Tiger Woods down under

[Philip Ferguson <plf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tiger Woods is in NZ at present playing at a Golf Open here.  It cost the
organisers millions to get Woods to come, and apparently people are paying
six-figure summs (so, at least $100,000 NZ - ie $US40,000 and upwards) to
play a few rounds with him.  An interesting sign of how the state helps
capital is that the government (centre-left) was prepared to hcip in to the
costs of bringing Woods here.  To give you an idea of what this equates to
in NZ - the average income in Christchurch is $NZ20,000.  My income is
about half that.  So these snoots are paying five times the average
*annual* income of a Christchurch person, and about ten times my annual
income, to play a few rounds with Tiger.

On the tea-time news on Tuesday night, however, the lead item was of a
picket of Woods in Wellington as he was attending a charity event.
Picketers were drawing attention to the fact that Nike workers in Third
World countries get $2 a day, while Mr Woods' sponsorship deal was about
$129,000 a day.  The coverage of the picket on the mian news was quite
good.  However I was rather interested in what the charity event was (after
all, a lot of people find it a bit churlish to picket someone when they're
attending a charity event, and I assumed it was something like the cancer
society, or disabled children or so on).  It didn't say, but on the late
news on another channel, it said the charity was NZ young golfers!!!  I
can't say I have ever noticed that young golfers are an especially
disadvantaged group in this country, but there you go.

There was a big police presence at the picket.  Indeed, police security
around Woods at the tournament, just outside Wellington, is phenomenal.
They have deployed 400 (!!!) police for security!!

The organiser of the Woods picket in Wellington unfortunately lost his
diary and some helpful member of the public handed it to the cops.  When
the cops went through it, they visited the organiser, a young white NZ guy,
and asked him if was a member of any Islamic organisation and if he had
access to cyanide!  (Apparently the cyanide would be to poison Woods)!

Philip Ferguson





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