Dear NZ - I don't want to hear another bloody word about rugby after Monday

Yay, our 15 guys are better than the 15 other guys from a tiny selection of countries who play Rugby. Yay.

Now I think that Rugby holds a terribly large hold over the NZ cultural psyche and that sometimes our fixation borders on the obsessive and tends to block much more important issues of public debate, but I'm glad we won, if not only to save me from the deep depression many of my fellow NZers would have fallen into if God forbid we had lost.

But the game is over, we won, and I don't want to hear another bloody word about Rugby for at least 4 years! The manufactured Rugby World Cup chatter has blocked any debate about things vastly more important, like, you know, our election.

The Guardian embarrassingly summed up our myopic rugby obsession...



From The Guardian, Friday 7 October:

New Zealand goes to the polls on 26 November for a general election, with the National party leading Labour by 27%, but a significant proportion of Kiwis have more interest in the World Cup. According to a recent poll, 30% of those surveyed said they placed more importance on who wins the World Cup than the result of the election. The figures make depressing reading for those worried about young people's lack of interest in politics: among the under-25s, 55% said they were more interested in the World Cup


This manufactured RWC chatter has managed to eclipse our credit downgrade, the fact Key lied about Standard & Poor's suggesting a downgrade under Labour, the growing economic meltdown overseas, Key's admission that poverty is growing in NZ, that food hand outs have doubled, that vast erosion's of our civil liberties were rammed through under urgency when no one was paying attention and that the Trans Pacific Free Trade agreement which Key wants to sign will allow for pharmaceutical companies to wage war on pharmac.

I'm all for watching the Haka and getting excited about a game as much as the next citizen, but sweet Jesus Christ, that's a whole lot of shit I have to pretend didn't just happen in the last 6 weeks.

There is a bloody election on folks, the decision of which will radically alter NZs path one way or another, and if sleepy hobbits think winning a Rugby match combined with John Key's vacant aspiration is enough to keep us all singing and dancing, then sleepy hobbits are in for one hell of a wake up call.

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