I fucking despise the America’s Cup.
I always have, I always will.
The private school privilege, the elitism & the wealth disgusts me in a country that was once egalitarian.
It’s an ugly naked display of money masquerading as a sport. At least League, Rugby, Soccer and NetBall have a class inclusiveness about them, sailing is for rich white people and those who want to worship rich white people.
How can we all get so worked up about this fucking grotesque display of elitism when our suicide rate is twice as high as officials acknowledge, when quarter of a million kids live in poverty, when 41 000 are homeless and when incarceration rates soar? Such cheerleading for privilege while so many suffer is evidence of how devoid of values our nation has become.
When Maori voyaged here on one of the greatest ocean migrations in human existence, sailing was the epitome of human excellence.
When Pakeha spent months and months at sea to get to NZ for a better way of life, sailing was courageous.
When rich white people used yachts as tax havens and the egos of billionaires fuelled competition, sailing became a sexually transmitted cultural disease for rich fuckwits.
I LOVE how we have to wait to win a sailing billionaires ego pissing match before we can get any bloody infrastructure in Auckland.
The happiest person celebrating the America’s Cup today will be Bill English who is grateful the spotlight is off him for 24 hours.
Thank you so much Martyn for expressing so well all the things I’ve been thinking for the last couple of hours. Media hype is unbearable and it’s reassuring to know I’m not alone in hating and despising all that the America’s Cup and NZ’s participation in it represents.
Here here Martyn. 100% agree.
I see Auckland will be hosting a ticker tape parade for TNZ when they arrive back in the country! Who will be paying for that? Certainly not the mayor and councillors!
Disgraceful, considering the number of (growing) homeless families who are living rough in Auckland this winter!
Oh well if nothing else, the cup win will assure the heat will go off Natz and its shameful deBarclay affair. For a while that is! Then like a pulsating festering boil, the odious sore that is Natz will erupt again, exposing more foul rot in the government!
HERE HERE MARTYN,
This was always a rich mans sport as golf and others are so we should shun the lavishness of money spent by taxpayers to get into them while our poor and disadvantaged cling desperately to life, living out in the winter cold!!
GGGGGRRRRRRRRR
I figured it out when in the 1980s I watched Michael Fay (yeah, the asset thief) wandering about with press entourage and bucket in a south Auckland Tavern, or similar, “fundraising’ for “NZ’s” Americas Cup challenge.
No depths are low enough that the 1% won’t sink to them in order extract money from the poorest amongst us.
In NZ (and Australia), sporting success often positively rubs off on the current government for reasons that are entirely unfathomable to me (since said govt did NOTHING except spend OUR money on this literally pointless distraction), but not so with the good people of NZ who just love their sports. Maybe they are living vicariously through OTHER people success which makes them feel better about their otherwise miserable/empty lives??? Sadly, I expect a rise on National’s poll numbers from this.
ETNZ was funded by private backers and sponsors. How was that “our money”?
We get it, Martyn doesn’t like the America’s Cup. This article however is a spiteful piece of work. I await Martyn championing anything publicly funded to point out that people are starving or living on the streets and what a scandal it should be that anyone dare aspire to higher achievements, excellence or otherwise.
Well said MATT
You are being highly disingenuous, the NZ team’s cup challenges/wank fests have been taxpayer supported over the years to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
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