I don’t care about womens sport.
There. I said it.
Am I coming out of some sort of woke closet here?
To be fair though, I don’t care about Male sport either.
I appreciate YOU might think it’s important. I appreciate that for some people their entire lives revolve around sport. I appreciate the idea that everyone has to play by the same rules when they are playing sport can have enormous bonding experiences and I appreciate that it takes skill to kick a ball, catch a ball, run with a ball, throw a ball, hit a ball, pass a ball.
Buuuuuuuut.
It’s still just fucking around with a ball right?
I mean in terms of human development, there’s not really that much difference between kicking, running, passing, catching skills now than when prehistoric cave people did it.
It’s literally not rocket science or brain surgery is it?
Some people claim sportspeople are role models. Perhaps you need to get out more.
My role models are artists, philosophers, thinkers, teachers, nurses, Drs, Fire Fighters, writers, activists and scientists. I think basing your national identity on who can kick and catch balls is embarrassing and I wish we could focus on our suicide rate, climate crisis and corrosive domestic violence and poverty the way we do about the fucking All Black selections.
Wake me up when the bloody Rugby World Cup is over.
Nah, just keep importing more colonists, bomber… that’s what the transnational Capital Party is going to do when it takes the Beehive next year.. oh, wait… the Wage Slave Labour Party is doing it too…
I’m similar. Rugby is an awesome game to play, but watching sport to me -unless it’s special for some reason- is mostly an unproductive waste of time. I went off it more when various all blacks started preaching politics.
Bread and circuses tho, and let’s not rain on others enjoyment of what they like.
Suicide prevention and rugby are not mutually exclusive- outdoor team sports are healthy mentally and physically.
It’s the media balance that’s lacking of course.
Yasssss! someone in Nu Zilund agrees with me. Thugby is an integral part of the authoritarian leaning, anti intellectual sector of our society. Rugby is going down in popularity, per media views, and actual match attendance, thousands less school kids play it than even a decade ago. It was not my thing as a school kid, and the ’81 tour, still got dented helmet, and an election stolen by Muldoon, ensured it never would be.
The Rugby World Cup is a puffed up “Emperor has no clothes” spectacle. Thousands of NZers don’t give one about Rugby fullstop. They are just being polite –unlike some of us! The feigned tolerance of pissed fans of a sport that is a teensy minority game compared to soccer on the world stage, is closer to pity.
Whardarryaaaaa…? don’t like the Rugby…poofters!
Annndddd…there is why I never had too much time for the 81 tour protesters. The 81 protests was as much as an anti-government of day tour, just like the TTPA protests, as it was about being anti another countries laws.
The proof was there were no protest marches when the All Black’s played Argentina nor Romania around the same time. Galteri was throwing political prisoners out of air planes at 20,000 ft over the River Plate and Caucescu was murdering anti-communists…yet the same protestors didn’t seem those causes worthy or fashionable at the time
The All Black selection was the first story on 6 pm news channels the other night, more important than Amazon or G7 or domestic news. MSM are just pissing their pants trying to get the public to buy in to the team as brand, the tough and the heroic, our guys on the field, complete with Churchill figure Hansen leading us into battle.
Makes me feel ill that rugby is No. 1 on the news FFS
What a brave and wonderful man you are speaking thus. You may need police protection. But – hey – it’s ok to be different – provided that nobody notices –
I dislike sport. Always did. I don’t think it had anything to do with my brothers playing cricket and using me as the wicket, or my school losing a hockey tournament when I was goalie and gave some gigantic stick-wielding amazon a clear run. I now think that was a set-up anyway, but convent girls’ boarding schools spawn the devil’s offspring.
They laced my tea with L-Dopa, medication prescribed for Francie, an epileptic from Cave. There was no escaping from compulsory sport – or the power of the girls with rich farmer dads and mums in real fur coats.
The deification of rugby players in NZ, I have long thought contributes to our shonky cultural values.
The fact that PM Key, with the benefit of costly media advisers telling him what to do, hung around the All Blacks like a hormonal teenager, testifies to the impact of their image.
Whether or not Rugby glorifies violence, I don’t know, but I do happen to think that these two- legged bundles of muscles provide violent role models for young males, and for NZ males accepting being brutal to each other, to themselves, babies, women, children and animals, and mammals along the East Coast.
I keep rereading Jock Phillips’s revised edition of, “A Man’s Country ?”, because I think it shows the pathway which leads to so many of our social problems, although I doubt that was Phillip’s intention, but think that like most of Hager’s books, it should be compulsory reading – that’s if people still read books. Still read words.
One of my winning Lotto fantasies is a campaign to abolish rugby in NZ. If possible with the help of Saatchi and Saatchi – unlike Key, I don’t settle for second-raters, I go right to the top. ( I’m also interested in smashing all television sets, but find the logistics a challenge.)
If this leaves a void in blokes’s lives, I don’t care. They can grow more spuds or learn lace-making.
Why take away other people’s pleasure because you don’t understand it or like it?
Physical sport isn’t violence, it’s physical sport.
This is an alienating mindset.
Yup I love rugby but if you don’t why does it have be painted as being some kind of personal persecution?
I’m not interested in Fashion Week but I can understand and appreciate that others do – and I don’t go online to moan about their liking it.
I think we should forget about being offended over Snow Whites distain for males and sport and let her have her say.
The sport is an ideal vehicle for mass producing toxic elitism, skewed value systems, stoicism, infantile arrested development adult children, and general distraction with a nationalist flavor. It also puts a band aid over the gaping spiritual void/wound of soullessness.
That is exactly why corporate fascists encourage it, sponsor it, and glorify it through the fascist media. Our sport is pure fascism. Once you see it you can’t unsee it.
I don’t care about sport FULLSTOP. I play badminton for fun once a week.
I was furious that TV3 news last night was for the first 8 minutes all about the bloody all blacks. Give us a break surely that is for the sports slot following the news, well it was on that as well I expect.
We can’t possibly have serious news on first because the all blacks are way more important.
But then it isn’t really the news when some idiot decides at the end that we need a soft little story of something cute going on usually in the U.S.
Boring, boring and more boring IMHO ?
Panem et circenses – Bread & Circus
That was what the Roman Emperors used to distract the populace from what was really going on.
Nothing has changed
Good for you Bomber. It’s a pity that most of the MSM and huge number of “patriotic” NZers (and sadly many new immigrants trying to fit in) feel this need to be the top dog in rugby – we are the Antipodean supermen and can kick the shit out of the effete English (and others). Why extant All-Blacks and ancient and grizzled AB “legends” (what’s that all about?) seem to have an entry into all aspects of NZ discourse and influence is a real mystery.
I love it when we kick the shit out of the effete English (clearly you can be a socialist while not cuddling something small and endangered / bringing your kids up to be gender neutral / apologising ad nauseam for being white and male).
I thought all the focus on the All Blacks is because were useless at everything else. When Rugby went professional I switched off. But sport is good. Exercise with discipline as in Martial Arts, Boxing and yes Rugby is good for boys/young men. Fire Fighting is very hard work and great fun, just like sports. Do we want this banned?
@greenbus: No one has suggested that comment on the All Blacks shoukl be banned. There is a time and place for everything. I watch the first half hour of TVNZ and then turn off because, vacuous as it is, most of what follows is worse. So it annoys me intensely that the All Blacks, which can have a whole half hour from 6.30 to 7pm if they wish, leads off the main news.
And lets not pretend that Rugby is all clean fun. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if our obsession with that evil haka is responsible in part with our outrageous violence statistics.
Agree with your last paragraph.
“Fire Fighting is very hard work and great fun, just like sports. Do we want this banned?”
No we don’t, just remunerated the same.
Sport is good, absolutely no doubt. But when a nation’s sense of self depends on the success – and perpetual success – of a particular team then it is poisonous; and when the sport itself, especially rugby in NZ, is conducted with such cold-blooded ruthlessness, threats of violence at the start of the match (haka), do-anything-to-win techniques and tactics, and associated discourse about “revenge”, “claret”, “payback”, “clash”, “big hits” then the purpose of the sport – team spirit, fair-play and old-fashioned fun is disrespected and abused.
Anyone to beat the ABs in the World Cup (or any game) for me.
‘Threats of violence at the start of the match’ – From the sounds of things you wouldn’t have been a lot of help bringing an end to the Nazi’s and their concentration camps by fighting in the deserts of North Africa in WWII, luckily not everyone then (men and women) or now share your mindset Liminal.
Even the softest of you at times rely on those who may share (some of) your views but aren’t quite so precious.
I thought we are talking about sport – not war. You are clearly a rather unpleasant xenophobe to boot. How ridiculous to suggest that I am what you suggest I am, or would have been – you have absolutely no idea. Clearly I have touched a very raw nerve with you. Perhaps you enjoy violence in sport and maybe you beat the crap out of your children and partner as well.
Sorry to disappoint Liminal but no I don’t beat my wife or any of my 6 kids.
My father in law hated rugby because as a rugby league coach for kids back in the 60s and 70s his code was always discriminated against by rugby and its enforcers.
If you did not play the game then it could hurt your chances with being accepted into certain schools and league was a no no even if you were a gifted player as it was rugby or clear off.
There are so many examples of how immature this country is and how it is viewed as a joke in many overseas countries by our childish approach to serious issues.
A case in point is despite some major issues at home and abroad our national tv news covers nothing but the All Blacks as the first story for 13 minutes.
You could be forgiven for thinking that rugby news is all that is happening and why do we bother too look to the tv networks too inform us of the real issues.
No wonder TVNZ is loosing money hand over fist as its only function is too inform 30% of the viewing public.
If other sport had the support this bloody game gets with its funding ( americas cup aside ) and its numerous tv channels and sponsorship then maybe we could compete with the rest of the world in other sports that exist and are played successfully.
And too finish Bomber please stop showing pictures of Key too make a point.
I had almost forgot about that shyster and seeing him with whoever that boof head is has angered up the blood !!!
“What you see is what you get
You’ve made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You’ll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns
And the public wants what the public gets
But I don’t get what this society wants”
~ Paul Weller (The Jam), ‘Going Underground’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7hTATM4i_8
CLIMATE CHANGE Profits or Paris: Are oil giants betting against climate goals?
Six big fossil-fuel companies have plans inconsistent with keeping global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius.
Plans approved by the biggest multinational fossil fuel corporations include $50bn of investments since last year that not only undermine climate targets but also threaten shareholder returns.
A new report released on Thursday by financial think tank Carbon Tracker says the set of projects currently being put in motion proves that none of the six largest oil and gas companies conforms to standards established by the Paris climate agreement to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The Breaking the Habit report states that demand for fossil fuels will need to decrease drastically to meet climate goals set by the international community and that only the lowest-cost investments are likely to deliver economic returns – given those aims.
It highlights 18 projects – cumulatively worth $50bn – that have already begun and are “deep out of the money in a low-carbon world”.
New projects by major oil and gas companies place the world on a pathway to more carbon emissions than the planet can sustain.
One such initiative is ExxonMobil’s $2.6bn Aspen project, a greenfield oil sands venture in Canada, which would require an oil price of more than $80 per barrel to produce a 15 percent return.
The report says no new oil sands projects “fit within a Paris-compliant world”.
Among the other projects not Paris-aligned is Shell’s LNG Canada venture, an investment worth up to $13bn. Other notable projects are in Angola, Australia and Mexico.
Some of the drilling is in deep water, shale or the Arctic, contributing to so-called “stranded asset risk” arising from potential changes in the regulatory environment limiting the use of fossil fuels, a shift in demand toward renewable sources of energy or even legal action.
The six Western fossil-fuel giants have varying degrees of alignment with the Paris climate accord
Of all the oil majors, ExxonMobil has the highest risk of stranded assets, as more than 90 percent of projects for the next decade would be beyond the 1.6-degree pathway, according to the report.
Shell is second at 70 percent, followed by Total at 67 percent, Chevron at 60 percent, BP at 57 percent and Eni at 55 percent.
In a business-as-usual scenario, Carbon Tracker suggests fossil-fuel companies are expected to spend $6.5 trillion by 2030 – and the world would be on the 2.7-degree course, with temperatures rising quickly.
Investment in projects that keep the planet within the 1.6-degree scenario would mean that oil and gas companies are spending $4.3 trillion, as the more expensive projects entail higher stranded asset risk and are ruled out.
Compliance with the Paris Agreement would require dramatic changes, says the report. But it also suggests that European oil giants – BP, Shell, Total and Equinor – are doing more than others in assuring investors that they are “responsive to climate concerns”.
Without modification, a likely outcome of continuing along the current path is a temperature increase of 2.7 degrees Celsius.
SOURCE: Al Jazeera News
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