Third Domino tumbles in wipe-out of political class

The decision by France’s president Francois Hollande not to offer himself for re-election for another five year term brings to an end the heyday of client-politics in the western alliance.

Known in France simply as “clientelism” the process is borrowed from industrial consumer merchandising.

It amounts to identifying numerous sector or niche markets. Then tailoring a special approach to each in order to create the desired mass market, in this case of votes

Mr Hollande, known in France as the King of Concensus, brought this whole technique to a fine art.

Anything at all would be tossed back and forth, tested, then tossed back and forth again for further consultation.

It was Mr Hollande’s bad luck that he was in the driving seat when France went through its most tumultuous period in the past half century in the form of islamic insurgency.

It was now that Mr Hollande fell back on his consensus technique which took the form of testing the reaction of his sprawling left constituency to sweeping aside France’s exaggerated code of rights in order to implement the state of the emergency that the situation required.

As was his custom, Mr Hollande sought out acceptable displacement activities such as leading parades to commemorate the slain in these atrocities.

He immersed himself in the Paris climate conference. At any other time France’s ultra-politicised politico-professional liberals would have trumpeted his presence at the high altar of the political class as an example of his mastery of statesmanship.

Instead his absorption by the liberal ritual was construed as still another example of Mr Hollande’s reluctance to bite any bullet for fear of losing votes.

Mr Hollande is a photo-fit of the political class. He started at one of France’s political versions of West Point. In his case ENA, and then zig-zagged his way forward, his pace accelerating during his patronage under the aegis of the regal Francois Mitterand.

Cruelly, and in the Latin tradition, everyone, and from all his niche markets, now has their boot into the hapless outgoing president.

The most vicious kicks in the guts are from his own former proteges whose careers he had so assiduously nurtured in the tradition of the French political class.

Celui qui essaie d'avoir des amis avec tout le monde n'a pas d'amis.

He who tries to be friends with everyone has no friends

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk - Friday 2 December 206

Earlier MSC article: The end of the Politically Correct

Giggling Gerties are scaring away audiences

Nobody in New Zealand public life has left such a vacuum of such black hole dimensions as television broadcaster Paul Holmes. To television he was truly irreplaceable. This is why they are out on the streets now looking for a replacement.

The word “streets” is important here because this is the location in which is likely to dwell the new talent.

Other search locations have proven to be dry wells.

The broadcasters have tried re-processing broadcasting types from previous eras. Most people only became aware of their particular shows when bearded characters marched down Queen Street in protest against their show being taken off the air.

They will not be sending their talent scouts in the general direction of university media studies departments or J-schools.

They are looking for someone with gravitas, a self-possessed type. A McLuhanesque figure. It will be recalled that Marshall McLuhan codified what works in the media and what does not. In television it was, he stated, that it was the camera that does the work.

The people in front of the camera only needed to stay cool, according to McLuhan. The must not prance around uttering naughty words if they are male. They do not have to nervously giggle in response to anything that can be construed as remotely amusing if they are females.

As with Holmes they should use standard English. Remember the show is for the people at the other end of the camera , not the ones at their end.

So there should be a clampdown on words such as “talkun” for talking “meeer” for mayor, “heed” for had, and so on.

Did anyone ever hear Holmes talkun about a group of, a collective of, a number of “woman?”

Another thing. The bulk of the audience now is in their middle years and over. Manners tends to be a factor here. So add the courtesy title Mr.

If this is too much just use the first name such as referring to the prime minister as John Key.

Anythun’ else? Ah! Yes, or as you might say “yeees”. If you have Key or some such on the other end of the microphone—why not let them get a word in now and then?

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk - Thursday 1 December 2016

Trust in official employment numbers fades alongside faith in political classes, institutions

In two current events that came to pass but which were not supposed to happen the real mood was disguised by ultra-positive unemployment figures that outcomes indicate were not in fact trusted.

The first upset was Brexit. The second was Trump.

Britain’s unemployment official figures could not have been more favourable to the status quo. At 4.8 percent incredibly even under New Zealand’s which in the English-speaking zone are routinely the lowest.

United States employment figures remain equally rosy at 4.9 percent and which again remain on a par with New Zealand’s

The institutions charged with analysing and articulating public moods we can see now were fixated on these figures which falsely radiated the impression of the naturalness of the conventional wisdom which was that Britain would stay in the EU and that the Democrats would stay in the White House.

How wrong.

These institutions now resemble a group of indulged children whose hands have been found in the cookie jar. They are unable to admit they were wrong, and why they were wrong. They decline still to learn from their mistake

Nothing illustrates this more than the revealing verbatim conference between the New York Times, once the most highly regarded of these institutions, and their in-house conference with the obliging drop-by president-elect Donald Trump.

The received impression is of a group of doctrinal dilettantes foppishly unwilling to countenance the way in which they misled the people who trusted them.

The sole New York Times representative present who acquitted themselves with any dignity was the proprietor Arthur Sulzberger (pictured) who gave the impression of understanding the failing of his own institution..

So why are people, ordinary people, not responding to these statistics?

The simple answer is that they do not believe them. Instead they believe now:-

• Even if the figures do reflect face-value employment many of the jobs are part time ones
• Many of the jobs similarly are deemed to be low-paying ones in service rather than productive sectors
• The figures are false because for example they do not include those in training or re-training or further education who do not statistically qualify as unemployed because they are students.
• Many unemployed do not register themselves as being unemployed
• The available jobs are for women rather than men.

The impression now conveyed by these once revered employment statistics centres on the cynicism surrounding the nature and reward of the actual jobs.

This devolves onto the once high-paying jobs in coal and steel especially being replaced by low paying jobs, often part time, in the service industries that have sprung up in their place. This includes janitorial type employment more suitable voters tend to believe for women than for males.

President-elect Trump’s message is for those in the once economic engine room states of the United States who find their high-paying jobs have evaporated.

The people who once worked in coal and steel and in production engineering have now seen their well-padded pay packets migrate into the hands of the service sector, notably the East Coast banking one.

This cynicism now compounded when the banking sector was revealed to have lost immense amounts of the nation’s s wealth accumulated by this very same productive sector.

Anger and disbelief now compounded when it became clear that the highly rewarded financial practitioners were to suffer no consequence in what amounted to embedded institutional bungling of the type that would have cost productive sector employees their jobs- --perhaps forever .

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk

Cites Dictator’s emphasis on health, education throughout Latin America

Fidel Castro was a “giant” who saved Cuba from revolving door coups and counter coups declares New Zealander Bernard Diederich who was a close friend of Castro’s since his ascent to power.

Mr Diederich and his wife were on the invitation list for the 10th anniversary of the Cuba revolution.

Had it not been for Castro, emphasises Mr Diederich, Cuba would simply be another “poor and uneducated” Latin nation.

Mr Diederich cites Castro’s intense interest in science and religion as additional, and unrecognised, aspects to the personality of the dictator.

Mr Diederich also emphasises the way in which the Cuban leader deployed his technical people notably doctors throughout Latin America and to the benefit of the poor there.

For many year Mr Diederich ran Haiti's daily paper and was thus eyewitness to the various catastrophes in the region caused by human intervention.

Mr Diederich was for many years in charge of Time Life’s Central America coverage. He was awarded the National Press Club's Lifetime Achievement Award two years ago. He is pictured at the event in Martinborough where his New Zealand family is now based.

He hails from Wellington and is considered now to be New Zealand’s greatest living adventurer. His odyssey started early in World War 2 when he became a boy sailor on the Pamir, the square rigger seized from the Germans.

Considering this too safe, he went on to sail in tankers across the Atlantic.

After the war he hove-to in Port Au Prince, Haiti, where he started his newspaper and began a tortured relationship with the Duvalier dynasty.

Now a resident in Miami, Mr Diederich was to deal on personal terms with all the Central American dictators over the next half century and his books on them are considered standard reference works.

Early revolutionary days (below): Bernard Diederich, wearing tie, with Fidel Castro.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk

Pacific Partnership union Presidential sinking welcomed---but public displays of globalisation grief still mandatory  

The pending collapse of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade union  will be secretly welcomed by New Zealand traders and policymakers alike.

One reason is that New Zealand offers no finished goods challenge to United States manufacturers.

The other reason is that the Trump Exit evaporates dangers to still flourishing trade with China which would have been tarnished by New Zealand belonging to what is in effect an anti-China bloc.

New Zealand exports to the United States are overwhelmingly raw materials for further processing.The president-elect vows to restore United States pre-eminence in manufactured goods of all description.

Mr Trump claims that over the past 20 years that the United States has financed the rise of the Chinese middle class.

This he claims has been at the cost of the careers and jobs of the United States whose own middle class has been relegated in many states to low paying jobs, if they have jobs at all.

Mr Trump’s overwhelming loyalty is to the productivity of United States rust belt states, as they are known, which saw him through to the presidency.

Mr Trump is pledged to revive specific United States industries. They are in:-      

• Coal      
• Steel        
• Textiles       
• Automotive

None of these compete with anything coming from New Zealand. Indeed, New Zealand can claim common cause with the United States in seeing its own textile industry shrink in the face of exports from the Orient.

In the last analysed statistical year New Zealand was the United States’ 57th largest supplier of imports.

The main categories were: Meat (frozen beef), albumins, modified starch and glue (mostly caseins), wine dairy, eggs, and honey, along with milk protein concentrate .

The one challenge in the process finished consumer product category  is wine (USD296 million.)Wine though is focussed on the West Coast, notably California. None of these wine states are by definition rust belt states.

They overwhelmingly voted for Hillary. They can expect no favours in protective tariffsfrom the incoming administration.

On the president-elect global hit list meanwhile are countries such as Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, and Vietnam, and Japan. These all compete in manufactured products with the United States.

They are all members of the Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement and nations which the Trump Doctrine blames for taking away manufacturing jobs from his American constituency.

January 21 next will be the first day in office for President Trump with the proclaimed cancellation of the Trans Pacific Partnership as his first executive priority.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk - Monday 28 November 2016

Work dispersal contingency now needs priority over social engineering

| Napier, MSCNewsWire, Nov 24, 2016 | -  Earthquake damaged and currently uninhabited government buildings in New Zealand’s capital Wellington indicate a practical reappraisal of implementing a distributed or cottage workforce contingency.

This especially applies for the stricken government buildings in the defence and emergency services category.

These structures house people who are in information business and who do not need to be in the buildings in the first place, regardless of how safe or unsafe their condition.

Most of the staff are in fact candidates for remote working, meaning that they can just as easily do their job from their place of residence.

After a promising start in the remote working sphere which was characterised by such things as glide time and hot desking, the departmental scene in Wellington reverted to its literally time-honoured custom of bottoms-on-seats 9-to-5.

In spite of its intense susceptibility to other social trends in this same era the government employment scene after dabbling in things such as flexi-hours clung to traditional time/place work practices.

The sector clung to established practices with a singular determination, and has done so in the face of the infrastructure consequences so visible in the working week day rush hour traffic jams.

Remote working was taken up by the Arthur D Little management consultancy in the late 1980s. The underpinning facilitator was the technology of networked personal computers. This merged with the concept of the paperless office.

The demonstrable result was that the bureaucrat could just as easily fulfill their functions from their home, or anywhere else, as from their place of work.

This early official enthusiasm now gathered force as it coincided with the property Klondike which saw public service-grade office space literally spiral through the roof in cost terms.

Another factor in the early enthusiasm for remote working was that it now became legislatively and thus expensively necessary to house public servants in modern or retro-fitted buildings because of the threat of claims resulting from things like frayed linoleum (falls), rickety furniture (falls +internal anatomical injury) and poor ventilation (general ailments.)

The subsequent property bust and a huge new public building administration construction scheme, especially in what became known as the Parliamentary “precinct,” (pictured) dampened down office costs and it was now that the emphasis slid away from remote working.

The recent round of earthquakes and the vulnerability of this same precinct to seismic activity now indicates that remote working will have to be re-considered. If not as an integrated reality, then as a well-rehearsed contingency response.

Our foreign correspondent forecast the Trump victory, and now previews the fall of France’s Francois Hollande ....

| Napier, MSCNewsWire, Nov 24, 2016 | - The predicted fall of France’s president Francois Hollande in next year’s election will bring to a close the initial era of political correctness. He is scheduled to become the third big-economy leader victim within less than a year of the accelerating electoral power of the non-political class.

Mr Hollande is known as the King of Consensus. His determination prior to any decision to canvass every opinion and nuance in his own Socialist Party and also in the string of other French leftward parties conveyed an impression of dithering in the face of islamic insurgency.

Instead of being seen to be heading a tough reaction Mr Hollande’s nature lead him to be more at home leading candle lit marches, vigils and uttering trite panaceas in the face of the emergency. It was left to his prime minister Manuel Valls to express the public mood about the threat throughout France of rampant religious extremism.

Worse still, Mr Hollande was viewed as being over-preoccupied by the star studded Paris climate conference with its breathtaking ritual insights into the blindingly obvious instead of with the much more visible and immediate terrorist threat

The most visible manifestation of Mr Hollande’s pending loss of the presidency is the number of his own hand-picked cabinet members who are deserting the sinking ship. The “frondeurs” as the rebels are known are setting themselves up, they are still in their 30s and 40s, for the 2022 election.

There is though in the anticipated disappearance of Mr Hollande a signal point of difference with those other landmark scupperings of the political classes, Brexit and Trump. The difference is that this time everyone is expecting it.

The winner of the French Republican Party primaries is now looked to as the winner of the presidency. This is looking, in fact, increasingly like former premier Francois Fillon.Mr Hollande’s political career has been an inch-by-inch bureaucratic progression characterised by a reverse Clinton-effect process.

His life-mate Segolene Royale (pictured above with Hollande) with whom he has four children was the glamorous one. Her attempt to crack the French version of the glass ceiling was more spectacular than anything attempted by Hillary.

In the event she lost to Sarkozy.

It was now that that the blander Francois entered the lists and in doing so streamlined his approach by parting from Segolene.  The go-it-alone Francois now beat the unpopular Nicolas Sarkozy and the ElyseesPalace was his and his Socialist Party’s.

Four and a half years later he looks like a president who knows he can’t win. He is unlikely to hand over to the rather more decisive figure of his prime minister Manuel Valls.

No major economy leader, not even President Obama, personifies so closely as does Francois Hollande the twin pillars of diversity and multiculturalism which in France’s case are supercharged by the Revolutionary code of the Rights of Man.

Few doubt his sincerity of purpose. It is just that as with the other casualties of this new wave politics, the Clintons, he found himself reading from an out-of-date script

Personally wheeled in drinks trolley to New Zealand dealer employees

Gentlemen

Your news of the deal that Henry Ford 11 sought to make with New Zealand prime minister Keith Holyoake in Wellington in the mid 1960s has the ring of truth. Mr Ford, and it was always “Mr” Ford, was like his grandfather the founding Henry Ford (pictured) in that he was a production and marketing genius. He saw opportunities in terms of great simplicity. He had also the gift of the common touch.

When he and his Detroit group came to Wellington they stayed at the White Heron Lodge in Kilbirnie. The White Heron was the first of the modern hotels in the capital.

I was employed by one of the Ford regional franchisees in New Zealand and Mr Ford had stated that he wished to spend time with as many franchise representatives as possible including those at a junior level such as myself.

Mr Ford enjoyed fine living and was a connoisseur of wine, especially red. He traveled with his own cellar. At the conclusion of the formal dinner at the White Heron it was made known to our group that Mr Ford was allowing guests overnighting at the White Heron Lodge access to this personal cellar.

All we had to do, we were told, was to ring an internal hotel number for access to the private cellar and its contents. A steward would be on duty there until late, very late.

As our own company party gathered after the formal dinner in our manager’s suite there was at first a certain shy reluctance to avail ourselves of this offer.

Time wore on. We got bolder. Eventually someone took courage and rang the number of Mr Ford’s own cellar room. A voice answered and asked exactly what sort of wine we had in mind?

Whatever you recommend came the response from our side “and bring plenty of it.”

The party resumed. A few minutes after the call there was a knock at the door. In came a substantial bottle-laden trolley being pushed by Mr Ford.

Yours faithfully

S. GibbonsPalmerston North

Henry Ford offered Keith Holyoake a game changer.

| Napier - MSCNewsWire - Tuesday 22 Nov, 2016 | Just over a half century  ago Henry Ford proposed to New Zealand prime minister Keith Holyoake a deal that would have forever changed the face of the economy. The deal was this...

If the New Zealand government would allow Ford to bring its cars into New Zealand fully built-up and ready for the road, then the Ford Motor Company, said Mr Ford (pictured at the time) would make New Zealand one of its key centres globally for the supply of castings and forgings.

At this time New Zealand was the acknowledged leader in castings and forgings in Oceania.

The problem the industry had was short-run production. There was not the scale for the long runs required to embed the industry so that it did not have to be protected, which it was, and heavily.

This was the height of the protectionist era. The Ford cars were shipped into New Zealand as kitsets, known as CKDs – completely knocked down. In effect, disassembled vehicles. These were reassembled again in the Hutt Valley providing immense employment and thus contributing to the reverse unemployment of that era. Too many jobs. Not enough people to do them.

The Ford Motor Co had seen all this. Now was the time to put forward the offset in the form of designating New Zealand as what would now be known as a centre of “ excellence” for castings and forgings components.

In the event premier Keith Holyoake whose operating principle was “steady as she goes” turned down the scheme and the CKDs poured into New Zealand for another 20 years.

Obvious benefits emerging from shrouds

| Napier - MSCNewsWire - Monday 21 Nov,2016 |- Now that the media-led hysteria attendant upon the election of Donald Trump is fading we can obtain a clear fix on the new United States trade policies.

They in fact indicate an increasingly fair wind for New Zealand.

The priority is to in-shore what was once United States based engineering and manufacturing and return it to the rust-belts where the electors voted heavily for Trump.

This will not affect New Zealand which in the 1980s and in pursuit of globalisation ceased the manufacture here, actually added value, of all the most contentious products from the Trump point of view, notably vehicles.

The real shoot- out is between the United States and China. Here, New Zealand is in a strong position. An example will illustrate this point.

U.S. trade and commerce authorities in 2009 after President Obama took office imposed a punitive 35 percent tariff on vehicle tyres from China. In response, China took retaliatory steps of imposing tariffs on US chicken products with the result that importers now started by-passing the United States.

The point being that New Zealand stands to benefit in any forthcoming tit-for-tat trade war by acting as default supplier.

In New Zealand the emphasis on the Trump victory has centred on the Trans Pacific Trade wrap-up signed in Auckland earlier this year.

In fact and as MSC Newswire has consistently pointed out this now represents an earlier move to contain China by ensuring that the bulk of world trade, 80 percent, continues to be conducted in the USD.

This was a half-way house because of the Obama-Clinton adherence to the globalisation philosophy.

An anti-globalist president-elect Trump is bent on suppressing China’s currency while also stalling its exports to the United States

Tariff rates as high as 45 per cent have been floated as deterrents to Chinese manufactured goods imports into the United States.

China is the US largest trading partner, with USD $598 billion in total goods traded between the two nations in 2015.

Of that $598 billion, U.S. exports to China amounted to $116 billion, while goods imported from China amounted to $482 billion. This means the U.S. goods trade deficit with China was $366 billion in 2015, a 6.6 percent increase over 2014.

Meanwhile the détente between the United States and Russia implicit in the Trump victory is scheduled to end the US led embargo on Russia. New Zealand is party to this.

The embargo was imposed at the same time as EU production started moving away from quota restrictions and this has led to massive farm surpluses in Europe to New Zealand’s detriment.