1,000 pages at last!

Quite without my realising it, New England Online passed the 1,000 page mark on 1 September with the creation of a page on the politician Brett Churchill-Lewis.

I am immensely proud of myself obviously for passing such a monumental milestone. But there is much more to be done, so work continues unabated.

An unseemly discussion

Queen Elizabeth II. Long may she reign!

Whilst recently editing an article in the Encyclopaedia of New England Online, I came upon the rather unfortunate dilemma of writing in the time of death for our present Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II. There have been a good number of authors over the years that have not hesitated to write about such an eventuality, but I for one cannot abide such an unseemly discussion whilst Her Majesty is still alive and well.

It goes without saying that it would be highly unlikely if Her Majesty were to still be alive on the 5 June 2052, the date at which the Encyclopaedia of New England Online is presently set. If by some happy miracle she were, then the Queen would be the very hearty age of 126 years, 1 month, and 15 days. Whilst not entirely outside the realm of possibility, especially given advances in medical science (see this slightly tongue-in-check article for another take on the longevity of the Royal Family), it is far more likely that either the Queen’s son or grandson will be sovereign on this date.

If and when the Queen does die, then the article will be updated with the time and place, and the world shall be a poorer place for it. That does not mean, however, that I think it appropriate to speculate when Her Majesty will leave us for her eternal reward, and I for one will not do so on this encyclopaedia. Instead, the date is marked with a simple em dash (—)  and a link to this entry in the journal as a means of explanation.

Going nuclear

Recent events in Japan, and the media bun-fight that ensued has led me to adopt what you might call a ‘reactionary’ position regarding nuclear power. The news media coverage of the Fukushima incident was little more than an exercise in ‘disaster porn’, and shamed all good taste and rational analysis of the situation.

So in order to do my bit in support of a clean, safe, and dependable industry I believe should be adopted widely by all civilised nations, from this month New England has had nuclear power written into the fabric of its story. Instead of a nation that had no nuclear because of a lack of fuel, our favourite fictional country now gets a range of existing and new power stations, and a rich deposits of uranium ore to fuel them. There is also a sophisticated nuclear research site in order to conduct vital research into nuclear medicine and other allied industries.

A controversial move? Sure. Of course it is. But readers must not forget that New England Online is not an exercise in just building a nation for its own sake. There is, and always will be, a strongly political element to why I have created this website. Nuclear power makes sense, and for those of you out there who believe that energy should be clean and ‘carbon-free’, I’m glad to say that nuclear is only viable option available. Even if one rejects the need to cut carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (as I most certainly do), going nuclear is good for creating jobs, creates economic diversity, allows Australia to value-add to a raw product it has in abundance, and breaks our reliance on coal as the primary source of base-load electricity.

Food for thought surely?

A year in review

The time has come to undergo a small stock take. Looking back on 2010, it should be obvious just how much has been added to the website in the last twelve months.

There are now 825 pages on content and 1,320 uploaded files on the Encyclopaedia of  New England Online.In addition, there are a further 1,281 page that have not yet been created, with the list of wanted pages actually continuing to rise as more content is added. The old saying of one step forwards, two steps backward seems to have been the order of the day in 2010.

Unfortunately, I do not have a record of how many pages and files existed on the site this time last year. This timer next year, however, I will be able to look at this page and see just how far the site has progressed.

The future

2010 was the sixth year of New England Online. I am very proud of the work I have done so far. HOWEVER, there is much more that needs to be done in order to get the website up to the standard I demand of it. The truest maxim of the entire enterprise is the idea that content is king. This applies as much today as it did in June 2004 when for no sane reason I kicked off this crazy venture.

The political events of 2010 in Australia and elsewhere demonstrate that a conservative alternative approach to the idea of socialism and big government is desperately needed. In a very small way, I want New England Online to show the world an alternative to tradition-bashing progressives who value nothing over themselves and their own selfish needs.

For a couple of years now I have been talking about multimedia content, and I still want to develop videos to add a further level of believability to the site. The kind of short little videos that has been used by Sweden to promote that realm are the sort of thing I still have in mind:

Sweden: Open Skies, Open Minds tells one everything you could ever want to glean in four minutes about Sweden. A cursory exportation of the video and want it is trying to say about the country and it’s people can be readily deducted. Sweden is not New England of course, and what this video is trying to say is not what New England is about. That said, this is a marvellous video that provides a brilliant insight into what the Swedes think of themselves and how they want us to think of them.

I hope 2011 affords me some opportunity to something very similar for New England.

The local revolution

Some months ago I purchased The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain by Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan.  The central premise of the book is the idea that too much power has been taken away from Parliament and local communities and handed to unelected bureaucrats in Whitehall and Brussels. Twenty-first century Great Britain is the sorry story of a nation overrun by qangos and the EU, and as a result, politics in the country is failing.

Since I bought the book, I have read and re-read it, looking for ideas that can be applied to the New England experiment. It goes without saying that I have found a number of things that any sensible politician should consider adopting as policy, but the most important thing I have gathered from the book is the idea that any decision affecting people should be made as close as possible to those same people. It seems obvious, and very simple, but in recent times there has been a swing back to the big spending centralist governments of the left who quite frankly, couldn’t run a whelk stall.

Here are just some of the many ideas discussed in The Plan that have been translated to the New England experiment:

• No public funding for political parties;
• Devolution of social security to local authorities;
• Singapore style health insurance; and
• Referendums that can block any legislation passed by Parliament.

It goes without saying that I think this policy should apply to Australia as well. There need to be more states, not less; and the ever increasing power of the Commonwealth should be curtailed. At the present, it is far too big.  Given the centralist policies of all the political elite in this country, there isn’t a snowflakes chance in Hell this would happen.

And people wonder why I gave up on the real world years ago and started New England Online…

Alternatives

While I am not updating the website, I have been working through some of the issues around the creation of the comic. By rights, I shouldn’t even be doing this, as I really need a rest. However, when my brain starts to work, there isn’t much I can do to stop it.

In any case, my research into the idea of creating a comic has made me realise that the plot of this story could easily be adapted to other forms such as literature, film, or radio. This gives me a sort of flexibility to craft a story that can be adapted to one or more types of entertainment media as things develop.

Another break

Various distractions are forcing me to lay down the virtual pen for a short rest. I shall return soon.

A ligne claire comic book?

Over the years, Andrew Cusack, that most wonderful of web correspondents, has written a number of articles on comic artists of the ligne claire style most famously used by Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin (example, pictured right). As a Tintinophile, the style is a particular favourite of mine. Indeed, above the comics of Footrot Flats and XKCD, The Adventures of Tintin is easily my favourite example of this medium.

The idea of producing a comic book version to freshen up the story that has been so stodgily written in New England Online has some appeal to me. I have long written about my own shortcomings as a writer, particularly of any sort of work involving narrative or verse.  The one idea I have had for a novel, that being the story of a jaded Australian journalist travelling to New England and having an adventure, has not progressed very far. So, the idea of instead writing a comic of this story, which I feel would come more easily to me, has some appeal. Even the story line itself has obvious Tintin-esque characteristics to it, so producing it in the same medium seems to be an appropriate way of telling the tale of New England outside the tired parameters of an encyclopaedia.

At this stage, I am promising nothing. But I instead to create a storyboard and brainstorm out an adventure in comic form. If it works, I shall try and commission an artist to draw it, and you’ll see it in good time. If it doesn’t work, I will never speak of it again

Ring in the Changes

What an amazing six months!

The site really has been transformed by the decision to embrace traditionalism last year. Many ideas for pages that had been discarded for seeming too reactionary have now been embraced and published. These changes aren’t without controversy, and the very act of writing and publishing them makes the site a target for political criticism. But, I wouldn’t really be doing this if I didn’t want to engage in some sort of political discourse on the fate of western civilisation, and I sincerely and strongly believe that these new pages introduced are necessary if we are too survive.

To summarise, these changes have included:

• Establishment of Christianity as the state religion. All major denominations are included;
• Establishment of a peerage and baronetage in New England as part of the honours system;
• The introduction of a quadripartite system for secondary school education;
• The replacement of social democracy with liberalism as the major progressive political ideology; and
• Reintroduction of capital punishment for the most serious and aggravating of offences (I freely admit that this is probably the most controversial idea I have introduced to the website, but I do not shy away from the need for it).

In 2004, New England Online was featured in the book High Lean Country: Land, People and Memory in New England. For me, it was a great honour to be featured in this academic work, and confirmed that what I was doing for of both academic and artistic, merit. In the prelude to the book, Professor J.S. Ryan described the site as “A utopia built on the realities and values of the present” and “New England idealism wonderfully updated”.

I doubt very much that Professor Ryan would view New England Online of 2010 in quite the same light, not least because of the massive changes wrought by the passage of time, as the author has grown up and his political views have changed almost beyond recognition. But even if I lost the admiration of academia for now, I don’t believe that what I am doing has any less value as an academic exercise. Time, and the chance to complete many more pages of New England Online, will provide me with a product that can argue my case for a traditionalist state in the south pacific.

Back to Work

Updates have now resumed on the website, after a considerable lay off. I am really looking forward to getting stuck into it again.