Reader insists that the question must be asked

 Dear Sirs,

In regard to the mysterious “agro Centre” which has appeared somewhere in the Arabian desert seemingly built and constructed by the New Zealand taxpayer you, the Taxpayers Union, and other questioners have all been asking the wrong question.

The question that you should be asking is this: Is this agri hub the pivot of a counter trade deal between New Zealand and the Saudis?If it is the central component of a counter trade deal then the New Zealand government deserves credit for its imagination in implanting itself into a valuable trade opportunity.

If it is not, and as no direct payment from the Saudi royalty involved appears to be expected, then, you and Mr Williams of the Taxpayers, are correct in assuming that it is all a magnificent bungle.

One contributing reason is that in the Middle East now the demand for live sheep is lessening and the reason is the problem throughout the region in keeping them alive with fresh water.

The reason I am inclined to think, and indeed, hope, that this is a counter trade, perhaps still to be realised at the Saudi end, is that it makes such sense. We could well be looking, for example, at a third country involvement somewhere in say South America or Africa.

In such an instance it would make sense for the Saudi acquirers to send oil to a third party in one of these countries which in turn would send a commodity such as fertiliser to New Zealand in conclusion of the payment cycle.

Such a contingency should now be investigated. Sufficient time has elapsed for such a counter deal to have been rotated. It’s existence or not should now be determined.

Yours trulyHenry KoenigSingapore

Was too busy to pick up award from Governor General

| Napier-MSCNewsWire-18 Nov 16 |  Bob Dylan is too busy to meet the Nobel Prize committee to pick up his Nobel Prize. He has, instead, he claims “other engagements.”

The musician's determination to stick to his routine will remind New Zealand provincial historians of a similar business-as-usual determination in the face also of the collection of an award.

The local incident similarly involved a notable, this time one involved in the practice of local government.

The mayor of Woodville was too busy to receive the Governor General Sir Bernard Fergusson, later Lord Ballantrae.

Sir Bernard was scheduled to meet the mayor, Mr Beale, in order to present him with an award.

This was a decoration for his long service to the remote junction town at the head of the Wairarapa Valley and which serves as the gateway to Hawkes Bay, and to the Manawatu Gorge.

This was quite some time before the explosion of such awards caused by the need to accommodate New Zealand decorations alongside the Imperial ones.

Mr Beale was up for a sturdy such order in the Queens Service class.

It was now that the problem intervened. The mayor was also the proprietor of Beale’s Bookshop, a flourishing concern in that era of the early 1960s. On the very day that he was to receive Sir Bernard he was also required to perform his annual stock take.

The stock take was performed on that same date every year, regardless. It took all day. He, the mayor, would be unable to attend. The matter was non-negotiable. Another date would have to be found.

Beale himself was from an early settler family hailing from London that had thrived in Central Hawkes Bay.

Officials at various levels gently pointed out to Beale that Sir Bernard was of dynastic stock, the fourth of his line to become viceroy.  Beale was adamant. He was in his bookshop all that day. The viceroy to avoid disappointment would have to make another appointment

The Beale family continues to flourish in Central Hawkes Bay. The Fergussons until just a few years ago still serving officially here, but now at legation level, finally faded from the New Zealand scene.

MSCNewsWire articles published prior to 14 Nov earthquake#4 | 2 Nov 16 |   Ministry of Works Dissolution started Leaky Buildings & Earthquake Vulnerability #3 | 26 Oct 16 | Ministry of Works Wellington Motorway Swathe Sowed Anti Big Engineering Project Whirlwind#2 | 24 Oct 16 | Ministry of Works had clear cut lines of Civil Engineering Responsibility#1 | 21 Oct 16 | Department was Repository of Exceptional Engineering Technical Ability & Management

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Reminder of HMS Veronica at Napier Earthquake

|  Napier - MSCNewsWire - Thursday 17 Nov,2016 | The full steam to Kaikoura by the United States Navy brings to a close the high water mark of the New Zealand contribution to international political correctness which took the form of outlawing from ports US Navy vessels.

In the event the steaming of the USS Sampson to Kaikoura has about it overtones of the support provided by HMS Veronica to Napier when the British naval vessel happened to be in port during and after the Hawkes Bay earthquake, the nation’s worst.

New Zealand’s restriction on the entry of US naval vessels stipulated a requirement for the formal disclosure of whether or not the vessel featured any nuclear capability at all.

Such a disclosure contravened US security – and so the vessels stayed away.

US naval vessels such as the Truxtun and the Buchanan now entered New Zealand PC folklore in the various stand-offs that followed.

In fact, New Zealand’s unreliability in regard to US naval vessels had been displayed before this when the icebreaker Glacier, a strategic vessel in that era, had been locked up for many months by union action in the old Wellington-based floating dry dock.

Soviet era spy Kim Philby usually considered the most damaging of Britain’s deep penetration agents, in his memoirs, noted that the Lange move meant that New Zealand had been expunged from the Soviet retaliation map.

The USS Sampson’s appearance in New Zealand waters is to participate in the International Naval Review which is part of celebrations for the 75th anniversary of the Royal New Zealand Navy.

The visit is the first since the David Lange-inspired Anzus rift in the 1980s sparked by New Zealand's landmark anti-nuclear policy.

National Press Club president Peter Isaac interviewed about Commerce Commission upset merger veto.......

Napier - MSCNewsWire, Tuesday 15 November 2016

If someone from the two chains contacted you and asked, What should we do now? What would you tell them?My instruction would be to turn their strategy on its head and go in next time at this democratic literary end which means furnishing evidence of the freedom that the two pending proprietorial partners already allocate to their individual newspaper editors, and have done for many years.

The Commerce Commission would require evidence?The Commerce Commission response indicates that it wants working real-life examples of the chains’ ability to allow their editors and thus their newspapers to enjoy the freedom to say pretty much what they want to say. I would suggest for example that Fairfax management for one refers to the separate nature of The Dominion and The Evening Post which for so long co-existed under their old INL banner. They were entirely separate in regard to editorial staffs. They looked utterly different and had quite different contents and opinions. Similarly now with the Waikato Times, for example, which happily still co-exists under the Fairfax banner. Similarly with for example the Nelson Mail and of course with the The Press of Christchurch, Southland Times also in the stable, and so on.

Can we assume that the Commerce Commission is aware of this?The point that the two groups need to make is that it is simply not in their interests to have their combined newspapers all singing the same song. These newspapers must reflect their own communities and the issues therein. In my many years involvement with INL/Fairfax in a number of regions I cannot recall even one incident of the management strong-arming anyone, anywhere, to follow this or that party line.

Isn’t the Commission of the opinion that they will publish just the one nationwide daily?They have tried this from the Wellington end and also from the Auckland end on several occasions. The result has always been the same. Failure. The national daily business model does not exist here and the reason is that subscribers insist on localised news from their own localised newspaper. The proof of this theory is the litmus test in the form of the chains’ holdout, the flourishing and regional Otago Daily Times. Even Rupert Murdoch could not get off the ground a national daily here.

There are no guarantees that this hands-off legacy will continue?You have now several government-sponsored referee organisations. The Press Complaints Commission, the Advertising Standards Commission to name just the direct ones. So in the event of the amalgamation there exists in place these pressure valve authorities on subscriber daily newspapers. The state determinedly holds onto its own broadcasting channels, so there is a ready diffusion for the result of any such arbitration. In fact, if I had anything to do with the two newspaper chains and their dealings with the Commerce Commission I would start lobbying now for the re-instatement of Column Comment on the government’s own television channel.

Explain?Column Comment was the de facto newspaper referee for decades and was taken very seriously by newspaper people at all levels, more seriously, I think, than the channel itself realised. I know a version of it has been reproduced on the government’s Radio New Zealand. But it was the television delivery that carried the punch to the readers and thus to the industry itself. I don’t think anyone would suggest that such Column Comment commentators as Ian Cross, Keith Ovenden or the late Neil Roberts, among other presenters, could be bought.

It is said of the New Zealand press that it is either boring or sensational?You could say the same thing about the press anywhere in the world. A point not fully understood about the industry in New Zealand is that for legislative regulation reasons it took much longer here to establish Sunday newspapers than it did in the rest of the English-speaking world. When they did emerge I do concede that they tended toward the sensational. But if you look at the chains’ bulldog editions, the Saturday ones for weekend carryover, then they contain a greater proportion of what you need-to-know instead of what you-want-to-know frivolity.

Where are the proprietors going wrong then, that they need this shotgun marriage, and yet have now been left dangling so embarrassingly at the altar?They thought that the Commerce Commission would see things from their point of view, the one centred on economics. In the event the Commission saw things from the literary angle. Bureaucrats and newspaper people share one thing in common--they must not make assumptions with legal outcomes. This is a resounding lesson to the industry.

Your advice to the still-betrothed newspaper chains is?To fence off their spread sheets and get onto the Commission’s own wave-length which in the Commission’s own words is this literary liberal democracy preservation one. The chains’ message should be clear. It should be “if we are not allowed to merge then we will even overtake China within 10 years because there will be no daily newspaper proprietors in New Zealand whatsoever, and thus no daily newspapers free or shackled.”

Still, there remains the argument now that others will rush in and fill the gap?They will and they will be part of the free-model that the hitherto two subscriber daily chains will have already filled with their own weekly free-sheets. Nobody not even the Horton family has been able to start up a subscriber daily newspaper. Once they go, they have gone for ever.

In spite of the media being such a studied subject at universities, there is little in the public domain about newspaper economics?You have this argument to the effect, Oh! We will have as they do in London these free dailies. But in New Zealand there is insufficient commuter intensity to underpin them. Even in Auckland. As it is in New Zealand the weekly free-sheets do best in rural-provincial areas where the population is older and there is thus a lower take-up of screen-delivered free-model news and information in general.

Your point being?That once the current chain dailies disappear, the ones that dot the nation from Invercargill to Whangarei that they cannot be replaced by other subscriber dailies. Only by free sheets.

You were surprised at the Commerce Commission’s decision to stall the Fairfax-NZME merger?I was and I was in good company- -that of the two chains for a start.

Then you must have shared with them an underpinning belief?If you read between the lines of what emerged from the episode then we all got it wrong. The assumption was that the Commission as a government organisation would have been primarily pre-occupied with the cost in human terms of a centralisation of mechanical services, notably of the rotary presses. In the event the Commission saw the fusion in an intellectual context and said so unequivocally in terms of what it saw as this need to preserve the “liberal democracy” through diverse newspaper ownership.

You didn’t see this?I did the same thing that the strategists of the two chains did. I forgot my history. There is a strong backbone for this kind of regulatory reaction. The News Media Ownership legislation designed to keep Lord Thomson out of New Zealand remains the best example. So I was party to a fault that I routinely accuse everyone else in the industry of committing which is that of a failure to put issues into historical context. Background in other words.

Do you think it is curious the way in which certain journalists post Commerce Commission have turned on their paymasters and accused them of being out of touch?This is pretty much confined to older opinion peddling wafflers who talk in terms of the bosses needing to bring their editorial, data and privacy codes up to “international best practice” and suchlike. The proprietors are not running localised versions of United Nations. Not so widely known is the reason behind the often contradictory nature of daily newspaper content. They are in fact purchased and read by baby boomers and beyond. Yet the editorial formulation is aimed in large measure at the age categories which no longer actually buy newspapers but who view them via the internet editions, the free model in other words. . These are the people in their 20s 30s. It is this category, the early home-buyers, that the property sector, overwhelmingly the major advertiser, needs to reach.

How would you approach the government itself, the ultimate arbiter?I would quietly ensure that MPs became aware of something which is in fact considered best practice in some other OECD nations which is taxpayer subsidy of dailies in order to keep them afloat.

Final point?If I was remotely responsible for the return match with the Commerce Commission I would illustrate on what a delicate economic thread hangs these nationwide subscriber daily newspapers. To reinforce this point I would ensure that there was someone with no particular axe to grind, perhaps one of these academic types you refer to, who would step up and point out what a remarkable job the two chains have done in maintaining this score or so of daily newspapers in a population equivalent to that of many global cities and how this feat can only be sustained by the proposed amalgamation. The stormiest metropolitan editor I ever worked forwas the late Frank Haden. The unbiddable Haden loved imagery. He would say that it was the taste that any story left in the mouth of the reader that mattered. The taste the two chains with their revised submission should leave to linger in the collective palate of the Commerce Commission is this:-

Even if we wanted to, tried to, align our daily newspapers in a constant state of editorial harmony we could not achieve it. The reason is that our subscribers would bar us from conspiring in such regimentation by the simple act of cancelling their subscriptions. They would in response throw in their lot with the digital free model.

Why Trump’s Victory Really was Super-Brexit

Donald Trump’s victory has been described as “super Brexit” most notably by the president-elect himself. We now examine some of the similarities and we begin with the decision which can now be seen as a dangerous one for President Obama’s highly visible pro Hillary campaigning. This was all the more curious since it was then known in the United States that UK Premier David Cameron’s similar campaigning for his cause Remain had represented more of a burden than a blessing. President Obama’s campaigning was compounded by the intervention of Mrs Obama who had hitherto been universally admired just because of her public detachment from partisan party politics. Main points of similarity summarised:-

Presidential – Prime Ministerial Pleading & CampaigningIn both Brexit and Trump the leaders of the in-power establishment parties joined in the fray. British Premier David Cameron actively campaigned to remain in the EU. President Obama actively campaigned for Hillary Clinton and in doing so was joined by Mrs Obama. In both causes and in both countries this frenzied campaigning can now be viewed as having the opposite effect of the one intended.

Financial Sector Backed Lost Causes – Remain and HillaryHilary Clinton’s campaign and the Remain campaign were both openly backed by the financial sector

Non university voters backed the winnersIn both causes in both countries Brexit supporters and Trump supporters were solidly drawn from those who had not attended university

Opinion polls were wrong on both sides of the AtlanticPolling organisations were continuously wrong in both countries and in both outcomes

Movement leaders both emerged from outside established political partiesBrexit leader Nigel Farage had his own party. Donald Trump had had no previous political experience

Both victorious leaders ignored and talked over mainstream mediaIn the United States Donald Trump actively expressed his contempt for his media entourage describing members as “the worst people in the world.”

Mainstream media was wrong footedA characteristic of the mainstream media in both countries and from the outset was an inability to concede that either Donald Trump or Brexit had a chance of success

Project Fear aftermaths on both sides of the AtlanticFollowing Brexit the communication organisations responsible for monitoring and then making known shifts in public opinion started a diversionary campaign. This took the form of the generation of an atmosphere of public fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the effects of the events which they had failed to predict. This development is now evident too in the United States following Trump.

United States foreign worker clampdown will boost US milk production costs

MSCNewsWire - Nov 10, 2016 / New Zealand’s primary produce export opportunities are more likely to rise rather than decline with the election of Donald Trump as United States President. The reason is that the incoming president as a priority has the dismantling of the confrontation between the US and Russia.

The economic component of this stand-off is the United States-led embargo on exports to Russia. A détente will open up Russia especially to exports from the EU which is the United States main partner in the embargo.

The lifting of the embargo will introduce the free flow of food exports from EU nations into Russia. The problem for New Zealand since the embargo was installed is that the EU food exports, notably milk, have backed up all over Europe instead of going to Russia.

For its part Russia in defiance has enforced the embargo by destroying EU foodstuffs with back door labeling or being shipped under proxy bills of lading. French foodstuffs carrying face value Moroccan origination are just one example of this.

The dissolving of the US led embargo on Russia will also allow New Zealand which is also a partner in the embargo to start trading again directly with Russia.

New Zealand participation in this trade embargo with its self-damaging results has long been cloaked in a conspiracy of silence. Politicians and exporters alike have kept their mouths shut for fear of US reprisals.

Even though the incoming president has promised to scrap United States trade treaties in order to build US domestic employment, the abandonment of the Trans Pacific trade agreement signed by all participating countries in Auckland earlier this year is unlikely to present a serious problem to New Zealand exports.

The legislation attendant on the treaty is subject to a lengthy clearance process having only just navigated its latest reading in the New Zealand parliament. Other countries will take years to approve it. Critics claim that the Trans Pacific trade deal, and other such US treaties with other countries merely double up on what has already been achieved under the WorldTrade Organisation among other such bodies.

An additional point, and one that may make a President Trump resist pulling the plug on it is that the Pacific agreement is primarily viewed as a device by the United States to preserve its global supremacy in currency leadership. At least 80 percent of world trade is carried out in the USD and the United States is determined to stop China taking any part of this share with its own rival currency..

Meanwhile the central theme of Trump policy, curbs on immigration, is likely to add to the value of New Zealand primary products. This is because in the United States Mexico is the home of much of the US milk workforce at every phase.

A reliance on United States nationals to do the work will add greatly to the costs at every stage of US milk production.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk   /   Thursday 10 November 2016

Will bring much needed internationalism to White House

Adjudicator wants new angle on proposed merger filed by March 2017 deadline

Just as everyone else including the proprietors themselves were giving up on newspapers the Commerce Commission has seized the print cause with a vigour and enthusiasm absent for many years now from the industry itself.

The Commission which arbitrates on New Zealand’s mergers and acquisitions from the competitive point of view has fastened upon newspaper diversity as their reason for vetoing the merger of the nation’s two newspaper publishing chains, the locally owned NZME and the Australian owned Fairfax.

As if mirroring the newspaper editorial quest for a new angle on something familiar, the Commerce Commission instead of fastening upon the mechanical aspect of the consolidation especially in regard to printing instead focused on the loss of editorial independence attendant upon such a merger.

Giving this point a big headline the Commission observed that such a single-owner concentration of publishing would put New Zealand only one place behind China with its single party ownership of the media.

The result of the first round of the merger application by the two chains has thus come as a surprise to the applicants.

The feeling had been that any objections to the fusion would be related to print production economies and thus the loss of jobs ensuing from the telescoping of the two chains comparatively numerous printing works.

One reason for this is that the two applicants in their joint submission outlined a surprisingly small joint saving from centralised mechanical production.

In effect the Commission in the manner of a stern but fair editor has told the two operators to come back to them. Next time with a better story. The deadline for filing is March next year.

The meaning of the Commission’s intent is in fact spelled out in its emphasis on what it describes as the need “for a well-established liberal democracy".

This it made clear was not attainable with “one organisation controlling nearly 90 per cent of the country's print media market.”

The Commission’s confidence in the economic future of print media will in a curious way re-invigorate the two supplicant chains as they seek to define a winning formula to compete with the free model in which social networks of one description or another have taken over the subscriber system once symbolised by print dailies.

It is obvious that neither of the chains foresaw the Commission adopting this editorial content diversity angle. The Commission in a curious way has revealed the emphasis that certain sectors of society still place on news as news.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters'desk  Tuesday 8 November 2016

New Zealand Party’s forecast based on own pre-election analysis

New Zealand’s ACT Party predicts without qualification that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. The political party’s newsletter Free Press states flatly that “Clinton is bombing out.”

The party simultaneously forecasts that the “fallout” from Mr Trump’s election “will be like Brexit.” It will be “terrifying the day before and unnoticed the day after.”

The party’s Trump prediction is based on its own pre-election soundings in the lead up to New Zealand’s own general elections. The party does not amplify this demographic or statistical analysis.

But their prediction is taken to be a comparative one based on a broadly similar anglo-saxon English speaking and ethnic mix.

ACT New Zealand is a free market political party in New Zealand founded in 1993 by Roger Douglas the former finance minister generally credited with converting the economy from a regulated command one to its current enterprise status.

In spite of its Trump prediction the party is pessimistic about his actual effect and value of Trump in office. The party it says has long watched “neophyte” MPs and Ministers,” no matter how successful in their previous lives”, get thoroughly “gazumped” by bureaucrats with "30-40 years’" experience in their area.

This bureaucratic inertia quotient is cited as the reason the party believes that the Trump presidency will in the event be a “fizzer.”. .

From the MSCNewsWire reporters desk  -  Monday 7 November 2016