no more guilt

speaking of maori, a new series on the treaty of waitangi started on maori tv.
written and hosted by mike king, it is a ten part series on how then treaty was created and signed

(yes, that's mike king the comedian. if i was cynical, i;d say that they meant to hire michael king, the historian, but he was unable to commit to a ten part history on account of being dead, so they hired mike king and hoped that no one would notice the difference. but i'm not, so i won't)

last nights episode was quite good. it is king's contention that the villans of the piece were the nz governement of the time, together with edward wakefield.
they sold it to the governement for a few hundred dollars. wakefield added a couple of zeros to teh price and onsold it. he also sold land that he didn't technically own fuguring that by the time that the settlers arrived he would have gotten the land one way or another. the settlers were blameless having bought the land in good faith. so, the breaches of the treaty are not our fault. its the bloody government and a dodgy property developer.

plus ca change, ces plus la meme chose