I'd like to congratulate myself and similarly placed persons who got through an entire World Cup tournament without seeing a minute of footage.

#FuckFIFA #FuckTrump

Wow, Lindsay Graham has snuffed it. That Senate majority is getting thinner and thinner.

What would be awesome is if everyone in Clacton voted for Count Binface, instead of Farage.

Bindependence Day!

I think the thing that Winston Peters hasn't realised is that American culture war issues don't transfer well to Aotearoa New Zealand for a very simple reason - size of population.

USA has over 300 million people. It's very easy to have a community of people that totally excludes any marginalised groups, just because of numbers. 6 degrees of separation and all that. People are more anonymous to an individual who is thinking about (mostly unjustified) stereotypes.

In A/NZ, with only 5 million people and 2 degrees of separation ("yeah, he's my cousin, eh" said in Fiji to someone who asked), we often KNOW the marginalised people personally. Whether whanau or community, these are people in our lives.

While there are followers of the racist politicians who promote this stuff who lap it up and yell loudly, there are so many more of us saying "this is bullshit. My friend/sibling/workmate/neighbour is not like that", because we know the people being attacked. There are many, many more of us than there are of them.

This doesn't mean that we ignore Peters and his ilk, but let's not be terrified of them either.

[This was prompted by a discussion I overheard in the supermarket (in Foxton!) between two women this evening where one said "I'm not trans but some of my family are and I stand with them 100%! Fuck him!"]

I just want to say, as a lifelong football/soccer fan*, that in 65 years this is the first world cup that I just don't give a shit about. I'm not watching the games, I'm not tabulating results, I'm just not paying attention.

And you know what #FIFA, I may never pay attention again.

*and former player,