish evangelical Christian preacher, the life choices for Paisley were rather narrow, but he took full advantage of what were available. He wanted all the adulation and power that was going and to crow on top of whatever hill there was to be on top of.

Unfortunately for Northern Ireland, Paisley had exceptional eloquence, charisma and ruthlessness necessary to destroy any who stood in his way. I will never forget the experience of listening to his powerful preaching in his Martyrs’ Memorial Church. The true believers were rapt and ecstatic.

Paisley was only 25 when he fell out with the Presbyterian church in which he was a minister and so founded the much more fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. Distinguished for its abusive anti-Catholicism and its designation of all popes as anti-Christ, he was its supreme leader for almost 60 years. Then he made a U-turn on some of its core beliefs by going into government with unrepentant terrorists and taking on an office — that of First Minister — which involved responsibility for the protection of LGBT rights.

He was forced to resign as moderator, but he held on to the manse even though the church had bought him a retirement home. Paisley wasn’t motivated by financial greed, but he liked his comfort. And being a devoted father and very attached to his family, he liked storing up comforts for them too. In the interests of peace, Tony Blair gave Eileen Paisley a peerage to keep him company. Ian Junior inherited his father’s seat.

Normal unionist parties were too tame for Paisley. In 1950 he campaigned for the Ulster Unionist Party, but broke away to join the National Union of Protestants, from whom he split when its leader refused to become a member of his Free Presbyterians. After some years of the street agitation and general troublemaking in which he excelled, he did so well when contesting the constituency of Bannside against Captain Terence O’Neill, the Prime Minister, as to weaken him fatally and help bring him down.

Paisley founded the Democratic Unionist Party in 1971, which he ruled despotically until he had to step down from government in 2008. Even though nominally a constitutional politician, Paisley would use his magnetism and eloquence to convince generations of loyalists to hate and fear their Catholic neighbours. He was careful never to condone murder, but he inspired many to join the loyalist paramilitaries whom he disowned.

His political career consisted mainly of destroying every unionist leader who wanted to make peace with Irish nationalists, his most distinguished scalp being David Trimble, a man of vision and courage, who was downed by Paisley’s tribal appeals to reject the power-sharing deal with Sinn Fein, “the spawn of Satan”.

That he agreed a virtually identical deal himself was no surprise to Paisley-connoisseurs. He was well suited to holding office with Sinn Fein, whose mastery of hypocritical rhetoric rivalled his. What became known as the Paisley-McGuinness “Chuckle Brothers” routine was hailed by the credulous as a sign that old enemies were now united. What they had done, of course, was to take power and divide the spoils.

“Very sad to learn that Ian Paisley has died,” Martin McGuinness says. “My deepest sympathy to his wife Eileen & family. Once political opponents — I have lost a friend.”

I wonder how the victims of both these men feel today.


• Ruth Dudley Edwards is a historian and a prize-winning biographer and crime writer. Her eleven non-fiction books include The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist, 1843-1993 and Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing and the Families’ Pursuit of Justice. Her twelfth crime novel is Killing the Emperors, a satire on the world of conceptual art.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ruthdudleyedwards/100286257/ian-paisley-is-dead-the-old-hypocrite
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« Reply #358 on: September 15, 2014, 10:54:23 pm »



Dunedin Sound's Gutteridge dies


NZ Newswire

Updated September 15, 2014, 1:14 pm

One of New Zealand's more notable musicians behind "the Dunedin Sound", Peter Gutteridge, has died.

Gutteridge, in his early 50s, died on Monday morning, music critic Simon Sweetman wrote in a blog.

In the early 1980s, Gutteridge was a founding member of The Chills, The Clean and The Great Unwashed. He later went on to form Snapper.

Sweetman said he passed on news of Gutteridge's death so people could "grieve the passing of one of the heroes of New Zealand's alternative music".

"Gutteridge was one of the icons of Dunedin music, the Dunedin Sound - he had a wildness in his heart and in his head it seemed. He channelled that in ugly/beautiful measures in the music he wrote and played."

Snapper performed a reunion tour last year following Gutteridge's treatment for drug use.

Record label Flying Nun, responsible for many of the Dunedin bands in the 1980s, remembered Gutteridge as a great talent.

"All of us, and so many people around the world, have been touched and effected by his music, whether it be the swirling fuzz of the guitar or haunting piano melodies, Peter was a true hero of New Zealand music, and will deeply missed," the label said on its website.

"Our thoughts and sympathies are with his family and friends at this very sad time.
"Thank you Peter for all the music, may you rest in peace."

https://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/24991819/dunedin-sounds-gutteridge-dies/
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« Reply #359 on: October 26, 2014, 12:17:08 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Jack Bruce, bassist with classic rock trio Cream, dead at 71

By MIKAEL WOOD | 12:16PM PDT - Saturday, October 25, 2014

Jack Bruce, who died Saturday, performing in 2008. The bassist was best known for his membership in the band Cream. — Photo: MJKIM/Associated Press.
Jack Bruce, who died Saturday, performing in 2008. The bassist was best known for his membership in the band Cream.
 — Photo: MJKIM/Associated Press.


JACK BRUCE, whose muscular yet melodic bass lines helped power the bluesy British rock trio Cream, died Saturday aged 71, according to a post on the musician's Facebook page.

“It is with great sadness that we, Jack's family, announce the passing of our beloved Jack: husband, father, granddad, and all round legend,” the note reads. “The world of music will be a poorer place without him, but he lives on in his music and forever in our hearts.” Rolling Stone reported that Bruce's publicist said the bassist died at his home in Suffolk, England.


British musician Jack Bruce was best known as bass player and vocalist for the power trio Cream. — Photo: David Redfern/Redferns.
British musician Jack Bruce was best known as bass player and vocalist for the power trio Cream. — Photo: David Redfern/Redferns.

Bassist Jack Bruce, left, drummer Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton of Cream perform live onstage at London's Royal Albert Hall in 2005 during their first reunion concert. The band broke up in 1968. — Photo: Yui Mok/Associated Press.
Bassist Jack Bruce, left, drummer Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton of Cream perform live onstage at London's Royal Albert Hall in 2005 during
their first reunion concert. The band broke up in 1968. — Photo: Yui Mok/Associated Press.


Best known for such late-'60s hits as “White Room” and “Sunshine of Your Love”, Cream featured Bruce (who also sang) along with singer-guitarist Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker; each had previously established himself in the British blues-rock scene, leading many to regard the band as a so-called super group.

It worked quickly: “Fresh Cream”, the trio's first studio album, came out in 1966, followed by “Disraeli Gears” in 1967 and “Wheels of Fire” in 1968. “Goodbye”, the band's final disc (with several live tracks recorded at the Forum in Inglewood), appeared in 1969, though by that time the group had already broken up.

Bruce then began a long solo career before reuniting with Cream in 1993, when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and again in 2005 for concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall and New York's Madison Square Garden. Bruce's most recent solo album, “Silver Rails”, came out in March.






http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-jack-bruce-bassist-cream-dead-20141025-story.html
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« Reply #360 on: December 20, 2014, 02:43:01 pm »


Top aviator and Warbirds founder Trevor Bland dies

Fairfax NZ News | 4:20PM - Saturday, 20 September 2014

The Roaring '40s at Warbirds Over Wanaka. — Photo: GAVIN CONWAY.
The Roaring '40s at Warbirds Over Wanaka. — Photo: GAVIN CONWAY.

ONE OF New Zealand's top aviators and the founding president of the NZ Warbirds Association has died.

Trevor Bland, 78, died at Auckland Hospital this morning following a long illness. He is survived by his wife and four daughters and two step daughters.

Bland first served as a Vampire pilot in the Royal New Zealand Air Force in the 1950s before moving to RAF as an aerobatic pilot, where he made his name as one of the New Zealand's best known display pilots.

Later he rejoined the air force before becoming an Air New Zealand pilot.

Bland's passion for flight transcended outside of work hours and he owned a number of vintage planes.

In 1978, he founded the New Zealand Warbirds Association, which restores and preserve ex-air force service aircrafts.

Bland served as president for thirty years before stepping down seven years ago due to ill health.

Gavin Trethewey, former president of the Warbirds Association, said Bland will leave a legacy for the association's 400 members.

“We all look up to him enormously because of the fact that he was the founder of our association,” he said.

“He had very big shoes to fill.”

Bland's story is recorded in his biography, Rags to Rivets — the Trevor Bland story, by Ron Pemberton.

Funeral arrangements are yet to be confirmed.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/64354800/top-aviator-and-warbirds-founder-trevor-bland-dies
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« Reply #361 on: December 23, 2014, 08:34:42 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Bobby Keys dies at 70; Rolling Stones saxophonist

By KRISTIN M. HALL | 5:45PM PST - Tuesday, December 02, 2014

Bobby Keys, left, Mick Jagger, Mick Taylor and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones perform live onstage at Newcastle City Hall in the United Kingdom on September 13th, 1973. — Photo: Ian Dickson/Redferns.
Bobby Keys, left, Mick Jagger, Mick Taylor and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones perform live onstage at Newcastle City Hall
in the United Kingdom on September 13th, 1973. — Photo: Ian Dickson/Redferns.


BOBBY KEYS, a saxophonist and lifelong rock ‘n' roller who played on recordings by Buddy Holly and John Lennon and performed the solo on the Rolling Stones' “Brown Sugar”, has died. He was 70.

Keys died on Tuesday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee, after a lengthy illness, according to his friend and fellow musician Michael Webb. Keys had been on tour with the Stones this year before his health prevented him from performing.

“The Rolling Stones are devastated by the loss of their very dear friend and legendary saxophone player, Bobby Keys,” the band said in a statement. “Bobby made a unique musical contribution to the band since the 1960s. He will be greatly missed.”


Bobby Keys and The Rolling Stones perform at the Inglewood Forum in 1975. — Photo: Tony Barnard/Los Angeles Times.
Bobby Keys and The Rolling Stones perform at the Inglewood Forum in 1975. — Photo: Tony Barnard/Los Angeles Times.

Known for his raw, raucous style, the Lubbock, Texas, native was born on the same day as Keith Richards — December 18th, 1943 — and the Stones guitarist would often cite Keys as a soul mate and favorite musician. Besides “Brown Sugar”, Keys also played memorable solos on such Stones favorites as the 7-minute jam “Can't You Hear Me Knocking” and the country-styled “Sweet Virginia”. Other career highlights included John Lennon's chart-topping “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” and albums by Richards, George Harrison, Barbra Streisand and Eric Clapton.

“I have lost the largest pal in the world, and I can't express the sense of sadness I feel, although Bobby would tell me to cheer up,” Richards said in a statement.


Saxophone player Bobby Keys, during the sound check for the first night of the Rolling Stones' 1973 European World Tour in Stadthalle, Vienna, on September 1st, 1973. — Photo: Michael Putland/Getty Images. Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and saxophonist Bobby Keys perform at Arena Amsterdam September 22nd, 2003. — Photo: Rob Verhorst/Redferns.
LEFT: Saxophone player Bobby Keys, during the sound check for the first night of the Rolling Stones' 1973 European World
Tour in Stadthalle, Vienna, on September 1st, 1973. — Photo: Michael Putland/Getty Images. | RIGHT: Rolling Stones
guitarist Keith Richards and saxophonist Bobby Keys perform at Arena Amsterdam September 22nd, 2003.
 — Photo: Rob Verhorst/Redferns.


Keys' career dated back to the 1950s, when as a teenager he played with fellow Lubbock native Holly and The Crickets. He met the Stones in the mid-'60s while they were on the same bill at a state fair in San Antonio, Texas, and was distraught that the British rockers had recorded a cover of Holly's “Not Fade Away”.

“I said, ‘Hey, that was Buddy's song’,” Keys recalled in Richards' memoir “Life”, published in 2010. “Who are these pasty-faced, funny-talking, skinny-legged guys to come over here and cash in on Buddy's song?”

But once Keys listened more closely, he decided the Stones were playing “actual rock and roll,” an opinion the Stones shared about Keys. He first recorded with them in the late 1960s and toured and recorded with them off and on over the following decades, his work featured on three of the group's most acclaimed albums: “Let It Bleed”, “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street”.


Bobby Keys of the Rolling Stones, right, joins from left, Warren Haynes of The Allman Brothers Band, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, Trey Anastasio of Phish and Grace Potter of the Nocturnals at A Benefit for Headcount at The Capitol Theatre on September 7th, 2012, in Point Chester, New York. — Photo: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic.
Bobby Keys of the Rolling Stones, right, joins from left, Warren Haynes of The Allman Brothers Band, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead,
Trey Anastasio of Phish and Grace Potter of the Nocturnals at A Benefit for Headcount at The Capitol Theatre on September 7th, 2012,
in Point Chester, New York. — Photo: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic.


In some ways, he was too close to Richards, developing a heroin addiction that led to his temporary estrangement from the group. But he was with them on every major tour over the past quarter of a century, dependably stepping up for his solo on “Brown Sugar”.

Keys' memoir “Every Night's a Saturday Night” was published in 2012, with a foreword by Richards. Keys recalled that he was first exposed to rock ‘n' roll through Holly's music — not on the radio, but at the grand opening of a Texas gas station near the home of Keys' grandparents. It was the first time he had heard an electric guitar played live.

“And right then and there, I knew I wanted to have something to do with that music,” Keys explained.


Kristin M. Hall writes for the Associated Press.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-bobby-keys-20141203-story.html
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« Reply #362 on: December 23, 2014, 08:34:57 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Joe Cocker dies at 70; British blues-rock singer who rocked Woodstock

By RANDY LEWIS | 8:02PM PST - Monday, December 22, 2014

Singer Joe Cocker performs at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, upstate New York, in August 1969. — Photo: Associated Press.
Singer Joe Cocker performs at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, upstate New York, in August 1969. — Photo: Associated Press.

EVEN by the wild and woolly standards of rock music in the late 1960s, there was nothing right about Joe Cocker's career-making performance at the Woodstock summer music festival in upstate New York.

He wasn't handsome by any conventional measure, his voice sounded as though he'd just swallowed a length of rusty barbed wire and his body contorted to such extremes that anybody watching wondered if he was in the grip of an epileptic seizure.

Yet in writhing his way through the Beatles' “With a Little Help From My Friends”, which sounded light-years away from the Fab Four's bouncy pop version, the British blues-rock-R&B vocalist turned in what became one of the most indelible performances of that gathering of many of the greatest rock musicians of the era, and introduced a singer who became one of the most creative and soulful interpreters of other people's songs.

For Cocker — who died on Monday at his Colorado home at 70 after battling small-cell lung cancer in recent years — his instantly identifiable, highly idiosyncratic performance style, which became fodder for parody years later on “Saturday Night Live[/i]”
[/url], was simply the way he felt music.

“When I look at the old footage, I can't quite deal with it,” he told an interviewer in 2008, saying his contortions were how he thought he'd move if he could play an instrument, a talent that escaped him “because I have these fat thumbs.”

His ragged, tortured vocals became an ideal outlet for blues-rooted music that emulated and then transcended his lifelong admiration of soul singer Ray Charles.

“He was a blues singer without necessarily singing the blues,” Robert Santelli, executive director of the Grammy Museum, said on Monday. “He was the male equivalent of Janis Joplin, not only in the way he let the emotion of the song take over his entire being — his voice, his body, his soul — he also lived hard and his voice was not something he treasured in the way a lot of great singers do. He abused it, which gave it that vitality. But over time, that becomes a detriment.”

Indeed, Cocker's life often played out the way his anguished hit interpretations sounded when he reinvented the Boxtops' “The Letter”, the Beatles' “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”, Leon Russell's “Delta Lady”, Dave Mason's “Feelin' Alright”, Arthur Hamilton's 1950s torch song “Cry Me a River” and Billy Preston's “You Are So Beautiful”.

He embodied, yet survived, the hedonistic excesses of the 1960s and '70s rock world, indulging in alcohol, heroin, PCP and, as he once put it, “just about every drug imaginable.”[/size]

Joe Cocker performs with John Belushi on “Saturday Night Live” on October 2nd, 1976. — Picture: NBC.
Joe Cocker performs with John Belushi on “Saturday Night Live” on October 2nd, 1976. — Picture: NBC.

Unlike Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and others whose battles with their demons led to early deaths, Cocker kept singing and recording — perhaps in part because of his hearty constitution from a hardscrabble early life in the steel town of Sheffield in northern England.

He faced serious financial troubles in the 1970s, '80s and beyond, but Cocker periodically resurfaced with hits that brought his voice before new generations of listeners.

In 1975, he recorded “You Are So Beautiful”, a song written by Preston originally as a gospel song about Jesus and then retooled as an expression of romantic love.

Cocker once said it “is probably the … strongest tune I ever did in just the simplicity in it.... There's a little thing at the end that goes ‘… to me’. You know the note?”

“When I sang it in the studio,” he told NPR in 2012, “I remember everyone pricking up their ears — the whole studio, the staff, the engineers. And you know, it kind of woke up something in me, that softer side that I have going for me. It comes into my mind a lot, that tune. It's just such a lovely melody.”

The soft side of the hard-living Englishman came to the fore again seven years later when he was invited to record a duet with singer-songwriter Jennifer Warnes for the film “An Officer and a Gentleman”. The pair won the Grammy Award for pop performance by a duo or group for “Up Where We Belong”, written by Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jack Nitzsche and Will Jennings.

It was a far cry from the jagged material he first became known for.

“A lot of people wondered what had happened to the old gravel belter when they heard it and thought I'd softened up and gone all pop,” he said. “I like a ballad, but doing lighter stuff like that doesn't really suit me, because I've always been a rocker at heart, and I'll always return to my soul roots.”

He typically did so through a series of about 30 albums released throughout his recording career, which began inauspiciously in 1963 with a round of sessions featuring his band Vance Arnold & the Avengers.


Joe Cocker performs at Woodstock in August 1994. — Photo: Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times.
Joe Cocker performs at Woodstock in August 1994. — Photo: Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times.

John Robert Cocker was born May 20th, 1944, the youngest son of Harold Cocker, a civil servant, and his wife, Madge. Early on he was attracted to the dark, pain-fueled singing of American singer Ray Charles, and to the scrappy music of English skiffle star Lonnie Donegan. At 12, Cocker joined his older brother Victor's skiffle band and made his first venture singing in public, then took the name Vance Arnold when he put together his own group.

They played clubs in Sheffield then got a slot opening for the Rolling Stones in 1963 for a show at Sheffield City Hall. He landed a solo contract with Decca in 1964 and put out a rendition of the Beatles then-current song “I'll Cry Instead”, to little notice. But it telegraphed his ability to put his own stamp on material by some of the most highly regarded songwriters of the era.

Joe Cocker's Big Blues Band followed soon, and again generated little real traction. He formed the Grease Band — the group that would support him at Woodstock just a few years later — in 1966 with keyboardist-songwriter Chris Stainton, the co-writer of “Marjorine”, which gave Cocker his first U.K. hit in 1968.

That's the year Cocker chose to take another whack at a Beatles song, and he radically reimagined “With a Little Help From My Friends” as a slow, screaming blues workout — future Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page was among the players backing him — in which Cocker engaged in an increasingly fervent call and response with the backup singers in the song's question-answer lyric.

Cocker's agonized cries took the song to a realm the Beatles hadn't imagined, and Paul McCartney on Monday said in a statement, “It was just mind-blowing, [he] totally turned the song into a soul anthem, and I was forever grateful for him for having done that.”

It was a major career boost when Cocker was booked to perform at Woodstock in 1969 along with more established rock heroes, including Hendrix, Joplin, the Who, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jefferson Airplane.

After Woodstock, he mounted the fabled Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, a juggernaut with more than three dozen musicians, from which he made little money because of the massive overhead and indulgences that helped create the blueprint for what came to be known as the era of “sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll”.

Rock critic and author Anthony DeCurtis said at that time that “what Mad Dogs & Englishmen represented was ... the high-water mark of a certain kind of utopian impulse in popular music.”

The tour made a bona fide rock star out of American musician Leon Russell, the tour's bandleader, pianist, singer and arranger, but left Cocker's career on the ropes, setting a pattern of fits and starts because of his addictions that played out for almost three decades.


Joe Cocker performs during a concert in Nice, France, on April 6th, 2013. — Photo: Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images.
Joe Cocker performs during a concert in Nice, France, on April 6th, 2013. — Photo: Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images.

The successes of “You Are So Beautiful” and “Up Where We Belong” rejuvenated his career and finances for a time, income from the latter hit allowing him to buy a sizable ranch in Santa Barbara.

He attempted to lead a healthier lifestyle at several junctures, but it took him decades to quit drugs and alcohol entirely.

“It's not any fun having people tell you about things that you can't remember yourself,” he said in 1995, about six years before he got sober. “It's like your life never happened, like you went out on the road, did a whole tour and got back and can't remember any of it.”

He and his wife, Pam, married in 1987 and a few years later bought a 240-acre ranch in the mountains of Crawford, Colorado, about 250 miles southwest of Denver, where the singer devoted much of his time to growing tomatoes, walking his dogs, fly fishing, riding horses and playing billiards.

For all the pleasure he got from the more rural lifestyle, he periodically wondered whether he'd lose connection with his musical muse.

“I'm afraid if I quit for a while,” he told the Denver Post in 2008, “I may not be able to get it back.”

Although he periodically recorded gospel songs, much like his hero Charles, Cocker kept his spiritual beliefs largely private.

But he was never shy about touting the place music held in his life.

“When I think of some of the stuff I've been through,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 1986, “people ask me if I'll ever retire. But as long as my voice is in pretty good shape, why should I? ... I really do live for music. Without it, there isn't much left of me. I'd just be a lost soul.”

In addition to his wife and brother Victor, Cocker is survived by a stepdaughter, Zoey Schroeder, and two grandchildren, Eva and Simon Schroeder.


Los Angeles Times staff writer Christine Mai-Duc contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-joe-cocker-20141223-story.html
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« Reply #363 on: January 16, 2015, 11:35:29 am »


Renowned architect Sir Ian Athfield dies, age 74

     (The Dominion Post | 1:12PM - Friday, 16 January 2015)




He didn't survive long enough to receive his “GONG” in person from the Governor-General (the old tap on the shoulders with the sword).
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« Reply #364 on: January 19, 2015, 10:16:12 pm »


from The Dominion Post....

Editorial: Athfield lives on in his work

EDITORIAL | 5:00AM - Monday, 19 January 2015

SIR IAN ATHFIELD

SIR IAN ATHFIELD was a great Wellingtonian who changed the face of his city. If you seek his monument, as was famously said of another noted architect, look around you. Athfield lives on in concrete and steel and will be remembered long after a tribe of local bigwigs and lesser architects have passed into oblivion.

Ath's trademark was whim and eccentricity, and his wackiest creation was his own house. Here he could let his imagination run amok, unchained by the demands of the rich and powerful who commonly hired him. Not everyone loved or loves the house that writhes and sprawls down the hill below Khandallah. Some of his neighbours positively hated it. Athfield once claimed that the critics had killed his chooks and even left bullet holes in his house.

People loved and hated his buildings, but what mattered more was that they noticed them and argued. Athfield helped make architecture matter to people, as it should. It is the most public art, and the one that has most influence on our daily lives.

A lot of New Zealand architecture is bland and oppressive, like Te Papa. Athfield's buildings were never like that. Think what could have happened if he and the genius Frank Gehry had been chosen to design the national museum instead of failing even to make the short list. We might have had a masterpiece; we would certainly have had a building that lived in controversy. Instead, we have a giant nonentity.

Athfield's style is known to people who have no interest in architecture at all. Everyone knows the nikau pillars of the Wellington Library, a kind of visual joke or paradox that is pure Athfield. But more impressive, perhaps, are the great curved glass windows that form a wall of the library and look out to the harbour. This was a splendid design that was both striking and useful. Readers love the vast view that surrounds the pages they are studying, and flock to this great building.

Athfield said once that there was no one way to design a building and that the space between the buildings was as important as the buildings themselves. The civic centre is a triumph of this principle. Somehow Athfield welded this weird collection of buildings into a single harmony. This is civic space as a celebration of diversity.

Athfield's style is always recognisable but always adapted to the particular place. The Chews Lane redevelopment is a special success, a shaft of light in Gotham City. Sometimes it takes people years or even decades to see how superbly the building matches the landscape. The house he designed in 1980 for winemaker John Buck of Te Mata vineyard in Hawke's Bay raised a ruckus with the neighbours: they hated its concrete curves and waves. Now it is part of our heritage.

Athfield was a working-class boy who grew up in a drab part of southern Christchurch. His life was a sustained refusal to add to the dreariness of our built environment. His was a joyful architecture, and the joy will outlast the irritation, the back-biting and the bullet-holes. We owe a debt of gratitude to Ian Athfield.


Related news story:

• Renowned architect Sir Ian Athfield dies, aged 74

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/editorials/65170660/Editorial-Athfield-lives-on-in-his-work
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« Reply #365 on: January 20, 2015, 02:48:32 pm »



Coronation Street's Anne Kirkbride dies

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/65214627/coronation-streets-anne-kirkbride-dies
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« Reply #366 on: January 21, 2015, 08:42:25 am »


She died young - 60 years old. Kirkbride was battling cervical cancer a few years ago. I guess it had spread. RIP.
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« Reply #367 on: February 17, 2015, 11:07:40 am »



(click on the picture to read the news story)
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« Reply #368 on: February 17, 2015, 11:19:17 am »



(click on the picture to read the news story)


I had a huge amount of respect for Celia Lashlie. She had balls. RIP
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« Reply #369 on: February 18, 2015, 12:40:27 pm »



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« Reply #370 on: February 25, 2015, 10:47:20 am »


from Radio NZ News....

Dame Thea Muldoon dies

7:36AM - Wednesday, 25 February 2015

Dame Thea and Sir Robert Muldoon.
Dame Thea and Sir Robert Muldoon.

DAME THEA MULDOON, the wife of the late former prime minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, has died in Auckland aged 87.

Born Thea Dale Flyger, she had a strict upbringing in Huntly, and National Party meetings were one of the few places where she was allowed to go as a young, single woman.

She met Robert Muldoon when she was chairing a debate at a Young Nationals meeting. They were married in 1951.

As the wife of the prime minister from 1975 to 1984, she spoke regularly at functions, opened buildings, and visited the sick, very young and elderly.

Accordingly, she was the first prime minister's wife to have her own full-time secretary.

Dame Thea was made a dame in 1993 for her services to the community. She is survived by two of her three children.


http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/267024/dame-thea-muldoon-dies
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« Reply #371 on: February 28, 2015, 07:01:16 am »


my bolding emphasis

Leonard Nimoy, famous as Mr. Spock on 'Star Trek,' dies
By Lynn Elber, AP Television Writer | Associated Press – 58 minutes ago

Leonard Nimoy, world famous as Mr. Spock on 'Star Trek' TV series and films, dies at 83

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Leonard Nimoy, the actor known and loved by generations of "Star Trek" fans as the pointy-eared, purely logical science officer Mr. Spock, has died.

Nimoy died Friday of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at his Los Angeles home, with family at his side, said his son, Adam Nimoy. He was 83.

Although Nimoy followed his 1966-69 "Star Trek" run with a notable career as both an actor and director, in the public's mind he would always be Spock. His half-human, half-Vulcan character was the calm counterpoint to William Shatner's often-emotional Captain Kirk on one of TV and film's most revered cult series.
"He affected the lives of many," Adam Nimoy said. "He was also a great guy and my best friend."

Asked if his father chafed at his fans' close identification of him with his character, Adam Nimoy said, "Not in the least. He loved Spock."

His death drew immediate reaction on Earth and in space.

"I loved him like a brother. We will all miss his humor, his talent and his capacity to love," Shatner said.

"Live Long and Prosper, Mr. #Spock!" tweeted Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, aboard the International Space Station.

Nimoy displayed ambivalence to the famous role in the titles of his two autobiographies: "I Am Not Spock" (1975) and "I Am Spock" (1995).

After "Star Trek" ended, the actor immediately joined the hit adventure series "Mission Impossible" as Paris, the mission team's master of disguises.

From 1976 to 1982, he hosted the syndicated TV series "In Search of ... ," which attempted to probe such mysteries as the legend of the Loch Ness Monster and the disappearance of aviator Amelia Earhart.

He played Israeli leader Golda Meir's husband opposite Ingrid Bergman in the TV drama "A Woman Called Golda" and Vincent van Gogh in "Vincent," a one-man stage show on the life of the troubled painter. He continued to work well into his 70s, playing gazillionaire genius William Bell in the Fox series "Fringe."

He also directed several films, including the hit comedy "Three Men and a Baby" and appeared in such plays as "A Streetcar Named Desire," ''Cat on a Hot Tim Roof," ''Fiddler on the Roof," ''The King and I," ''My Fair Lady" and "Equus." He also published books of poems, children's stories and his own photographs.

But he could never really escape the role that took him overnight from bit-part actor status to TV star, and in a 1995 interview he sought to analyze the popularity of Spock, the green-blooded space traveler who aspired to live a life based on pure logic.

People identified with Spock because they "recognize in themselves this wish that they could be logical and avoid the pain of anger and confrontation," Nimoy concluded. "How many times have we come away from an argument wishing we had said and done something different?" he asked.

more at
https://nz.finance.yahoo.com/news/leonard-nimoy-famous-mr-spock-184605481.html
 

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« Reply #372 on: March 01, 2015, 11:41:46 am »

Invercargill identity Louis Crimp dies    
 
 
 EVAN HARDING   

Last updated 12:42 27/02/2015

http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/66737554/Invercargill-identity-Louis-Crimp-dies
http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/66744023/The-roguish-philanthropist
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« Reply #373 on: March 01, 2015, 12:06:07 pm »


Louis Crimp is mentioned in the following threads at this group....

• ~-~ Act always was revolting ~-~

• What a Penis!

• Ad man's race-referendum allies

• Gareth Morgan fires the first shot of WWIII

• One of Louis Crimp's mates?

• The Invercargill bigot.

• New Zealand has Louis Crimp .... America has Donald Sterling
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« Reply #374 on: April 04, 2015, 02:21:16 pm »

Judge Michael Brown dies aged 77

Gia Garrick, National  Saturday, 4 April 2015, 1:30PM

Members of the legal fraternity are tipping their hats to the man who revolutionised the way young people are treated by the courts.

Judge Mick Brown was New Zealand's first Principal Youth Court Judge, and was responsible for introducing a restorative approach.

He's died at the age of 77.

Lawyer Helen Bowen says he was responsible for a system that's so successful, it's often been copied and is widely used overseas.

She says he'd been practicing restorative justice anyway, by getting offenders into court and arranging meetings with victims.

Helen Bowen says Mick Brown was always ahead of his time.

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/judge-michael-brown-dies-aged-77/

 see also http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=174583
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