Thames Valley

The Thames Valley region is a loose term for the English counties or parts of those counties roughly following the course of the River Thames as it flows from Oxfordshire in the west to London in the east. It is generally taken to include parts of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Surrey and sometimes two boroughs of southwest London. It rarely includes either the source of the Thames at Thames Head in Gloucestershire, or any part of Wiltshire, and does not include the informal entities Central London or the Thames Gateway which surrounds the Thames Estuary.

The Thames Valley region can be compared with the longer and narrower M4 corridor, i.e. the area within a few miles of the M4 motorway, which runs East-West extending from Hammersmith, London through Berkshire (interrupted by two small salients of Buckinghamshire) and then Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire and over the River Severn via the Second Severn Crossing, a Toll Bridge to South Wales.

Economy

The Thames Valley is one of the wealthiest parts of the European Union, aided by a skilled workforce and its accessibility to London. Historic trades have been replaced by wealth-generating knowledge-based industries: in particular, information and communications technology and life sciences.

Thames Valley (disambiguation)

Thames Valley may refer to:

Thames Valley (European Parliament constituency)

Prior to its uniform adoption of proportional representation in 1999, the United Kingdom used first-past-the-post for the European elections in England, Scotland and Wales. The European Parliament constituencies used under that system were smaller than the later regional constituencies and only had one Member of the European Parliament each.

The constituency of Thames Valley was one of them.

When it was created in England in 1979, it consisted of the Westminster Parliament constituencies of Beaconsfield, Chesham and Amersham, Eton and Slough, Spelthorne, Windsor and Maidenhead, Wokingham and Wycombe. Following boundary changes which took effect for the 1984 election, the constituency lost the Beaconsfield, Eton, Chesham, Amersham and Wycombe areas to the new Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire constituency, while gaining the town of Reading in the form of the constituencies of Reading East and Reading West. The Westminster parliamentary constituency of East Berkshire which was created in 1983 was also part of Thames Valley. The constituency boundaries were then unchanged until the constituency was abolished in 1999.

Thames Valley, New Zealand

The Thames Valley is a non-administrative region in the North Island of New Zealand. Broadly, it is the valley component of the Waihou River catchment (which was formerly known as the Thames River). The lower part of the valley is more commonly known as the Hauraki Plains. Geographically the valley extends as far as Piarere, although this is not often referred to as such. In geographical history of New Zealand, the Thames Valley was the path of the ancestral Waikato River when it discharged into the Firth of Thames over 20,000 years ago.

For local government administration, the Thames Valley is fully contained within the Waikato Region, and is split between the Thames-Coromandel, Hauraki and Matamata-Piako Districts.

The region's principal industry is dairy farming and is considered to be some of the most intensively farmed dairying areas in the world. The main towns are Thames, Paeroa, Ngatea and Te Aroha. While geographically the towns of Morrinsville and Matamata are also located within the Thames Valley, they are not typically treated as such.

New Zealand

New Zealand (/njuːˈziːlənd/ new-ZEE-lənd, Māori: Aotearoa [aɔˈtɛaɾɔa]) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses – that of the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu – and numerous smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres (900 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. Because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long isolation, New Zealand developed a distinctive biodiversity of animal, fungal and plant life. The country's varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland.

Somewhere between 1250 and 1300 CE, Polynesians settled in the islands that were to become New Zealand, and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer, became the first European to sight New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the British Crown and Māori Chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, making New Zealand a British colony. Today, the majority of New Zealand's population of 4.5 million is of European descent; the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealand's culture is mainly derived from Māori and early British settlers, with recent broadening arising from increased immigration. The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, with English predominant.

1926 in New Zealand

Population

A census was held in March 1926.

Incumbents

Regal and viceregal

Government

The 22nd New Zealand Parliament continued with the Reform Party governing.

Parliamentary opposition

Main centre leaders

Events

2011 Rugby World Cup

The 2011 Rugby World Cup was the seventh Rugby World Cup, a quadrennial international rugby union competition inaugurated in 1987. The International Rugby Board (IRB) selected New Zealand as the host country in preference to Japan and South Africa at a meeting in Dublin on 17 November 2005. The tournament was won by New Zealand, who defeated France 8–7 in the final. The defending champions, South Africa, were eliminated by Australia 11–9 in the quarter-finals. The result marked the third time that the tournament was won by the country that hosted the event (following New Zealand in 1987 and South Africa in 1995).

It was the largest sporting event ever held in New Zealand, eclipsing the 1987 Rugby World Cup, 1990 Commonwealth Games, 1992 Cricket World Cup and the 2003 America's Cup. Overseas visitors to New Zealand for the event totalled 133,000, more than the 95,000 that the organisers expected. However, there was a drop in non-event visitors, meaning the net increase in visitors over the previous year was less than 80,000.