On December 3rd 2021, New Zealand spinner Ajaz Patel took all 10 wickets in one innings of a Test Match against India. He was only the third bowler in history to achieve this feat in international cricket.
On April 7th 2023, the Guardian‘s Elle Hunt joined the ranks of great spinners from New Zealand:
New Zealand’s Green party is in highly public turmoil after one politician sent a message seeming to criticise a colleague to a group of their other colleagues, apparently by mistake.
While the Greens’ Chlöe Swarbrick was speaking in the House on Wednesday, her fellow MP Elizabeth Kerekere texted a group of Green politicians and staff: “omg what a crybaby” – seeming to refer to Swarbrick’s failed amendment bill, aiming to reduce harm from alcohol.
After a colleague responded with “I think this is the wrong chat …?” – which ranks alongside “We need to talk” in its ability to instantly strike fear into the heart of its recipient – Kerekere deleted the text, then apologised for the “inappropriate message … which was not meant for this thread”.
The comments show Guardian readers wrestling with the difficult moral dilemmas thrown up by this situation. Swarbrick is female and LGBTQ. Kerekere is female, LGBTQ and Maori, seemingly giving her an unassailable lead. Then again, Swarbrick is vegan and sees a psychologist every week. And as the top comment by JunoNZ reminds us, “Chloe was trying very hard to persuade Parliament to advance a bill that would improve our terrible alcohol laws. These laws have a huge impact, especially on people living in poverty. And that includes some transgender people and their whanau as well as a disproportionate number of Maori and Pacifica, the groups supposedly of concern to EK.”
Bringing in “transgender people and their whanau” was a smart tactical move. Merely to mention transgender people, though a sound enough strategy in debates about the provision of bus shelters or the cost of electricity, would not have been enough to negate Kerekere’s Maori advantage, but, like all the best spin bowling, the sudden and logically unjustified use of the word “whānau” won by sheer audacity.
The “Hierarchy of Victim Groups”.
This stuff started as Frankfurt School Marxism (Herbert Marcuse and so on), but it has now taken on a demented life of its own – “intersectionality”.
“I am black” – “I am black and a woman!” – “I am black and a Transwoman!” – “I am black, a Transwoman and have one leg!” – and on and on.
My main concern is who votes for these people?
I live in what would’ve been considered a Rotten Borough in days gone by,so spoiling my ballot paper with “Brewsters Millions” inspired none of the above is the only way I can show my utter contempt for the lot of them…
No, Paul: you do not “have one leg”; you are disabled. Identity, see?
That’s the root of the whole insidious caper. Although it’s couched in the language of the Western tradition stretching back through the Enlightenment to the classical period – rights, fairness, reparation – it doesn’t follow the established rationale of “I have suffered loss therefore deserve compensation”; it’s simply “Don’t you know who I am?” on a grand scale.
Natalie, nice catch re the comparison of Guardian journalistic left-spinning with the incredible spining prowess of New Zealand bowler Ajaz Patel. As an exiled Pom and a paper Kiwi who has lived in Little Tasmania for a number of years I can attest to the utter nonsense that goes on in NZ politics. It’s even worse than in the UK.
Some people (not me you understand) have said that “The Land of the Long White Cloud” has recently been aptly renamed as The Land of the Small-Minded Bigots”, the standards apparently having been ably set by what Tucker Carlson of Fox News called an “appalling prime minister” (Jacinda Trudeau), however I couldn’t possibly comment.
The DIE! (Diversity, Inclusivity, Equality) situation here is become so bad that I have recently had to reassess my position and so, as a 39½ year-old hetero Caucasian bullet-headed Saxon mother’s son I have “come out” and now self-identify as a hot black 18 year old trans chick with the obligatory 2 GCSE “O” Levels – Home Economics and Social Studies (majoring in pressed flowers).
The world is my oyster, or something.
Happy days.
No, Paul: you do not “have one leg”; you are disabled. Identity, see?
The other leg identifies as a penis.
Ryan – according to all official sources 81 million Americans voted for all this in 2020, including the sexual mutilation of eight year old children (Mr Biden was clear about this in a televised “Town Hall” – indeed it was just about the only matter of policy he was clear on).
I believe the election was rigged, on a massive scale, but if I am wrong, and the Economist magazine, and so on, are correct, then the United States of America is damned to Hell – and I am not using a figure of speech.
Sam Duncan and Ted Schuerzinger….
I stand corrected Gentleman.
We are in Caricatural Marxist period.
Maybe when Marx said that History reveals itself first as a tragedy and then as a farce… was talking after all about what he created…
Interestingly (and correctly) Patel was dropped for New Zealand’s next match.