Has taken Napoleon’s Advice: Do not Interrupt your enemies while they are making a mistake

New Zealand First Party leader WInston Peters MP has re-drawn the map of the pending general election so that all roads lead to his own central issue which is immigration

Like the maestro his adherents believe him to be WInston Peters MP has choreographed the pending general election around this single issue.

No matter which route his competitors in campaigning actually wish to take, he has wired the general election so that they must converge on and arrive at immigration

All the other issues converge on the single theme of immigration and do so regardless of any face value variant. Here are the usual main ones that now end up at the immigration destination:-

• Housing and infrastructure
• Employment
• Health education and welfare
• The environment

This quartet of traditional issues has been boiled down to immigration.

• Demand exceeding supply of the infrastructure to accommodate them reflected in the bidding up of scarce housing.
• Employment figures are no longer greeted with the same unquestioning belief that they have been in the past due to the absence of supporting statistics on pay received i.e. part time, full time. So are immigrants depriving locals of the worthwhile jobs?
• In health education and welfare there is a strong belief that immigrants are competing with residents for stretched services that the residents have paid for via their taxes.
• The liberal parties have bundled immigration with clean-green. Mr Peters now in effect claims that New Zealand is no different from a farm in that it is being dangerously stocked well beyond its balanced carrying capacity.

Mr Peters’ focus on immigration now puts pressure on the area most affected by the influx which is the Auckland isthmus which the Labour Party regards as its electoral territory.

Having set the order of the election battle to chime with his own agenda Mr Peters gives the impression of heeding the advice of Napoleon who recommended that enemies should never be interrupted while they are making a mistake.

He has boxed in the Labour Party to the extent that it can only tinker with policy surrounding the language schools and their uncertain backdoor contribution to the inflow.

The Greens meanwhile are doctrinally obliged to call for the accommodation of more and still more refugees.

Then there is the National Party.

It has long seen a direct parallel with an immigration influx and industrial growth.

The extent to which it has been check-mated was revealed when New Zealand Business, nowadays the main industrial lobby, tried to refocus the issue on seasonal migrants on farms which has nothing to do with the type of immigration that Mr Peters is talking about.

Then there is Britain now so vividly portrayed in terms of the grotesque high rise, intensive, and now demonstrably unsafe accommodation required to house the recent arrivals.

Neither is this flood of experience in Europe likely to abate before the general election.

Mr Peters’ skill as a politician has been to define issues worrying to the electorate at large. He strips away the confusing ideological or doctrinal or simply fashionable camouflage that disguises them.

As the conductor now of his own electoral orchestra he is there on the rostrum in a position to direct his general election symphony without any distracting variants.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ||  Wednesday 21 June 2017   |||

Risk dimension is for the very few only insists New Zealand innovator

Lance Lissette is often considered in New Zealand the longest continuously operating figure in electronics, telecommunications, and information technology. In the past he has been willing to talk in public only about his numerous sporting activities. Now, though, he focuses on his commercial career and answers our Five Questions......

You are one of the last, perhaps even the last, of the electronics entrepreneurs from the 1970s-80s era still operational today. How did you get your start?

For many years I was associated as a dealer with radio pioneer Angus Tait. In 1983 I sold my dealership business to Philips. So you could say that I had the good fortune to start pretty much where I intended to finish up, which is with the major league.

This was the era of two-way radio and you are remembered, not surprisingly, as a vocal supporter of two-way.

I was. To some degree I still am. There is such a thing as negative progress. Two way radio was clear cut. It was easily managed by depot control. In contrast the cell phone with all its increasingly numerous options can easily lead to confusion and information overload. Two-way was dedicated to the business at hand. Cellular by definition handles many threads. A piece of entrepreneurial trade craft though is levering off a fading technology and into the new one- which we accomplished as we made the transition into the wider sphere of IT.

You convinced Telecom of the virtues of two-way at a time when cellular was already making inroads?

I did. I went into partnership with Telecom, as it was then known, under the banner of Telecom Fleetlink, and for many years the clarity and uncluttered efficiency of two way radio was there for everyone to see in terms of the freight and parcels delivery industry. Then we went over fully to cellular and we did so and in a rather spectacular way. We went into a joint venture with the Allen Corporation of the United States to install Telecom’s cellular infrastructure. Allen later bought us out and the joint venture became the basis of their cellular infrastructure work in both New Zealand and Australia.

You are known to have firm views on the role in society, at all levels, of the entrepreneur?

Thank you for asking. I most certainly do. I am horrified by the government for example calling for more people to be entrepreneurs. I believe it is shameful for people who are supposed to be in a position of responsibility such as at universities touting courses and education programmes for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. Most people sensibly do not want to become entrepreneurs. I never recommend what I do to anyone at all. Why? Because an entrepreneur at any given moment can lose everything they have. The lot.

What are you doing now?

Creating jobs across New Zealand and North America with a simple yet basic product line that at this stage I have no intention to reveal to you. Why am I still out there, and at my stage of life? Because my long experience tells me that I have an essential attribute without which any other skills that I may possess are insufficient to bring anything to fruition. I am talking of luck.

|   This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.||  Monday 19 June 2017   |||

Both leader new to politics and both invented their own parties

A French election transposed on New Zealand would result in a victory for Gareth Morgan's new political party..

Interest in election outcome transfer has so far covered the British general election.

But a scrutiny of the result of the French presidential election won outright by Emmanuel Macron and then of the ensuing French parliamentary election also won outright by his party demonstrates a dream that on face value could only be achieved by Gareth Morgan.

Here now are the similarities:-

*President Macron had never stood before as a party political candidate – Neither has Mr Morgan

*President Macron invented his own polltical party, En Marche. Mr Morgan has also created his own party, the Opportunities Party

*President Macron’s background is in high finance. So is Mr Morgan’s

*En Marche is liberal centrist. So is Opportunities

*President Macron launched himself into the presidential election which he won, and the legislative election which he also won claiming that no existing political party was in a position to effect any positive change. Mr Morgan is saying the same thing.

In the event, President Macron re-cast the French political scene, causing to disappear as any force at all the ruling Socialist Party.

Will Mr Morgan accomplish the same sweeping reorganisation of the political landscape here?

A problem in contrast with seeking to transpose the British general election to New Zealand is that no reading can be taken, no tea leaves read, on the disrepute in which professional career politicians were regarded by the British electorate.

This is because they were all professional politicians who had all devoted their adult careers to politics.

So in the New Zealand general election the electorate in the form of Mr Morgan will be faced with this man-of-the-hour type drawn to the fray--- out of patriotism.

President Macron in his own election, and then in the En Marche dominated legislative (Parliamentary) election broke France’s endless party political electoral conveyor belt which runs from the City councils, through the regional/departmental councils by way of the European Parliament.

It could also be added that the two party names, the one in France, and the one in New Zealand mean pretty much the same thing in being code for a break with the past.

Beyond an agricultural focus and a shared Polynesian experience, the two nations are not immediately apparent as political mirror images.

In recent years however France has followed several New Zealand structural leads. It has cut its presidential political term from seven years to five – still much longer though than New Zealand’s quick-fire three year term.

In recent weeks there has been a strong groundswell in France in favour of proportional representation.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  |  Friday 6 June 2017   |||

Five Question for UK vicar in British Industrial Heartland .........

 Reverend Graham Sawyer (pictured) is well known in New Zealand as a BBC commentator, educator, and cleric. He is now a vicar currently based in the north of England. He now answers our Five Questions ....

1. You have been a Parliamentary candidate -and now you are a man of the cloth. Is the approach to religious extremism by the various authorities the correct one?

No. The response has been to create a climate of fear and to suggest that the "government" is protecting us. In fact, the cause of extremism is flawed foreign policy and economic colonialism e.g. the meddling in the Middle East by Blair and Bush. Rather than seeking to look at the causes of extremism the response by governments is to fuel the fear caused by extremists and thereby seek to give pseudo-legitimacy to the Western governments' failed foreign policies.

2. There is this constant call from leaders of all stripe to separate the terrorism from the underpinning religion?

The vast majority of people of faith are peace-loving and have peace at the centre of their religion. Terrorists of any kind will always take refuge in a book to justify their behaviours e.g. a religious or political text. Modern day fascists in Germany revert to Hitler's writings as much as some revolutionary Communists will revert to Marx. Those with a religious background will use a religious book for similar although dishonest purposes.

3. It is said that the three religions of the book at various historical times endure the throes of some kind of extremism or such zealotry. Are we witnessing this kind of surge now?

We are but it is always present. Think of the Crusades and also Christian biblical justifications from St Paul's writings for resisting the abolition of slavery. Christians have killed far more Muslims than the other way round in the name of Christianity. All religions of the book have parts of their scriptures that can easily be turned to give false legitimacy to extremist behaviour.

4. Do you go along with the theory that the present convulsions, now so evident on the streets of Western cities, represent in effect a striving for religious purity, pretty much regardless of where the victims originated, or, indeed, of their religion?

No. The real problem is the resurgence of nationalism as a result of frustrations with globalisation and austerity concomitant with the failure of capitalism. Think of the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War and the huge reparations inflicted upon Germany - these were the seeds of the Nazi rise to power. See today with the resurgence of fascism in Greece. So-called religious purity comes and goes but is often used by political opportunists.

5. Do you go along with the notion that Western governments are hampered in this matter, whatever its cause, by their need to appease their own doctrinal left wings?

No. Capitalism is the driving force. The un-elected European Union bureaucrats and economists dictate everything and it is the same in other developed countries (New Zealand is a very extreme example). The failure of their policies is causing the potential disintegration of the EU and the resurgence of nationalism and hence fascism in the West e.g. Greece, Hungary etc.

|  From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  ||  Tuesday 13 June 2017   |||

They foolishly counseled the sidestepping of domestic issues especially the one of the crazed assassins active on UK streets

 From the MSCNewsWire European Correspondent- Jun 10: Failure to identify priority issues has sunk UK premier Theresa May’s objective of attaining a decisive Parliamentary majority. Chief among them was a startling inability to confront the religious fanatic murders of passers-by in British cities.

This was covered by a wooden de-personalisation spectacular even by English bureaucratic standards.

It was officially delegated to the abstract as “attacks on democracy.”

Unbelievably these assassinations invoked a policy decision by the Conservatives to cut back on the police. No compensating investment for beefing up border or IT surveillance was given. Instead the Conservatives outlined a nebulous campaign to face-down Facebook.

Knowing that its constituency is composed of those of mature years, the Conservatives backed and filled on social spending notably in regard to the housebound infirm thus easily laying themselves open to cries of imposing a dementia tax.

Much the same thing happened to the school age generation where cuts were announced and again without any balancing counter-investments. This cup-half-empty exercise was repeated throughout the campaign, writes our European correspondent.

When these election-losing examples of social spending cuts at the poles of the age spectrum were drawn to the attention of Conservative policy makers, they simply U-turned, leaving their original errors unacknowledged.

It was the most bizarre Conservative Party election campaign in living memory. Mrs May came across as more elite and out of touch than any of the Euro-loving elites so spectacularly swept away in Brexit.

In contrast Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn, dismissed just a few weeks before as a looney-lefty, ambled donnishly and amiably around in an everyman manner conveying an impression of informed and sympathetic populism.

Mrs May meanwhile came across as the prissy headmistress of a posh boarding school trying to explain why she felt it necessary to use the cane quite so often.

All might still have been well if most of the votes from the imploding UKIP flowed on their anticipated course which was into the Conservatives.

Instead the UKIP votes flowed into Labour.

Mrs May’s snap general election was designed to give the conservatives a Parliamentary majority of sufficient size to hammer through Brexit without let or hindrance.

Instead quite the opposite happened – a hung Parliament which will be a breeding ground for boondoggling, and compromise.

Mrs May was decisive though over the SNP’s demand for another revolving door referendum on Scotland’s independence She gave a clear cut and unequivocal no with the result that the SNP seats were recovered by the Tories.

Elsewhere the signal was anything but clear.

Whether Mrs May remains or goes as premier now becomes the dangling conversation of Westminster

There is though one certainty.

Pedestrians slaughtered by crazed assassins might be categorised as unit casualties in an “attack on democracy”.

But those who were responsible for the Conservative campaign are due to have their heads displayed on the pikes on the bounds of Westminster.

They will include the obvious and visible candidates.

Also one highly decorated and much fawned over Austro-British back-room eminence who has learned as all showboating gamblers inevitably learn that pride does go before a fall however overdue the fall. .

| From This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  ||   Saturday 10 June 2017   |||

Five Questions for Mayfair arbiter of Fine Living

From MSCNewsWire's European Corespondent: Laurence Davis is a by-word in London for fine living and his dealings with Cuba have bestowed on him an aura in the UK redolent of that conjured up by fellow Briton the novelist Graham Greene. The façade of Sautter of Mount Street remains among London’s most famous hallmark store-fronts. For cigar afficionados the Mayfair store is the ultimate destination of any vintage pilgrimage. MSC Newswire entered this high temple of connoisseurship and posed Five Questions to Mr Davis who is pictured outside his store. .

You were among the first to import regularly from Cuba?

We have been dealing with Cuba on and off for 60 years, importing directly certain things but mainly through an importer. We import cigars and rum.

How effective do you believe now were the various US embargoes against the Castro regime?

The US inspired embargo led to a big grey market trade and the quality buyers from the USA have been coming to my stores for years.

As an eyewitness how do you rate the changes since the death of Fidel Castro?

Since the death of Fidel the promise of closer relationships with Cuba has already cooled with President Trump. The effects though are that there is a huge influx of Middle America visiting Cuba. I have to say that though that the quality for visitors of the cigars brought through the shops out there is inferior to the English market selection.

Cuba is still an exotic port of call for tourists?

Cuba is a fantastic tourist destination with many facets of culture communism and some of the most beautiful architecture anyone can hope to see anywhere and which the population enjoys as part of its daily life rather than as set aside monuments and other such museum-pieces of the past. I suggest that Cuba is visited now before globalisation destroys it in the form of the introduction of Starbucks, McDonalds and the numerous American hotel chains.

Do you envisage Cuba as a worthwhile target for intensive New Zealand trade promotion, development?

In practical terms, I think it is very difficult for smaller economies like Cuba to develop anything beyond niche product trade with any nation so far removed from its trade routes.

|  From the MSCNewsWire European correspondent ||  Friday 9 June 2017   |||

Live and let live communitarism has failed - - so will other naïve and ineffectual containment policies

The last round of London attacks draws attention again to what politicians and top-level law enforcement officials understand to be the only solution to religiously-inspired assassinations. This is that the relatives of perpetrators are returned to their countries of origin.

Britain continues to be the Western nation most confused by this terrorism and this is characterised by a number of symbolic responses such as putting symbolically out into the streets armed police and soldiers when the authorities know that the lethal problem is part of a society woven into the British way of life and submerged there, writes our European correspondent.

The reason that the mass summary deportation of the relatives and families is known to be the only solution is that the attackers themselves welcome their pending status as martyrs. It is also known that their belief in tribalism and therefore family means that they fear their blood relatives especially getting caught up with and paying the price of their own lethal zealotry.

Britain, much more than any other EU zone country has applied what is known as communitarism to its refugee influx. This means that these communities are left substantially to practise their own way of life wherever they happen to settle in the UK.

This contrasts with the breeding grounds for the zealotry in Europe which are much more fractionated and are therefore much more removed from replicating the traditional family-tribal way of life.

There is however a security benefit of communitarism.

It means or should mean that in law enforcement terms that for refugee settlements of any duration relatives are much more likely to become aware of developing zealotry.

Britain has been confused also by a number of stereotypes about this now manifestly accelerating zealotry.

These have seen perpetrators and likely perpetrators given identi-kit personas of which poverty, alienation, and absence of opportunity have been to the fore.

These stereotypes in turn have been reinforced by a mesh of other such semi-comforting mantras such as that all the killers are young, male, and have some kind of justified underpinning grievance for massacring civilians.

In fact the evidence proves that these killers can just as easily by wealthy, privileged by society, well past youth, and female.

At the base of the entire pattern of attacks is the British horror of putting into the public forum anything at all to do with religion and the way in which it is calculated to inspire what is known in Britain as terrorism, but which religious scholars view as a history of ad hoc attacks by the inspired on anyone within killable reach.

So there is little new in all this , a notion that many in Britain in places of authority, and who should know better, rigorously cling to.

Spontaneous murderous attacks with whatever weapon is closest at hand is a familiar theme in the context of this historic religious zealotry.

The issue now is the length of time, and the length of the casualty list, that must pass before the only known and workable response is implemented in the form of sending back to their original countries the relatives of the known perpetrators.

This reprisal is quite simply the only counter-fanaticism strategy that is within the grasp of the British authorities.

Its border statistics have been proved as being wanting. Even if these are in fact performing to specification, the surveillance and apprehension response they are supposed to engender is flawed.

In the nations from which the refugees have poured over three generations law and order is maintained by the secret police.

What was once a touching policy toward religious zealotry has itself become a lethal problem in itself.

The British have always had a kind of reverse pride in failing to understand the East in practical terms.

The critical time line now is the one centred on how long this failure to grasp reality can continue.

| From This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ||  Tuesday 6 June 2017   |||

Employment figures are no longer trusted

 The imminent British general election has in common with the pending New Zealand general election that both elections will swing on the issue of immigration rather than the face value and rather more acceptable and perennial matter of trade and the economy.

In Britain the topic hinges often unspokenly on the nation’s ability to accommodate immigrants in the refugee category.

In New Zealand the issue is a wider one and encompasses especially the demand-over-supply pressure that liberal immigration policies have on infrastructure in general and residential accommodation in particular.

In Britain the issue devolves to a greater degree on the nation’s National Health Service which is viewed as buckling under the strain of coping with the influx of immigrants from everywhere.

Both countries vigorously portray a belief in the dual pivotal theorems of multi-culturalism and diversity even though in the UK the operating process in effect remains that of the 19th century United States which is the melting pot one.

In both countries immigration means different benefits to each of the two major political parties.

Immigrants carry value to labour parties because the new arrivals in the political process are considered to cast their new votes in the general direction of the socialist party, however nominally socialist it in fact is.

For the conservative parties immigrants generate industrial demand and thus the economic growth that conservative parties are expected to deliver.

In between these two fixed points are a number of tender topics centred on the pressure such influxes bring to bear on both ends of the voting spectrum with the poor at one end and the prosperous on the other.

As is frequently heard in New Zealand, and increasingly so in the run up to general election, the negative pressure is focussed at the poorer end simply because those of limited means find it harder to compete with the additional competition for residential accommodation, especially in the nation’s northern and most populous industrial regions.

The higher income groups with their invested capital are seen as benefiting from this. But they are also sensitive to the pressure immigration puts on essential services funded by taxes that directly or indirectly they see themselves as funding.

The common element in both countries is the refugee-category immigration cheerleading especially from the non-productive services sector.

The position in Britain between the opinion centres has suddenly become scrambled before New Zealand observers as both ends of the spectrum have taken up the cause of the other.

The Daily Mail, for example, the tribal noticeboard on the nation’s middle class, in recent weeks has trumpeted the way in which Britain’s Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn has closed the gap on the once seemingly unchallengeable lead held by Theresa May’s ruling conservatives.

This narrowing the gap news is though presented with ominous conjecture about Labour’s deep down commitment to letting in more immigrants.

A de-coding of this indicates that the middle class tribune has detected a signal danger –- that of the conservative vote becoming complacent to the point at which it will not bother to deliver itself to the polling booths on the election day.

A feature of both elections will be the distrust of unemployment figures once the stand-out indicator in both countries of their economic state of health.

The reason is that these figures are now widely distrusted, as was experienced in the run-up to Brexit, because they carry no indication of the value of the job in terms of pay, or whether the job is part time, full time, or temporary.

Similarly voters have now largely woken up to such statistical wheezes as people taking part-time courses on any subject at all considered officially as being employed.

In Britain immigration hovers as a national security issue first and then as putting pressure on available public resources.

In New Zealand this is reversed.

The British general election is on June 8 this year. New Zealand’s on September 23.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  ||  Saturday 3 June 2017   |||

New Zealand’s Most Famous Tabloid Editor Said it Does not Exist in the First Place

New Zealand’s last tough-talking Front Page era editor, the late Frank Haden, declared that the press in any official court room or other such tribunal would always emerge much the worse for the experience.

Therefore he stated the press should take every precaution against appearing before such a body for any kind of judgement at all.

The reason for avoiding court rooms and the like he stated was that “the public hates the press.”

This meant in practical terms that those seeking to represent the general public in any deliberations involving the press either separately or collectively would inevitably grasp their opportunity to “savage” the press.

Therefore he stated the press should always avoid, somehow, all such appearances, because it was simply not going to win. It could only come out of the encounter much the worse for it.

The press, insisted Haden, was reluctant to accept the loathing in which it was held and thus found itself before juries and other such panels in the fond and misguided belief that it’s clams would fall on receptive ears.

Instead, the crusty Haden insisted, the officially constituted panel would simply become a lightening rod through which the public hatred of the press would be transmitted.

It is hard not to consider the likelihood that the Haden dictum figured in the twice-declared no by the Commerce Commission to the nation’s two predominant newspaper chains ardently seeking permission to merge.

It is hard too not to entertain the notion that the Commission had no sympathy either for the individuals before them who were advocating the merger.

The two-act episode was a startling re-affirmation of Haden’s Law.

It holds that the press and those who work in it in any appearance before any group formed to represent the common weal, the considered opinion on the public benefit, will simply act as a conductor for the public antipathy to it.

The second part of Haden’s Law can be stated by saying that the only avenue open to the press in this entire matter is to do its utmost to avoid any exposure at all to these constituted courts of public opinion.

Haden’s views were expounded many years ago and were widely heeded at the time if only because of the distressing experience of the industry’s libel lawyers in a string of fixtures.

Since this raffish era and with the disappearance notably of Truth the tabloid tyranny largely subsided.

The institutionalisation of the press through the mandatory university induction process ensured a commonality of voguish opinion and thus stated views.

The era of politesse thus became well established. Gone are the Woodbine-smoking renegades who once inhabited Vulcan Lane and Cuba Street.

In their place are corporate employees nurturing their careers and sharing a similar liberal outlook. They are about as threatening to societal values as the Vienna Boys Choir.

The most interesting element in their newspapers is now the surreal debate over who owns them, and how.

The newspapers management, no longer now “bosses,” have the appearance of well-intentioned pillars of society, doing their best.

But who have been publicly slapped in the face, twice, for subverting society.

SO how did Haden’s Law propounded so long ago, and in an era in which the tabloids were often villainous, now so evidently, re-emerge like a bolt, two bolts, of lightening from the heavens?

Because the two chains in seeking to please everyone, pleased nobody.

The more they sought to personify diversity in all its forms the more constricted they appeared. Their quest for plurality led them to losing their singularity.

In Frank Haden’s era the unbridled cheek of the press meant it was feared and loathed with a sprinkling of respect.

Haden himself was the last practitioner to have worked for all of Australasia’s dynastic publishers – the Fairfax, Packer, and Murdoch families

Today, the corporatist harmonised fashionable wisdom-friendly version has instead inspired an attitude of low-resonating indifference of the type that in turn has inspired two Commerce Commission verdicts in its disfavour .

Even given their joint tendency to treat the world as if it had started this morning, the two chains who are said to be contemplating a return and third match, this time with an appeals court should now heed Frank Haden’s Law.

Stay away from these types of convocations be they judicial or quasi judicial.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Email followed on heels of major international flap

A scam email today is the latest in a concerted fakes sent out to Xtra users. The current one (see below) is filled with grammatical and spelling mistakes that reveal it as a fake.  It follows a similar email drop last week (see below) inviting recipients to access a fake Westpac site.

The barrage pin points the need for a central bank 0800 query pool on suspect emails. The email followed on the tail of the global WannaCry cyber attack and at a time when New Zealand households still remain plagued by phone-ins from bogus Microsoft “certified” technicians now seeking to take advantage of the enhanced fear of cyber implant disruptions.

The first bogus Westpac email reads:-________________________________

Dear Westpac Customer,

New Successful Payment.For more information about this payment please follow the link below:https://westpac.co.nz/transaction

If you received this message in your SPAM/BULK folder, it is because of the restrictions imposed by your Mail/Internet Service Provider.

2017 Westpac New Zealand Limited.

________________________

The second and most recent fake email is rather more convincing being centred on account verification procedures. Its message:-

Dear Customer,

Account Update

Due to the recent upgrade of our servers, we have urged all our online banking users for possible verfication.

Kindly use our website below to verify your profile to avoid account termination.

http://www.westpac.co.nz

Thank you for choosing us

Westpac Bank New Zealand.______________________________A problem recipients encountered with these email mass-drops, is that they feature the inference when it landed in a Westpac customer in-box that it was specially targeted at them.

In the instance of the first email inquirers had to compete with phone-ins in the regular course of bank business, as well as those now alerted by the bogus email.

MSC Newswire has lodged an enquiry with Westpac seeking to discover the source of the bogus email as well as more details on its modus operandi.

The arrival of the second such bogus email points up the problem that the Australian trading banks have in coping with this problem.

The incidents point up the need for a cooperative banking rapid response enquiry centre for customers to obtain information about all doubtful emails.

Banks of course do not contact customers with emails. Only by traditional post. Or via a customer-prompted and subsequently verified phone call.

Aware of this the international email fraudsters seek nonetheless to entice a response, in this case by conjuring up the notion of an inward payment.

The banks are no strangers to cooperative efforts.

They have profited greatly by keeping their customers at an economic distance by electronic banking, thus reducing their premises overheads.

A small proportion of these savings should now be re-invested in a quick-response shared call centre dealing with bogus emails which are now demonstrably on the increase.