Tony Abbot is a former prime minister of Australia. He stopped the boats. For years, illegal migrants had bought passage in Indonesia and entered Australia at the nearest point. Abbot said enough of that, anyone arriving illegally by boat will never be allowed set foot on Australian soil. That did it, the people smuggling stopped.
Britain needs to take immediate action, listen to Tony Abbot.
Rugby has been in the doldrums for years now, what with rigged games and lack of defence. But, watching over the weekend, the new Nations Championship format looks to be promising. This is where the top 12 teams in the world play one another for the overall title of world champion. The teams are divided into two pools, the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. Peculiarly, Japan has been placed in the Southern Hemisphere.
Results (North First, then South)
France 32 - 34 New Zealand
Italy 10 - 27 Japan
Ireland 33 - 31 Australia
Wales 39 - 24 Fiji
England 21 - 45 South Africa
Scotland 47 - 38 Argentina
The competition will take place over two years, culminating in a grand final where the top team from the North plays the top team from the South.
One problem with this format is it is likely to lead to the South dominating the North, because all Rugby World Cup winners, apart from just the one - England - are in the South.
World Rugby are trying to head off the challenge posed by rival promotions such as Rugby360. In Super Rugby they now have their Super Rugby Weekends where all the teams descend on one city and play over a weekend. This year it was held in Christchurch and proved very successful. It helped that Christchurch has a covered stadium.
Rugby has to look at covering its stadiums but at the same time not making them too large. Crowd sizes positioned close to the pitch and numbering about 25k is ideal. The NRL play open to the elements but they do keep their crowd sizes down and have fans able to see the action, which makes for a far better experience.
So, the Super Rugby weekends and this format of a Nations Championship does at least attempt to address the problems rugby is facing, and that is; a lack of fan engagement and high scoring but ultimately unsatisfying games.
Rugby has to sort out their feed to Google and other search engines. Currently, it is hard to get updates. I'd rate their efforts as a whole a fail on this, a D- for sure. Soccer are always on top of things, by contrast.
The best link I've found is the BBC in England, check it out:https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union
There is also a second division, called the Nations Cup, and that includes the likes of Georgia, Romania, USA, Samoa etc., but no promotion/relegation as yet. This won't happen anytime soon, but if it does, Georgia are looking the most promising. Even now, Georgia could just about replace Italy.
I have this guy popping up in my feed these days; I don't agree with everything he says, but this video is quite accurate. My only quibble relates to timelines. When it comes to planning things, commitment, and rescheduling, these may occur more at the start as two people get to know one another. Events may clash etc. But on the personal level, lack of respect, denying your status within the group and lack of tactile communication are huge red flags in my opinion.
This advice is aimed at men, but you can reverse it and much of it is advice that can be given to women as well. Basically, don't live in a dream world.
Gradually, inexorably, the truth is being revealed. Just release the files already!
This is quite touching, all sides of the political spectrum in the US are coming to the realisation that everything is a lie - everything.
Worldwide there is a critical shortage of welders. When I talk to a young person about job prospects, I always say, learn how to weld. The courses are not expensive and everyone wants a welder.
https://weldingonlineacademy.com/the-state-of-welding/
Peter Thiel is one very strange Dude. He bought New Zealand citizenship at one point, what was that all about? He's been reported as in Argentina, they're welcome to him, stay there Mr Thiel and while you're at it, take Elon Musk with you. But the strangest thing of all is his vision for the future. He and a few of his billionaire mates see a future that is a techno feudal state. I laugh when I hear about this stuff as these people seem to think they'll prosper from such a thing. Err...no, they'd be disposable. What do these Peter Thiel types actually do? They're not useful, so all those who are useful would simply dispose of them.
Following major upsets in Democratic Party primaries in New York, Colorado has voted to unseat Diana Degette, the long time representative for Colorado's 1st Congressional District. It is a safe Democratic hold, so the new anti-AIPAC candidate, Melat Kiros, will be the new congressperson in the House of Representatives in Washington DC.
It seems the Democratic Party is undergoing transformation, removing AIPAC-backed candidates. This is a grassroots level movement, not something imposed from the top down. It will be interesting to see how the party responds, as the Israeli lobby pretty much owns the Democratic Party for now.
Amazing how many still think the jab was somehow a good thing. For truth head over to my useful links page for resources which explain the extent of the horror unleashed.
The US may go to war against Iran on the ground. This is next level stupidity, but the US appears upset that it lost the war.
Who to believe? The US and its tame media says that it has delivered a stunning blow to Iran. Meanwhile, Iran says it has caused serious damage to US interests in the Persian Gulf. The below report seems to substantiate the latter; US bases in the Persian Gulf have been severely impacted.
Imagine needing a subscription to possess the keys to your house. How about your car thinks you're too tired and won't let you drive. Cashless society, say hurty words online, card payments disabled. Not long to go now, the surveillance state will kick things off for real.
On the quiet, while no-one was watching, King Charles has stopped describing himself as Head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith. Now he describes himself as protecting the space for faith within the multifaith nation. He spouts complete drivel in other words.
The below video explains what has happened. I'm finding it hard to obtain a video explaining this succinctly. Most commentators blather on about irrelevancies, even this one, but at least it does get around to spitting it out.
New Zealand fitness industry heavyweight, Les Mills, has died at the age of 91. Les Mills founded Les Mills World of Fitness. Their fitness programs are sold by thousands of gyms worldwide. In the US alone there are about 4,000 gyms selling a Les Mills program. If you've seen BODYPUMP, BODYPUMP HEAVY, or BODYATTACK then these are Les Mills intellectual property. I often joke that we'll soon see PUMPIDYPUMPPUMP as a brand. Maybe BOOTYPUMP. There is no limit to the number of PUMPS possible.
Les Mills was a New Zealand Commonwealth Games field athlete who won a gold medal in the discus. He also won a silver medal in the shot put. Later, he coached Beatrice Faumuina to a world championship in the discus.
Apart from sport and fitness, Mills was mayor of Auckland for eight years. He was big man, big in character and stature. His son built the business he founded into an international success story, but back in NZ he had little understanding of how big his name was. When visiting Texas, he was surprised at people's reaction upon meeting him, they were surprised Les Mills was a real person, not some French company!
I sometimes use Les Mills as an example of NZ's soft power.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/people/celebrity/gym-chain-founder-and-olympian-les-mills-snr-has-died
Interesting discussion this; examining exactly why the outgoing British PM, Keir Starmer, is so hated. Who thought promoting him into the highest office in the land was a good idea? Consider, when the question was put to him, Davos or London, he chose Davos.
Is Elon Musk a trillionaire? No, he isn't. The trillion dollar value people put on him is derived from his stock holdings, multiplied by the current value of those shares. A company may have a large market cap, but not be making a profit. Oh wait, that's SpaceX.
Elon Musk cannot simply sell his shares and bank a trillion. In theory he can, but in reality if he put his shares on the market, the market as a whole would tank and he'd end up getting cents on the dollar.
There are different ways of looking at this, I realise that, and there is no doubt Elon Musk deserves to be a billionaire off the back of Starlink alone. But beyond that, Musk's ventures are foolish, mostly flimflam. Look at the list; Tesla is the worst car ever made, SpaceX rockets blow up often, the boring company wasn't any kind of new idea, that hyper loop was stupid. Paypal leaves me wondering why people use that platform, I checked it out once and found that you basically give your money to them and they decide whether you can access it - not like a bank which rarely behaves like that. Twitter has always been a US government operation, governments have backdoors through which they monitor people.
I look at Elon Musk as performance art. PT Barnum was the greatest and remains so.
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We are due for a correction and there are a lot of overvalued stocks. AI is a bust, face it, it is often wrong. SpaceX doesn't make a profit, and may never make a profit but it is meant to be highly desirable. We've seen this before: the 1987 stock market crash and then the industrial property crash of the early 90's, the dotcom crash of the late 90's and early 2000's, then the GFC 2008, and now, 2026.
My issue is with the thinking that some companies are too big to fail. Constantly rescuing failed enterprises is a fool's errand. After 2008, all that happened was governments bailed out the chosen few and doubled down. We are living in a bubble.
Elon Musk isn't a genius: according to some, he's an illegal migrant who should be deported to South Africa. His predictions turn out to be nonsense, and he's never invented anything. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are university dropouts we are expected to listen to. How did these individuals get to be super rich? My explanation is they're all the beneficiaries of taxpayer largesse, one way or the other.
What I am describing is a situation where we're living on a leaky boat, and the people expected to keep us afloat are only interested in making the holes in the boat larger so it can sink faster. The politicians are owned by these same people, so they'll ignore the leaky boat. When the boat looks to be sinking and going under, they'll blame us.
I wonder if the UK's Royal Mail knows where New Zealand is? Today, I received an expo guide from the Quarrying Institute in Britain, promoting Hillhead 2026, a working quarry show held in Derbyshire every two years. I am a regular attendant, but did not plan on going this year. I received the guide after the show was held, 23-25 June 2026. The envelope was sellotaped together, it had broken in transit.
Normally I would receive such mail well in advance of the event. So I looked at the post mark - Sweden. The origin point was Nottingham, England; so I'm assuming this letter went from England to Sweden first. The mail system saw New Zealand, and thought, oh, Sweden (there is a Zealand in Denmark and the Netherlands, don't know about Sweden). It arrived there, and the Swedes nicely repaired the package and sent it on to the correct destination, New Zealand, on the other side of the world.
Sweden can find New Zealand, but not the Royal Mail. Imagine the type of people they hire in mail sorting in England!
