Ah well, as my knowledge of the breadth and depth human experience expanded I couldnt help but have the blinders lifted from my eyes ;-). As for ACT, heres what Russel Brown had to say about Rodders and the Sovereign Yachts "scandal"
today:
"The non-scandal of the week really has to be that concerning Sovereign Yachts, the company that last year set up a super yacht building facility on some land formerly occupied by Hobsonville airbase. The government and Waitakere City worked together to speed up compliance with regulations so the company, which is owned by expat New Zealander Bill Lloyd, could set up.
It has been revealed that in the early 1990s, Lloyd traded in shares in the mining company Templar Resources, which was listed in the Vancouver Stock Exchange. He was its president and a director and failed to properly declare his trades - and was quite rightly slapped by the British Columbia Securities Commission, which in 1996 fined him $20,000, banned him from being a director of a publicly listed company for five years and told him to take a study course in governance. Fair enough.
Yet there has been some startlingly lazy reporting on this. Various writers - most notably Jane Clifton in the Listener - have been happy to go along with the portrayal of Lloyd as some sort of fugitive from British Columbian justice.
Shall we check this out, then? Oh look! There he is, being glowingly promoted, along with his business, on the website of the British Columbia Trade and Investment Office, which aims to help "strategic industries" and attract investment. So the state where he once breached regulations is providing active assistance to him and his company - and New Zealand, where he has never done anything wrong, shouldn't? Do me a favour ...
Lloyd's ban on directing a publicly listed company in British Columbia overlapped by a couple of weeks the announcement that he would set up here. But Sovereign Yachts is not a publicly listed company. It's his money. And the new base in not in British Columbia.
Moreover, it is tempting to muse that if New Zealand had insider trading laws as strict as those in British Columbia, then one or two prominent members of the local business community might find themselves in strife.
Lloyd is also in dispute with several creditors - three according to Lloyd, six according to Hide, who, as usual, has no evidence to back up his higher number - in Canada, including a former designer. The total sum in dispute across all the claims is around a million dollars - which might sound a lot until you consider that the boats he builds retail for as much as 12 million New Zealand dollars. Furthermore, he has apparently deposited money with civil courts until the disputes are resolved. It is very hard to see what more he could do.
Meanwhile, Hide continues to fling mud and simply walk away when it doesn't stick. He claimed the New Zealand government sold Lloyd four hectares of Hobsonville land at a knockdown price. Actually, it was sold for half a million dollars - the higher of two independent valuations - in accordance with the Public Works Act. Perhaps the land has since appreciated in value, but no one has produced actual evidence to that effect, still less that there was anything improper in the sale. Compared to the way in which various well-known New Zealanders made a killing in the 1990s out of buying and onselling public assets for huge profits, it seems inconsequential.
Hide then claimed that a secret deal had been done to sell another 50 hectares of former airbase land to Lloyd. Again, no proof was offered and the allegations were not repeated outside the protection of Parliament.
Meanwhile, the owner of the local contracting company that built Lloyd's giant boatshed has described him as "nothing but fair and honest". Lloyd is currently employing 40 people and plans to hire another 20 when a second yacht hull arrives from Canada in July. He has done all this with his own money. Rodney Hide - who was so recently happy to be hosted by Lloyd out on the harbour - seems to want to shut him down. It is shameful.
Then there's the business with the New Zealand Post board - Hide again, this time with his fellow bottom-feeder Murray McCully. They produced this week a seven-month old memo from the eternally unhappy man of the Post board, deputy chairman Syd Bradley.
In the memo, Bradley made various accusations against Post CEO Elmar Toime in a bid to have him removed before his contract ended. His fellow directors rejected the bid, leaving Bradley with two choices: resign if he felt he was right and they were wrong, or retract what he said in the memo. He publicly did the latter.
Post has had a bit of explaining to do - especially over its brief, bizarre business development foray into Spain - but to demand the resignation of the Minister of State Owned Enterprises on the basis of something happened - or, rather didn't happen - seven months ago on its board is preposterous."
Are you sure this is the sort of politician you want in government?
This question goes for you to. Still, soon you wont have to worry about my carping; my passport and relevant documents went to the US Consulate today and if all goes well I should be winging my way to New Mexico in a month to work for the USDA. I suspect that there I will be to busy for regular FR sparring sad to say :-/ I will of course say a prayer know and again for your troubled souls