Wednesday, 22 May 11 am – 2 pm

“Have you always wanted to learn a new craft, how to ice a cupcake or how to take great photos from your smartphone? Come along and try your hand at Creative Crafts Day in Mahara Place, Waikanae. It’s free and you might even discover some hidden talents.

“Pop into participating Mahara Place shops to take part in a creative pastime and learn something new from the experts.”

(KCDC media release)

It can only require one vintage car to achieve this — in this case a 1935 Ford CX Tudor (designed in Dearborn, Michigan, but built in Dagenham, England).

The signature looks like “M Bellen” and the date is 1990.

Last week we analysed the three segments of Mr Gower’s TV-presented thesis on the alleged threat from non-black racists in NZ, thinking that was going to be all – but no, he was back again on Sunday 19 May in the 6 pm news bulletin with another 6:37 minute installment (at least not the lead item this time), and may have still more to come.

Sunday night’s piece was more of a history lesson from his perspective, rather than covering topics particularly relevant to the here and now; but having examined the pieces from last week, we should say something about it.

It begins with one of the many police raids in the last 2 months on those who have stances on Globalist mass migration opposite to those of PM Jacinda, recorded in this case by the target of the visit himself on a camera phone. The pink(!) shirted policeman totting a pistol and an unarmed female constable didn’t want the conversation recorded (why?) and departed after a few minutes.

Then Mr Gower announces, apparently dejectedly, that despite all the raids, the police have made zero arrests for “white supremacy” as it was all about “community reassurance.”  Hmm.

Then cut to a scene from the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers in which “Nazis” have to jump off a rural bridge somewhere in the U.S. to avoid a car being driven at high speed towards them “and are portrayed as sad, bumbling idiots.”… “Gang expert Jarrod Gilbert says that’s how the ‘far right’ have often been viewed here.”

Gower continues: “But there has always been a dangerous element to the white power movement here. Gilbert describes them as ‘hard-as-nails skinhead street-gang kind of guys’ who thrived in the South Island. The most notorious was the Fourth Reich, which terrorised Nelson and the West Coast.”

The members of this last group, founded in a Christchurch prison in 1994 were violent, but there is a problem in describing them as ‘white supremacists’ as members were a mixed bag of races.¹  In 2011, co-founder Malcolm Chaston was convicted of the murder of (white) Christchurch woman Vanessa Pickering, and sentenced to life in prison. That seems to have been the end of media reports of the group.

According to Mr Gower, “Like the Nazis they emulated, most of the skinheads’ venom was aimed at Jews.” One problem with that statement is the four victims he identifies of the Fourth Reich gang weren’t Jews.  The other problem is that skinheads are not ideologically motivated, by and large; they are an expression of an alienated youth subculture. They have provided the street presence for a few self-styled ‘nationalist’ grouplets in NZ.

Black Power and the Mongrel Mob have been associated with the Maori Party, to the extent that when that party was founded these gangs were represented on the party’s national committee. Shall we now say that any Maori political manifestation is intrinsically violent and gang related? Silly, but it’s the usual double-standard.

“But then, in 2001, 9/11 [the major Muslim terrorist attacks in America of 11 September 2001] happened and the extreme far-right added a new ‘enemy’ to the list. Sociologist Paul Spoonley says this led to new followers.” Of who — the skinheads? Hardly.  Incidentally, one notes Gower’s use of “extreme far right” which says a lot about his need to hype up his utterances to the max.

Next Gower introduces Joris De Bres, the Race Relations Commissioner from 2002 until 2013. “Alarmed at an increase in threats against Muslims, he repeatedly asked the Government and police to start recording crimes motivated by hatred and racism.”

One could safely assume that most crimes of violence are motivated by hate, unless they are incidental to a crime of robbery or theft, Mr Gower?  There is the problem, too, of how to decide if racism was the motive – perhaps in those rare instances that the victim and perpetrator were of different races and that there was no other apparent motive?  And is that not recorded by police?

“I don’t think we’re sufficiently aware that we do have people among us who do those things and who have a real and worrying hatred,” De Bres told Newshub.

According to Gower, De Bres started collecting data on this theme himself. Given that it was theoretically one of his roles, one might have expected him to.

“During his time as Commissioner there were more than 100 race-related crimes reported in the media.” Well, that is over a period of 11 years, so hardly a big number considering the number of crimes that occur, and one can understand police not considering it a significant problem — it wasn’t.

The narrative returns to Sociologist Paul Spoonley: “They are part of a big international network and that’s a big challenge here in New Zealand, just not realising that we’re now hooked into this conspiratorial, racial vilification, white supremacist network,” Spoonley says.

A big problem with that last comment is that it contradicts what Spoonley said on this radio interview with Mike Hosking in March 2017 : “we should not worry about ‘white supremacists’ in NZ.”  It would actually have been helpful for both Gower and Spoonley to define what they mean by that term, but they don’t

There are a couple of sound bites from Muslim females about displays of hostility they have encountered on the streets. It seems that Mr Gower, along with Jacinda, don’t seem to realise that Islamic clothing is provocative to many who’ve seen reported on numerous news items over the last 20 years literally hundreds of Islamic terror attacks motivated by what’s in their Koran. The obvious thing for Muslima would be to not go around wearing that clothing — there’s no requirement for it in their scriptures — until such time as the frequency of these events diminishes to pre 9/11 levels. Easy.

So where is Mr Gower going with all this? It seems that the pending Jacinda government ‘Well-being’ budget is going to include expenditure for ‘fighting white supremacy’. Again, what is it?  Gower has so far totally failed to produce anything that merits special revenue directed to fighting this ambiguous notion. It probably means that the Office of the Race Relations Commissioner is going to have more funds. Time and again, the commissioners have shown themselves to be bigoted against any manifestation of pro-European heritage. Other than the original ‘conciliator’ in 1971, Sir Guy Powles, all subsequent race relations commissioners have done nothing to justify the continued existence of this branch of government and the question that should be contemplated is whether taxpayers’ money should be saved by its abolition.

The problem for Newshub in broadcasting overblown, inaccurate reports like those of Patrick Gower on minor problems is that in future, Newshub viewers will have an “oh yeah?” response at best; at worst “oh no, not him again” followed by a press on the TV remote to another channel.

1. An inquiry of our own produced this statement from someone in the know: “They had a big mix, even two guys who were part-Chinese. Their last name Sewhoi, one of them killed a guy. Their leader and one of the murderers was half Samoan. One of the other murderers was Maori, they had a few half-casts. They were much like the Aryan brotherhood in America, who will take anyone who helps them.”

A scene that reminds one of Oregon, but it’s in Reikorangi.

The Californian Monterey pine has dominated the commercial forestry scene in NZ since the 1930s, and it’s the main commercial species in Kapiti. The Douglas fir, of which there are plantations in NZ, is a more attractive tree in our opinion.  Pine trees need to have their lower branches regularly pruned, otherwise the trunks develop knots, and planks that will come into contact with (rain)water need to be pressure treated to prevent rot.

What once would have been called a beach bach or crib.  With a floor area of only 28 m² it won’t be a suitable family dwelling, but the land area of 901 m² makes it a candidate for the bach to be sold and removed, and a full-sized house to be built on the lot (section) in its place. The RV is $340,000.

Realtor’s listing with more pics.

Mitigation of the effect of urban heat islands in summer by planting lots of trees, which will also photosynthesize carbon dioxide into oxygen, must be one of the measures involved with “well-being”.

by Marlborough-based journalist and author, Tony Orman

The new buzz word

There’s a new tone likely in the forthcoming budget. A month or so ago Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hinted that a “wellness” flavour was likely to feature in the 2019 financial statement, a.k.a. the Budget.

Then in another snippet of news it was announced Treasury Chief Executive Gabriel Makhlouf “who is credited with introducing well-being measures into government budgets, has taken a job as governor of the Central Bank of Ireland.”

The departing treasury CEO is not the only economist to talk about “well-being”. Other economists are increasingly mentioning a departure from focussing solely on monetary values and instead embracing human aspects such as the well-being of people and the environment.

Considering social and environmental values as well as economic ones

One or two public advocacy groups have called for wider criteria in running an economy. For example the Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of New Zealand (CORANZ) in its election charter presented to all MPs before the 2017 election called for replacing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to measure the nation’s progress.

The reason for the latter’s inclusion in the CORANZ charter (i.e. GDP versus GPI) is that GDP measures the country’s state by solely economic values whereas GPI embraces not only economic but social and environmental values.

The relative merits of GDP and GPI are being increasingly debated. Just a couple of weeks ago the prestigious Financial Times reported “there is a growing chorus of economists who say it’s time to stop using gross domestic product as the prevailing measure of growth and economic progress. Barclays, one of the world’s largest banks, just joined in.”

“Doughnut Economics” hits the spot

Also recently I’ve just read a most interesting book called Doughnut Economics subtitled “Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist” by Kate Raworth, published by Random House Business Books.¹

The world is undoubtedly undergoing traumatic times, both economically and environmentally.  What are we going to do about these challenges which after all, a multifaceted crisis? 

• The capture of governments and political parties by corporates and their public relations lobbyists
• deep and widening inequality, increasing violence and rampant consumerism
• the degrading environment whether it be the controversial climate change, stressed water resources, soil and water contamination, disappearing insects, depleted fisheries and others.

Kate Raworth argues that GDP in its present form and application has failed. Not all agree. Past economic theorists have argued that more economic growth would make the ugly stuff disappear. Ecological destruction would be arrested and controlled and inequalities would be erased.

But it has not happened. As values, ethical principles and moral purposes are lost, the promise of growth is all that’s left. It’s not unlike the dog chasing its tail.

Need for a balanced approach

Kate Raworth says getting to a balanced system that considers economic, social and environmental aspects “calls for investing in the sources of wealth – natural, human, social, cultural and physical – from which all value flows, whether it is monetised or not.”

She concedes that challenging the entrenched GDP system will be difficult as “the compulsion of the old GDP game holds its grip because GDP brings both global market power and global military power.” Macro-economic models need to be rewritten, but that will only be achieved by innovative thinking to adopt strategies that usher in “growth-agnostic global governance.”

The GDP model that caused the crises needs to be modified to address increasing social and environmental problems.

Even Simon Kuznets, who standardised the GDP measurement of growth, warned: “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income.”

Kate Raworth points out that GDP-based economics in the 20th century was “captured by a proxy goal – endless growth.”

Meeting needs by living within our means

The purpose of economic activity, should be “meeting the needs of all within the means of the planet”. Instead of economies that need to grow, whether or not they make people thrive, there’s a need for economies that “make us thrive, whether or not they grow”. This means changing the picture of what the economy is and how it works.

Undeniably something urgently needs to be done. But is the concept of “Doughnut Economics” too idealistic and not pragmatically facing up to the human myopic penchant of lusting for material wealth and power and to hell with the consequences?

Undeterred, Kate Raworth seeks a new economic approach that embodies happiness and well-being, reduces inequalities in wealth and income and respects the environment in contrast to the current abuse under GDP.

Regenerate rather than squander resources

Money, markets, taxation and public investment would be designed to conserve and regenerate resources rather than squander them. State-owned banks would invest in projects that transform society’s relationship with the living world, such as zero-carbon public transport and community energy schemes.

Could a new measure of progress which would measure genuine prosperity embracing happiness, replace the cold, hard cash values of GDP?

 Look for the up-coming Budget for a clue as to future direction.

1. The book retails in NZ at $28.

Ngāi Tūhoe have been strict about not letting DoC helicopters fly over their territory to drop their toxic loads of eco-poison.

Their honey brand Manawa (heart) is sold in selected outlets around the country (Wellington outlets are shown below) or you can order it on-line here   Prices are competitive.

This part of the website gives information on the Kaupapa (story).