The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

JUNE!!! What the fuck?

June has always been a very significant month for me …

Not simply because it’s the official half way point of the year.
Not simply because it’s the month the ad industry gets to pretend it’s the 80’s at Cannes.
But because it’s my birthday, Jill’s birthday and Paul’s birthday …

But this June is something more, it’s the start of the World Cup – and while that excites me – it also makes me feel a bit sick because I’m seeing Trump and FIFA actively change it from being ‘the World game’ to ‘the rich persons game’.

That said, Trump and FIFA are made for each other.

Self-interested, money-hungry, egotists who will gaslight, exploit and lie on a whim.

Where the approach to ‘reputation management’ is to cause drama so people are distracted from the issues they want to hide.

Which leads to this …

Saw this couple near the Colenso offices recently.

For fucks sake …

Don’t get me wrong, being an increasingly cashless society has some major implications.

It makes the banks and card companies richer.
It makes the poor and needy, even more vulnerable.

But we’re now in an age where if there’s anything we don’t like or don’t agree with, we decide it’s all part of some evil conspiracy … and even if that was true – which it isn’t – we are still choosing to ignore the stuff we should be demanding be explored or investigated.

+ Forest getting into Europa versus Man City’s 115 charges.
+ US Airport delays versus Trump and his Epstien connections.
+ AI Data Centre costs versus Zuck putting spy software on all Meta computers.
+ Cashless society versus the collapse of the NZ economy.

Which highlights that Trump may be evil, but he’s smart. Because not only does he know his audience better than research companies – even with all their data sets and models – he also knows people like to complain but rarely do much about it.

Maybe that’s why his approach is influencing more than just American politics – but management practice and Linkedin preaching.

And while we may like to think we’re smart enough to ignore it, the reality is we haven’t been smart enough to push back against it.

So let’s hope the back half of ’26 is better than the front.