Items filtered by date: January 2016

Flawed and Cringing New Zealand Foreign Policy Closes World’s Biggest Nation Russia to Vital NZ Exports Claims Napier Engineering Chief
Craven fawning United States orientated policy conflicts with frivolous and irresponsible populist stance to wreck trade

MSCNewsWire-EIN-National Press Club Service:  New Zealand manufacturers in the food and food processing equipment sector in shutting the door on exports to Russia will find themselves also shutting themselves out of an immense and reliable growth market counsels the managing director of Napier Engineering & Contracting.

The company turnkey constructed a string of freezing works in Russia with all the expertise and processing equipment hardware shipped out of the Port of Napier.

The experience was both profitable for Napier Engineering and salutary. “Our staff who lived in Russia for months a time were superbly treated. In most contracts of the scope and size of this one there are major problems. But in the Russian project no problem arose that could not be solved on the spot,” recalled Ken Evans (pictured).

Mr Evans warned exporters that the US – invoked embargo that prevented EU members from selling to the Russians meant in practice that the Russians were jump-starting their own food and food processing machinery resources.

Mr Evans said that the Russians were not unaware of the inconsistency inherent in New Zealand banning US Navy vessels warships on the one hand.

Then “grovelling in meek obeisance” on the other in falling into line with a US embargo on Russia to which it was not even party to.

An export economy such as New Zealand’s simply could not eliminate the world’s biggest country, which also happened to be a growth one and an emerging one, insisted Mr Evans.

The falling into line of the EU with the United States embargo on Russia was substantially responsible for the world milk surplus.
Milk and other agri products that would have been sent to Russia continue to back up into an unmanageable world surplus, noted Mr Evans.

The severity of the problem locally was being demonstrated by farmers in regions such as Taranaki being urged to “diversify,” he said, and do so regardless of their investment in processing and handling equipment.

Mr Evans urged the government to propound a sensible and statesmanlike trade policy with the United States “at least midway between the cringing and damaging humiliation of participating unofficially in their boycott of Russia and that of the equally silly and dangerous embargo on their warships here.”

According to Mr Evans the conflicting policies in regard to the United States , the “craven” one on the export ban to Russia, and the “frivolously damaging” one of the warships ban here had the effect of “putting New Zealand and its exporters into a dim light” around the world.

 

The severity of the problem locally was being demonstrated by farmers in regions such as Taranaki being urged to “diversify,” he said, and do so regardless of their investment in processing and handling equipment.

 

Published in Main

Green Parrot Discovered
in Club Memorabilia
Now Linked to The
Green Parrot Restaurant

The Green Parrot founded 90 years ago is renowned as the most enduring and famous restaurant in the South Seas. In a bizarre twist of events the National Press Club appears to be holding the original green parrot jug from which the Wellington institution derived its name.

The jug (pictured) was given in the early 1970s to a group of journalists in order that it might adorn the premises of a press club that was then under consideration. In the event the jug disappeared from sight. It has only just recently re-surfaced during the cataloguing of National Press Club memorabilia.

The circumstances of how the jug came into the possession of the club are noteworthy.

It was donated by Tony Poynton. He was a prominent commodities trader during the 1950s. This was sometime before the Green Parrot restaurant was taken up by society patrons such as those nowadays in the sphere of arts, entertainment and politics. In this 1950s era it was the eating place for those in hard edge sectors especially those in metals and vehicle trading. Mr Poynton was involved in both.

A commanding presence, Mr Poynton had seemingly intervened to calm down a threatened disturbance involving diners from two rival and competing camps of scrap metal exporters.
Grateful for such timely and effective intervention the proprietor of that era spontaneously swept the green parrot jug off its shelf and presented it to Mr Poynton (pictured below.)

Of a restless and inquiring nature Mr Poynton with the advent of the 1970s took up a new profession. It was that of newspaperman. First in the advertising department of Truth and then he went on to pioneer Contact, the Wellington region mass-distribution weekly.

Rubbing shoulders now with journalists, Mr Poynton with his managerial experience and skills saw the need for a unifying organisation with its own premises. Here, he reasoned, the considerable expenditure on conviviality in those more gregarious days could be re-invested back into the vocation instead of into the brewery balance sheets.

Mr Poynton’s death was to coincide with the founding of the National Press Club and thus he was never able to follow through on this objective. At the same time, and also from cancer, there occurred the death of his close friend the broadcasting journalist David Inglis which further diminished recollections from this time.

The jug though remained. It is stamped on its base as Made in Japan. Green parrot pitchers, as they were known, were a staple of the Japanese ceramics industry during the 1920s.

The Green Parrot restaurant was begun and named by an America sailor paid off in Wellington and who went on in 1926 to found the restaurant. The conjecture is that the pitcher was acquired by the seafaring founder in Japan and went on to have pride of place in the eponymous restaurant.

Published in Main

Kim Beazley Keynotes at Washington Un-Mooring

Kim Beazley Keynotes at Washington Un-Mooring

Australia’s ambassador to Washington Kim Beazley keynoted at the last farewell to New Zealand’s departing ambassador Mike Moore, reports MSCNewswire’s Connie Lawn, the only journalist admitted to the occasion.

The two former Australasian Labour Party leaders also have in common that Mr Beazley will also shortly be returning to the South Seas, having handed over to the incoming Joe Hockey.

The two larger-than-life populists share quite different backgrounds. Mr Beazley is from a dynastic political family and from an early career in academia. Mr Moore in contrast started his working life as a boy-labourer.

But this has not stopped them from sharing an infectious sense of humour characterised at one joint session by Mr Moore suggesting that Australia become a state of New Zealand.

It was Mr Beazley who bestowed upon Mr Moore the Order of Australia.

Mr Moore’s being confined by a recent stroke to a wheelchair has not curtailed his ambassadorial activities and the prognostication is that it will not be long after his return to New Zealand that he will recover full mobility.

In the photograph by Dr Charles Sneiderman Mr Beazley is shown with Mike and Yvonne Moore.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk

Published in RH Module

Modern Marco Polo

MSC Newswire –Napier. International financier and two-time National Press Club guest speaker Marc Holtzman has become the Chairman of Bank of Kigali, the largest Bank in Rwanda.

Mr Holtzman (pictured) spoke to the National Press Club at two joint gatherings, both of them with the British New Zealand Trade Council,( now Business Association.) One in Christchurch and the other meeting held in Parliament.

At the time Mr. Holtzman was President of the University of Denver. Previously, Mr. Holtzman served in the Cabinet of Governor Bill Owens as Colorado’s first Secretary of Technology.

As technology tsar Mr. Holtzman helped guide Colorado’s economic transformation into a fully diversified technology hub. During his tenure, Colorado was consistently ranked first among the fifty states in having the highest percentage of technology workers per thousand in the nation.

In recent times, and seeking to further apply his experience in fostering hard-edge vocationally orientated education Mr Holtzman has put his shoulder to the wheel of the New Zealand charter school movement.

He has maintained for many years in New Zealand’s Gibbston Valley, near Arrowtown, a substantial home in the form of a retro French chateau amidst its own substantial vineyard.

It was here several years ago that Mr Holtzman celebrated his 50th birthday. Celebrants included a roll call of statesmen hailing from his preferred spheres of business notably from Eastern Europe and sub-Sahelian Africa. New Zealand minister of finance Bill English was also there.

From Kazakhstan to Kigali few over the past quarter century have trod the emergent-nation beat quite so assiduously as Marc Holtzman. Even fewer have had the same operational fiscal-to-factory floor level of economic participation.

A modern Marco Polo, nobody brings to contemporary education policy formulation and implementation quite the same applied knowledge of the connection between funding, schools, and jobs as Marc Holtzman.

Published in Main

Where are they now?

Sir Anand Satyanand & Dame Margaret Clark

Rt. Hon. Sir Anand Satyanand and Dame Margaret Clark were for many years stalwarts of the National Press Club. Sir Anand relinquished his membership of the club when he was appointed in 2006 New Zealand’s 19th Governor General.

Dame Margaret was an active participant in club operations during the 1990s when it took up public positions on ethical and career issues, most notably those in connection with the tertiary education and training of would-be journalists.

Sir Anand’s vice regal appointment capped a career following his graduation from the University of Auckland as a legal practitioner, district court judge, and Ombudsman in which newsmaker capacity he joined the National Press Club.

Dame Margaret was a pioneer in the then new field of political science and lectured in the subject in the Americas and in Asia prior to returning as professor to Victoria University, Wellington.

In 2010 Victoria University conferred on Dame Margaret the status and title of Emeritus Professor in the School of History Philosophy and International Relations in recognition of her career of valued and distinguished service to the university.

Since the completion of his five year vice-regal term in 2011, Sir Anand has remained active in community affairs notably as chairman of the Commonwealth Foundation, and more recently as patron of the Superdiversity Leadership Council.

Published in RH Module
Monday, 04 January 2016 11:53

Safety & Security in Contrived News*

Safety & Security

in Contrived News*


How serious are no-go areas in relation to their coverage by mainstream media?
They are all the more pervasive just because they have become an accepted as part of the scene. Therefore they do not stand out. They are not viewed as being unusual, or out of place.

Some examples?
The most worrying aspect of these no-go areas is that there are so many of them. Here’s one to start with. When it was officially disclosed that in New Zealand there were 40 people under surveillance by the security services, there should have been instigated by the media at the very least a debate on the nature and provenance of the individuals being watched.

You could say that the admission that in a sparsely populated nation that there were 40 people under surveillance was disturbing in itself?
It was a very candid admission and pretty much corresponds to a non-disclosed number of quite a few more. We have to assume these fall into the lesser security category of persons of interest.

This hardly constitutes a pattern of no-go areas?
If you want a very large-scale and set-piece no go area then you have to consider the Paris climate conference. It was treated with the type of hushed reverence that was once accorded royal events such as coronations. There was no disclosure of the immense and embarrassing tensions at the conference. Instead there was the old rote style of reporting in which the word “historic” was such a recurring feature. I would have liked to have known details, for example, of who was there from this country, and who was paying for them to be there?

Let’s have more examples to make still more visible this pattern?
This no-go syndrome is far too easily ascribed to the delicacies of political correctness and this is certainly an element in the toadying, conformist, correct and polite coverage of something like the Paris event. Timing is also a big part of this. For example earlier in 2015 the round of pay increases to politicians triggered immense and justified media ire. At the end of the year, when the mainstreamers were not watching, were distracted, the pay boosts went through and without a murmur.

What are these distractions?
The distractions are made up of pre-programmed and large scale events. Sport hardly surprisingly is the central one here. It is so much part of the mainstream wallpaper that news practitioners fail to notice it. For example you are watching the news on television which is mainly about sport. At the conclusion, the newsreader says “and now we have the sport” when all you have been watching has been about sport.
This is hardly something new in the news?
It has become intensified because of the mainstreamers turning themselves inside out as they seek to hug popular culture in all its manifestations and this really is the heart of the matter. Its most obvious manifestation is the embracing of entertainment and sport.

You are always going on about market-forces and such like and isn’t this what we are talking about here?
Let me narrow this down. We are talking about news which is in fact contrived in that it is a pre-programmed event such as a ball game. One side must win. The other must lose. So the outcome also is 50 percent pre- programmed. It is very much pre-packaged and it is the news equivalent of bubble-wrapped pour-on instant convenience foods.

Some might say that you will soon recommend the return of classified advertising on the front page?
In this fingering of the dominance of pre-packaged and pre-programmed news I am in good company. Paul Henry for one (pictured speaking to the National Press Club in 2011). In his autobiography he relates how when he was working for the government television news, there was this intense focus on having the news crystallised as long as possible before it was presented.. When there was spontaneous news, actual news, it threw this pre-programmed contrived format into inconvenient disarray.

*Interview with National Press Club president Peter Isaac

Published in Main