Patriot Realm

As the war on white privilege seems to be going from insane to dangerously insane, I cannot help but cast my mind back to my white privilege as a child growing up in the 1950s and ’60s in rural New Zealand. We were not a poor white family: My Dad had a job and we had a comfortable and clean home. 

Our household probably didn’t receive much more income than our neighbours but there was a fundamental difference between me and the neighbours kids – my parents didn’t smoke, drink or gamble. I knew kids who had their Dad bring home his paypacket, head off to the pub for the ” 6 o’clock swill ” ( Kiwi term for the fact that pubs closed at 6 pm ) over to the betting shop and into the tobacconist for some roll your own tobacco or cigarettes. And then return home and the kids would go hungry unless my mother fed them. 

I have been cleaning out years of stuff from the 3 rooms I call home. . One bedroom one bathroom and one lounge that doubles as a kitchen,. dining room and office. A room that also serves as a place to watch TV and kick back. 
Space is at a premium and I knew that I had to load shed some of the stuff that I have boxed up and accumulated over the years.

As I started doing the big clean out, I was walking back and forward, shoving things that meant things to me into the wheely bin. Knowing that I would never see them again.

Oh, there were things like the CD from Clive Palmer when he promised so much and delivered so little.

But there was more. So much more that I put into those wheely bins and designated to landfill. 

I put part of my life in there 

Into landfill.

"... My days on earth are numbered; But before I fade away, there is something IMPORTANT I need to say. It may not be important to anyone else; but it's important to ME. Win, lose or fraud...President Trump, I just want to say THANK YOU for the last four years.

Thank you for making it COOL TO BE AN AMERICAN again.

Mar A Lago was willed to the U.S. Government in 1973 by the heiress of Post cereal to be A WINTER WHITE HOUSE.

But after Jimmy Carter decided to get rid of the property in 1981 Trump bought it in 1985 for roughly 8 million dollars. It sits on 17 Acres, has 3 bomb shelters and in 2017 Trump's press secretary (Spicer) revealed it had a 'Sensitive Compartment Information facility' as well. What the hell that means I have no idea. 

I was brought up around boats. My late Dad was a sailor with the Royal Navy and later with the Royal New Zealand Navy. Nothing weird about that except he couldn't swim. Still, that was what he did as a young man during the latter years of the Second World War when he decided that he wanted to sail off, see the world, and hopefully be home in time for dinner.

He never returned home. In fact, when he sailed off into the unknown that was the Second World War, he had a one-way ticket that led him to a new life downunder. A place he lived, married and had children and the place he died.  He never returned home. 

Reposted from original last year.

On the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook's discovery of the east coast of Australia its worth asking ... what was Cook doing here? He certainly wasn't looking for Australia (or New Holland as it was then known) as Europeans had known it existed since the 1500's.  Like many other Europeans before him, Cook was searching for the fabled land of Terra Australis.