>>Boy are you lucky you are an island on the other side of the world.
Next week I'll be back in the Land of the Free.
FWIW, NZ has one other attribute that people aren't attuned to yet: clean water, and plenty of it.... and a heck of a lot of the more salty variety between us and anybody else who decides they want it. Australia, of course, is a giant desert with the opposite problem. ;-)
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
