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Prostitution in New Zealand

Prostitution in New Zealand, brothel-keeping, living off the proceeds of someone else's prostitution, and street solicitation are legal in New Zealand and have been since the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 came into effect. Coercion of sex workers is illegal. The 2003 decriminalisation of brothels, escort agencies and soliciting, and the substitution of a minimal regulatory model, created worldwide interest; New Zealand prostitution laws are now some of the most liberal in the world.

Until 2003, indoor prostitution in New Zealand was governed by the Massage Parlours Act 1978, which allowed brothels to operate in the guise of massage parlours. However, the act defined massage parlours as public places, so laws against soliciting in a public place applied to workers in parlours, and they were sometimes raided by police posing as clients. Workers in the parlours were also required to provide their names and addresses to the police. Advertising the sale of sex ("soliciting"), running a brothel, and living off the earnings of prostitution were illegal.

Despite the Massage Parlours Act and other laws meant to suppress prostitution, there was considerable toleration of sex work in practice in the last decades of the 20th century. These laws were all changed by the Prostitution Reform Act in June 2003.

Before 2003
The early examples of the exchange of sex for material gain in New Zealand occurred in the early period of contact between indigenous Māori and European and American sailors. Along with food, water, and timber, sex was one of the major commodities exchanged for European goods. The Bay of Islands and in particular the town of Kororareka was notorious for this and brothels proliferated. It is not clear whether all of these exchanges necessarily constituted prostitution in the usual sense of the word. In some cases, the sex may have been part of a wider partnership between a tribe and a ship's crew, akin to a temporary marriage alliance. The amount of choice women had about their participation seems to have varied. Throughout this period there was a severe gender imbalance in the settler population and women were in short supply.

In the nineteenth century, prostitution was generally referred to as the "Social Evil". As with other British dependencies, New Zealand inherited both statute and case law from the United Kingdom, for instance the 1824 UK Vagrancy Act was in force until New Zealand passed its own Vagrancy Act (1866–1884). These included reference to the common prostitute. New Zealand was also amongst those dependencies that British authorities pressured into passing Contagious Diseases Acts; New Zealand's was in force from 1869–1910. The Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand continuously found for repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts and ramped up its petitions and public letters with data from convictions in courts to prove how the law protected male predators and kept girls and women of all classes vulnerable to assault. These were oppressive Acts, based on the belief, expressed officially even in the 1922 report, that women represented vectors for the spread of venereal diseases. It was replaced by the Social Hygiene Act 1917, although these fears reappeared throughout the British Empire in both World Wars. In the post-war period, the concern was more with "promiscuity", although prostitution was seen as an extreme form of this. The gendered rationale and practice of venereal disease policy formed a focus for early feminist activism.

Prostitution-related statute law passed in the second half of the 20th century included the Crimes Act 1961, the Massage Parlours Act 1978, and the Summary Offences Act 1981. Section 26 of the Summary Offences Act prohibited soliciting, S 147 of the Crimes Act prohibited brothel-keeping, and S 148 living on the earnings of prostitution, and S 149 procuring. In 2000, the Crimes Act was amended to criminalise both clients and operators where workers were aged under 18 (the age of consent for sexual activity is 16). Young people under 18 were still classed as offenders after this came into force, until the passage of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003.

The Massage Parlours Act effectively allowed indoor commercial sex under a facade. Prostitutes advertised their services as "escorts", and brothels advertised themselves as "massage parlours". Workers in "massage parlours" were required to be registered with the police from the time the Massage Parlours Act 1978 came into force. In the mid-1990s, the police extended this registration ex-officio to other indoor workers in some areas of the country. The police had approached media outlets letting them know that they may be "aiding and abetting" sex workers committing crimes (such as brothel-keeping, etc.), and told the media that they should require such registration before accepting advertisements.

Prostitution Reform Act 2003
In 1997, a number of groups came together to hold a Women's Forum in Wellington, out of which a working group developed to draft a bill, including the NZPC, academics, women's groups (New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women, National Council of Women of New Zealand, YWCA), and the AIDS Foundation. Other individuals included legal volunteers and MPs, in particular Maurice Williamson (National, Pakuranga 1987–2017), Associate Minister of Health (1990–1996), and Katherine O'Regan (National, Waipa 1984–1996, List 1996–1999), who championed the bill in parliament.

Labour returned to power (1999–2008), and Tim Barnett (Labour Christchurch Central 1996–2008) assumed responsibility for introducing it as a Private Member's Bill to decriminalise prostitution. This was based on the harm reduction model of New South Wales (1996). The bill was introduced on 21 September 2000, and placed in the ballot box, being drawn as number 3 and debated on 8 November as Bill 66-1 (87:21), passing first reading 87:21. Party support came from the Greens, notably Sue Bradford (List, 1999–2009). It was opposed by New Zealand First, who proposed the Swedish approach of criminalising the purchase of sex. It then proceeded to select committee (Justice and Electoral), which received 222 submissions and heard 66 submissions, amending and reporting in favour of the Bill on 29 November 2002, following the 2002 election, the bill now being referred to as Bill 66-2. Dissenting minority opinions were recorded by the National, New Zealand First, ACT New Zealand, and United Future members. This was a Private Member's Bill, and theoretically, members were allowed a conscience vote. However, the three members of the 1999–2002 coalition (Labour, Greens, Alliance) all had decriminalisation in their manifestos. Later, the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, lent her support to the bill.

During the parliamentary debates and committees, support came from some women's rights groups, some human rights groups, and some public health groups. The police were neutral. Some feminists opposed the decriminalisation of brothels and pimping (see feminist views on prostitution), Christian groups were divided, and fundamentalist religious groups, including Right to Life, were opposed.

The Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) passed its third reading on 25 June 2003. This bill passed narrowly; of 120 member of parliaments, 60 voted for it, 59 against, and one politician, Labour's Ashraf Choudhary, the country's only Muslim MP, abstained. The result was a surprise, as most commentators had expected the bill to fail. An impassioned speech to parliament by Georgina Beyer, a transgender woman and former sex worker, was believed by many observers to have persuaded several wavering MPs, possibly including Mr Choudhary, to change their votes at the last minute.

The Act replaced the previous legislation, including repealing the Massage Parlours Act, largely removing voluntary adult (age 18 and over) prostitution from the criminal law and replacing it with civil law at both national and local level. A distinction was made between voluntary and involuntary prostitution. It remains a crime to coerce someone to provide sexual services. Sex work is also prohibited for those on temporary visas, and immigration for and investment in sex work is prohibited. Contracts between provider and client were recognised, and providers have the right to refuse services. Contested contracts can be referred to the Disputes Tribunal. Advertising is banned, with the exception of print media, which is restricted. The Summary Offences Act remains in force in relation to soliciting, which may be classed as offensive behaviour. The Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004 also allows sex workers to apply for previous convictions to be removed from the record. Sex work is recognised (but not promoted) as legitimate work by Work and Income New Zealand, who may not advertise vacancies in brothels or suggest people start sex work as a means of getting off a benefit. Now, workplace safety and health rules, developed in consultation with the prostitutes' collective, apply to sex work. Employment disputes can be referred to the Labour Inspectorate and Mediation Service. There is an obligation on employers and employees to practise and promote safe sexual practices. The Ministry of Health has the responsibility for enforcement. Registration of indoor sex workers with the police was replaced by certification at an administrative law level of brothel operators. Prior records have been destroyed. Refusal of a certificate is permitted for prior criminal offences (not necessarily related to prostitution). Police activities changed from the registration and prosecution of sex workers to protection. The Police Manual of Best Practice was amended to include prostitution.

Local government was empowered to develop by-laws for zoning and advertising, but not prohibit sex work.

In summary, the Act decriminalised soliciting, living off the proceeds of someone else's prostitution, and brothel-keeping.

Following passage of the Act, the Maxim Institute and other conservative Christian organisations tried to gain an appropriate number of signatures for a citizens-initiated referendum under the Citizens Initiated Referendum Act 1993. The initiative was sponsored by two United Future MPs, Gordon Copeland, the bill's most outspoken critic, and Larry Baldock. Although it was allowed an extension, anti-prostitution groups fell well short of gaining the number of authenticated signatures required for a citizen-initiated referendum.

Local Government New Zealand provided model by-laws and procedures. Court challenges have usually failed to uphold more restrictive council by-laws. By 2006, 17 of 74 local governments had drafted or implemented by-laws.

2008 evaluation
To help counter criticism, the Prostitution Reform Act included a requirement that a review of the effects of the new law had to be conducted three to five years after it came into force. An initial report in September 2006 indicated that the number of sex workers on the streets was approximately the same as before the Act came into force and, in some cases, even slightly reduced, contrary to allegations that it has increased. The extent of sex work was compared to 1999, the only notable change being a trend from managed sex work to the private sector. An examination of entry and exit factors showed that many sex workers said they desired to continue to sell sex, as financial return and independence were attractive features. Workers seemed more empowered, but there was still violence on the streets. It is clear that the Act did not decriminalise violence, and the police take action about violence when sex workers make complaints (c.f., R v Connolly, a police officer who was jailed in 2009 for blackmailing a sex worker into giving him free sex). Some deficiencies in safe practices, especially for oral sex, were identified. Perceived stigma remained a problem. Inconsistencies were noted between local and central government intent, the former being more restrictive, causing problems for some workers.

The Prostitution Law Review Committee presented its final report in May 2008. It found no evidence for the claims of critics at the time of introduction, and it concluded that there was no expansion of the industry. However, employment conditions still left a good deal to be desired. Stigma remained a major problem, and the traditional distrust of authorities also remained. Sex workers are now more willing to report crimes against them than they had been in the past.

Following the release of the evaluation, suggestions of bias were raised, and critics such as the evangelical Christian TEAR Fund's Humanitarian Chronicle stated that authors of the report were "supporters" of the sex industry and thus not "neutral". They stated that the situation was much worse than presented in the evaluation. Alex Penk, Maxim Institute's Policy and Research Manager, said that: "The report released by the Prostitution Law Review Committee today clearly shows that the Prostitution Reform Act is not making life safer for many of New Zealand's most vulnerable men, women, and young people."

Melissa Farley, an opponent of the legislation, stated that the decriminalisation of prostitution had very negative effects (e. g., an increase in human trafficking and street prostitution), and that the NZ Prostitution Law Review Committee "was biased and blatantly favored the sex industry". However, Farley has been criticised for failing to provide any facts or details to back up her assertions. Furthermore, Farley continues to use a claim that "the numbers of those prostituting on the street in Auckland have increased by 400% since decriminalization". During an online debate in The Economist, Farley repeated these figures, claiming at paragraph 35: "Since decriminalisation, street prostitution has spiralled out of control, especially in New Zealand's largest city, Auckland. A 200–400% increase in street prostitution has been reported."

However, in reply to the claims Farley and others make, the Prostitution Law Review Committee (2008: 40) stated: "In the Committee's first report, the number of street-based sex workers in Auckland was estimated to be 360 (PLRC, 2005). An increase of 400% would mean there would now be 1,440 sex workers on Auckland's streets. The Committee considers that the research undertaken by the CSOM conclusively refutes an increase of this magnitude, with the 2007 figures estimating the number of Auckland street-based sex workers at 230."

Furthermore, in relation to human trafficking, the PLRC (2008: 167) stated: "Information received from Immigration Service NZ indicates that no situations involving trafficking in the sex industry have been identified (Department of Labour, 2007)."

Subsequent initiatives
Moves to restrict prostitution in New Zealand continue. In 2010, National MP Tau Henare called for restricting premises from being opened near schools. However this actually falls under local municipal responsibility. The Kiwi Party called for the repeal of the Act. The party's last remaining MP was voted out of Parliament in 2008, and it was subsequently absorbed into the Conservative Party of New Zealand. The party maintains the Kiwi Party's earlier opposition to prostitution law reform, but, like the Kiwi Party before it, polls well under the minimum threshold required for parliamentary list-only representation.

In May 2013, Elizabeth Subritzky submitted a petition on behalf of Freedom from Sexual Exploitation that asked the House of Representatives to "legislate for a national plan of action to combat street prostitution, including a law which makes the purchase of sexual services illegal" (the Swedish model). The Ministry of Justice responded to the assumptions in Petition 2011/60 in September 2013, followed by a response by the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC) in February 2014. On 7 November 2014, the Justice and Electoral Committee of the New Zealand Parliament issued its report which rejected the petition. In its concluding comment, the committee stated: "We appreciate the petitioner's concerns about street prostitution. However, we are aware that the eradication of street-based prostitution has not proved to be achievable in any jurisdiction, and simply banning it may have negative consequences for the health and safety of sex workers. We support the Prostitution Law Review Committee’s conclusion that local approaches are likely to be most effective in dealing with street prostitution." Reacting to the report, Dr Calum Bennachie from the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective stated that, "When other groups are finally given rights by society, they rarely have to keep returning to parliament to protect those rights. Yet, sex workers, who have been given their rights by Parliament in 2003 when sex work was decriminalised, continually have to defend themselves in parliament, fight the same battles, and time after time have to refute the same tired arguments based on invented figures."

Today
As in other countries, New Zealand sex workers work in a variety of settings, including street prostitution and the indoor market in brothels and saunas, as well as for escort agencies and as independent workers.

Street prostitution
Street prostitution continues to dominate debates because of its visibility. For instance, sex workers often gather on and around Karangahape Road and Hunter's Corner in Auckland, Cuba/Vivian/Marion Streets in Wellington, and Manchester Street in Christchurch amongst other places. Since the 22 February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch this has moved to Ferry Road and the residential end of Manchester Street.

Despite it being illegal (see Attorney General's opinion on the New Zealand Bill of Rights) to discriminate against individuals on the basis of gender identity within New Zealand, the transgender community often finds that many of its younger members require survival sex for food, shelter and rest. As such, they are heavily represented within street sex work.

Conflicts in the South Auckland area of Manukau continue to be the focus of debate (see below).

Brothels and escort agencies
Many sex workers find employment in brothels or escort agencies. In the brothels, clients come to the place of business, which may be in a commercial area and fairly obvious, sometimes attached to a strip club, or more discreetly in a residential area. Escort agencies take phone calls from clients and arrange for the worker to go to their homes or motels. Typically the business will charge the worker a fee per shift, and will usually also take a set percentage of the client's fee. It is illegal for brothel operators to fine workers for lateness, unprofessional conduct and other misdemeanours, but many legally charge what they call 'shift fees', and most require their workers to buy their own clothes and accessories. This means that on a slow night the worker may actually lose money. However, brothels and escort agencies are generally seen as preferable to street prostitution, as their environment appears to be relatively safe. Brothels vary in size between 3 sex workers on duty to up to approximately 30. Brothels and agencies advertise through a range of media, including billboards, the Internet, and late night television advertisements, but especially newspaper advertisements, particularly in New Zealand Truth until its closure in 2013.

One of the results of the law change is that 16- and 17-year-old sex workers are no longer allowed to work in brothels. With the exception of several well publicised cases this change has been successful.

Sex workers who do not wish to be employed often set up one-person or two-person brothels or agencies, commonly in their homes. Within the definitions of the act these are called small owner operated brothels (SOOBs). They tend to rely on classified newspaper advertisements or by advertising on the Internet.

The location of brothels within local territories has been a continuing area of litigation, and a poll conducted in March 2011 suggested that 66% of the population would support a ban on brothels in residential areas. The same poll showed a 50% support for banning street prostitution.

This poll published by NZ Herald was initially commissioned by the political conservative Christian group Family First and run by Curia Market Research. The research has drawn criticism as potentially representing bias due to the ties to Family First. Potential areas of result skew include:
 * An unusually high proportion of respondents from more conservative rural areas. 31% of respondents versus 8.4% population distribution. (Source: see table one)
 * Age distributions not reflective of the general population instead favoring older more conservative age groups (although the overall effect of this is unknown as approval and disapproval varied significantly throughout age groups without clear trend towards changing attitudes with age).
 * Respondents were 57% female and 43% male while population distributions show females as 51% of the population. This may have had significant effect as females were found to be more substantially more likely to disapprove of prostitution (For females 44% to 64% approve regulation, while in males 28% to 39% approve).

Conflict – the case of Manukau (Auckland)
Manukau City in South Auckland consistently opposed the legislation. Manukau felt that street prostitution was particularly problematic in its area. Manukau City Council's portfolio leader for community safety, Councillor Dick Quax, was particularly critical. In 2009, he said that "involvement of gangs and organised crime in street prostitution has become evident (...) Street prostitution also attracts offensive litter, disorder, drugs, and intimidation", and "There are kids going to school with condoms lying on the street and prostitutes still standing around. It's dangerous, not only for the workers themselves, but for the rest of the community. We're sick of it (...) The community has had enough. It's not fun to come out in the morning and be having to clean up condoms lying in your garden and on the fence. Cleaning up condoms and needles – it's just not fair."

This has led to conflicts with the locals, which have attempted to curb this phenomenon, by trying to scare off prostitutes' customers, breaking negotiations between prostitutes and clients, and sending the prostitutes' clients letters, tracking them down through their car registration plates.

A private Bill, the Manukau City Council (Control of Street Prostitution) Bill 2005, led to hearings before a select committee, but failed to pass its second parliamentary reading on 11 October 2006 (46 votes to 73) following a Select Committee Report that stated that, "initiatives supported by the local community, sex workers and their advocates, outreach workers, social agencies, and the police are a more effective and appropriate use of resources than the proposed legislated solution". A government review of the situation was carried out in 2009, and concluded no further special legislative action was required. This resulted in critics of the legislation to be dissatisfied. Councillor Quax said that the review was very disappointing: "It ignores the fact that anti-social behaviour such as harassment and intimidation has become worse since the passing of the legislation decriminalising prostitution."

Manukau then made a further attempt to regulate prostitution with the Manukau City Council (Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places) Bill 197-1 (2010). This passed first reading 82 votes to 36 in a conscience vote on 8 September 2010. The Bill was opposed by the Māori Party. The Bill's purpose is stated as "This Bill provides for local bylaw control over the locations where the business of prostitution or commercial sexual services may occur when that business or those services take place or are conducted other than in a brothel or a small owner-operated brothel in Manukau City" and was referred to the Local Government and Environment Select Committee, which required submissions by 5 November. all of which have been posted on-line.

The future of the Bill was placed in doubt when Manukau City Council ceased to exist in late 2010, being absorbed into the Auckland Council. However, the new Auckland Council endorsed the bill and in view of the municipal reorganisation Auckland was given till February 2011 to present its submission, the Committee hoping to report to parliament in March 2011, enabling a second reading of the bill. The Auckland Council asked the NZPC to make a presentation to it on 15 February 2011. On 27 January 2011, Council voted 11 to 7 to support a submission to the committee on the bill, in order to give them powers to prohibit street prostitution anywhere in Auckland.

However, in late June 2011, retiring Manurewa New Zealand Labour Party MP George Hawkins conceded that his private members bill had insufficient parliamentary support to pass its second reading, now scheduled for September 2011, and said that the perceived "radical" expansion of the bill to encompass the whole of Auckland City would adversely affect any subsequent passage. Other objections are local exemptions to national ambit legislation, and criticism from law enforcement and social service agencies that provide front-line health and social services to street sex workers. It was also seen as contravening the Bill of Rights. Despite such objections, local Papatoetoe businesses hope to invest in more closed circuit television surveillance cameras to deal with what they view as "anti-social" and "public nuisance" behaviour allegedly ancillary to street sex work. Supporters of the sex workers argue that the behaviour in question may be unrelated to their presence, and linked to the early closure of public toilets and widespread alcohol outlets within the adjacent area.

The private member's bill was later reintroduced to Parliament, with strong criticism from some members of the LGBT community. They argued that the bill would disproportionately affect transgender street sex workers, given that gender identity is not covered within New Zealand's Human Rights Act 1993. They also argued that the Manukau and Auckland City Council had contributed to the situation through closure of public toilets and denial of the use of council rental accommodation to sex workers, and denounced what is argued to be vigilante tactics from some anti-sexworker local residents. They argued that in instances of inappropriate sex worker behaviour, local councils, concerned residents, police, and business interests should rely on the Summary Offences Act 1981. Furthermore, the council is stated to have exaggerated the number of street sex workers.

The Local Government and Environment Committee reported back to Parliament on the Manukau City Council (Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places) Bill on 5 December 2014 and recommended that it not be passed. The Bill received its final vote on 25 February 2015 and was defeated 109–11, with only New Zealand First voting for the bill.

Whether or not this means that there will be a third private members bill to re-criminalize street sex work, despite this second consecutive defeat, is uncertain. Defeated former New Zealand First List MP Asenati Lole-Taylor was an advocate of such tactics, but she was too low down on her party list rankings to return to Parliament after the 2014 New Zealand general election. For her party, New Zealand First Deputy Leader Tracey Martin spoke in support of the bill's passage during its second parliamentary reading and consequent defeat.

Prostitution and minors
Underage involvement in the sex industry continues to be a controversial issue in New Zealand, both before and after the passage of the PRA in 2003, with conflicting claims of its extent or relationship to the PRA.

The law
Child prostitution is illegal. The Prostitution Reform Act 2003 reads as follows: "Prohibitions on use in prostitution of persons under 18 years

20. No person may cause, assist, facilitate, or encourage a person under 18 years of age to provide commercial sexual services to any person.

21. No person may receive a payment or other reward that he or she knows, or ought reasonably to know, is derived, directly or indirectly, from commercial sexual services provided by a person under 18 years of age.

22. No person may contract for commercial sexual services from, or be client of, person under 18 years

(1) No person may enter into a contract or other arrangement under which a person under 18 years of age is to provide commercial sexual services to or for that person or another person.

(2) No person may receive commercial sexual services from a person under 18 years of age.

23. Every person who contravenes section 20, section 21, or section 22 commits an offense and is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years.

(2) No person contravenes section 20 merely by providing legal advice, counselling, health advice, or any medical services to a person under 18 years of age.

(3) No person under 18 years of age may be charged as a party to an offense committed on or with that person against this section."

Thus, it is legal for a person under 18 to be a sex worker, but it is illegal for anyone else to profit from them in this capacity, or cause, assist, facilitate, or encourage them to provide commercial sexual services to any person. It is also illegal for anyone to purchase sex from a person aged under 18. The media are likely to require photographic ID before placing advertisements to ensure they are complying with this law. The defence of "reasonableness" has been removed, but sex workers appearing under age may be asked by police to provide proof of age.

There appears to be no law prohibiting a person under 18 from being a client of a prostitute, thus the legal age for this is presumably 16, the legal age of consent in New Zealand.

Media publicity
Newspapers report on concerns about underage street workers, stating that this is the commonest entry point into the trade for them and that some of them may be being pimped by gang members.

Reports have cited some community workers who stated that they had found girls "as young as 10 or 11" selling sex, and one mentioned students from a West Auckland high school who "turned tricks" at lunchtime. Children as young as 13 were also removed from the streets of South Auckland.

Convictions have been obtained against operators who did not check ID and hired under age workers. There have been several cases in Christchurch. Another case occurred in Whangārei.

In 2005, ECPAT New Zealand and the Stop Demand Foundation (agencies which combat the sexual exploitation of children), commenting on the Ministry of Justice's report "The Nature and Extent of the Sex Industry in New Zealand", questioned the effectiveness of New Zealand's legislation in relation to underage prostitution; the agencies pointed to a police survey of the New Zealand sex industry which showed that 210 children under the age of 18 years were identified as selling sex, with three-quarters being concentrated in one Police District.

In Christchurch in 2008, Salvation Army officer Major Wendy Barney from Christchurch's Street Outreach Service (SOS) said underage prostitution was "a big problem – but also a hidden one". Nevertheless, this anecdotal evidence is not supported by statement made by outreach workers from youth support agencies, including Youth and Cultural Development (YCD), who indicate that many of the young people are not working, but are "hanging out" on the streets.

Despite these claims, police have continued to bring prosecutions for underage prostitution against the brothels despite relaxed oversight.

US Human Rights Reports
The United States Department of State Human Rights Reports from 2004–2009 comment on child prostitution cases in New Zealand. The 2008 report states that prosecutors in Christchurch applied for the first time the law banning sexual slavery, adopted in 2006 in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However this is not mentioned in domestic sources, and the PRA provides penalties for such actions; and the 2009 report does not mention it.

The NZ government has criticised the US reports as being based on faulty and biased data sets. For example, it appears that the State Department ignored material in the Prostitution Law Review Committee Report, which indicated there was no evidence of increased underage sex work in the New Zealand sex industry. This latter report is acknowledged in the 2009 US report.

Support and services for sex workers
The New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective (NZPC) is a New Zealand-based organisation that supports the rights of sex workers and educates prostitutes about minimizing the risks of the job. It was founded in 1987 by, among others, Catherine Healy, and received funding from the Minister of Health in 1988, and subsequently the Department of Health (which became the Ministry of Health). The organisation played a major part in the decriminalisation of prostitution.

Further information from evaluation process
The report "The Impact of the Prostitution Reform Act on the Health and Safety Practices of Sex Workers: Report to the Prostitution Law Review Committee" from the Christchurch School of Medicine was a study of 772 sex workers in New Zealand, covering Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch as main urban centres, and Nelson and the Hawkes Bay as secondary centres. It and studies by the Crime and Justice Research Centre at Victoria University    provided the Prostitution Law Review Committee with the evidence that it required to reach a conclusion about the effect of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 on sex workers.

The researchers described this process further in a 2010 book titled "Taking the crime out of sex work- New Zealand sex workers' fight for decriminalisation". It was written by Gillian Abel (a senior public health researcher and lecturer at the University of Otago, New Zealand), Lisa Fitzgerald (a public health sociologist and social science lecturer in the School of Population Health, University of Queensland), and Catherine Healy (a founding member of the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective). The book includes the results of interviews with over 700 sex workers, and concludes that the decriminalisation has had positive effects for the prostitutes' safety and health.

In its 2008 "Report of the Prostitution Law Review Committee on the Operation of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003", the committee provided further information on many of the cases and background of sex work in New Zealand. The Report also addressed issues raised by ECPAT New Zealand and the Stop Demand Foundation, and the claims made by those supporting the Manukau City Council (Control of Street Prostitution) Bill 2005.

title: Prostitution in New Zealand


text:
Talk:Cambridge, New Zealand

Untitled
This needs more information.
 * Molinari

I know right it's not gd a all — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.238.122.192 (talk) 21:22, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

School issue
The Cambridge School issue is pretty controiversial in the region - but this article presents just one side of the case. It needs a more objective view. Grutness 09:53, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

... or better still, a revert. Grutness 13:10, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sport
Removed and revised reference to Catherine as a Princess. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keenas99 (talk • contribs) 07:39, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Leamington
Is there a reason for having so little about Leamington (Cambridge West)? If I change that, would it go better here as a sub heading of History, as a separate article, or what? Johnragla (talk) 20:03, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Cambridge, New Zealand


text:
Robert Merle

Robert Merle (28 August 1908 – 27 March 2004) was a French novelist.

Early life
Merle was born in 1908 in Tébessa, French Algeria. His father Félix, who was an interpreter "with a perfect knowledge of literary and spoken Arabic", was killed in 1916 in the Dardanelles. Young Merle and his mother moved to Paris, where he attended three lycées and the Sorbonne.

Academia and World War II
Merle was professor of English Literature at several universities until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. During the war, Merle was conscripted into the French army and assigned as an interpreter to the British Expeditionary Force. In 1940, he was in the Dunkirk evacuation on the beach of Zuydcoote — which he called a "blind and abominable lottery" — and was captured by the Germans. Merle was taken prisoner to Stalag VID at Dortmund, and escaped, but was recaptured at Belgian customs. He was repatriated in July 1943, and after the war was awarded the Croix du Combattant.

Writing
Merle used his experiences at Dunkirk in his 1949 novel Week-end at Zuydcoote, which became a "sensational success" and won the Prix Goncourt. A 1964 feature film adaptation, Weekend at Dunkirk, was directed by Henri Verneuil and starred Jean-Paul Belmondo. It was a box office hit and made both men famous.

Merle's 1967 novel Un animal doué de raison (lit. A Sentient Animal), a stark Cold War satire inspired by John Lilly's studies of dolphins and the Caribbean Crisis, was translated into English and filmed as The Day of the Dolphin (1973) starring George C. Scott. Merle's post-apocalyptic novel Malevil (1972) was also adapted into a 1981 film. His 1952 novel La mort est mon métier was adapted into a 1977 film, his 1962 novel L'île was filmed as a 1987 miniseries and Le propre de l'homme (1989) was adapted into a 1996 TV movie.

Among Merle's other works are the 1950 play Flamineo, based on John Webster's The White Devil, the 1948 biography Oscar Wilde (extended in 1955 as Oscar Wilde, or The Destiny of Homosexuality), and various translations including Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In 1965 Merle wrote Moncada: premier combat de Fidel Castro and Ahmed Ben Bella, and around this time translated the diaries of Che Guevara. Until the invasion of Afghanistan by the Red Army, Merle was a sympathizer of the French Communist Party. He said: "I was just a minor militant, and my fellow Reds did not approve of what I wrote. As for the student riots of May 1968, I never believed in the reality of that revolution. The only thing of value that came out of it was the liberation of sexual relationships."

Merle's "major achievement" was his 13-book series of historical novels, Fortune de France (1977–2003), which recreate 16th and 17th century France through the eyes of a fictitious Protestant doctor turned spy. A "genuine scholar of language", Merle wrote the novels using many of the appropriate French speech rhythms and idioms of the historical period. The series made Merle a household name in France, with the author repeatedly called the Alexandre Dumas of the 20th century.

Personal life
Merle was married three times, and had four sons and two daughters. He died in 2004 at age 95 of a heart attack in Montfort-l'Amaury, France.

Fortune de France series (1977-2003)

 * 1) Fortune de France (1977)
 * 2) En nos vertes années (1979)
 * 3) Paris ma bonne ville (1980)
 * 4) Le Prince que voilà (1982)
 * 5) La violente amour (1983)
 * 6) La Pique du jour (1985)
 * 7) La Volte des vertugadins (1991)
 * 8) L’Enfant-Roi (1993)
 * 9) Les Roses de la vie (1995)
 * 10) Le Lys et la Pourpre (1997)
 * 11) La Gloire et les Périls (1999)
 * 12) Complots et Cabales (2001)
 * 13) Le Glaive et les amours (2003) (English: Love and the Sword)

Reception
Kirkup called the Fortune de France series "spectacular" and dubbed it Merle's "major achievement". Douglas Johnson of The Guardian described the author as "a master of the historical novel". The series made Merle a household name in France, and he has been repeatedly called the Alexandre Dumas of the 20th century. Le Monde dubbed Merle "France's greatest popular novelist", and Le Figaro observed, "Robert Merle is one of the very few French writers who have attained both popular success and the admiration of critics."

Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Allan Massie praised Merle's "thorough research, depth of understanding and popular touch", noting that "one of the strengths of Merle’s novels in his ability to evoke the feeling and texture of everyday life as well as high politics". Massie compared the first novel in Merle's series to Maurice Druon's The Accursed Kings (Les Rois maudits), another famed French historical novel series, writing "There is a philosophical depth to the novel absent from Druon, for the Brethren are attracted to the Reformed Protestant (or Huguenot) faith ... Though not as gripping as The Accursed Kings, The Brethren never strays, as Druon sometimes does, into the grotesque. It has a credibly human solidity." Toby Clements of The Telegraph wrote, "There are set-piece discussions on the dilemmas of faith that are informative if not the stuff of high drama, and passages on the history of France that can only be made sense of with the aid of a map and a memory for names. But elsewhere there is much colour, and, overall, The Brethren gives a salty and plausible idea of just how different, odd and parlous life might have been."

As of 2014, Fortune de France had sold over five million copies in France.

title: Robert Merle


text:
Talk:Sinicization

An old-fashioned term?
This is a very interesting topic on Taiwan and it appears the term "sinasization" is losing ground in academia. The reasoning is that because Chinese were new to Taiwan and encountered a different cultural and natural environment, the stresses of frontier life changed the immigrants as much as it changed the aboriginal inhabitants, the "export theory". American culture is exported all over the world, but translated in different ways by the local cultures, in effect, becoming local. The Qing treatment of frontier regions was exclusive to each region and Taiwan was governed on terms that the Qing felt were pragmatic for the Taiwanese situation and not duplicated on the continent. The receeding use of sinasization arises from its inability to nullify and simply replace the native cultural and social values without the native culture going to China. A good example in Taiwan is the Holo language is peppered by nursery words from earlier languages, much like an American family of German ancestry might continue to use the word opa for grandfather. Aboriginal religious customs have also combined with religions from China and become Taiwanese practice. The other quirk is the determination of what Chinese culture is. There are different cultures which came from China and if they are not part of the current Chinese cultural continuum are they Chinese? The debate is ongoing... User:211.72.233.19 01:44, 26 Jun 2003

the Holo language in taiwan(taiwanese) is strongly influenced by japanese due to Japan's rule for more than half an century. there are many words borrowed from japanese. It is like modern english after norman's rule which is different from old language(I mean the language anglo-saxons brought from Continent). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.75.91.2 (talk) 06:23, July 18, 2004 (UTC)

Jiang's Edits
Jiang, re: your edit at 0400 on 15/01/2004.

Do you think it worth mentioning that Mainland China has indicated that it would like to assimilate (economially, if not culturally or politically) Taiwan, have they categorically denied it, or have they remained silent?

More pedantically, are you sure "on" is more clear than "about"?

MrJones 11:32, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't think there's a specific statement in line with the word "assimilation". The situation is closer "free trade". Does "They feel it is part of a strategy by the People's Republic of China to sinicize Taiwan, thus making reunification inevitable." do the job?

 * Yes, I misread that sentence and "about" is more correct. However, "about Taiwan" is a very vague statement. It needs to be changed to something more specific. --Jia ng 23:21, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Mons
I don't know much about the subject, but should "Mons" be changed to "Hmong"? "Mons" currently links to a Belgian city. Easytoremember 12:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Untitled
Hello! Xinjiang anybody?!!!... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.60.1.125 (talk) 12:27, January 5, 2007 (UTC)

Deleted various parts
The paragraph regarding the expulsion of Vietnam from the Han dynasty really doesn't belong here. Intranetusa (talk) 18:53, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

A modern meaning is the process by which other peoples like the Koreans, Japanese, and the Vietnamese are strongly influenced by Chinese culture and working practices??
quite sure japan influence in modern east asian practices is higher. i always thought Sinicization of east asia occur prior to the european arrival. i cannot really agree with the statement without seeing the usage in an article. agree? Akinkhoo (talk) 11:08, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I dont really understand what you are trying to say. Are you suggesting that Japanese culture has a stronger influence in east asian cultures than Chinese culture? this is debatable, and most importantly, not related to what we are discussing here. also. yes, Sincization started MUCH earlier than european arrival. Bwang12 (talk) 16:56, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm thinking of adding my own definition of Economic Sinicization that briefly discusses China's Foreign Direct Investment and how its integration in African, European and other Western Markets has impacted foreign economies. Do you think that Chinese firms' investment in foreign economies has contributed to sinicization in a way that would be significant to the scope of this article? I was just thinking it might be worth exploring since the best way to understand cultural conquest is to follow the money! Tyson (talk) 01:50, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Change to unification
because that is what both sides on the dispute in Taiwan call the position. Roadrunner (talk) 16:15, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Also revert to Mainland China. People disagree as to whether or not Taiwan is part of China and what that means, but everyone agrees that Taiwan is not part of Mainland China. This makes it politically neutral. Roadrunner (talk) 16:25, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Sinicisation -- the old "what is Chinese?" debate
The comment on the Sinicisation of Tibet is quite at odds with the definition given at the start of the article. "Sinicisation" refers to the culture and civilisation of the "Han Chinese". It's therefore quite possible to talk of the Sinicisation of Tibet.

The greater issue, of course, is the issue of what constitutes China. The modern Chinese ideology is that all ethnicities within the boundaries of China are "Chinese", are an inalienable part of China, and have always been an inalienable part of China. This politically motivated ideology introduces all kinds of contradictions and complexities into the definition of what "Chinese" is. To claim that "Tibetan culture" = "Chinese culture" may be politically correct if you want to make a point -- namely, that Tibet is part of China, therefore you shouldn't use terminology that suggests otherwise -- but in cultural terms it is nonsense. Tibetan culture is quite different from (Han) Chinese culture, and it is quite proper to point out that there are people who are opposed to the assimilation of Tibetan culture to (Han) Chinese culture. Only the most rabidly politically correct would insist that a Westerner who embraced Tibetan Buddhism (and was, for argument's sake, virulently hostile to Han Chinese culture) was being "Sinicised".

The fact is that the insistence on the modern sense of "Chinese = the 56 ethnic groups" is actually a distortion of the historical concept. Prior to 1911 or thereabouts, no one would have seriously suggested that the Tibetans were Chinese. It's the modern political ideology that is giving rise to the nonsensical paragraph on the Sinicisation of Tibet.

I therefore suggest that the paragraph should be either deleted, or the quibble over the meaning of "Sinicisation" should be removed.

Bathrobe (talk) 03:08, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

 * The current text of the "Sinicization of Tibet" section seems to contain an individual editor's analytical claim, a good example of original research. According to WP: NOR and WP: V, an analysis of this sort should be grounded in a reliable secondary source that makes this claim "directly and explicitly" (these words are from No_original_research). In the absence of such a reference, and since the paragraph contradicts the definition of "sinicization" proposed at the beginning of the article, I agree with Bathrobe's proposal to delete it. The question becomes: if we delete the paragraph, should we keep an empty section called "Sinicization of Tibet"?
 * For reference: "Sinicization of Tibet" was added as an empty section by Rédacteur Tibet on October 23, 2008 (here). The current text of the section was inserted by PalaceGuard008 less than a month later (here).
 * --Madalibi (talk) 04:26, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

 * Quite right. I've replaced the existing text with the leading paragraph from Sinicization of Tibet, to which the reader is already directed. Bertport (talk) 05:20, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

 * Thank you! Madalibi (talk) 06:25, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Taiwan
I think we can continue the neutrality discussion from Talk:Republic_of_China here.--pyl (talk) 16:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

NPOV noticeboard
Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard — Preceding unsigned comment added by Readin (talk • contribs) 15:46, June 6, 2009 (UTC)

Adding information from a new source
When adding information from a new source, it is not ok to simply remove or misstate information from sources that already exist. Readin (talk) 19:47, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

"sinicize" vs "re-sinicize"
We only have one source that puts the "re" in there, and it does so somewhat haltingly: "resinicizing" them, one might say. Whether or not the sinicization is a "repeat or not, it is a sinicization, and that is the more neutral way to say. It also matches the sources better.  Readin (talk) 19:49, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually two. But I don't think this is a compeittion based on source count. It is actually more neutral to do "resinicizing" unless the Han Chinese who arrived in Taiwan before the Japanese period were considered by a major POV not to be Chinese at first place. Logically it is:-

 * Chinese -> "Japanization" -> "Resinicizing"

 * The intention of the government (the primary source) was "resinicization" as well, the quote says "..... making Taiwanese customs, thought, and language gradually return to that of Chinese people".

 * If you still consider me doing "POV pushing" after using sources, then I guess I will have to return your favour in the future. You are proven to me to be unable to refrain from making personal comments.--pyl (talk) 06:14, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Manchus
A paragraph in the article Chinese nationalism reads

 * "After the 1911 Revolution, the official definition of "Chinese" was expanded to include non-Han ethnicities as part of a comprehensive Chinese nation (Zhonghua Minzu), although some historians argue that this was due mainly to the realization that a narrow definition of "Chinese" would result in a loss of Chinese territory, and that the Manchus were too sinicized to be considered an outside group."

But this article says nothing about the sinicization of the Manchus! Instead, there are contemporary and contentious allegations of the sinicization of Tibet and Taiwan! Covering what linked articles refer readers to would be a good start for making this article useful and neutral. The Homosexualist (talk) 03:31, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Sinicization of yunnan
Purblio (talk) 23:50, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Need for balance and up to date coverage
I tagged the article for "need for expert" because the coverage is haphazard and not comprehensive. The definition in the lede is "non-Han Chinese societies come under the influence of dominant Han Chinese state and society," which seems to be political, but the general usage is more cultural. The following examples are confusing. To take only a few examples, the section "Integration" is a good idea, but does not address the current or historical policies of the PRC. The section on the Ming is two sentences on military expansion, not on sinicization, and the Qing section leads by saying that the Manchus "began to sinicize," and gives the example of taking Chinese names. There is much more to be said on this fascinating topic! ch (talk) 18:01, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that this article does need attentions from experts. The section on the Ming is indeed more about military expansion than sinicization, and thus requires major rewrites (and I have added a cleanup template to this section). The section on the Qing has major problems too, although I have tried to change the first paragraph of this section a bit in order to mention there exist different views on this issue. --Evecurid (talk) 19:24, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

"Chinalization"
In this article, someone added a cleanup tag for the word "Chinalization", which you added to this article's lead section several years ago. Is "chinalization" a commonly used word, or is it a neologism? Jarble (talk) 00:19, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * English is not my major language, but I has read this word, by example this one and this. china and chinese are obvious words, because they have many different definition. --Alfredo ougaowen (talk) 02:46, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It seems to be uncommon common Chinglish. The actual English term would be Chinafication or Chinification, but it's not terribly common either. — Llywelyn II   06:58, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

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Two sentences on sinicization are poorly sourced and don't mention a time period
''The KMT pursued a sinicization policy, it was stated that "the time had come to set about the business of making all natives either turn Chinese or get out" by foreign observers of KMT policy. It was noted that "Chinese colonization" of "Mongolia and Manchuria" led "to a conviction that the day of the barbarian was finally over".''

I'm removing these two sentences from this article (and the article on Kuomintang) because it doesn't reference a time period and the sources are problematic. The Open Court and Frontier History sources do not support the sentences at all, or at least, the links provided for these sources don't support the sentence. Instead, I had to manually search for "day of the barbarian" in the Open Court source to find the exact same writings as in the first source. But even searching for that in the Frontier History source does not provide any relevant results. So this is not actually three independent sources, but rather the same singular source simply being published in two different journals, and the third source doesn't mention it. Searching for "KMT sinicization" on Google Scholar only provides results that talk about their post-1945 policies in Taiwan. The other issue with these two sentences is that they are both in violation of WP:WEASEL by using passive voice. I can't find the name of the author who actually wrote what is being quoted. If someone objects to this removal, please respond here on this talk page and explain your reasoning. --JasonMacker (talk) 17:40, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

 * OK so
 * I know nothing about the subject matter, apart from vague awareness of the queue (hairstyle) being decreed by law, which amuses me because the hairstyle is stereotypically Chinese and yet originates from 17th century invaders.
 * I'm here because I saw the argument on Reddit which inspired this edit. Would it be alright if link to that? Might be good context.
 * WP:WEASEL is just a guideline, so "violation" is putting it a bit strong. You can see there that it says views that are properly attributed to a reliable source may use similar expressions, if those expressions accurately represent the opinions of the source. The author of the weasel words in this case is Owen Lattimore. It would be alright to keep them as a quote from the source: perhaps mentioning the author, like this: Owen Lattimore, writing in [wherever], asserted that "The Kuomintang urged that the time had come to set about the business of making all natives either turn Chinese or get out".
 * Card Zero (talk) 08:16, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Sinicization


text:
Talk:Robert Merle

Untitled
"Recreating the French 16th and 17th century..." isn't good English. Does he recreate the French of this period, or the France?
 * Molinari

Erm yes - you're right - I think I culled a sentence relating to the language (he writes the box in period French) and got it confused... Off to correct it :D MarkBoydell

 * Quote: "he went so far as to write it in the period's French making it virtually untranslatable"
 * Says who? Does that mean other works from the 16th and 17th century like Shakespeare and Molière are "virtually untranslatable"?  --Stéphane Charette (talk) 04:45, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I have a distinct recollection of a British edition of "The Day of the Dolphin" (It must have been around the time of the film) which managed to omit all quote-marks, yet was full of direct speech by characters. Maybe he just suffered from bad translators?Zhochaka (talk) 22:46, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

La mort est mon métier (Death is my Trade)
This poem is marked as published at 1952, but according to Great Soviet Encyclopedia it was published at 1953. What date is right? 13:33, 23 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.91.193.36 (talk)

ru:Участник:Коммунар

...making it virtually untranslatable...
That is not true. I read the Fortune de France series in Hungarian, it is popular in Hungary and I don't think that is a unique case. Maybe a french author is not marketable in English, and it is easier to say that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.132.185.3 (talk) 09:15, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Finally published in English.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/16/historical-epic-by-frances-hilary-mantel-crosses-the-channel-robert-merle — Preceding unsigned comment added by Delira (talk • contribs) 07:58, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 04:38, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

title: Talk:Robert Merle


text:
HMY Britannia

Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia is the former royal yacht of the British monarchy. She was in their service from 1954 until 1997. She was the 83rd such vessel since King Charles II acceded to the throne in 1660, and is the second royal yacht to bear the name, the first being the racing cutter built for the Prince of Wales in 1893. During her 43-year career, the yacht travelled more than a million nautical miles around the world to more than 600 ports in 135 countries. Now retired from royal service, Britannia is permanently berthed at Ocean Terminal, Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland, where it is a visitor attraction with over 300,000 visits each year.

Construction
HMY Britannia was built at the shipyard of John Brown & Co. Ltd in Clydebank, Dunbartonshire. She was launched by Queen Elizabeth II on 16 April 1953, and commissioned on 11 January 1954. The ship was designed with three masts: a 133 ft foremast, a 139 ft mainmast, and a 118 ft mizzenmast. The top aerial on the foremast and the top 20 ft of the mainmast were hinged to allow the ship to pass under bridges.

Britannia was designed to be converted into a hospital ship in time of war, although this capability was never used. In the event of nuclear war, it was intended for the Queen and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, to take refuge aboard Britannia off the north-west coast of Scotland.

Crew

Royal Navy officers were appointed for up to two years. The crew were volunteers from the general service of the Royal Navy. After 365 days' service, they could be admitted to the Permanent Royal Yacht Service as Royal Yachtsmen and serve until they chose to leave the service or were dismissed for medical or disciplinary reasons. As a result, some served for 20 years or more. The crew also included a detachment of Royal Marines. A contingent of Royal Marines Band members embarked whenever Britannia was on duty away from home port.

History
Britannia sailed on her maiden voyage from Portsmouth to Grand Harbour, Malta, departing on 14 April and arriving on 22 April 1954. She carried Prince Charles and Princess Anne to Malta in order for them to meet the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the end of the royal couple's Commonwealth tour. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh embarked on Britannia for the first time in Tobruk on 1 May 1954.

On 20 July 1959, Britannia sailed the newly opened Saint Lawrence Seaway en route to Chicago, where she docked, making the Queen the first British monarch to visit the city. U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower was aboard Britannia for part of this cruise; Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton were welcomed aboard in later years. Anne and Mark Phillips took their honeymoon cruise aboard the ship in 1973; Charles would do the same with Diana in 1981. The ship evacuated over 1,000 refugees from the civil war in Aden in 1986. The vessel sailed to Canada in 1991 and made a port of call in Toronto and Kingston, Ontario.

HMY Britannia, when on royal duties, was escorted by a Royal Navy warship. The yacht was a regular sight at Cowes Week in early August and, usually, for the remainder of the month, was home to the Queen and her family for an annual cruise around the islands off the west coast of Scotland (known as the "Western Isles Tour").

During her career as Royal Yacht, Britannia conveyed the Queen, other members of the Royal Family and various dignitaries on 696 foreign visits and 272 visits in British waters. In this time, Britannia steamed 1087623 nmi.

Decommissioning
In 1994, the Conservative government announced the yacht's retirement: "The yacht last underwent a major refit in 1987. A further refit at an estimated cost of some £17 million would be necessary in 1996–97 but would only prolong her life for a further five years. In view of her age, even after the refit she would be difficult to maintain and expensive to run. It has therefore been decided to decommission "Britannia" in 1997. The Government will now consider the question of whether to replace "Britannia"."

- Viscount Cranborne

In January 1997, the government committed itself to replacing the Royal Yacht if reelected. The timing of the announcement, close to a general election, was controversial; The Guardian Weekly called it "part of a populist appeal to wavering Tory voters in the run-up to the general election" and reported that the Queen was "furious" that the Royal Family was "dragged into the centre of the election campaign, just as it is fighting to restore its public image." Sir Edward Heath publicly objected to the government's handling of the issue, stating "The Conservative Party above all must be an honourable party. And I don't believe the actions that have been taken are honourable ones and should never have been taken in this way."

The government argued that the cost was justified by its role in foreign policy and promoting British interests abroad, particularly through conferences held by British Invisibles, formerly the Committee on Invisible Exports. It was estimated by the Overseas Trade Board that events held on board the yacht helped raise £3 billion for HM Treasury between 1991 and 1995 alone.

The Labour opposition announced it would not commit the use of public funds for a replacement vessel for at least the first two years of any new Labour government. After its election victory in May 1997, the new government considered multiple options for the future of a royal yacht, but concluded in October of that year that Britannia would not be replaced: "We made clear that we would not spend public money on a Royal Yacht and I am keeping that promise. We in the Ministry of Defence have to justify every penny of the taxpayers' money that we spend and in this case I could not do so, particularly – as the Queen has made clear – since a Yacht is not needed for Royal travel. We considered in detail all private finance options, but these would only have been viable with a substantial annual subsidy from public funds."

- George Robertson, Defence Secretary

The Royal Yacht's final foreign mission was to convey the last Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, and the Prince of Wales back from Hong Kong after its handover to the People's Republic of China on 1 July 1997. Britannia was decommissioned on 11 December 1997. The Queen, normally undemonstrative in public, was reported to have cried at the decommissioning ceremony that was attended by most of the senior members of the Royal Family.

Visitor attraction
Listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Britannia is a visitor attraction moored in the historic Port of Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is cared for by the Royal Yacht Britannia Trust, a registered charity. There was some controversy over the siting of the ship, with some arguing that she would be better moored on the River Clyde, where she was built, than in Edinburgh, with which the yacht had few links. Her positioning in Leith coincided with a redevelopment of the harbour area and the advent of Scottish devolution.

Entrance to the yacht is via the Ocean Terminal development, and over 300,000 people visit the Royal Yacht Britannia every year. She is one of the UK's top evening events venues. On 18 May 2006, the Swiss-born Hollywood actress and first Bond girl, Ursula Andress, celebrated her 70th birthday on board. On 29 July 2011, a drinks reception was held on board Britannia for Queen Elizabeth's granddaughter Zara Phillips and her then fiancé, Mike Tindall, to celebrate their forthcoming wedding.

An early Land Rover in much-restored shape is displayed in the on-board garage and a retired Rolls-Royce Phantom V state car is parked on the wharf below the ship. The tour of the five decks open to the public includes the Queen's bedroom, which can be viewed behind a glass wall, and the state dining and drawing rooms, which hosted grand receptions for kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers throughout the world. The clocks on board are stopped at 3:01, the time that the Queen last disembarked. The royal deck tea room was added in 2009.

The 1936 racing yacht Bloodhound, once owned by the Queen and Prince Philip, is now berthed alongside Britannia. Bloodhound was one of the most successful ocean-racing yachts ever built and was the yacht on which King Charles III and the Princess Royal learned to sail. The Royal Yacht Britannia Trust bought Bloodhound in early 2010 and she is the centrepiece of an exhibition focusing on the Royal Family's passion for sailing. Visitors can view Bloodhound from a specially built pontoon when the racing yacht is in port. During July and August, she is berthed in Oban marina and is available for private charter, as she sails around the islands once visited by the Royal Family during their annual fortnight holiday in the Western Isles of Scotland. During this period, Royal Yachtsmen (Yotties) from Britannia's original crew sail the yacht for the Britannia Trust.

From 2019, the MV Fingal has been permanently berthed near to the Britannia at the Albert Dock Basin. The Fingal is a former Northern Lighthouse Board ship converted into a boutique hotel owned by the Royal Yacht Britannia Trust.

Proposals for successor
Proposals for the construction of a new royal yacht, perhaps financed through a loan or by the royal family's own funds, have made little headway. In December 2019 it was reported that the late Sir Donald Gosling donated £50 million in his will to pay for it.

In May 2021, it was reported that Prime Minister Boris Johnson would announce the construction of a new royal yacht, named after Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, "within weeks". On 29 May, Johnson announced that the "new national flagship" – a ship rather than a luxury yacht – would enter service within the next four years and cost up to £200 million. The following day it was reported that government plans to name the ship after the Duke of Edinburgh were not well-received amongst royal sources, and these plans had subsequently been "abandoned". By 2022 plans had progressed to two favoured design teams. It was reported in October 2022 that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was planning to scrap plans for a new yacht as part of a package of spending cuts.

Commanding officers

 * Captain J. S. Dalglish, 7 January – 28 April 1954
 * Vice Admiral Sir Conolly Abel Smith, 28 April 1954 – 30 January 1958
 * Vice Admiral Sir Peter Dawnay, 30 January 1958 – 25 January 1962
 * Rear Admiral Sir Joseph Henley, 25 January 1962 – 9 March 1965
 * Rear Admiral Sir Patrick Morgan, 9 March 1965 – 1 September 1970
 * Rear Admiral Sir Richard Trowbridge, 1 September 1970 – 11 September 1975
 * Rear Admiral Sir Hugh Janion, 11 September 1975 – 4 February 1981
 * Rear Admiral Sir Paul Greening, 4 February 1981 – 12 September 1985
 * Rear Admiral Sir John Garnier, 12 September 1985 – 18 September 1990
 * Rear Admiral Sir Robert Woodard, 18 September 1990 – 1 April 1995
 * Commodore Anthony Morrow, 1 April 1995 – 11 December 1997

title: HMY Britannia


text:
Top Secret (disambiguation)

Top Secret generally refers to the highest acknowledged level of classified information.

Top Secret may also refer to:

Film and television

 * Top Secret (1952 film), a British comedy directed by Mario Zampi
 * Top Secret (1967 film), an Italian-Spanish film
 * Top Secret!, a 1984 American comedy starring Val Kilmer
 * Top Secret (1998 film), a 1998 French film
 * "Top Secret" (House), an episode of House
 * Top Secret (TV series), a 1961 British series starring William Franklyn
 * The Billionaire, known in Thailand as Top Secret: Wai Roon Pan Lan
 * Top Secret Videos, a TruTV comedy show starring Brian Posehn, Ron Funches and Ali Kolbert

Games and gaming

 * Top Secret (arcade game) or Bionic Commando, a 1987 action platform game
 * Top Secret (role-playing game), a 1980 espionage-themed role-playing game
 * Top Secret, an experimental multiplayer online game project from Acclaim Games

Music

 * TST (band), a South Korean boy band formerly known as Top Secret
 * Top Secret (UP10TION EP), a 2010 EP by South Korean boy band UP10TION
 * Top Secret (single album), by Jun Hyoseong, 2014
 * Top Secret, an album by Captain Jack
 * Top Secret Drum Corps, a Swiss precision drum corps

Songs

 * "Top Secret" (song), a 2012 song by F.T. Island
 * "Top Secret", a single by Winston Wright
 * "Top Secret", a song by Hangry & Angry from Sadistic Dance
 * "Top Secret", a song by Namie Amuro from Play
 * "Top Secret", a song by Ratt from Detonator
 * "Top Secret", a song by Girls' Generation from The Boys
 * "Top Secret", a song by Weeekly from We Can

Publications

 * Top Secret (play), a 1949 play by Alan Melville
 * Himitsu – Top Secret, a 2001 Japanese manga
 * Top Secret, a children's novel by John Reynolds Gardiner
 * Top Secret (novel), a 2014 novel by W. E. B. Griffin and his son
 * Top Secret (magazine), a Polish magazine devoted to the subject of computer and video games

Other uses

 * Top Secret (aircraft), a B-29 Superfortress modified to carry the atomic bomb in World War II
 * Top Secret (radio program), a 1950–51 American program on the NBC Red Network
 * Top Secret (company), a Japanese automobile tuner and parts manufacturer

title: Top Secret (disambiguation)


text:
Jhonen Vasquez

Jhonen C. Vasquez (born September 1, 1974) is an American cartoonist, writer, producer, and director. He is best known for creating the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac comic book series (alongside its spin-offs Squee!, I Feel Sick, and Fillerbunny) and the Nickelodeon animated series Invader Zim.

Early life
Jhonen C. Vasquez was born in San Jose, California, on September 1, 1974. He is of Mexican and Venezuelan descent. He grew up in East San Jose and attended Mt. Pleasant High School, where he spent much of his class time drawing in sketchbooks.

Vasquez was a fan of Disney animated features growing up, and found himself even more fascinated by alternative animation by filmmakers such as Ralph Bakshi. Vasquez cited The Plague Dogs and Flight of Dragons as two of the most personally influential animated films he saw in childhood, while at the same time in live action, he found himself most influenced by Ridley Scott's Alien.

Vasquez also read his older brother's superhero comics as a child, but first became interested in exploring the medium through the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman. He said:

"It wasn't until I started collecting Ninja Turtles comics that something switched over in my head. To me, there was something just so different about those books that I did start to obsess over themthe way the books felt dirtier in my hands, the filthy artwork and hero characters that never seemed healed over from their last battles. There was a sense of person just behind the printed page that I had never felt before, a thinner separation from production to my hands and eyes that just fired hooks out into me... it felt unsafe, ya know? It's like, the book itself was less removed from the initial moment a creator is excited about having just come up with some great idea to when they finally finish a thing, nice and polished and just a little dulled from before the thing was just another book. To me, anyhow. It's just what I interpreted the experience like, and I'm sure to a lot of people it was just a book about big mutant turtles."

During high school, Vasquez took part in a contest to design a new look for his school's mascot. He earned no prizes; however, on the back of a preliminary drawing for the contest, he drew his first sketch of who would later become the title character of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, and the student newspaper published a number of his comic strips featuring Johnny. He also created Happy Noodle Boy while attending Mt. Pleasant.

After graduating in 1992, he became a film student at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. Despite having little formal artistic training, he soon dropped out of De Anza to pursue a career as a professional cartoonist. He met Roman Dirge and Rosearik Rikki Simons at Alternative Press Expo in 1995; Dirge later became a writer on Vasquez's series Invader Zim, while Simons joined the show's coloring team and voiced Zim's erratic robot sidekick GIR. Simons also worked with Vasquez on the coloring seen in his two-issue comic I Feel Sick. In September 1996, Vasquez announced in his introductory text to the sixth issue of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac that the comic book had been successful enough for him to quit his day job and focus on his art.

Comics
Carpe Noctem magazine published early one-page strips featuring Johnny in the early 1990s. In 1995, Slave Labor Graphics began publishing a series of Johnny comics after Vasquez submitted samples of his artwork to them. Vasquez's first comic, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, ran for seven issues and was collected as a hardcover and a trade paperback book named Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut. The cover features the logo "Z?", meaning "question sleep", which appears frequently throughout Vasquez's work and relates to his characters' insomnia and his own hypnophobia. The series follows Johnny as he searches for meaning in his life, a quest that frequently leads to the violent deaths of those around him as well as, briefly, his own. A photograph of one of Vasquez's friends, Leah England, serves as the middle of a portrait collection on the cover for the second issue of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. England also gave Vasquez the inspiration for a filler strip about a child who was dangerously afraid of losing sight of his mother, as well as the notorious "Meanwhile" filler piece in the second issue of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Vasquez's next project was The Bad Art Collection, a 16-page one-shot comic. He stated that he did the book's art while he was in high school to discourage classmates from asking him to draw for them.

In 1997, Vasquez gave Squee, a supporting character from Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, his own four-issue series. It chronicles Squee's encounters with aliens, Satan's son, and eventually Satan himself. The trade version (which features a cover image of Squee with the words "Buy me or I'll die!") contains, in addition to the actual Squee comics, the Meanwhiles that were left out of the Director's Cut of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, as well as comics of Vasquez's "real life" and Wobbly-Headed Bob. Vasquez's next project was I Feel Sick, colored by Rikki Simons. I Feel Sick follows a tortured artist named Devi (another character introduced in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac) as she tries to maintain her sanity in an insane vision of society, despite conversing with Sickness, one of her own paintings. Slave Labor has published three Fillerbunny mini-comics, the third having been released in March 2005. The Mini-Comic was a spin-off of a filler comic designed to replace a vacant page usually reserved for advertising space in the Squee! comics.

Vasquez said at the 2007 New York Comic Con that the original Fillerbunny comics would be done in a single night and he would rush through and do whatever he could in a small amount of time. The third issue, however, broke this mold. According to the introduction, it took over nine months to complete, and he feels it is of much higher quality than the first two. At Comic-Con 2005, Vasquez mentioned that his next comic was a love story. Since this, however, he attended an event in early 2007 and stated he was not working on his "own" comics – he was collaborating on two comics in the style of Everything Can Be Beaten, acting only as author. The first, titled Jellyfist, was intended for release on July 25, 2007, but the initial print run of Jellyfist was incredibly poor, and so it was re-released in October 2007. In 2009, Vasquez collaborated with other alternative artists in Marvel Comics' Strange Tales, issue 2 of 3, with a story about MODOK. It sold extremely well and all three issues have been collected into a hardcover trade paperback. The next year he returned for Marvel's Strange Tales II, issue 1 of 3, with a story about Wolverine.

In 2012, DC Comics announced that Vasquez joined the writing team for their digital comic Beyond the Fringe, based on the Fox TV series Fringe. In May 2014, Vasquez announced on his Tumblr page that he would be re-releasing his previous Fillerbunny comics into a new collection and additionally releasing his first new comic book in ten years.

Television
At Nickelodeon, Vasquez created the animated television series Invader Zim, which aired on the network and then later on Nicktoons. It focuses on the daily life of Zim, a naïve alien from the planet Irk who tries to conquer Earth and enslave humans, before his attempts are constantly thwarted by a young paranormal investigator Dib, who believes that Zim is an alien but no one believes him. The first episode aired on March 30, 2001. The series lasted for two seasons, before it was cancelled by Nickelodeon, saying that its main causes were low ratings, over-budget production and lack of interest in continuation of the series. The last episode before the show's cancellation, "The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever" (a Christmas special), aired on December 10, 2002. Episodes of the third season and a finale then remained unfinished. Vasquez provided the voices for Zim's computer, Old Kid, Minimoose, and various characters including himself as a background character (being credited as "Mr. Scolex"). Vasquez later returned to Nickelodeon in 2016 to write Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, a TV movie based on Invader Zim.

Vasquez also did character designs for the Disney XD show Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, as well as wrote for an episode of the online series Bravest Warriors. In July 2014, it was revealed that Disney Television Animation had picked up the pilot Very Important House, co-created by Vasquez and Rick and Morty production designer Jenny Goldberg, who previously collaborated with Vasquez on Jellyfist. However, on September 30, 2016, Vasquez announced on his official blog that Very Important House was ultimately not picked up for a full series; The Art of Invader Zim, which released in 2019, mentions that Very Important House was passed due to executive leadership changes at Disney Branded Television.

Other work
Vasquez collaborated with Crab Scrambly to produce the storybook Everything Can Be Beaten, published by Slave Labor in 2002. Vasquez, credited as Chancre Scolex, wrote the story and Crab Scrambly illustrated it. Everything Can Be Beaten is about a strange person who lives in a room in which he can do nothing but beat kittens. However, an adventure into the outside world changes his perspective, and he discovers that "everything can be beaten". The storybook inspired Urban Squall in 2008 to create the puzzle browser game Bloody Fun Day. Vasquez did the entire artwork for the deluxe edition of the Mindless Self Indulgence album If as well as the digital single "Mastermind". He also directed the music videos for Mindless Self Indulgence's "Shut Me Up" and The Left Rights' "White". Jhonen made the cover art for the album Zero Day by MC Frontalot and also indicated that he shows his artwork in galleries from time to time. He also did an art rendition of BioShock 2 called "The Sisters". He was quoted saying the following about the rendition:

"Who says kids are good for nothing other than emergency food in disaster conditions? I don't, because at this point my badass nieces helped out quite a bit for reference. I dragged them, much like Big Sister there, out for a quick photo session and we had a damn fine time in freezing winds posing like the little, demonic wee ones that they are. Being my niece, the youngest had no problem finding that place in her heart that allowed her to simulate the howling face of a child being dragged down a nightmare alley by an unspeakable horror. Throw in a tall, monstrous friend of mine to stand in for Big Sister and you have four people with chattering teeth and trying to steal my jacket. After that, the line-art came pretty easily enough, save for an adjustment period of finding the balance between a more realistic style and not losing the strange cartoonishness."

He also worked on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles short called Don Vs Raph, where Donatello and Raphael compete to see who is better, but the two always end up tying.

Style
Vasquez's characters are often highly geometric and thin with heavy black outlines, almost to the point of resembling stick figures. The protagonists in his comics are typically mentally unstable characters who live in dysfunctional societies, and whose manias are able to speak through inanimate objects. His storylines tend to follow a basic dark comedy formula. His art style is very edgy and eccentric, and smiley faces are found throughout his artwork, trying to evoke an ironic sense of happiness in a world of chaos and darkness. Much of his writing conveys misanthropic and pessimistic themes, often for the purposes of parody and satire. Several of his works have featured goth characters or depictions of that subculture for the purpose of satire. In an interview on The Screen Savers in 2005, he responded to host Kevin Pereira's comment that fans considered him "a goth king" by quipping, "King, yeah, but not goth... I mean, that's arrogant."

Awards and nominations

 * Squee! was nominated for 1998 Eisner Awards for Best New Series and Best Humor Publication.
 * I Feel Sick won an International Horror Guild Award in 2000 for Best Illustrated Narrative.
 * Invader Zim won an Emmy, an Annie, and the award for Best Title Sequence at the 2001 World Animation Celebration awards. It also garnered seven other nominations.
 * Vasquez and his work were honored in the National Design Triennial: Inside Design Now, a 2003 exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
 * Vasquez received the Inkpot Award in 2015.

title: Jhonen Vasquez