this is from me and @timmarchman.bsky.social for @wired.com:

these texts (and the context around them) are some of the wildest ones I've read from the House Oversight Committee drop.

A price I am willing to pay

Parish Council take-over?

Afraid it doesn't count unless he managed to co-opt himself

Ok this is cool. I would love to adopt a drain in London.

You know, X which has been boosting the far-right? news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

I read Gordon Slatter's The Pagan Game several years ago.

Written in the 1960s, it is based around a small Lower North Island town's high school rugby team (feels like Feilding!).

There is a fair bit about class and religion too, which resonated with my 1990s small South Island town

My father is from the latter and mum is from the former (although more Scots than Irish Catholic).

Then there were urban vs rural divides. Mum recalls the nuns being quite dismissive of farmer's daughters compared to the daughters of the small town urban professionals.

That is interesting.

The SI Rural thing resonates. But then these things are always more complex. Religion and ethnicity played/plays a part too.

Plenty of Irish Catholic or just Catholic farming families were looked down upon by Protestant farming families.

Indeed. NZ's net migration is back to the bad old days - due to the recession.

The £1 must sting