Fuss about citizenship reminiscent of Takaro Lodge Flap.

Midas Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel backed Facebook, Paypal, and Xero. But his founding of crime and insurgency systems developer Palantir currently valued at $20 billion can be considered less than helpful to floundering New Zealand law-and-order systems producer Wynyard Group.

On Wednesday, 02 November 2016 in:-  Wynyard Class Action Must Identify Litigation TargetsMSC Newswire reported: “Wynyard for example walked into this kind of Silicon Valley deep-pocket storm when it found itself confronted with sometime New Zealand resident and Tolkien buff Peter Thiel’s Palantir crime product.”

Underpinning Mr Thiel’s right to New Zealand citizenship is his passion for Tolkien.

The name Palantir comes from the Lord of the Rings in which the Palantir was a magical seeing stone that let you see what was happening in lands far off.

Mr Thiel’s skill has been to see what is about to happen in the rather closer internet era once described by Bill Gates as representing the epoch of “disintermediation” in which people dealt directly with the people and services they required.

Mr Thiel’s strong and highly visible support for the election of President Donald Trump can itself be seen now quite clearly.It was based on an understanding that the new President could communicate directly with voters rather than having to deal with them via the intermediary of the established media.

Mr Thiel’s activist support for President Trump can also be viewed as triggering pique from New Zealand’s Labour Party Opposition to the bestowing upon him of New Zealand citizenship.

Otherwise Mr Thiel is a photofit personified of all New Zealand’s activist yearnings.

He supports openly all major societal alternative and libertarian thrusts, notably the right for people to live on man-made islands beyond legal jurisdictions in a concept known as “seasteading.”

He is an ardent proponent of peoples’ right to privacy and put the pervasive celebrity tittle-tattle internet site Gawker out of business by financing the legal action against the site on grounds of intrusion by showman Hulk Hogan.

He is the leader of the second generation of California innovators who sprang up in the footsteps of Bill Gates and Steven Jobs.

This set is sometimes described as the Paypal Mafia, the network of former employees and co-founders that includes SpaceX’s Eion Musk and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman.

Mr Thiel now stands identified as the jewel in the crown of the New Zealand government’s campaign to see installed here information technology disruptive-scale investors to seed development in the home-grown industry.

One of the reasons that the government is evasive about this whole daring strategy is that it also encompassed Kim Dotcom.

Like Mr Thiel who emigrated with his parents to the United States, Kim Dotcom was also born in Germany.

It is likely that the government will now informally approach Mr Thiel with a view to his outlining investments other than Xero that can be said to be in the national interest.

Mr Thiel, for example, is said to be actively engaged in life sciences, notably in the field of postponing or even eliminating death.

In some ways the fuss about Mr Thiel’s New Zealand citizenship resonates with the campaign in the 1970s against United States oilman Stockton Rush.

Mr Rush and his family moved to New Zealand to create Takaro Lodge, a hunting and fishing retreat with an emphasis on conservation and located coincidentally in the same Wanaka lakes region favoured by Mr Thiel.

However and all those years ago it became known that Takaro Lodge had been fitted in whole or part with gold plated plumbing fitments.

These gold taps now became a class warfare icon.

Bill Rowling was the first New Zealand Labour Party prime minister from a privileged background.

Newly installed he was determined to publicly demonstrate his working class credentials which now took the form of a campaign against Mr Rush and his lodge and of course his taps.

Meanwhile, out-of-pocket and patriotic New Zealand investors in the until quite recently NZX listed Wynyard Group will find themselves cherishing a singular and not unreasonable hope.

It is that Mr Thiel can be persuaded to put his shoulder to the wheel in restoring their forensic systems producer to solvency.

Mr Thiel is considered the major holder of Palantir.

Wynyard Group had its beginnings in Christchurch with the Jade organisation which in the 1970s invented one of the world’s first programming compilers, i.e. a programme that generated other programmes.

The Wynyard Group investor class action group is currently evaluating its options in regard to the now insolvent onetime NZX main board company.

On their agenda at their forthcoming meeting might now be a motion calling for a formal approach to their newly revealed fellow citizen, Peter Thiel.

|  From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  |  Thursday 26 January 2017  ||

More reading:  Wynyard Class Action Must Identify Litigation Targets

Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Steven Joyce and Social Development Minister Anne Tolley have today announced two new Auckland jobs and skills hubs as part of the latest update of the Skilled and Safe Workplaces chapter of the Business Growth Agenda.

“I am pleased to announce new jobs and skills hubs at both the Wynyard Quarter and Tamaki, which will give young people a pathway to employment in the construction sector, as well as on-site numeracy, literacy and practical skills training,” Mr Joyce says.

“The New Zealand economy is growing strongly, unemployment is down and we have the opportunity now to bring more people who have been long-term unemployed into work. These hubs are a key way to provide intensive support and encouragement to those who aren’t yet in work to get them into a meaningful career as the economy grows.”

The Auckland CBD Jobs and Skills Hub, based at Wynyard Quarter will revolve around the extensive commercial development and construction activity in the area, with the Tamaki Hub supporting the housing developments at the Tamaki Regeneration Programme.

“These new hubs are part of the Government’s plan to improve outcomes for our young job seekers, and have a focus on achieving both economic and social outcomes,” says Mrs Tolley.

“The redevelopment of 7,500 new houses in Tamaki will generate sizeable job opportunities. The Tamaki Hub will support residents to gain the skills, knowledge and opportunities to progress their lives, as well as strengthen the local economy and unlock the potential of the Tamaki area.”

The CBD Jobs and Skills Hub will centre on significant development in the area, including the Madden and Packenham Street upgrades, the Halsey and Gaunt Street upgrades, construction of the Park Hyatt Hotel, the expansion of Grid Auckland, construction of apartment complexes and a bus depot.”

The hubs are a partnership between central and local government, businesses, tertiary providers, ATEED, and ITOs. They’re modelled on the successful Ara Skills Exchange at Auckland Airport. The Hubs set up training facilities and wrap-around services at the centre of areas where there are sizeable projects which create jobs and opportunities.

“Building these job and skills hubs are just one of many projects in the Skilled and Safe Workplaces report where government and industry are collaborating to grow the skilled workforce in industries critical to New Zealand. By focusing on getting more people into skilled employment, we will equip New Zealand to succeed in the modern economy,” says Mr Joyce.

Questions Float about IPO ticket-clip   -  

The mooted litigation-funded class action against the Wynyard Group faces an immediate two-fold problem. This is exactly what entities are in the firing line of this proposed action, and how will any desired reparations be extracted from these entities?

Are we looking here, for example, at Britain’s Skipton Building Society? This financial services organisation is usually cited as controlling the Jade computer services organisation from which the Wynyard Group originated.

There are several problems here.One is that the Skipton Building Society–Jade organisation’s association with Wynyard Group is rather more tenuous than is widely supposed. For example, instead of seeding its new offspring with funding, the British organisation appropriated for itself a very large part of the original investment from the NZX flotation. The exact benefit of this to the fledgling offspring, the Wynyard Group and its shareholders has been complex to define and similarly with the labyrinthine ensuing cross-over obligations between the two companies. 

If the Wynyard class action group has in its sights any other investors and/or promoters in Jade then there is the problem now of their being domiciled outside the Westminster jurisdiction. This especially applies to Jade investors in the United States. 

In so many ways the Wynyard Group flotation represented New Zealand equities investors at their finest and most patriotic in their willingness to put their money behind the home team. You have to live in Christchurch to understand the intensity of this willingness to back the local side which Jade once was, and so, much more recently, was its Wynyard offshoot.

In the event Jade began in the desert, the Saudi Arabian one, where two New Zealand programmers were working as IT specialists for a Saudi distributor of United States earthmoving equipment. A problem in the 1970s that hit the engineering and construction equipment and stock holding business everywhere was the arrival of double digit inflation. The danger to engineering suppliers in this was selling parts and even full scale pieces of equipment at below their replacement cost.

It was now that the two programmers, with time on their hands, set out to solve this problem. They did so by devising a real time and online (ie instantaneous) system which meant that price increases from suppliers rippled out to all warehouse and outlet supply depots across the planet and as they occurred. This was a colossal breakthrough by any standard and became more so as the two programmers now proceeded to package it and market it

Burroughs, then a major force in world computing, ranking only just behind IBM, recognised the value of this discovery and in a remarkably short space time branded it as LINC (for logic and information network compiler) and put it in the very top shelf of their worldwide marketing. Our photograph shows Gil Simpson (at left) with his co-developer Peter Hoskin. In the middle is Robert Holmes the Burroughs top sider who oversaw the deal.

It was now that Jade made Christchurch in the 1980s one of the world hubs of network computing science. It really was a “centre of excellence.”  The Linc compiler with its rapid implementation automated programming was the unique selling proposition, the secret. While the Linc project never actually became fourth generation (as was widely claimed for it) the product in that era got as close as any other system did to replicating the wave or multi-processing operation of the human brain.

All the rest followed. The Jade Stadium, Sir Gil Simpson Drive, and of course Sir Gil himself.  Peter Hoskin, the co-developer, faded out of direct involvement and in recusing himself became the New Zealand version of those other early self-sidelined co-developers Paul Allen and Steve Wozniak.

Time moved on, and it was now that as so often in the IT sector, time from being an ally now manifested itself as a problem, especially at Burroughs, which by now had re-named itself Unisys. It was still a big-iron, mainframe manufacturer of centralised computers. It was now besieged by the personal computer manufacturers.

Even as Burroughs – Unisys became distracted, it was still able to use its muscle in its stronghold of mainframes to insert the Jade Linc system into the financial sector notably in the United Kingdom. It was now that started the supplier-client relationship of Jade with the Skipton Building Society.

Exactly why, and how Skipton became anchor investor in Jade remains largely unclear. There are though grounds for believing that Skipton needed to protect its own investment in its own Jade systems and did so by investing in the supporting supplier.

Even so, Jade was careful always to diversify its own market and took up a strong footprint in logistics, a natural growth sector deriving from its original inventory management expertise.  

It was as part of this sector application diversification scheme that Jade sought out still newer fields in which to apply its compiler expertise. Law enforcement/risk management made sense.  

Jade was by now encountering the problem of companies outside the United States to the effect that no matter how effective their products, no matter how much they tuned and re-tuned their underpinning quantum mechanics not to mention their marketing, they still seemed the poor relation to Silicon Valley. Especially in its ability to launch torrential new products on a marketplace that had become attuned, if not addicted to fast-rotating product issue frequency. 

Canada’s Research in Motion with its Blackberry and Finland’s Nokia are two examples of seemingly invulnerable companies that succumbed to this kind of Silicon Valley rolling release. 

Wynyard for example walked into this kind of Silicon Valley deep-pocket storm when it found itself confronted with sometime New Zealand resident and Tolkien buff Peter Thiel’s Palantir crime product. 

Wynyard because of its Anglo-United States lineage had about it from the start an aura of the gilt edge. This halo was emphasised by its role as New Zealand’s first heavy-end departmental-capability IT main board listing. As is the IT custom everywhere the claims and forecasts made on its behalf contained a show-business extravagance and the executives seemed more photogenic than in other industries. The explanation for this multiplier is that if you win big in IT you win bigger than you do in other industries. 

In the event, and as we can all see now, it was highly speculative and depended for its success on an early investment take up. One ideally in the form of a mainstream merger or acquisition that would have given Wynyard scale and the global distribution and sales and support channels that it always needed.  

It does now all seems so unfair.  Jade in its day took automated programming, meaning fast setup, further than any other technology outfit anywhere. It survived the 1987 bust, the dot com bubble, and the Great Financial Crisis.

But now its offshoot and which carries its pedigree is left to fade unfinished into the history of New Zealand ultra-advanced technology.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk - Wednesday 2 November 2016

The Canterbury tech summit to be held in Christchurch on Thursday is already a sell-out which is not surprising considering the rapidly increasing interest and investment in all things technology, Muller says.

“Technology is growing at a staggering pace around New Zealand which now has about 29,000 tech firms, contributing $16.2 billion to gross domestic product, $6.3 billion in exports and employing almost 100,000 Kiwis,” Muller says.

“Technology is New Zealand’s fastest growing and third largest export sector. Christchurch now has its own vibrant tech sector. It is one of New Zealand’s top regions for IT businesses. Christchurch companies include the listed SLI Systems, Diligent Board Books and Wynyard, as well as global niche players such as Tait, Trimble and Dynamic Controls.

“The Canterbury Tech Cluster is playing a big part in helping technology growth in South Island’s biggest city and they have done a great job in organising the big tech summit this week. The timing is right for Canterbury to step up as a leader in NZ tech sector growth.

“With rebuild activities at a turning point, a strong regional tech network and a clearly defined strategy for the Christchurch tech sector, the Canterbury tech community is in a healthy position to help strengthen the nation’s tech sector growth.

“The Canterbury tech sector contributes $2.4 billion worth of GDP and 14,837 jobs to the local economy and combines grassroots organisations with large technology companies to produce some of the best innovations in New Zealand.

“Technology impacts almost every aspect of our lives and is a very competitive global market. Growth of the Canterbury tech sector is important but it is equally as important for all regions to work together and share knowledge to help grow the nation’s economy.”

Physically New Zealand’s biggest region, Canterbury has a large agricultural sector and is experiencing growth in the precision agriculture sector. NZTech is supporting the Canterbury-based Precision Agriculture Association of New Zealand grow its members.

For further information contact New Zealand Technology Industry Association chief executive Graeme Muller on 021 02520767 or Make Lemonade media specialist Kip Brook on 0275 030188

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Swinglift’s long history of continuous improvement dates back to the 1960s, leading to a new evolution of its innovative container side-loader that will debut at the Melbourne Truck Show in May.

Trailer, 18 april2016  - Since 2005, container side-loader expert Swinglift has been flourishing under the Patchell Group, a heavy transport trailer manufacturer based in Rotorua, New Zealand.

A decade has passed since the Swinglift product joined the Patchell catalogue of specialised equipment – including log transport trailers, food grade stainless steel tankers, drop decks and skel trailers – but the long and successful Swinglift story goes back a lot further than that.

According to Swinglift Australia General Manager, Gordon Dyson, the company’s practice for developing innovative equipment began in 1968 with the advent of the first truck-mounted container side-loader in New Zealand, purpose-built to carry 10’ rail containers and later modified to accommodate 15’ sea freighters.

The development continued in May 1976 when the first road legal 20’ side-loader in NZ was introduced. Invented by Swinglift’s founder, Robin Wynyard, the first unit stood out for its utilisation of New Zealand’s then newly-introduced super single tyres on the front axles of a truck, a lift capacity of 20 tonnes and for being the first to comply with NZ road regulations for a 20’ Swinglift.

The full story has appeared in the April edition of Trailer. To get your copy, click here.