State funeral?

In my opinion the funeral of Sir Ed, to be held next Tuesday, would have been better off being a private affair than this state funeral that has been planned. I thought the idea of a state funeral is that members of the public could attend, if not actually in the building, then out on the lawn. But the lawn outside the Church in Parnell is small and at a guess could hold 1,000 people - maybe 2,000 - well even at a wild guess 5,000. Hardly the solution for the tens of thousands of people that would like to attend.

So it appears that the funeral is really just for friends and family plus the ruling elite - is this what they mean by state funeral?

The funeral really should be held at the museum if the intention is that New Zealanders attend. I know they won't change the plans now, but a quick fix would be to transmit the funeral to a big screen on the lawn outside the museum. This way the non-elite can gather to say their final farewell to this great man. The Hearse can then drive through the domain on it's way to the crematorium.

Update: Turns out that's exactly what's going to happen - oops. I'm just so use to the powers that be stuffing thing's up, that I jumped the gun.

Commemoration of life well spent

Not entirely sure why the commemoration of Sir Ed’s life should be an either/or situation. By all means name a mountain after him, but please call it Mt Ed, not Mt Hillary - wouldn't want Hillary Clinton to claim it. And please don’t spend thousands of dollars consulting with every man and his Iwi about which mountain, just do it cheaply and quickly. Acutally might be better to do this in Nepal, I'm sure they will love it.

And, have a public holiday in his honour – I don't think it need necessarily relate to any particular date, just a Friday some time in the middle of winter would be good, thus bringing much relief to workers during this long stretch without a break. Since I run my life around the Australian Stock Exchange it won't be of any benefit to me, but you can't say I don't do anything nice for you wage slaves.

As for continuing his work in Nepal, then by all means raise money to enable this work to continue. I suggest that the fundraising activity could be undertaken in the week of the Sir Ed's national holiday. But it is totally inappropriate that it comes out of taxpayers account – it is the individuals’ choice where their charity dollar is applied (or not) – it is not the governments.