Several thousand people have gathered in Christchurch this afternoon to protest the demolition of the city’s Anglican cathedral.
The protest rally began in Cranmer Square and saw past and present civic leaders, MPs and other high profile Christchurch residents calling on the Anglican Church to immediately halt demolition work on the quake-damaged Cathedral.
There might have been a couple of thousand marching, but the majority of the population are realists. A recent poll showed that 54% thought the cathedral should come down.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/our-rebuild-your-views/6988951/Christ-Church-Cathedral-should-go
Anglican Down Under comments on this poll that:
[blockquote] To read the Press over the last few months has been to read about a situation which sounds like there is a damaged but easily restorable cathedral, which restoration is both affordable (just $20 million!) and enthusiastically wanted by the majority of Cantabrians, with the only thing standing in the way of the restoration being one dogmatic bishop. The reality has been and is different: a very badly damaged cathedral which is only restorable as a replica building after deconstruction to safe levels, at a huge cost (say $50+ million above insurance proceeds), for which only a few people have actually committed themselves to give towards, with no clear sense of how much popular support lies behind the heated (and sometimes venomous) controversy, with the decision to deconstruct being made by corporate bodies of the church rather than the Bishop alone, and endorsed by the whole Synod of the Diocese of Christchurch. [/blockquote]
http://anglicandownunder.blogspot.co.nz/
If your are interested there is a video of the protest which shows what the cathedral now looks like here
http://www.3news.co.nz/2000-rally-to-save-cathedral/tabid/423/articleID/255676/Default.aspx
Of course we also had a 5.2 non-eventful earthquake aftershock yesterday – something that small is only just big enough to get on the news these days!!!!
Depends what kind of city you want to live in; I live in one filled with realistic projects like cash-for-gold shops and taxpayer-subsidised sports arenas for billionaire team-owners.