I disagree. There are quite a few cases (Singleton pattern for instance) where static references are absolutely nessecary.
But I guess you know what I mean, right? To avoid chaos somewhere because some variablename was already used. So, that singleton pattern might be an exception together with another handful o' thingies ..
What I meant is: if you create for example a mapeditor, then don't create a few functions to update the map and do the events while all the map-variables (width/height/x/y/tileimages/eventstates/etc.) are just globals floating around everywhere.