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The White Horror Of Racism

The White Horror Of Racism - People saying what you said is racist isn't as bad as racism.

So, I’m white. Like, really white. Sitting on a mountainside in a cowboy hat white. The thing about being white, especially being white and a man, is how much power you get to decide over what’s normal. Whiteness is the standard unit of “normal” in a lot of countries which have a socio-political system geared towards white people being in charge. In New Zealand, there’s a lot more tension…

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#racism #white people

Get Involved

Get Involved: The 2017 election will be won by hard work, not bombshells. Let's get to work.

It’s finally here, although really it hasn’t really left. 2017 means only one thing; it’s election time. The foreshocks in Mt Roskill and Mt Albert’s by-election have no real bearing on the potential results of New Zealand’s general election in the Spring, other than to remind us that there is nothing more irritating than election hoardings, except for politicians talking about how the election…

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Heaven

Heaven: Byrne, Lineker, Veidt & Beckett VS the endless #AllBlacks winning streak

Last Tuesday I was having a chat with a mate. He’s a staunch Kiwi bloke, not given to flights of fancy. We were talking about the Lions tour in 2017, and the remaining Rugby Championship games for the ABs. He said something that stuck with me; “Yeah, these games don’t matter really – I want to see them play England, reckon they’re the only team that could make it an interesting game at the…

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#All Blacks #new zealand #rugby

HIM

Fresh reckons on HIM.You know who I mean... yeah, him... #ChasingGreat

And like that, he was gone. Except he never really was there. The thing about him, really, was that he wasn’t ever really there as a person. He was single digit number, a stooping jersey, a familiar grinding presence. A face in close up, but almost always reduced to silence while others pondered what he was thinking in commentary. When he spoke, it was in the circuitous well trained way of those…

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Too COOL For School?

Too COOL for School? A Primary teacher's reckons on online schooling

Imagine, if you will, that you’re the politician and under-politician in charge of a smallish country’s education system. Not the smallest, but not exactly big either. The sort of place where people mess with medals tables data to try and get nearer the top without actually winning any more medals. You’re experiencing a growing classroom and teacher shortage. Efforts to introduce more schools, in…

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The All Black Brand

It’s been a bad week for New Zealand’s most famous brand, the All Blacks. Well, it has been if you listen to the howling of sofa-bound Steve Hansen’s, ringing into RadioSport to decry a group of professional athletes competing at the highest level for falling short of perfection. Because a New Zealand mens side has lost a game, and now the country is ruined. Not even Lazer Kiwi can save us. When…

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This Is Not America

Long Read - This Is Not America - The rise of #Trump and the fall of the Grand Old Party

Donald Trump is a walking, talking, living comments section. He’s every ‘Well actually…’ conversation women have ever heard, every ‘I’m not racist, but…’ experienced by people of colour and he’s bound together by that insidious sticky rising tide of thought which favours anecdote and confirmation bias over reality and evidence. Donald Trump is a white people problem, he’s an avatar for entitled,…

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It Ain't Right

It Ain't Right - Bullies, twitter, free speech... basically fuck these racist misogynists.

“Shit, looks like they’re going after that kid” “We should do something” “What, and draw attention to ourselves? Yeah, nah” How bullies work isn’t exactly complicated. The threat, the fear of being targeted and being next, is what holds their power. As does the seeming indifference or wilful blindness of any authority to exercise any kind of intervention. That fear is nothing compared to actually…

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Review: Ghostbusters (2016)

Review: #Ghostbusters (2016) - GO AND SEE THIS FILM IT'S FREAKING AWESOME

Let’s start by getting something clear. I’m a huge fan of the 1984 Ghostbusters. It is literally one of my favourite films of all time, I can recite dialogue off by heart and have watched it more times than I could tell you. I wrote about everything I love about that film here. Today I went to see a film called Ghostbusters and what I got wasn’t a remake or a reboot or whatever. I got a fucking…

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Bloody Hell

Bloody Hell: Whoever wins, #KeepCorbyn or #SaveLabour, things might actually get worse.

Caaaaan’t liiiiiive, if living is without youuuuu….Corbyn is on the ballot. Constituency Labour Parties and subsidiary branches are suspended until September. The hundred thousand or so members who joined post-Brexit cannot vote. Neither can anyone who joined after mid-January, including every single member of the recently re-affiliated Fire Brigades Union. Well, they can all vote, but only if…

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#British Politics #jeremy corbyn #uk labour

Blair's Chilcot Lesson

Blair's #Chilcot Lesson: On Iraq, Chilcot, regret and cold, helpless fury.

Digital: GWB: NATO work session I wanted there to be weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A secret underground facility, one of the mobile chemical weapons labs we were told about. Definitive proof of Al Qaeda working with Saddam Hussein. Something that would connect the words and statements and imploring to reality. Something. Anything. I realise now that I wasn’t too far away from the Prime…

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Subtle & Vicious

Subtle & Vicious: How Cameron gambled, Boris was betrayed & the Tories hit turbulence #nzpol

The Conservative Party have always been a more subtle and vicious political party than Labour. In the aftermath of the EU referendum, David Cameron’s resignation was unexpected, but only in that it came so soon. Cameron, the first Conservative Leader to form two successive Governments since Thatcher, was never really popular with his own party. The 2010 – 2015 coalition with the Liberal Democrats…

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The Long War

The Long War: Corbyn, the PLP and the battle for the soul of the Labour Party.

“Welcome to Britain” tweeted Danny Wallace in the days following the Brexit vote “The local time is 1972”. Not in the Labour Party, it isn’t. If anything, the extraordinary ructions as a result of the Government committing to and losing a referendum, are far more reminiscent of 1980’s. That particular period of upheaval, the departure of the SDP, the cutting out of the Militant Tendency, the…

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A Disorderly Brexit

A Disorderly #Brexit - The #EURef result wasn't an earthquake, more of a slow erosion.

Well, this will have to change.The United Kingdom elects 73 MEPs to the European Parliament every five years, from twelve regional constituencies. Each region has a number of MEP’s, proportional to their size. Proportion is important, because it’s one of the few election processes in the UK which does not use First Past The Post. No UK European Parliamentary Election turnout has ever exceeded a…

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What Terror Looks Like

Twenty years ago, British people knew what terrorism looked like Twenty years ago, terrorism was white. It had an Irish accent, wore balaclavas and had its voice distorted on the evening news. Terror came via a phone call, warning of an attack. Or it didn’t. Terror came in an explosion on Corporation Street, Manchester on June 15th, 1996. In Omagh. Birmingham. Today, British people know what…

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Radical Messaging

Radical Messaging: Did Joyce really just compare Auckland to post-quake Christchurch? #nzpol

In conversation with Liam Dann on NZ Herald’s ‘The Economy Hub’, Steven Joyce compared the Auckland housing situation with that of Christchurch post-quake. Hold on a second. Did a Government minister just equate a housing crisis in Auckland to the aftermath of an earthquake in Christchurch, which the city is still recovering five years on? Yes. He did. Except Auckland hasn’t been struck by a…

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Click. Twist.

Click. Twist. A post about mental health. And rubiks cubes.

There’s no one thing that led to to where I am right now. I can’t point at one day, one event and say ‘That, right there, caused me to feel this awful’. It’s not a big bang, it’s more of a slow sunset, a gentle waning of light and the extinguishing of tiny lamps in the unnoticed darkness. Light fades, imperceptibly. Work stress didn’t help, and there was a lot of it, there always is when you’re a…

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