Has the All Black cult of winning ruined the Olympics?

1. ACT is gold.
   We don’t like second best – party vote ACT

   • Really See-More – Gold?

     Gold – more like thirty pieces of silver – for the treasonous deeds of selling off New Zealand’s state-owned assets such as railways, post offices, power companies, banks, schools and now state houses. There’s no money left to provide any safety net support for kiwis, ravaged by Rogernomics, living in mouldy garages and cars and living on minimum wage listening to neoliberal trickle-down lies.

     Your ACT Party when it infiltrated Labour in the 80’s, successively through Bill Birch and Ruth Richardson years and now in coalition with an even mottlier English crew, have ruined this once-great country See-More.

     Gold – more like pyrites – the systematic pillaging of New Zealand’s state-owned assets to supposedly pay-off debt, but lining the pockets of uber-rich thieving parasites and liars.

     Gold card – I’ve heard your ACT Party threats to dismantle super-annuation, the last social safety net for the generation that actually helped grow the state assets that ACT and its treasonous cabal have sold off.

     White for peace and purity, gold for Olympic winners, red for passion. Your ACT Party are not gold, but if there was a colour which could represent treason, lying, selfishness and asocial – that colour would be ACT. The colour of ACT? A colour somewhere between cowshit, worm cast and pond scum.

     • Well said Wha. As an elderly woman, I will soon be reliant on superannuation, See-More’s threats have struck a nerve. Winston Peters (and my namesake) was the architect of the Gold Card.

       See-More and ACT, if you are going to rescind the Gold Card and tamper with super, you’ll have to go through Winston and all those men and women who paid taxes for years to guarantee a safe and secure income in their golden years – yes GOLD-en years.

       The attempts to take away New Zealand’s flag and replace it with a corporate logo failed because of people in, or approaching their GOLD-en years.

       Is that why you are so bitter about the elderly See-More? Is that why you and Key and others are talking about means-testing Super, then getting rid of it altogether? That advert says it all “You can’t get by on Kiwisaver”. Muldoon, another Nat, dismantled and spent the Universal Super Scheme and you, a Nat in a tacky yellow suit, want to do the same.

       Do you want super-annuitants living in cars and garages and eating cat-food See-More? Apologies for my language, but you are a scoundrel See-More. My parents and my generation fought wars and worked their fingers to the bone to build state-owned assets and create a country that cared for its citizens and was socially responsible.

       I agree with Wha Left. Selling state assets was a treasonous act (ACT), but sending old people to the ‘knacker’s yard’ reminded me of Orwell’s allegory from Animal Farm

       :The animals crowded round the van. ‘Good-bye, Boxer!’ they chorused, ‘good-bye!’
       ‘Fools! Fools!’ shouted Benjamin, prancing round them and stamping the earth with his small hoofs. ‘Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side of that van?’
       That gave the animals pause, and there was a hush. Muriel began to spell out the words. But Benjamin pushed her aside and in the midst of a deadly silence he read:
       ‘Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied.
       ’ Do you not understand what that means? They are taking Boxer to the knacker’s!’
       A cry of horror burst from all the animals”

       • well said WINNIE

         that wiped the floor with see more.

   • HAHAHAHAHA you are toast!!!!!!!!! See less more

   • Well, fool’s gold, maybe.

   • ACT – absolutely nothing to see there, move on to something substantial.

2. I think having rugby at the Olympics hasn’t been a great thing. It was nice having a break from wall to wall rugby. Now rugby, while only a minority sport at the Olympics, is suddenly one of the main focuses of the Olympics on New Zealand media, and it doesn’t even have to be a New Zealand team.

3. My feeling entirely Martyn, bad losers we are now, a culture since Rogernomics.

   I to feel saddened as we live under the most repressive Government in our history going from bad to worse.

   • So, it’s all John Key’s fault? Again?

     • Yes Onetrack. Key.
       Can’t stay out of their changing sheds and now has ‘Clinker cleaner to the All Blacks’ on his CV. Sharing a Steinie after the World Cup. Photo-ops with Max and AB’s. Forgets his stance on the Springbok Tour. All Blacks illegally texting National Party support on Election Day and go unpunished for breaking the law. Set up a nudge-nudge-wink-wink committee to change NZ’s flag to link with the AB’s silver fern. All Blacks supporting his $26 million vanity flag referendum.
       Did I miss anything Martyn?

       • And those rowers who texted their support for National on election day deserved a hole in their boat.

       • You are a bit quiet Onetrack? Many here, including me, are quietly waiting for a retort, response or even a rebuttal.

         Defend John Key’s actions? Put a positive spin on what Winnie has claimed?

         If not, be as gracious as Valerie Adams was, and say “Yep, beaten on the day by a better opponent!”.

         Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.
         — ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
         Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak, write/respond to Winnie’s challenge and to remove all doubt..

         • Good point you make about Onetrack, DT.
           Onetrack has gone pretty quiet.

           Funny how types like Gosman, Andrew and Onetrack come in here, spread their vapid gobshite like dandelion seeds, then disappear, like New Zealand’s state assets!

       • ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ …zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…waiting for Onetrack to answer Winnie……..

         …maybe Onetrack is asking Crosby Textor or waiting for the MSM to kick in and come to the rescue?

     • Don’t confuse accountability with responsibility. The entire National party are to be held accountable, as are ACT and United Future for supporting them, and of course, the people who voted for them. Responsibility, however, is the domain of the leader.

4. We’ve long given up watching the Olympics. Whatever glory it once represented for human achievement has been drowned out in drug-cheating, scandals, waste of financial resources, and crass commercialism.

   These days we value watching our children on their sporting fields, with their achievements. It has a more human quality to it.

5. NZ society is now profoundly sick, with something metaphorically akin to cancer having been fostered by corporatist exploiters and manipulators over recent decades.

   Black is actually not a colour at all but is what is left when all colour is removed (or no light is reflected).

   Throughout all of recorded history black has been associated with filth, disasters, grief, illness, villainy, fear, and Satanism etc.

   Black Sunday (Monday, Tuesday…a day on which disaster struck.)
   Black-shirts (Nazi enforcers)
   Black Death (plague)
   Black and blue (bruising)
   Black cloud on the horizon (bad omen)
   Blaggard (Black Guard =villain)
   Black widow (poisonous spider)
   Blackout (unconsciousness, loss of electric power)

   In less corporatized times, the ‘baddy’ in any play/film could always be identified long before any misdeeds had actually occurred because he/she would always be dressed in black, whereas the hero/heroine would be dressed in white or a pale colour, so deep was the association of black with evil.

   Now, the Prime Minister openly flouts his evilness, and gets applause from those whose minds have been taken over by the corporatists. People wear black clothing whatever the season or weather; cars are black, buildings are painted black: the battle for control of the minds of the bulk of the populace has been won by the corporations and the globalists.

   • You left out black flags, like ISIS and the Jolly Roger (pirate flag). It’s a strange colour indeed to choose for a national team.

6. “I’m in awe of anyone who gets to the Olympics, let alone wins a medal, yet in NZ our demand to win sporting events and not ‘choke’ when the moment is upon us suggests to me a deeply insecure country, not a confident nation who are proud of our attempt rather than the result.”

   Well, there is a kind of inferiority complex that sits in many New Zealanders, hence the constant need to make up for it, by clinging to winners such as the All Blacks. That is also why so many voted for and support the Nats under Key, he is despite of his convenience with the truth and his shallowness considered a “winner”, who “made it” in his career of money dealing and merchant banking, and who managed to become party leader, who charmed the nation.

   No matter what, the ones who voted for him, they are not quick to criticise him or give up on him, as they would need another “winner” to cling to, and a lot is just perception, but that seems to be worth more than substance.

   In sports the depression sets in whenever the All Blacks lose a game, and the same applies with other sports heroes. Winning silver is second best, and not good enough, as it questions the aspired to (but unrealistic) “superiority” that many seek.

   Most New Zealanders are just Joe and Martha Averages, or Jack and Jill ones of the same, and when being a little nation at the bottom of the globe, they see a strong desire for making up for any disadvantage and rather try and develop a superiority complex.

   Indeed, we should respect and congratulate all that win, and all that even just made it to the Olympics. But as I commented under another topic, for me personally, all this is not that relevant anyway.

   I wish people would develop further interests, besides of sports, which covers half the “news” in the media most the time, now even more than half.

7. Have you ever thought that attitude is one of the reasons the All Blacks rarely lose.

   • No, I think the fact so few other countries bother playing rugby has more to do with us winning.

     • Exactly. Look what happened to our dominance in Rugby 7s when it became an Olympic sport, and other countries got seriously interested. The All Blacks are big frogs in a small pond.

     • True that Martyn,

       I lived in five countries over twenty years until a decade ago and none of them had rugby as their principal sport so Gooseman is wrong again as usual.

   • Wow, Gosman – I thought you were banned from here?
     Must be an election coming soon if you are back.
     By you being here again, does that confirm the rumour that there will be an early election before Key and National fall any further in the polls?

     [Doubting Thomas, Gosman is not banned from the Daily Blog, and never has been to my memory. – ScarletMod]

     • Sorry, ScarletMod, mea culpa, I thought that fuckwittery of Gosman’s ilk, should have been banned. Wishful thinking I guess.

       Wishing something is so, is not the same as reality, as NZ since 1984 has shown.

       Otherwise, if that were true, ACT’s ‘trickle-down wealth theory’ would have well and truly be proven and have come to fruition and people would not be living in cars??

   • Gosman, are you saying that other countries don’t have “attitude”? What about our Olympic athletes? No “attitude” there?

     Tell me how do you measure or define “attitude” at any given moment?

     So “failure” equates to lack of “attitude”? Is that what you’re saying?

     You’ve provided us with more insight into ACT/neo-liberal beliefs than you realise.

     • Actually, I should’ve said “failing to win” rather than just “failure”.

8. Currently touring Ireland and I watched their local rowers win silver to which the crowd cheered and clapped loudly. All very proud of the effort and achievement. To read this the next day was most distressing… NZ needs to grow up.

9. Absolutely spot on there Martyn. Thanks for opening this topic up for discussion.

   NZ is obsessed with winning at all cost. Taking the cue from Key and his self indulgent mob of reprobates! Anything less isn’t acceptable it seems.

   Yesterday I heard Valerie Adams “lost” the gold! In my book she performed extremely well and won the silver. Val didn’t seem to be too upset by it and seemed quite satisfied with her effort. That’s the way it should be too.

   Accepting doing one’s best at whatever is attempted should be the focus.

   • I trust that Adams was gracious enough to admit that she was beaten by a better athlete on the day.

     • A drugs test will confirm that, Kropotkin.

       • I’ve become extremely cynical about the whole issue of drug testing, Frank, with the way that the West has ganged up on Russia. Undoubtedly some competitors have been justifiable banned, but in the case of Russian track and field athletes, in particular, many innocent people have been made to suffer simply because of their nationality. Similar criteria aren’t applied to athletes from other countries, such as US sprinter and drug cheat Tyson Gay.

       • I thought that you had to be Russian to be subjected to a drugs test at these Olympics.

   • 100% Mary_A

     port is now fanatical not a friendship games as envisaged when the Greeks begun them, they now have completely lost the plot.

10. I’m not in awe of their personal achievements, but good on them. They’ve got a talent, their progress is measurable, they put training and time in. NZ gives them goals and funding. They know if they do X they will get Y, and result in Z.

    That’s not real life. Try being a writer, or artist. Or someone looking for funding to initiate unprofitable social change. Most life does not involve times to beat or some other fabricated measure that will guarantee success. And this pretence that competitive sport with its scorelines and times to beat somehow correlates to effort in life – with the charlatanism of “economics” and corporatist business dogma riding its coat-tails (profits = score)- has had an incredibly destructive effect on our public discourse.

    So applaud. But for me, awe is part of the problem.

11. One other thing I noticed in the reporting on Kiwis competing and winning a medal, the focus is almost exclusively on the Kiwi sportswoman or man, and little if any mention is made of who was the one that was the one behind them, e.g. who may have won a silver or bronze medal, it does not seem to matter to the reporters.

    As a fair thinking person I would consider it is fair and showing good sportsmanship, to also mention your competitors, and who may have just won the medal ahead or behind your nation’s competitor.

    This seems to be of no relevance for our reporters from the Olympic games.

12. Notice how John Key keeps well away from the rugby people when they don’t win.
    He amply demonstrates National’s attitude that if you are not on top, then you are not worth bothering it.

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