She said it was cheaper for people, as three couples were covering the cost of the venue and other hire fees, but it still allows people to have a beautiful wedding.

"It's got the gorgeous-ness of a full wedding without having to organise any of it." Read more

Some of these changes are small and understandable - we are becoming a much smaller world, after all, with everyone being constantly connected.

Some are nonsensical, such as the image of Santa looking ready for a blizzard in the middle of our summer, or teachers accepting school work with Americanised spelling because that's often what autocorrect defaults to.

Others, such as the increasing "celebration" of Halloween, are pointless and should be wholly discouraged.

Halloween always reminds me of the scene in ET where Elliott takes the titular alien out trick-or-treating, and his friend recognises Yoda from Star Wars.

It's parents taking kids out, an entire community getting involved and doing something communal.

All I've ever seen here in Hamilton is kids trying to skive free lollies from the neighbours with their parents' approval - and it annoys me.

I realise my image is skewed by my love of the very media I mentioned in the first paragraph, and I know Halloween originated with the Celts.

But now it has become this homogenised excuse to dress up and bug people for candy.

In a city where you are accosted for free stuff in the CBD all the time, it doesn't look great to be instilling that mindset in a new generation.

In fact, it goes against the incredibly important lesson we all teach our kids about not taking lollies from strangers.

Here we see people actively encouraging it.

I've watched as kids are sent out to harvest treats, and I think it's wrong.

In a city where high fences and privacy are highly prized, what will allowing kids to scab lollies end up doing to the communities we have here? Continue reading

Source

• Paul Barlow in Stuff

Paul Barlow is a writer and Film & Stage Crew member based in Waikato.

The British are known for their abstemious ways with alcohol, and the respectful way they behave on, for example, soccer grounds.

They may be known for their steady drinking at neighbourhood pubs, their homes way from home, where they down pints while eating whatever's curled up in the warming cabinet, but goodness knows they'd never chunder on Westminster Abbey, or pee outside a pub. They only riot.

What better time could there be than our national holiday to remind us of their gentler introductions to this country?

Alcohol was among those; early descriptions of the carry-on in the Bay of Islands, fuelled by booze, depict a Saturnalia that would astound even us today. And think of the Treaty itself, a pact with Maori made by the British in the name of Queen Victoria, but soon flung somewhere out of sight for rats to gnaw.

Those land-grabbing acts by our founding fathers are with us today in the annual Waitangi Day demonstrations.

There are sour memories, actually, in all Britain's former colonies, where indigenous people got a raw deal - but why pee on their footpaths? It's so disrespectful.

I was in London recently. Their great Trafalgar Square was looking tired and tatty, and I noted how many of their memorials and statues had to do with one war or another.

But they also brought us the neighbourly art of curtain- twitching, fine china, the Church of England, Oasis and the Rolling Stones, so we should go easy on them.

Labour leader David Shearer put his finger, metaphorically speaking, on why we should be gentle with each other, too, on our national day, observing that: "Often we don't realise how lucky we are until we are on our OE or travelling offshore on holiday."

Few Ngapuhi are able to enjoy that experience, being mired in poverty, but what a nice thought. Read more

Sources

• Rosemary McLeod in The Press
• Image: International Business Times