Brexit Exposes How British Labour Party Conspired Against Its Workers

The Labour Party exists
only to help poor declared
Glenda Jackson MP

“The Labour Party exist for just one purpose,” British Labour MP Glenda Jackson told a National Press Club meeting. “It is to help the poor.”

Her comment came in the aftermath of the introduction of New Zealand to globalisation by the David Lange-led Labour government.

Miss Jackson (pictured at the time of her visit to New Zealand) was one of the very few Labour Party MPs of this era in the Westminster sphere who had sprung from an authentically working class background and having started her own career as a shopgirl.

Britain’s membership of the EU has had the unanticipated effect of being a multiplier of Britain’s intra party rifts especially within the Conservative Party.

Now though the EU in a wrenching display of the power of reverse leverage is pulling apart the British Labour Party as it strips away the layers of tarpaulin camouflage that has tenuously held it together.

Starkly revealed now are it components. There are the real poor who are those in the old rust-belts and fishing towns. Then on the other side of the Labour equation are those who have never been poor, do not intend to be, and who, in the words of UKIP’s Nigel Farage, have never held down “a proper job in their lives.”

It is this last category, mostly based within the London commuter belt, who now stand exposed. They are like the people swimming without togs when the tide goes out.

They are the ones thrilled to their marrows by the concept of Europe, especially the Latin zone such as France with its gauche de la gauche political parties and even a fully-fledged Communist Party.

It is here that an old field revolutionary such as Che Guevara cohort Regis Debray can saunter around between academia and far left political convocations expounding their views on how we live now.

Until just a few days ago the Labour Party could glue together its quite opposing components in the form of the workers and those who were not workers, quite the opposite in fact.

Now this flimsy coalition has burst apart . The non workers especially those who make up most of Labour’s parliamentary wing, were explained away by the notion that they were idealistically-driven. That they intended to use their privilege to serve Glenda Jackson’s poor.

Now though they have been revealed in the eyes of those poor to have been actively working against them.

The have been seen in plain sight to have been encouraging the very wholesale immigration that adds up to cheap labour and thus depressed earnings.

They have been exposed to have been in fact conspiring against Glenda Jackson’s constituency by handing over much of Britain’s fishing grounds to the EU and by seeking to encourage and enable the very immigration that acted counter to the livelihoods of workers.

The game of pretence which has endured since the 1960s has finally ended.

Jeremy Corbyn, himself from a professional class background, has become quite literally its first martyr. The elastic would ultimately only stretch so far. He was unable to reconcile the irreconcilable. He had to step into the light and so did his Labour Party.

New Zealand Trophies on Display

New Zealand trophies
On Display at
the Washington
National Press Club

The New Zealand National Press Club’s plaque and accompanying silver salver commemorating the presentation of its Lifetime Achievement Award to long time Dean of the White House Press Corps Connie Lawn are now in the lobby of the Washington National Press Club.

Miss Lawn was for a generation the Washington reporter for Radio New Zealand, a tour of duty featured in her autobiography You Wake Me Each Morning.

Miss Lawn was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 by Hon Steve Maharey the Minister of Broadcasting at a ceremony in New Zealand’s Parliament .

She was appointed an Honorary Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit from Queen Elizabeth in 2012.

Miss Lawn has presented her New Zealand National Press Club trophies to the Washington National Press Club’s permanent exhibition collection.

President of the Washington National Press Club Thomas Burr and executive director Bill McCarren, are photographed (below) with Miss Lawn’s plaque and silver salver from the New Zealand club.

Founded in 1908, every U.S. president since Theodore Roosevelt has visited the Washington Press Club (pictured), and all since Warren Harding all have become members.

Yes, New Zealand Judges are Above Criticism

But their Judgments are Not

Napier, MSCNewsWire, Wednesday 18 May 2016 - In the entire sphere of jurisprudence in New Zealand nothing is quite so obscured or subject to so much ambivalence, tautology or sheer confusion as the matter of the right of citizens to censure members of the judiciary who in this matter give the impression of being as bemused on the topic as the public at large.

In the English speaking world the problem appears peculiar to New Zealand in the same way that otherwise learned and cultivated people describe here a collective of females as a group of “woman.”

The very simplicity seems to render it beyond any comprehensible analysis and thus definition.

This confusion visibly vexed Law Lord Leslie Scarman who, at a conference here, said, and we quote....

“I am going to speak to this only one more time.....It is this........You may criticise the judgment. But you many not criticise the judge.”

This succinct appraisal by Lord Scarman (pictured at the time of his visit to New Zealand) evidently fell on deaf years. So we will now paraphrase the rest of Lord Scarman’s discourse as his audience insisted on further clarification on this issue which has now entered such a fevered phase.....................

Judge John Doe, as we will call him, delivered a mild custodial sentence to an individual who painstakingly plotted the death of an innocent person going about their daily business. The individual thus sentenced, it transpired, had a criminal past and in the eyes of reasonable persons might sensibly be regarded as presenting an enduring menace to society.

Following their release after their relatively brief time in prison the individual in fact became a lethal menace to society.

A reasonable person might now reasonably cause to say or to be published words to the effect that the judgment was wrong , and misguided, and might be deemed to have even caused the death of an innocent person.

So far so good. The judgment is being criticised. Not the judge.

What cannot be said or caused to be published is that Judge John Doe came to the judgment because he, Judge John Doe, was:-
    * A drunkard
    * Of impaired mental powers
    * Knew or was otherwise acquainted with the accused

This type of criticism of a trial judge technically triggers extremely severe repercussions on those who utter them or cause them to be otherwise broadcast or published.

In New Zealand though such commentaries have been allowed to pass by, especially the one centred on the trial judge having some sympathy with the accused through acquaintance or some other common interest.

The current and demonstrable confusion on this matter and exhibited all levels of society including the judiciary itself must now be clarified and done so using the concise definition provided by Lord Scarman.

Fairfax –APN New Zealand Merger Must Focus on Unified Christchurch Print Hub

Up up and away from Auckland (and Wellington)

Napier, MSCNewsWire, 17 May 2016 - Airfreight will determine the cost-efficiency and thus the success of the pending merger of the New Zealand subsidiaries of the Australian Fairfax and APN media chains which must now look to the skies for the mechanical economies of scale they know they must now find.

As it is the sparsely populated New Zealand is host to the two chains’ scattered printing plants strung out in a line between Auckland and Dunedin.

The opportunity exists for a forwarder to present the merging group with a scheme that would allow it to consolidate all its mechanical activities into one site.

A case for Christchurch would be the forwarder’s master stroke.

A problem for the two chains is the constant pre-occupation with three dimensional mechanical production issues at the expense of the idea ones, the ones that do not require capital investment, and which are central to success in the internet age.

In the event much of the Auckland and Wellington dailies are early material anyway with their sports updates, soft-peddle business re-hashes, generic environmental stories, and columns by local celebrities usually talk-back types presenting their glimpses of the blindingly obvious, along with political activists. Their vehicle, travel and property supplements meanwhile are hardly of hold the front page grade urgency.

A problem for the two subsidiaries is that in the past they have found it hard to cooperate and this curiously has become more evident in a shrinking market.

There was their failure to cooperate in the matter of the TradeMe acquisition. Indeed a suitable study for one of their question-marked “investigative” pieces might be entitled – What has the Newspaper Proprietors Association Been Doing?

In fact the NPA, as it is known, was the victim of its own success in the matter of cashing in at the height of the market on its collective shareholding in Reuters.

The old family proprietors trousered their winnings and sensibly left the field to the two Australian chains.

Enter now the problem of representatives around the NPA table who were several steps removed from the real decision-making which of course now took place in Australia. They were in the position of being policy implementers rather than policy makers.

There began to emerge a distracting preoccupation with things such as scholarships and also with an increasingly proliferating and bizarre swathe of awards.

Curiously, too, the emphasis went on makeup hubs at a time when subeditors and other process journalists can efficiently work from their own kitchen tables.

The Christchurch Press Johns Road printery adjacent to the South Island’s international-grade airport indicates that such an eventuality may have been anticipated.

But experience indicates localised pre-occupations with mechanical processes of the type that have become near-irrelevancies in the compoundingly disruptive internet age.

Seriousness of Purpose is Club's Priority - President

This past year again saw the National Press Club adhering to the times and more specifically to an era in which the mainstream media pre-occupation adheres to contemporary culture rather than with the club’s mainstay of politics and hard news.

Even so our event earlier this year in handing back the green parrot artefact to the Green Parrot restaurant displayed a certain whimsicality on our behalf, admitted National Press Club president Peter Isaac in his annual report tabled at the annual general meeting in May.

The restoration event commemorated the era in which people from diverse occupations and callings were able to take up the role of newspapermen.

"Thanks to the wisdom of successive committees the club has refused to be panicked by the blend so evident today of the accelerating confluence of technical and sociological currents."

Instead the policy had been to conserve the club’s resources in order that they be deployed with an underpinning seriousness of purpose, he emphasised.

The club retains and develops numerous affiliations with other national press clubs and these "permit us to be engaged in the major ethical events of the era with www.nationalpressclub.org. routinely remaining at the very top ranking of these national sites."

One of the reasons for this was the club's new operational affiliations with the Napier-based news service MSCNewswire and the Washington-based EINPresswire service.

MSCNewswire he noted now has claims to being the pre-eminent dedicated internet news service in New Zealand and with its emphasis on commercial news is the one with the major international pick-up.

Touching upon membership issues Isaac noted that it was with deep regret that he had to report that Lifetime Achievement Award holder Connie Lawn remains severely stricken with Parkinson’s Disease. Two veterans of World War 2 also battled the effects of the passing years - Life Member Denis Adam and long time stalwart Mick Bienowski.

Green Parrot Jug returned to South Seas Longest-Operating Restaurant by VP Peter Bush, Australasia’s longest-practising journalist

MSCNewsWire-EIN-National Press Club Service, Napier, 30 March 2016 - Australasia’s longest-practising journalist Peter Bush returned to Australasia’s longest continuously-operating restaurant which is Wellington’s Green Parrot its signature and founding artefact, a green parrot ceramic jug made in Japan.

Mr Bush’s career as a photojournalist and war correspondent began in 1946, 20 years after the founding of the Green Parrot restaurant which also on this occasion celebrated its 90th birthday.

Mr Bush is vice president of the National Press Club which staged the ceremony. In fact the green parrot jug had lain unrecognised in the memorabilia of the club for many years. It had originally come into the club’s possession via an early stalwart, Tony Poynton.

He had intervened at a tense moment during the club’s post war years when it served as a de facto or curb exchange, most notably among scrap metal dealers such as Mr Poynton then was. A commanding presence, Mr Poynton’s intervention earned him the gratitude of the proprietor who stood to lose their trading licence if found to have conducted an unruly house.

The then proprietor gave the late Mr Poynton the signature jug which Mr Poynton, by now a newspaperman himself, had donated to the club to adorn any future premises.

The restoration event was emceed by National Press Club treasurer Bryan Weyburne, pictured above with Peter Bush at centre and Green Parrot proprietor Chris Sakoufakis.

Speakers noted that the occasion would in future years be viewed as recording also the transition turning point from the colourful heyday of print journalism to the present technology-pressured one.

It was noted that someone such as Mr Poynton could in those earlier days switch from metals trading to newspapers and in the process bring with them a variety of new approaches and ideas along with real-world experience.

The timing of the ceremony, it was said, also saw the era approaching of the 40 year envelope from the advent of a technology on the consumer market, in this case the internet and associated technologies, to the point at which it became pervasive and thus fully transformational.
Electricity and automobiles were quoted as two earlier examples of this 40 year take up phenomenon.

The Green Parrot restaurant was begun in 1926 by a United States merchant seaman paid off in Wellington who had acquired the jug at Yokohama and who then named his new restaurant after the fashionable ceramic ornamental piece of kitchenware.

Event seen as Line in the Sand between Old & New Eras

Kay Poynton, Tony’s sister with Yvonne Weyburne

Richard Laurenson, Hamish Hancock, Gordon Stewart, Stephen Underwood

Carol Armstrong and Luba Perry

George Westermayer and Mark Dunajtschik

Ian and Adrienne Stewart

Anne Stewart and Barry Durrant

Connie Lawn is First to Talk to
NZ Washington Ambassador Tim Groser

Greatest farm surplus ever is the
prime problem for the career trade negotiator

MSCNewsWire-EIN-National Press Club Service, NAPIER, 14 March 2016 - After a lifetime massaging trade deals as an official and then as a Minister of the Crown, Tim Groser finds himself negotiating his trickiest mercantilist tightrope to date. As his country’s freshly installed ambassador to Washington the urbane yet wily bureaucrat must bed down his country’s role in the TPPA which he last year described as “New Zealand’s biggest ever free trade deal.”

His problem? How to get value from the Trans Pacific arrangement for an agrarian nation at a time when parties to the arrangement, along with the rest of the developed world, enter the era of hyper farm surplus?

Nothing unusual in this, even though the surplus is of greater magnitude than anything that has gone before.

In the past, trans Pacific parties such as the United States, Australia, and New Zealand have shared a simple solution. This was to ship the surplus to the always hungry Soviet Union, or Russia as we would describe it now.

This is no longer possible due to the US invoked and vigorously policed embargo on sending anything to this old disposal market.

Neither does the vast North American market offer much hope. Nobody is more conscious than Mr Groser of the surgical delicacy required in persuading Canada to sign up to the TPPA in the face of the opposition from its French-speaking dairy farmers, the most protected anywhere on the globe.

Should Mr Groser turn his attention to Europe he can only contemplate still greater surpluses as more farm categories come off the restricted production quota list. Next off the rank, the EU sugar beet production limits.

And yet...and yet....markets are never static. Mr Groser would never utter it, and may even have disciplined himself never to think it. But daily the odds are increasing in favour of Britain’s exit from the EU.

From his Washington command-post, it is hard to imagine that Mr Groser does not see just one more trade deal, on top of all the other ones to which he has been a party?

As he suavely goes about his official rounds, might not Mr Groser be forgiven if his thoughts are pulled away from a Pacific contemplation to considering now the nearby Atlantic Ocean?

As someone as close to the epicentre of world trade as it is possible for anyone to reach, might he not just be contemplating from time to time, oooh, something like a new Commonwealth Preference regime?

One in which Euro-soured Britons return to the supplier that rescued them until quite recent times from what Mr Groser and his diplomatic colleagues would delicately describe as “food insecurity.”

When the dean of the White House Press Corps and holder of the National Press Club, Lifetime Achievement Award Connie Lawn (pictured with Mr Groser) was first through the embassy doors to discuss events with the the new ambassador, these and other elements of realpolitik became the background tapestry to the official politesse.

The lesson of very recent years, and to which the Russian embargo bears witness, is that not only is the United States run from Washington. But in large measure, so is Europe.

Photo: Dr Charles Sneiderman

Empire Loyalist Winston Peters MP
is Echoed in Fleet Street

New Zealand First Leader Calls for
Resumption of London-Led Trading Bloc.

MSCNewsWire-EIN-National Press Club Service, NAPIER, 28 February 2016 - London’s Daily Express has given full coverage to the call by Winston Peters MP (pictured) to restore the once dominant Commonwealth trading bloc.

Reported the newspaper: “Winston Peters, who leads a group of MPs in the New Zealand parliament, has urged the UK to view the possibility of exiting the EU later this year as a chance to strengthen ties with those 53 countries that were previously part of the British Empire.”

The Daily Express along with the other middle class British mass-circulation newspaper the Daily Mail is implacably against Britain’s continuing membership of the EU. Both the newspapers have long campaigned for the British exit.

Under its signature proprietor Lord Beaverbrook, the Daily Express maintained a crusade against Britain abandoning the Empire in favour of a European trading bloc alliance.

Reported the Daily Express: “New Zealand’s ex-deputy prime minister told British politicians to use ‘Brexit’ as a way of making amends for ditching Commonwealth countries in favour of joining the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973.

The newspaper quoted Mr Peters as saying that Brexit " is an opportunity for not just New Zealand businesses, products and people.

“It is an excellent opportunity to heal a rift dating back to 1973."

EU Will End This Year

Declares German Head of Oceania Think Tank

Bungling of immigrant emergency

punctures German mystique

and leaves EU rudderless

MSCNewsWire-EIN-National Press Club Service, NAPIER, 18 February 2016 - The European Union during 2016 will cease to exist “as we know it” predicts Oliver Hartwich, the head of the New Zealand Initiative policy group.

The immigrant crisis was one too many emergencies for the EU which he portrays as staggering from one crisis to the next. Among these were member countries with covenant-breaking debt to GDP ratios, the Brexit, and the rise of radical politics in the form of populism and nationalism.

Germany meanwhile was reeling from its handling of the immigrant crisis, which now saw the once EU powerhouse “isolated.”

In addition, the officially-driven cover-up of the Cologne refugee assimilation consequences episode had even raised questions internationally about the nature of German society’s commitment to open government and a free press.

Dr Hartwich speaking at a seminar at the headquarters in Wellington of the New Zealand Initiative sheeted the pending demise of the EU “project” to the decision by its leadership after the fall of the Berlin Wall to embark upon an expansionist phase.

This took two perilous forms, he noted, the currency union and the quest for new members. History proved that instead there should have followed a period of “consolidation.”

The revolving door subsequent crises Dr Hartwich identified as “weakening the structure,” of the EU to the point at which it could only focus on its “own survival.”

The New Zealand Initiative sprang from a number of independent enterprise policy groups, notably the Business Roundtable.

Dr Hartwich,a German-trained lawyer and economist was appointed executive director at its inception, following a tour with Sydney’s Centre for Independent Studies, and as chief economist at London’s Policy Exchange.

He noted that the focus by the EU on member financial bail-outs, was obscuring the rise of radical politics in members such as Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.

The realpolitik exposition on the EU and its future conducted by Dr Hartwich was consistent with the enterprise group’s focus on cutting through doctrines and ideologies in order to outline events at home and abroad.

The event was attended by a number of National Press Club representatives including Life Member Sir Christopher Harris, pictured (at right) with Dr Hartwich.

In response to a question from a National Press Club representative about the involvement and culpability of the United States in the current series pf EU alarms, Dr Hartwich commented that the US simply saw the EU from its start as a bulwark against Russia, and its policies were centred exclusively around this view.

Ageing and Entitled Hub Workers Paved Way

for Pagemasters to Return to New Zealand

Axing gives Fairfax Accountants tighter grip on revenue/costs

MSCNewsWire-EIN-National Press Club Service, NAPIER, 17 February 2016 - New Zealand’s on-off-on relationship with Pagemasters is now full circle with Fairfax taking up the slack at the Australian makeup outfit left by the departure of NZME. The old Wilson & Horton chain fired the Australian makeup outfit bringing its production subbing in house again.

A year later Fairfax is filling the gap left by NZME and in doing so brings to an end the era of the Fairfax Hub, a centralised subbing depot here which did the page work for the chain’s papers in New Zealand and Australia.

Fairfax’s decision to fill the vacuum left by NZME was no surprise. In recent times veteran subs had suspected that in addition to their page layout software, that their bosses had fitted time and motion monitor apps on their terminals in order to assess the productivity of their often ageing staffers.

Fairfax was worried too about its eventual and accumulating retirement commitments to hub staff compared to its liabilities attendant upon its much younger general editorial staff.

Employment liabilities are an endless worry for all newspaper chains as they contemplate their digital first futures, as they describe the strategy.

Demonstrating this concern is the strong indication that Fairfax will pay Pagemasters on a piecework or productivity basis. This gives Fairfax accountants a much tighter grip on costs in relation to revenue. The outsourcing eliminates the unknowns attendant upon things such as sick leave, holiday pay, and service entitlements.

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Adrienne Stewart

Society Hostess

“Never Met a Stranger”

The death at 75 of Adrienne Stewart brings to an end the era of society hostesses when Wellington was a notable cultural focus of the South Pacific. Her determination to foster a keener appreciation of this sphere was made manifest in two organisations. One was the National Press Club and the other was the Newcomers Club.

She was a stalwart of the National Press Cub during the high noon of conventional journalism in the final decades of the last millennium insisting that the club’s guest speakers were confronted by the quantity and quality of audience that she believes that they deserved.

Simultaneously she was a prime mover in the capital’s Newcomers Club. This had its origins in the discovery that movers and shakers in the diplomatic and commercial world seconded to Wellington were existing in a parallel universe and needed to mingle with locals.

This coincided with the heyday of the dinner party era before the advent of electronic media interrupted traditional social transactions.

Adrienne was a patron of the visual arts encouraging practitioners to stage their own showings at the numerous art galleries of the Wellington’s fin de siecle era.

Seeing an opportunity for some applied social interaction she would from time to time venture out with an exhibition of her own works.

As a social mixer she liked to see people that she considered had ability take advantage of Wellington’s role as a merchant capital. In her role as a hostess she sought to bring together those she believed had shared commercial purposes.

Adrienne was a redoubtable collector of all sorts of artistic objects of the three dimensional variety and curiosity shops benefited greatly from her patronage.

Beguiled by journalism she tried her hand at it herself with a selection of columns cataloguing the comings and goings of the cosmopolitan and the colourful in the once-thriving suburban print weeklies.

She was recalled at her memorial service as someone who “never met a stranger.”

She is survived by her husband Ian and their two children.
Sir Christopher Harris Foresaw Culture Wars

Sir Christopher Harris who has died was for many years a stalwart of the National Press Club. He will be remembered for his constant cautioning of practitioners in their political coverage on emphasising what sounded good instead of what actually worked.

Christopher John Ashford Harris third baronet of the Harris Baronetcy of Bethnal Green, County of London foresaw the way in which journalists were increasingly being drawn to the ideological in place of the practical.

A member of the club under the newsmaker category Sir Christopher for many years ran the family importing and merchandising business Bing, Harris & Co and was also a main board director of the Todd Corporation.

He was to the fore when New Zealand abruptly sought new markets in Asia and he constantly iterated Singapore as a nation with valuable pointers for New Zealand. He was a man of action and put his various skills at the disposal of the political parties that echoed his point of view especially in the Wellington electorates.

He was worried about the effect on Wellington of the evaporation of its manufacturing and productive sector and a pet project was to restore to Wellington its floating dry dock in order to boost heavy engineering.

His platform skills were applied to the National Press Club notably in the vote-of-thanks summing up of guest speakers.

He was a lay expert on Captain Cook. He delighted in publicly presenting the explorer as the personification of kindly yet determined informed endeavour that became reflected as Sir Christopher saw it in New Zealand’s own pioneering history of method and order.

An orderly approach that he increasingly saw as being eroded by doctrinal rather than disciplined priorities and in many ways he foresaw the onset of today’s culture wars.

Always affable he successfully disguised any irritation he might have felt at any of the more extreme doctrinal points of view put forward by guest speakers or indeed by any of the club members themselves.

In many ways Sir Christopher was redolent of a distant age, and of an elite class. One that paradoxically installed in the Westminster realm the foundations of the extreme political liberalism that he found himself so severely at odds with.

The baronetcy had been established by his grandfather Sir Percy Harris a British House of Commons Liberal MP who did much to introduce the welfare reforms of Britain’s immediate post war era.

His father Sir Jack Harris and his mother Lady Patricia Harris became in New Zealand public intellectuals of an ultra-liberal persuasion.

Sir Jack was at the helm of the Save Manapouri campaign which paved the way for the Green Party. Lady Harris was a constant figure in the early days of New Zealand television. She was the author of Dining In and Dining Out in New Zealand, a book which remains a minor classic.

The family’s globe-girdling influence stemmed from the Bing, Harris & Co business fortuitously begun in Dunedin just in time to catch the Otago gold fields discoveries.

The family returned to Britain and then repatriated itself back to New Zealand to take control of a business which because of its diversification into so many mercantile sectors continued to prosper in 1934, the year of Christopher’s birth.

He was a pupil of Wanganui Collegiate and it was here that he notched up national school records in the 22O and 44O yards. In later years he was to establish a sporting reputation as a deep sea yachtsman based at Wellington’s Royal Port Nicholson club.

It was indeed as a collegiate figure and club man that Sir Christopher will be recalled. He tended to discard small talk and pleasantries in favour of discussing hard edge topical issues.

He was as genially at home with the grandees of the Wellington Club as with the more diversified and more sceptical devotees of the National Press Club.
Greatest Living Adventurer Dies

Bernard Diederich who has died in Haiti was New Zealand’s greatest living adventurer. The National Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award holder sailed before the mast on the Pamir during World War 2, graduated to tankers, and then took up ocean sailing as a hobby which is how he arrived in Haiti.

It was here that he started a newspaper, jousted with Papa Doc Duvalier, and then became during its heyday Time magazine’s Central America correspondent, a position which made him the global expert on all the region’s various dictatorships, and in this he was much assisted by his personal friendship with Fidel Castro.

Another friend was Graham Greene and he and Greene toured the region together giving Diederich the material for his last book Seeds of Fiction.

Bernard Diederich’s career coincided with the high point of print journalism before electronic media eroded the status of practitioners and their freedom to follow a story wherever it led them.

He returned quite regularly to New Zealand to visit his family roots in Martinborough and also to speak to the National Press Club, notably about his coverage of the US incursion into Grenada in which he interposed himself on a dinghy.
Krystyna Tomaszyk’s Last Journey

The death of Krystyna Tomaszyk QSM concludes the most storied of all New Zealand’s immigration epics of living memory. The National Press Club stalwart and her mother were part of a near thousand-strong contingent that fled Europe in 1944 via Siberia, Isfahan, and Bombay, eventually settling in a refugee camp home in Pahiatua.

Most of them stayed in New Zealand and Krystyna became a prominent civil servant while authoring several books on this experience known as the Polish Children.

Always superbly turned out and talking in perfect English, Krystyna over many years brought an aura of cosmopolitan class to the club’s proceedings. She was active in many other organisation, notably the National Library Association. She travelled widely, often on charitable work, notably those connected with Mother Theresa.
Mike Moore Had Built-In Shock Absorbers

In the modern history of careers there are few who can match the trajectory of Mike Moore who has died at the age of 71. Starting as an unskilled manual labourer he became for two years the head of the World Trade Organisation.

A regular guest at the National Press Club Mike Moore possessed built-in shock absorbers that allowed him to circumvent university education, and indeed, any real formal education at all, and yet attain the highest offices such as the WTO one, and the prime ministership of New Zealand, however briefly.

Mike Moore, pictured here being introduced by National Press Club president Peter Isaac on the occasion of Moore’s launching a campaign for a formal Constitution, was a constant communicator with the happy knack of an equally consistent ability to engage his audience, be they individuals or groups. His trademark was a candour blended with a humorous analysis of the driest of situations.

He was among the last of the authentic working class Labour Party potentates and a winning aspect of his persona was that he never sought to explain or promote his humble origins in order to draw attention to his spectacular rise in the world.

As ambassador to Washington his vernacular style accurately mirrored his country, as did his obvious enthusiasm to help out personally when the opportunity arose.

A curiosity about Moore was that one could never imagine him alone and thus without the constant human interaction, hostile or friendly, that appeared to fire his brimming energy in spite of much of his career being beset by his own anything but robust physical constitution.

In the event Moore turned any solitude to advantage by causing to be published boisterous political tracts in the form of books with titles such as Beyond Today, A Pacific Parliament, and Fighting for New Zealand.

His last communication with the National Press Club was two years ago in response to an invitation to participate in an event and in its way typical of his simple yet evocative delivery. It read:-

Dear Peter,

I must be quiet for another 6 months.

Sorry’

MIKE
Mick Bienowski: Out of Siberia

Mick Bienowski’s trademark convivial magnanimity of spirit belied the horrific nature of his arrival in New Zealand which was via a labour camp in Siberia which is where he found himself in the aftermath of the Russo-German invasion of Poland at the outbreak of World War 2.

He had the incredible good fortune, as he saw it, to be among the now-famous contingent of Polish children who eventually found refuge in Pahiatua, New Zealand.

Mick Bienowski (pictured at a National Press Club event in 2014) who has died at the age of 87 after a long illness was a long-standing member under the newsmaker category which in his case was due to his work as staging constructor at Wellington’s John Street show buildings which with its cavernous interior was the main large capacity venue of its era.

Mick had earlier discovered the show buildings and their value when he used them to display his quick-build homes, a now much publicised genre of which he remains an unacknowledged pioneer.

Here, at the show buildings, he was responsible for configuring touring pop shows as well as sporting events, notably WWF fixtures which as a wrestling enthusiast himself were a particular interest.

Mick Bienowski as soon as he could in New Zealand took up a building apprenticeship, became a master builder, and in Wellington established MB Construction after his own initials which in turn corresponded by chance with the branding of the Master Builders industry group, as he would gleefully point out.

A keen outdoorsman, he revelled in the New Zealand ethic, yet he was always conscious that his manual dexterity had allowed him to survive the war, and he was keen to take his ability out into the community and did so by instructing Maori groups in woodworking, and also in the practical side of prisoner rehabilitation through employment in the construction sector.

He is survived by his son and daughter.
Rex Benson was NZ Herald X-Word Compiler Kropotkin

The death at 75 after a long illness of National Press Club events organiser Rex Benson brought to an end the life and times of one of Wellington’s most diversified talents. It was typical of Rex that while he handled club events he also doubled as secretary- treasurer.

He was a big picture man and a detail devotee. He was best known however as Kropotkin the cryptic crossword compiler of the New Zealand Herald. To this task Rex brought a formidable computer-based firepower. This allowed full flight to his imagination while forestalling any repetition and doubling up of ingredients.

His personal interests were quite literally multicultural encompassing bridge, opera, wine and literature.

In counterpoint to these he was an ardent rugby fan who dedicated infinite air miles in pursuit of the touring All Blacks.

Wanganui-born Rex came to Wellington as a student and gained an early interest in journalism via the Victoria University student newspaper Salient.

His career was taken up in market research where he specialised in data analysis and in doing so became something of an information technology pioneer.

He never lost his university-era interest in radical politics and this was reflected in his own self-branding as Kropotkin a Russian philosopher and anarchist.

He is survived by his wife Judith and their children.
MSC Newswire Founder Max Farndale Reached Million-Plus Audience

Max Farndale founder of MSC Newswire, the National Press Club’s associate site, has died suddenly at his home in Napier.

The National Press Club’s association with the site began four years ago and it reached a peak of activity this year when monthly visits reached 1.2 million.

Mr Farndale configured the site around an international audience, reasoning that New Zealand media had become over-localised.

Burly and affable and well known in Auckland athletic circles, notably in cycling and running, Mr Farndale had worked in production engineering and travel before arriving in the publishing sector.

MSC Newswire became renowned for its predictions including the ascendancy of Donald Trump, and the fall of the National Party in the New Zealand general election.
Broadcasting Career Took Steve Whitehouse into UN inner circles

Witness to global peace keeping
operations for 30 years

Stephen Whitehouse’s career began in broadcasting in Wellington and took him to the inner circles of United Nations headquarters in New York where secretary general Kofi Annan described the New Zealander’s technique as the “Whitehouse Way.”

He led the United Nations radio and television unit and his 30 year career there took him throughout the Mediterranean, Middle East, and the Balkans during which time he witnessed and recorded many commotions.

Stephen Alexander Whitehouse who has died in the United Kingdom suddenly at the age of 73 emigrated to New Zealand with his family in 1952.

He grew up in Wellington in an artistic and bohemian household, his mother, actress Davina Whitehouse, being a central figure in the young country’s burgeoning cultural scene. Visitors to the home included a young Sam Neil, Richard Campion (father of Jane), and Peter Jackson. The opening frames of Jackson’s film ‘Brain Dead’ were shot on the beach outside his mother’s house.

After graduating from Victoria University, Wellington, where he had excelled as a revue writer and performer, he worked for the Broadcasting Corporation before moving to Hong Kong for a stint on the South China Morning Post. A keen jazz enthusiast (he played tenor saxophone) he leapt at the chance to work at the UN and lived in the Park Slope, Brooklyn (the ‘real New York’ as he put it) from the early 70’s.

Retiring to Sandwich, Kent, he worked on the Festival Committee, took up the banjo, joined the local Liberal Democrats, avidly watched cricket and rugby and listened to his beloved Radio New Zealand, returning to Wellington every year for the NZ summer.

An enthusiastic amateur historian, he was also a volunteer at Sandwich Museum. A keen sailor during his earlier years, he recently became a trustee for the P22 gunboat.

Steve is survived by his wife Lynne O’Donoghue, sons Sasha and Sam from his first marriage, a stepdaughter Alexandra and stepson Daniel.
Denis Adam, Insurance Tycoon, Philanthropist, RAF Pilot

The death in his 95th year after a long illness of Denis Adam brings to an end the era in which astute and cultivated Europeans did so much to set the tone of post-World War 2 New Zealand. He was the last of the independent philanthropists and his endowments in creative arts in terms of awards and buildings remain a constant and visible reminder of his generosity.

His range of interests extended into many nooks and crannies of capital life. He was for example for many years an active member of the National Press Club. He is pictured receiving his Life Membership plaque from the club’s vice president Peter Bush.

His career was testimony to a singular application of his diverse skills and especially so in regard to what made sense commercially.

Early in his days in New Zealand he became the proprietor of a petrol station in Petone and it was here that he anticipated the growth in motor vehicle insurance.

This now became the foundation of his insurance broking business, a sector which he would come to dominate.

He rarely referred to his life prior to his arrival in New Zealand, other than to make an occasional wistful or ironic reference to his earlier days in relation to his subsequent career in the Antipodes.

His background was in fact extraordinary.

He was for example one of the handful of Germans in World War 2 flying with the RAF

Denis Frederick Adam was born in Germany in 1924 to a family of secular Jews.

At an early age he was sent to boarding school in Britain and he was to retain subsequently vestiges of a clipped British private school accent.

His parents followed him to Britain upon the ascendancy of Hitler,

As soon as he was able he joined the RAF. If anyone were to bring up the topic, he would be careful to point that his experience had been predominantly in Typhoons rather than in Spitfires.

Upon demobilisation he contemplated a career as a journalist, an idea he tested on his commanding officer.

“Don’t do that,” he was told. “At the end of your career you will have nothing to show for it.”

Having met a number of New Zealanders while serving in the RAF, it was now that he decided upon a mercantilist career and also to embark upon it in New Zealand.

He was the younger brother of Sir Ken Adam who was responsible for the film sets for the James Bond films and for those of Stanley Kubrick, among many others. .

Sir Ken Adam, also an RAF pilot, predeceased him by two years.

Denis Adam was a signature figure of the Wellington business district for many years operating out of his modest Adam Foundation office in the old DIC building.

Always immaculately attired in a three-piece business suit and a tan overcoat he drove himself to and fro in a classic era Rolls Royce.

In his office he made himself available to a wide selection of citizenry dispensing in his matter-of-fact manner advice, if called for, gathered from his own experience in so many different fields.

He was appointed OBE and CNZM.

He is survived by his widow Verna.
David Yallop Inspired NZ's
Andrew Little to
Take Up Underdog Cause

Late Author defied institutions

David Yallop who has died in Britain at the age of 81 is credited by the New Zealand Labour Party cabinet member Andrew Little as precipitating him into a career dedicated to serving the “underdog.”

Mr Little shortly after his election as leader of the Labour Party confessed to NZ Lawyer publication that reading Mr Yallop had propelled him both into law and serving the Labour Party.

“I’d read a book about the Derek Bentley case in the UK – he was the last person to be hanged in England – and that piqued my interest,” Mr Little is quoted as saying.

“That was also at the time of Arthur Allan Thomas and the Royal Commission Inquiry, and I’d admired the various lawyers that [he] had…I liked the idea of using a legal qualification to battle for the underdog.”

Mr Little went on to study philosophy, law and public policy at Victoria University in Wellington

Upon graduation he was hired as a solicitor for the Engineers Union, which later became the EPMU and which also represented journalists.

Mr Yallop and Mr Little at various times both addressed the National Press Club.

Mr Yallop did so after the publication of his book To The Ends of the Earth about the career and eventual capture of Carlos aka The Jackal.

Mr Yallop demonstrated the depth and spread of his groundwork when in referring to the late Libya strongman Colonel Gaddafi he was asked by a member of the audience how he knew the correct pronunciation of the dictator’s name.

“He told me,” shot back the author.

After cutting his teeth on the British Craig-Bentley murder-capital punishment case in his book To Encourage The Others, Mr Yallop consolidated his reputation as a miscarriage of justice author with Beyond Reasonable Doubt?

In this he drew together many of the threads on the Pukekawa murders originally exposed by the Auckland Star’s Pat Booth (see also obituary below)

Mr Yallop along the way published other books with similarly ringing titles in which he challenged internationally sporting bodies, notably FIFA, and also the Roman Catholic church and its Papacy.

Mr Little meanwhile stood aside in 2017 to allow Jacinda Ardern MP to become leader of the Labour Party.

He continues though his destiny inspired by David Yallop as minister of justice among other cabinet-rank portfolios.
Connie Lawn
Brought Luminous Era
to Radio New Zealand

The death at 73 of Connie Lawn evokes for many the epoch in which Radio New Zealand set the news agenda throughout Oceania

Miss Lawn broadcasting from Washington became the best known of an international group of correspondents then featuring regularly on the news hours.

Miss Lawn’s renown centred on her Washington reports to Radio New Zealand’s morning segment prior to the start of the working day which in this era was required listening for what would now be described as the political class.

Her era in this role was encapsulated in her autobiographical work You Wake Me Each Morning which went through several editions.

Based on this experience Miss Lawn who died on April 2 after a long illness, Parkinson’s, became an unofficial consul in Washington shepherding itinerant New Zealanders in their desired direction.

Miss Lawn was made Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit and received the National Press Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the insignia of which she donated to the Washington National Press Club where it remains on display.

She was in her later years the Dean of the White House Press Corps, having served there for half a century.

Connie Lawn brought a luminous element to her foreign correspondent role thus presaging in a curious way the current RNZ scheme to recover its pre-eminence by grafting onto itself a television channel.

For most of her career she was freelance having incorporated herself as Audio Video News which was to achieve an international clientele.

She is survived by her husband Dr Charles Sneiderman and her two sons David and Daniel.

Miss Lawn is photographed in The Beehive in 2006 receiving her National Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award from Minister of Broadcasting Steve Maharey.
Auckland Star's
Pat Booth
Incarnated
Ed Asner
Newspaperman

The death of Pat Booth brings to a sharp end the era of the crusading human interest newspaperman.

Pat Booth who has died at the age of 88 was the last practising journalist anywhere in the world to have enjoyed a career that spanned the age in which newspapers flourished unrivalled all the way through to the social networking fractured picture of today.

In his acceptance speech on receiving at Government House the National Press Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award he recalled this transition.

“I came home brimming with a story that I wanted to tell my family. Instead they told me about it.”

They had heard it over the radio.

Pat Booth devoted most of his working life to the Auckland Star, rising to become editor.

During this tour he demonstrated a tenacity that saw him following stories wherever they went for as long as it took, most notably the Arthur Allan Thomas miscarriage of justice.

He bore in aspect and manner an uncanny resemblance to the television news boss played by Ed Asner, by coincidence in real life also an ardent advocate of human causes and who spoke to the National Press Club close to the time when Pat Booth received his award under the aegis of Governor General Dame Sylvia Cartwright.

Pat Booth in his ascent to becoming the nation’s pre-eminent journalist and a household name defied the prevailing belief that journalists had to work outside New Zealand in order to be successful in it.

In writing his last column three years before his death, he also stood in sharp contrast to the industry’s prevailing youth emphasis.
Jill Weyburne
1939 - 2017

The death after a long illness of Jill Weyburne brought to an end the life of one of the National Press Club’s most active members. Incisive of mind, she was adept in numerous vocations that also required dexterity, notable in the crafts sphere. These threads coalesced in her remarkable ability in bridge in which she became the New Zealand individual champion.

Jillian Marie Lynskey was born in 1939 into an illustrious New Zealand/ Irish clan. She married 53 years ago Bryan Weyburne at various times a Wellington City Councillor and an enduring mercantilist figure on the capital landscape. He is the National Press Club’s long time secretary- treasurer.

Jill Weyburne (pictured) will be remembered for her energy and her ability in many diverse fields and her willingness to put these at the disposal of the individuals and the organisation that she believed to be of value to the community at large.

She is survived by her husband and their four sons.
Warco Chris Turver
Honoured for Services
To Local Government,
Community & Journalism

National Press Club’s Chris Turver, appointed MNZM is drawn to the very different spheres of action, ideas, and public administration. He was born into strife in the industrial north of England at the height of the Blitz. He went on to become the first official war correspondent from New Zealand at the height of the Vietnam conflict.

As the New Zealand Press Association’s war correspondent of the era he was to touch down on several other conflicts of various intensities, notably in Borneo. He was embedded on the RNZN deployment to Mururoa.

Subsequently Christopher Turver (pictured, above) was to deploy here his own and still earlier experience gained as a pavement-level daily newspaper reporter in his native UK.

His near two decades as divisional editor, notably on the political desk, on Radio New Zealand brought a seasoned print-journalism level of unremittingly disciplined concision and impartiality to RNZ during its glory days before its eclipse by privatisation and then by the audience fractionalisation wrought by the internet.

At the conclusion of this tour of duty his career went anywhere but on the spike. He launched himself into local government as Kapiti district representative on the Wellington Regional Council. He became chief executive of the Royal New Zealand Coastguard Federation. He served on the district health board.

Later his public service career has embraced still further roles in which he has become president of the Paraparaumu RSA and chairman of the Electra Trust which represents district power users.

Christopher Turver JP’s Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit citation was for “services to journalism, local government and the community.”