They should be made to wear a yellow jumpsuit when they do their community sentence and clean-ups, and it should be published in the paper so people can go and look at them and say, 'Oh, how the mighty have fallen'.
Two former NZ Ministers of Justice, with a third director of Lombard Finance, have been found guilty of making false statements to investors about the company’s position. Sir Douglas Graham is one of the three and he was chairman of the Lombard board. Douglas Graham was National MP for Remuera, and always seemed to me the handsome epitome of Remuera’s abiding satisfaction with itself.
And so the media are rounding up investors who have lost some or all of their life savings with Lombard. Mr Paul Wah wants Sir Douglas stripped of his knighthood. “How can a knight of the realm be ... not a common criminal but someone guilty of criminal conduct?" the pensioner asked. "My fondest wish would be to see those guys on bread and water for a few years." Well I imagine the ranks of knighthood would be somewhat reduced if white collar and other criminals were excluded.
It was Gino Zambon who proposed the very public humiliation with which we began. And indeed, if you have seen the foundations of your retirement ripped away, the money you had put together through years of work and planning… If you had placed the funds with Lombard partly because of the reputation of these men… If in later years you now have to find other ways to afford to live, including rising medical costs…
Sir Douglas himself lost money, we are informed -- he reinvested $12,000 of $17,000 of matured debentures in October 2007, and also held a small stake in Lombard Group, then NZX-listed. Well it might have been prudent not to have advanced this information. Mr Wah invested his six-figure life savings in Lombard, and is probably unimpressed if Sir Douglas thinks he is sharing the pain.
Granny Herald, always helpful, supplies us with an interesting list of knights who have been stripped. I cannot imagine how Sir Douglas now feels being listed with Albert Henry of the Cook Islands, Morgan Fahey the disgraced former Christchurch Deputy Mayor, Frank Goodwin of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Robert Mugabe -- and Jeffrey Archer who actually got to keep his life peerage in the end.
But it hasn’t happened yet, and I doubt that it will. Sir Douglas was knighted not for his financial leadership, but for the very effective work he did over the years while Minister of Justice in Treaty of Waitangi settlements. It was good work, and it would be ridiculous to take that away from him.
I confess to being as uneasy as ever when responsible media so eagerly give an airing to the irrational anger of victims. The anger is perhaps understandable, but not always. It ought to be possible for Mr Wah and Mr Zambon to see what kind of society we would have if we followed their punitive prescriptions. It ought to be possible for the NZ Herald to review the ways they select what they are going to report. It ought to be possible to distinguish between fury and sensible legal outcomes. And it ought to be easy enough to see that gross deliberate public humiliation of people (as though the directors of Lombard had not suffered enough of it already) is actually barbaric.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
22 February
It was always going to be like this on 22 February, one year on from the worst of the long series of Christchurch earthquakes. Christchurch and much of the rest of NZ spent the day remembering and wallowing, commemorating and grieving. TVNZ gave itself over to long coverage of the various events in Christchurch, with sad repetitive accounts of individual stories. We heard of heroism, sad loss, destruction of important buildings, children finding ways to cope, people who can’t cope, people who have cleared out, people doggedly making the best of it, angry people, very tired people, people still trying to clear liquefaction, problems with certification and classification, hopes for the future... We saw flowers and balloons and new memorials, a wonderful big bell in Hagley Park.
On the whole our betters spoke quite well and were mercifully brief and sensible. The Anglican Bishop, Victoria Matthews, seemed to me a real minister, quiet and strong and without ego needs. Even John Key and his speechwriters seemed to sense the real needs. One of the truest things was the music of Linwood High School, obviously rehearsed 1001 times and needing another few rehearsals yet, but so good just as it was.
For me the hardest moment was when TVNZ played a couple of minutes of the first police calls on radio to base. These officers including one woman were reeling from what they were suddenly seeing and what was dawning on them, yet still cool and professional. “We need everything you’ve got...” They were hearing calls for help from every direction. “It’s huge, send all units... the building’s on fire... we’ve got a gas leak here... I’m seeing multiple injuries here...”
Of course we fall deep into sentiment. Grown men weep. We sing How Great Thou Art, heaven knows why. We hang notes on trees. And the media devote hours of time to getting people stumblingly to recount how they felt, how they feel now, how they think they will feel eventually. Right after we heard from one ferociously protective über-mother about how her children needed to be shielded from harsh reality, we went to a bunch of about 50 yelling happy kids and some sensible adult who said, “Oh, the kids are fine, they deal with it in their own ways...” As we have always known, the kids will reflect the adults’ anxieties and hang-ups.
Here in Algies Bay we are far away from it all, and should avoid making judgements. What has happened in Christchurch is monstrous, and it’s interesting to watch how different people react. Some simply don’t manage. On the other hand, we have dear friends who know that, whatever might be the worst that could happen to them, it’s not any of that. Neither did they ever expect life to be serene.
A TV item the other day concerned a couple who bought their Lifestyle property in the Waikato somewhere, and built their Dream Home. It was all perfect, the money, the vistas, the ponies... until Transpower built a large pylon 9 metres off their boundary and hung transmission wires. These people see it as a deliberate planned invasion of their lifestyle. It wasn’t for this that they dreamed their dreams and earned their wealth. They are destroyed... being evidently so fragile. Well, tough. Get over it. Christchurch people are dealing with real issues, not mere ruffles to their lifestyle.
On the whole our betters spoke quite well and were mercifully brief and sensible. The Anglican Bishop, Victoria Matthews, seemed to me a real minister, quiet and strong and without ego needs. Even John Key and his speechwriters seemed to sense the real needs. One of the truest things was the music of Linwood High School, obviously rehearsed 1001 times and needing another few rehearsals yet, but so good just as it was.
For me the hardest moment was when TVNZ played a couple of minutes of the first police calls on radio to base. These officers including one woman were reeling from what they were suddenly seeing and what was dawning on them, yet still cool and professional. “We need everything you’ve got...” They were hearing calls for help from every direction. “It’s huge, send all units... the building’s on fire... we’ve got a gas leak here... I’m seeing multiple injuries here...”
Of course we fall deep into sentiment. Grown men weep. We sing How Great Thou Art, heaven knows why. We hang notes on trees. And the media devote hours of time to getting people stumblingly to recount how they felt, how they feel now, how they think they will feel eventually. Right after we heard from one ferociously protective über-mother about how her children needed to be shielded from harsh reality, we went to a bunch of about 50 yelling happy kids and some sensible adult who said, “Oh, the kids are fine, they deal with it in their own ways...” As we have always known, the kids will reflect the adults’ anxieties and hang-ups.
Here in Algies Bay we are far away from it all, and should avoid making judgements. What has happened in Christchurch is monstrous, and it’s interesting to watch how different people react. Some simply don’t manage. On the other hand, we have dear friends who know that, whatever might be the worst that could happen to them, it’s not any of that. Neither did they ever expect life to be serene.
A TV item the other day concerned a couple who bought their Lifestyle property in the Waikato somewhere, and built their Dream Home. It was all perfect, the money, the vistas, the ponies... until Transpower built a large pylon 9 metres off their boundary and hung transmission wires. These people see it as a deliberate planned invasion of their lifestyle. It wasn’t for this that they dreamed their dreams and earned their wealth. They are destroyed... being evidently so fragile. Well, tough. Get over it. Christchurch people are dealing with real issues, not mere ruffles to their lifestyle.
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out
Someone has identified a global phenomenon (it has to be global these days), and even given it an acronym which makes it kosher among the trendy set -- Fear Of Missing Out, FOMO. It is all around us and among us.
The adolescent never more than an arm’s reach from the cellphone... The mindless communication: “What are you doing? Nothing... What are you going to do? Dunno...”
The mother to whom it is vital that “my daughter and I have no secrets from each other -- she tells me everything”. Oh yeah? It would be a crisis should she find out that her daughter had done something, experienced something, thought something, met somebody, without the mother knowing first. The sadness of this quite often is, not so much the mother’s illusion of uninterrupted openness as it may have been years ago, but that it may be slightly true -- the adult daughter may actually be more open still with her mother than she is with her husband, partner, lover, co-tenant, or whatever she’s got. I recall a young parishioner in Scotland whose husband had just stupidly turned down a wonderful job offer in Canada -- she said to me, “Oh, but I couldn’t leave me mum...!”
Then we have the church’s high art of gossip. Seemingly mature people in the church can fall out with each other because gossip was withheld from one to the other. “You didn’t tell me...!” Confidentiality, respect for privacy and dignity, can be at a high premium in the parish church. It may be that I am over sensitive about this. I am also aware that there are plenty of people who actually think they have some right to information, accurate or distorted, about others. FOMO is a living reality in the church. St Benedict, who is important to me, was very much aware of gossip and opposed to it.
I suppose the fear of being left out of the loop is pretty basic. A couple of colleagues recently told me some information about another colleague, which I hadn’t known. My initial reaction was, I am sorry to have been told that. I didn’t need to know. And indeed, the “Need To Know” principle is always worth bearing in mind.
A real and mature challenge is to form our own assessments of people with love and charity, and constant awareness of human frailty, without the help of gossips and tittle-tatlers. After all, our need is not to pin labels on others, which will always be only marginally accurate (and we don’t like it when they do it to us), but to practise hospitality and openness and exercise generous judgement.
The adolescent never more than an arm’s reach from the cellphone... The mindless communication: “What are you doing? Nothing... What are you going to do? Dunno...”
The mother to whom it is vital that “my daughter and I have no secrets from each other -- she tells me everything”. Oh yeah? It would be a crisis should she find out that her daughter had done something, experienced something, thought something, met somebody, without the mother knowing first. The sadness of this quite often is, not so much the mother’s illusion of uninterrupted openness as it may have been years ago, but that it may be slightly true -- the adult daughter may actually be more open still with her mother than she is with her husband, partner, lover, co-tenant, or whatever she’s got. I recall a young parishioner in Scotland whose husband had just stupidly turned down a wonderful job offer in Canada -- she said to me, “Oh, but I couldn’t leave me mum...!”
Then we have the church’s high art of gossip. Seemingly mature people in the church can fall out with each other because gossip was withheld from one to the other. “You didn’t tell me...!” Confidentiality, respect for privacy and dignity, can be at a high premium in the parish church. It may be that I am over sensitive about this. I am also aware that there are plenty of people who actually think they have some right to information, accurate or distorted, about others. FOMO is a living reality in the church. St Benedict, who is important to me, was very much aware of gossip and opposed to it.
I suppose the fear of being left out of the loop is pretty basic. A couple of colleagues recently told me some information about another colleague, which I hadn’t known. My initial reaction was, I am sorry to have been told that. I didn’t need to know. And indeed, the “Need To Know” principle is always worth bearing in mind.
A real and mature challenge is to form our own assessments of people with love and charity, and constant awareness of human frailty, without the help of gossips and tittle-tatlers. After all, our need is not to pin labels on others, which will always be only marginally accurate (and we don’t like it when they do it to us), but to practise hospitality and openness and exercise generous judgement.
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