Farming and rugby the winners

With the election on the Saturday and then the All Blacks up against our great rugby friends the Irish on the Sunday morning… wow, what a weekend!

As the election results started to trickle in that night, I’m sure I felt a huge palpable sigh of relief ripple throughout our rural communities nationwide!

With National having promised to “get Wellington out of farming” (finally some wisdom), that response was easy to understand. It has been more than tough being forced to swallow ideological nonsense from big-ego bureaucrats, coming at you through a firehose! Yep, we could put our head on our pillow that Saturday night with a smile on our face!

And then we had the All Blacks. With some pundits predicting the worst – and many fans feeling we were going to need a miracle — the ABs surely stood up tall and delivered against the world’s No. 1 team. Indeed, it all added up to a rather supercharged weekend.

And then it was on to the semi-finals. The pundits and the ABs fans, in general, seemed to be more buoyant and relaxed for this one. The ABs delivered ‘in spades’ like we thought they would.

And then to the final. Being a loyal Kiwi of course I was hoping it would go our way. But if not, then the Cup staying in the Southern Hemisphere would still offer a moment to savour. Especially so after hearing some ‘rugby expert’ up in the north predicted all Northern Hemisphere teams for the semis!

Ten rugby world cups have been played now and it has only gone north just the once! That is indeed an impressive record.

In general, I think the refs did a pretty good job. In the passion of the moment, we tend to forget they are humans, just like us. But like many others, I think it’s past time for the TMOs seriously have their wings clipped!

Now, to mention some other “news” that strangely seems to keep escaping the headlines. Out of personal interest, recently I checked on the internet for some info: close to 15 Auckland beaches were closed, all deemed too contaminated and unsafe to swim in. Wellington too, had several closed for the same reasons.

Now if it was a farmer even indirectly responsible for just the one beach, can you imagine the media outrage? For certain, some of our big city politicians would get themselves positioned in front of the cameras to spew out even more of their usual anti-farmer vitriol.

Hang on a minute, I just had a random thought here. Now the Green Party is no longer in government, with all the extra time this allows, perhaps they could roll up their sleeves and provide some hands-on help cleaning up all the slash from the forestry polluting our rural waterways and on our beaches!

Yes, interesting days are up ahead for sure. We in the farming sector will be waiting and watching to see exactly how our new government progresses with their promise to “get Wellington out of farming”.

It has never made sense to me that Wellington has hammered our biggest and most effective export earner, especially when we have such huge debts and financial challenges. Strange indeed!

Once again, with all the turbulent stuff happening in our world, I am truly thankful to have my life anchored to an immoveable Rock!

Take care and God Bless.

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