After a bit of a lull things started revving up again here at Boots Theory, thanks to the local government elections.
If you haven’t already checked out our massive list of 2016 local goverment endorsements, now’s your chance – and please get those votes in the mail!
There was quite a record-scratch heard across the NZ Twittersphere when a certain hacker resurfaced, so Beware, creepy men of the right: Rawshark returns (briefly).
It’s a bit hard to avoid the conclusion that rightwing men are so lacking a moral compass that they happily exploit sexual intimacy to manipulate women to gain political ammunition.
If women were doing the same thing to men they’d be denounced as cuckolding honeytrap Jezebels from every direction. That’s the patriarchal double standard for you.
Jordan Williams did ultimately win his defamation case against Colin Craig, in a decision which left many across the country wonder how much our reputations are worth if his black little soul is good for over a mill.
Stephanie pissed off a large chunk of the green lobby by posting on The Kermadecs and racist environmentalism:
So this is how it goes. Pākehā make a decision to eradicate fishing rights without consulting Māori, because we know better. Then we decry them for not caring about the environment – which we stole from them and exploited for over a century – and imply they only care about money – which is a good thing if you’re in business but not if you’re brown.
And so we pat ourselves on the back for being More Enlightened About The Environment while literally confiscating land & resources from Māori again.
Then it was back to business as normal being a woman living in patriarchy, because it was A great few days for sexism in New Zealand:
Look, ladies, it’s easy to stay out of trouble in New Zealand. Just don’t break up with men, don’t work for men, don’t call out men for assaulting you, and generally just don’t be in the vicinity of men. Especially if they’re someone you know, someone you loved, someone you worked for or a team of someones celebrated as the peak specimens of your country’s masculine prowess.
Unfortunately things just kept getting worse from there.
Back to the joys of local government, a lot of you enjoyed reading about The other war of the polls:
If there’s a weakness in the current lineup of Wellington likelies, it’s that the odds seem stacked against outsiders. Practically everyone running for mayor is either currently on council or has been. The front-runners are the current Deputy Mayor, who has a major party behind him; a sitting Councillor, who unofficially has an even bigger political party behind her; and the Mayor of a neighbouring city, with a warchest big enough to have his face plastered onto every available surface in the CBD (though apparently not enough to get humble hoardings out to the northern suburbs?)
I long for a Chlöe Swarbrick kind of run – and in Wellington she’d have a much better shot. Maybe in 2019 …
Well, in a couple of weeks we’ll have the results of the only poll that really matters.
Stephanie Rodgers 