Shiny Distraction!

This is a reminder that while I haven’t posted many blogs over the last while, my film-reviewing pages “Shiny Distraction” are still going strong. Over 2,800 movies reviewed as of today!

Marvel v. DC Movies

When Batman Begins came out in 2005, it ushered in the Golden Age of superhero movies. Superman in ’78 & ’80 was good, and Batman in ’92 & ’95 were okay, but it was when Christopher Nolan’s version of the Caped Crusader hit the screens, followed three years later by Iron Man, that’s when being a superhero was actually cool.

Both movies had great scripts, character development, cinematography and special effects which really gripped the audience. You’d think that it would be simple to keep up that formula; both movies were expensive (both costing around $USD150mill), but they returned far more cash to the filmmakers (about $375mill & $585mill respectively).

So, it was D.C.’s Batman v Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. The Dark Knight came out in 2008, raking in over $1Billion, and then Iron Man 2 in 2010, which made about $624million. Batman initially had the edge because the scripts were so complex, and the performances were so brilliant, but Marvel expanded first. Thor & Captain America came out in 2011, and they made about $450million & $370million respectively; it was obvious that D.C. had to use its other characters as well. The Dark Knight Rises in 2012 made about $1.1Billion, and Christopher Nolan moved on. The Avengers in 2012 made around $1.5Billion, and they stuck with the original formula; great scripts, character development, cinematography and special effects.

That was when D.C. launched Man of Steel in 2013. Directed by Zack Snyder, known for the films 300 & Watchmen, it was a bizarre choice to go with somebody who was famous for special effects over script. David S Goyer wrote the script, as he had done for the 3 Batman films, but instead of going for a new spin on an old tale, he went with special effects on an old story, which left most people disappointed. It only made $668mill as opposed to writer/director Shane Black’s fantastic Iron Man 3’s $1.2Billion and the unfortunately dull Thor: The Dark World’s $645mill that came out that same year. It should have been a big lesson for D.C.; special effects aren’t enough – there needs to be a script with substance underlying the whole project.

That’s what Marvel did, the same old formula that produced (mostly) fantastic results. Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 2014 made $714mill, Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 made $774mill, Joss Whedon’s Avengers: The Age of Ultron in 2015 made $1.4Billion, even somehow Ant-Man in 2015 turned out to be a great picture and made around $520mill. The audiences loved the great performances, a little comedy, a brilliant script, the cinematography and the special effects.

In comparison, D.C. said let’s put our two best characters against each other. It was a truly bizarre decision. It’s like somebody saying “I don’t know whether I love Helen or Juliet more, so I’ll try to get them to punch each other in the face.” Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016 was just an awful film. The two characters hated each other for no known reason, and then made up for no known reason. Yes, it made $874mill, but that was style over substance, and audiences felt dirty paying to see it. D.C. had turned into a plotless mess where the characters looked great, but were meaningless. Superhero porn, basically.

Captain America: Civil War in 2016, however, had lots of characters against each other, but you knew why, as the divisions between them had been foreshadowed in other projects. The film made over $1.1Bill, off a budget of $250mill, had heroes fighting against each other, and people loved it. Doctor Strange also came out that year, & made $677mill off what should have been a terrible story, but somehow people went to see that, too, from a production budget of about $165mill.

D.C. had Suicide Squad in 2016, which made $747mill, mainly off Margot Robbie’s great performance, but the best thing to happen to them was 2017’s Wonder Woman. Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot took an average script with a stupid ending, and used the Marvel formula; great performances, cinematography and made the thing substance over style. The film made about $822mill from a budget of about $150mill, and was the touchstone that the original Batman films had been 12 years earlier. Then that same year Zack Snyder released Justice League, which brought the whole franchise crashing to the ground. grossing about $658mill, just over double its production budget. But for about 6 months there, the D.C. universe was doing really well.

In 2017, Marvel had Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol.2 ($864mill), Spider-Man:Homecoming ($880mill), and the awesome Thor:Ragnarok ($850mill) and people loved them. It’s hard to see why D.C. don’t get rid of Zack Snyder completely and actually focus on what Marvel have been doing. If they don’t have the sense to be completely embarrassed by their superhero products by now, then there’s no saving them at all.

In 2018, Marvel had the brilliant Black Panther ($1.3Billion), the great Avengers:Infinity War ($2.05Billion) and even Ant-Man and the Wasp was pretty good ($677mill) because the formula was followed. Meanwhile, the awful Aquaman came out the same year, suffered from a terrible script that jammed TOO MANY plotlines in it and terrible dialogue (and a goddamn drum-playing octopus), and while it made just over $1Billion, again, the D.C. movie looked like a dick-pic compared to Marvel’s love-letters to its fans.

In 2019, while Marvel’s gestures of love to its fans are just getting bigger and better (Captain Marvel herself made over $1.1Billion, Avengers:Endgame is the highest grossing movie of all time at almost $2.8Billion and Spider-Man:Far From Home over $1.3Billion), D.C. is licking its wounds and wondering why the audiences don’t respond to their texts of “U Up?” to their fans with Shazam! ($365million).

D.C. has been treating audiences like children who love to see flashing lights and volcanic eruptions, whereas Marvel are the thinking person’s action films. Marvel could stumble and bring out a terrible film; but why would they? They’re sticking to the formula that works, and audiences are loving it. Meanwhile, D.C. appear to be a bunch of bumbling incompetent men, hoping Patty Jenkins & Gal Gadot can save the reputation of an entire franchise with Wonder Woman:1984 in 2020.

Brexit

I know everybody is keenly following Brexit, and so this will come as no surprise to anybody. But, I thought I’d add in my opinion anyway.

Brexit is Great Britain exiting the European Union (EU).

In 2016, the British Prime Minister of the time, David Cameron, announced a public referendum to decide whether Britain should leave the EU or not.

The Remain side of the debate told people that staying in the EU was far more stable and reliable.

The Leave side told people that immigrants would steal all their jobs if Britain remained, and lied that there would be millions of pounds that wouldn’t go to the EU and instead could go to hospitals. So, of course, the public voted to leave by 52%-48%.

And instead of just saying “The Leave side lied and are full of racists, so obviously we won’t be leaving,” the Conservative Government decided that the decision had been made to leave.
Now, over two years after the debate, the current Prime Minister, Theresa May, is still trying desperately to negotiate Great Britain leaving, and lots of Ministers who called for Britain to leave have resigned because it is far more difficult than they thought.

Here is the best comparison:

It’s like if a group of guys were out at a bachelor party, totally off-their-heads drunk. And they all agreed “Let’s vote on something to do tomorrow!”.
Just then, a beautiful woman who people vaguely recognise from some political TV show walks up and says “You want something to do tomorrow? Why not have sex with me! Vote for that!”

And the bachelor boy says “Well, 48% of us have said we have no idea what your motivates are, and they said no. But, 52% of us think you’re hot, so they’ve voted to have sex with you!”.
Then, the woman said “I told you it was sex with me, it’s actually sex with a lion at the local zoo. Bye!” Then she leaves.

Instead of just saying “That woman lied and we can’t have sex with a lion,” the guys said “We’re going to have to find some strong condoms and thick gloves.”

Two hours into the debate, somebody at the party says he will take control, and he keeps coming back to the poor bachelor boy in the bar, updating his pals with “I’ve called the zoo keepers, they’ve all laughed at me, but I’m still determined that we’re going to get this done.”

This guy spends two years trying to convince the zookeepers to that he & his friends should ass-rape this poor lion. Finally, he says to the bachelor at the heart of the party that he’s really sorry, he’s going to have to give up control, but he hopes that somebody else will be able to negotiate the fornication with the animal.

Some people are saying “We should just get on with it!” and of course those individuals are all idiots. The UK should not be having sex with a lion. There’s nothing to gain from it. There’s only downsides.

To be clear, there is only one pathway to gain any respect. Somebody in that powerful group needs to stand up and say “Look, we’re sensible people. We’ve sobered up and we know, the right thing to do is think logically.”

Conservative UK Government: Forget about that poor lion!

Best wishes for 2019.

Why NZ Citizens Identify With Grace Millane

December 2018, New Zealanders turned out in their thousands to mourn the death of UK traveller Grace Millane.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12177546.

Who was she? A conventionally attractive, white, young female, and that’s basically all NZ knows about her.
Why so much grief at her death?
Yes, we’re human beings, we show sympathy when people die. But why did thousands of people march in Christchurch and Auckland for Grace Millane?
New Zealanders, “so far away” from the rest of the world, see ourselves as travellers, and ask such, think we’re similar to Grace https://www.thehits.co.nz/shows/brodie-fitzy/brodie-kane-why-were-all-grieving-for-beautiful-grace-millane/

There have been young female travellers who have been murdered in New Zealand before; Jennifer Beard, Kayo Matsuzawa, Heidi Paakkonen, Monica Cantwell, Karen Aim, Birgit Bauer, Dagmar Pytlickova and Margery Hopegood were all attractive females killed in New Zealand, but none elicited this sort of reaction.
Social media is a contributor; never before has information flowed so freely, but even when newspapers reported details from the 1980s through to the 2000s, there weren’t protests, let alone on this scale.
Why are New Zealanders so incredibly upset about the death of Grace Millane?

Here is the reason, and the terrible secret, of why New Zealanders spilled so much anguish and outrage.

New Zealanders have spent the last 43 years voting for politicians & governments who do not care about our society.
Muldoon, Douglas, Bolger, Richardson, Shipley, Clark, Key, Collins & English all were the controllers of governments from 1974 – 2017 focusing on business, making money; the economy, raping and destroying creativity, hope and goodness.

Think about nurses. Working at least 60 hours a week with massive responsibilities. Teachers, working the same hours, with responsibilities and low resources. Firefighters, front-line police officers. They’re universally acknowledged as working difficult jobs for low reward. Now think about the children who are looking after their invalid parents, or parents looking after their disabled children, with few benefits for assistance. Because the government was constantly looking after the economy.
For 40 years.
There were strikes. Nurses, doctors, teachers, police, fire-fighters, and they were all ignored by authoritarian governments of New Zealand. Time and time again.

And remember all the people struggling to feed their children, and look after their parents, or grandparents, with little assistance, because the “nanny state” was criticized.
Now remember all the children going to school who work hard studying and get good grades, then they leave and can’t find a job. Or they go to university and get massive student loans, and can’t find a job.
For over 40 years, the New Zealand government has ignored society, neglected the vulnerable and dismissed the valuable people.

And in 2017, Jacinda Ardern appeared as leader of Labour, and suddenly people saw hope. Lots of people voted for her. Not a landslide, but a lot.
After a year of thinking about hope and maybe seeing a future, Grace Millane came to our country and was murdered.

Grace was what New Zealand was. A fantastic youngster with so much potential, cut short in the prime of life. A female who was murdered for no rational reason, and people are left to grieve, not knowing why. Yet, we go on.

Jacinda is a ray of hope for New Zealand, and finally, people can cry at the devastation that over 40 years of incompetent government has created. Finally, we can grieve for what we should have been.

This is why the country grieved for Grace. We are collectively crying for our imprisonment, and for our collective loss.

Jacinda Ardern isn’t perfect. But she is the first New Zealander to show empathy. And we are incredibly grateful for it.

WTF is happening to Generation Titles?

When I was growing up, a generation was a person. Your grandfather with the brill cream was one generation, your father with the sideburns was the next generation, and you were the current generation with whatever shit you thought was great, like video games or professional sport or warming lubricant. Every predecessor thought their off-spring was useless and lazy, and every off-spring thought their parents was a waste of oxygen who should just die, and they were probably both right.

At that time, in the 1980s, a generation was about 25 years. At about 25 years, a person was expected to have got married, and planning a family. It still conflicted with the fact that most people were at least dating somebody by 16, and that dating resulted in a baby, so the timeline was evened out to about 18, maybe 19 years. With the exception of the Baby Boomers, whose parents would have got tired of all the banging after only 10 years, especially because the males would already have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder anyway, and the females would have had very worn-out vaginas.

Generations were easy to define. You had the generation that were born when all the men came back from World War II, the one growing up in the mid-’60s, and then I was the generation growing up in the late ’80s. All of which was before the time when porn was so readily available to access.

Then, in the 21st Century, people decided to severely screw around with generation definitions.
Take this website: Socialmarketing.org It says that a generation can be anywhere between SIX and 18 years long. So, where do you fit into that? Are you “Generation Jones”, “Generation X” or remarkably, a Generation Y and a Millennial. The idea that Western Society has had an entire generation of new people in six years is just fucking confusing.

The Sydney Morning Herald starts off ok, saying Baby Boomers are born between 1945-1962, and Generation X are born between 1963-1980, but then suddenly Generation Y are squeezed into the years 1981-1994, a Generation Z into 1995-2009 and creates a Generation Alpha for after that. What the hell is this? This person obviously snorted way too much cocaine before sitting down to do their job.

One of my ex-bosses said that Millennials were the current generation of people; anybody born from 1980 onwards, and were coming up to being 40 now, never superceded. No, dumbass, that’s not a generation.

Here is the actual societal truth, and I know that because I’m backed up by the UK Telegraph. Never again will you have to listen to some idiot explain their stupid theory to you. Here is the definite reality:

Baby Boomers: 1945-1955. Generation X: 1956-1975. Generation Why: 1976-1994. Millennials: 1995-2013. Generation Exo-Planet: 2014-.

The Baby Boomers were the ones enjoying the Summer of Love in the 1960s, and oversaw the global recessions of 1975, 1982, encouraging the corporate greed of mid to late 1980s, and then allowing the stockmarket crash in 1987, and the global recessions of 1991 and 2009 onwards.

Generation X is divided between those who have seen the early rise of the new rich, and those who have never been rich. There’s a constant battle between the older ones who want to focus on business again, and the younger ones who know that way can only lead to chaos.

Generation Why have only grown up knowing recession and political greed. This is the group who politicians should be aiming at. They’re the ones who see no point in voting, because those in power either always lie to try to deceive, or always lie because it’s just easier to do it than tell the truth while making the rich richer and everybody else poorer.

Generation Exo-Planet? The first generation of homo sapiens sapiens born since astronomers discovered planets outside of our own solar system that can support human life.

We can either put our faith in future generations to flee our planet’s terrible destiny caused by the greed of those who went before, or we can focus on fixing our society now, rather than supporting individuals in the “uber-wealthy” bracket to keep all that money for themselves. It really is that simple.

I have a terrible feeling that both Millennials and Generation Exo-Planet will be the ones fighting in World War III, and we will have the U.K. and Donald fucking Trump to thank for that. So that means, anybody born after 2018 could be another group of post-war Baby Boomers. Poor bastards.

Lead

Lead. It’s the most deadly thing in the name of “Led Zeppelin”, and the other thing is Zeppelin, which makes people think of the Hindenberg. And then the Titanic. And other massive disasters.

Pb. Lead. It’s is a heavy metal that poisons animals. We’ve seen it happen in communities across the world, from India, China, and even the United States of America. It’s happening right now in all of those places, and millions of people are being affected across thousands of water systems.

There are millions of kilometers of pipes across the world that leach lead, and millions of kilometers of layers of paint that degrade and create dust which hundreds of millions of people breathe in.

A child can be poisoned and seriously affected by 10mg of lead. A teaspoon contains around 4,000mg of lead. That means irreversible damage to the brain can be caused by a house painted with lead paint.

Housing New Zealand has said it is committed to providing safe and healthy homes to tenants. It says it “regularly” inspects interior and exterior of its properties, identifies properties with flaking paint and tests it for lead, provides information to contractors and staff, and communicates with tenants about lead paint removal processes and precautions.

If you know of any Housing New Zealand property with flaking paint, then please immediately call your member of parliament in order to have it tested and have your landlord or the government pay for it.

 

Update 12 January 2020:

I wrote an email on 22 February 2017 to the then Minister for Building and Construction, Nick Smith, asking what efforts Housing New Zealand is taking to reduce the amount of lead paint on its properties.

I received a response on 20 March 2017 from Rachel Kelly, Manager Government Relations, who stated Housing New Zealand agreed that lead poisoning is a serious health issue, and is committed to providing safe and healthy homes to tenants.

I thought I was getting fobbed off, and I was, but today I have found an article on Stuff.co.nz, from 31 March 2019. It states “While Housing NZ manager of government relations Rachel Kelly said she couldn’t state ‘with certainty’ exactly how many of its properties have paint containing lead, she estimated up to 52,383 of their 64,333 properties contained lead-based paint” and this: “In the 12 months to June 30, 2018, 1135 Housing NZ properties have had exterior paint work done to remove lead-based paint.”

Apparently, lead-based paint removal began just months after I sent my letter. It’s probably just a coincidence, but in a nation where people in authority do not listen to the opinion of others, I will take this is a small win in an ocean of being ignored.

Here’s the article:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/111473661/more-than-50000-housing-new-zealand-homes-still-contain-toxic-leadbased-paint

New Zealand’s Housing Crisis

I saw this story online at stuff.co.nz , and knew I had to post about it.

Who Is At Fault For Current House Prices?

“[W]ho, if anyone, is to blame for the current state of the housing market?”

BNZ chief economist Tony Alexander, surprisingly doesn’t blame baby boomers, but puts the responsibility on people moving to the cities and “re-structuring” of borrowing money. Which is, of course, what somebody in the banking industry is going to say, because they’re desperately trying to avoid any blame.

I know who is to blame, and the reason why I know it is because I worked with members of the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) in the late 1990s. I actually helped set up and run the original Real Estate New Zealand property website, which at the time was known as RealENZ, despite over a dozen people telling our bosses that the name sounded like those on the phones were saying “rear ends”. They didn’t listen to that, and they didn’t listen to people telling them that their philosophy was fundamentally flawed.

Their philosophy was: “there is a lot of money to be made, by everybody, in property”. Real estate agents (mostly baby boomers) held the belief that there would always be houses being built, and salaries would always increase so that homes would always be affordable. The boss of RealENZ at the time had a discussion with me one evening after work where he said “the population is getting older. Those people have invested, they have the bank balance to afford to sell their places, and get better ones. We have a growing group that can afford to not only keep up with the price rises, but will be able to pass on the wealth to their children, so that they can keep being wealthy, too.”

My previous job before RealENZ was as a high school teacher on the border of central/southern Auckland. Almost none of those students had parents who could afford to buy their own homes. I knew that if vendors sold their homes continually for a massive profit, with agents driving up the prices because that meant they got higher commissions, that people coming into the market wouldn’t be able to afford it. So I mentioned that to my boss.

He, like a number of other real estate agents I spoke to over those years, said that there would always be houses for people entering the market, such as people from overseas.

At the time, I knew the only people entering the market from overseas were people with a large amount of cash on hand. But the argument against my opinion was always that those stories were of minorities.

I was constantly told: new houses will be built for people entering the market. The population is growing older, and there are less young people. We will have more houses than what is needed.

The problem was, obviously, that most of the new houses were being built for people already on the property ladder. Not only the people living in homes, but those who were renting one, or more, of those properties out.

And more people were being born, more people were coming in from overseas, and prices continually went up, and new properties were slowly being built, mostly available for those with the ability to purchase them.

Real estate agents knew this. Property investors knew this. The government knew this. It was inevitable.

But those people did not care. They refused to believe it was possible.

Can we blame the baby boomers? Hell, yes we can. The problem is, they do not care, or they refuse to take responsibility.

So, nothing will be fixed.

What caused the 2008 Financial Crisis?

I posted this on a website on 01/01/2009, and have been reminded of it every one of the 6 days that Donald Trump has been USA President.

Here is what I wrote:

It’s simple, really. Since World War II, Western society has been based on Capitalism. That’s the idea that wealth is privately owned, rather than given to the state so that it can run smoothly. Since the 1950s, the gap between the “corporate” world and the “labour” world has been increasing. People in management have been given higher salaries, and then bonuses on top of that, despite the fact that very few of them work harder than the people than they’re employing. Corporations have vast sums of money, compared to people who are necessary to society, like doctors & nurses, teachers, fire fighters, police officers, paramedics and so on.

The people with the money needed to spend it on something, and a lot of it was on clothing, jewellery, cars, yachts, and so on. But the asset that did the damage was property. Property investors, and people buying land and homes and then selling them for profit drove up the prices of these goods. Real estate agents were instrumental in making certain that prices of these commodities rose, because they were given a commission on the sale. So the majority of people couldn’t afford to buy their own homes, finance children’s education, or get adequate health care.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, America was the giant of the Western economy, mainly because it was producing so many goods, and so much profit was available for executives. Then America invaded Iraq. It was an unprovoked attack, so ethically there were many problems, but the biggest problem was the amount of money that was diverted to the war effort. Necessities of the state, health care, education, essential emergency services weren’t funded to the levels they should have been. Suddenly the majority of Americans found the price of these necessities growing.
In need of money, vast numbers of Americans got loans from their banks. The banks were happy to give these loans because they charged high levels of interest, and so would get a lot more money back. But because the majority of Americans weren’t paid enough money in their jobs, they couldn’t pay back the loans. So suddenly a lot of debt had to be written off by the banks. And suddenly there wasn’t enough money to loan to other people, or money to pay back the loans that the banks themselves had made. The banks needed a sudden influx of cash, otherwise they too would go bankrupt. Large corporations suddenly found that people weren’t buying their goods because there wasn’t enough money to do so. So the government poured money into the banks and companies like AIG and General Motors, in order to keep these large companies afloat.

And while all this was happening, the corporate executives were still taking away their huge bonuses given to them for “performance”, except this time, the bonuses were taken out of the money that the company said was “desperately needed” before they went bankrupt.
Average workers were made redundant, or their wages froze. But the managers kept their jobs.
Basically, the recession happened because of greed. Simple.

Workers – Please Assist Me

Here’s a situation. Please tell me if this is normal, or not.

At the end of 2013, I started at a new workplace. Let’s say I was in the “Data Info” team, the group of people that were emailed, asked for details, and we replied.
We relied on two systems; the Reading System, where we got the particulars, and the Asset System, where, strangely enough, all the asset info was stored. Everybody in the team complained about the Asset System. It was large, slow, and had peculiarities. It was basically like a eccentric hippopotamus that would occasionally slap you with it’s weirdly deformed penis.

For an entire year, our team complained about how bad the Asset System was. “What an insane, eccentric hippo with a weirdly deformed whacker-wang,” we would have said, had anybody had the imagination to do that, but we didn’t, we just used the actual name of the system, like savages.
Anyway, at the end of 2014, new management came on board, and they announced there were big changes coming.
A new team would be formed that would be in partnership with another company.
We moved offices nearer the CBD. New people were hired as the workplace got busier.
“Are we going to upgrade the systems?” we asked.
“Yes, of course,” management agreed. “Both the Reading System and the Asset System which is like an eccentric hippo with its weirdly deformed slapper-penis!” they almost said.
“And management will communicate with us better?”
“Naturally!” management cried. “We won’t hide anything from you! We love you all in a non-creepy family way!”
Hooray, we cheered.
In 2015, I was put into the new team of ten people. Let’s call it the PowerUp team. We had a six-week induction into how our entire company worked. It was exciting. We were told the Reading System and its weird hippo friend were being upgraded, and a new system was coming along, all before April of that year.
We said “April? That’s pretty soon. Are you sure we can do that?”
Management cheered and said “We’d better do it! This is huge for us!”

By February, the PowerUp team began to investigate the weird hippo and its strange cock. There were over 300,000 issues with the dong alone that needed to be fixed. Management told us it would take too long to fix the weird hippo. Then they said the Reading System wouldn’t be upgraded, either. By March, management pushed back the project until September. In June, they told the 10 of us the team was going to be split up and put back in various places around the company. The very next day, management called the entire workplace together, admitted the whole project was hopeless, and the entire plan was over.

There was a special Company Day where management took turns to say “We learned a lot,” without actually detailing what they had learned, or why they hadn’t listened to staff warnings. Workers were encouraged to write down issues that were important to the company on a massive piece of paper (such as ‘we need better systems’, ‘can you please train everybody like you trained the PowerUp team’ and ‘communicate with workers better’), and after they were finished, managed announced they would be throwing away the piece of paper, as this was just a “cathartic exercise”.

Two of us from the PowerUp team were put into a group that deals with contractors. Emails, telephone calls, logging jobs, that sort of thing went on in the Contractors team. We hadn’t been trained to do that job, but we watched everybody else do it, while we focused on trying to fix the weird hippo with its gradually declining smacker-dick.
Staff turnover was pretty high around this point, and work was getting backlogged. Five of the PowerUp team quit. The Contractors team wasn’t large enough to cope with day-to-day work volumes, but nobody in management worried about that.

An external person was brought in, to ask the workers how we thought things could be improved at the company. Mostly, people said ‘we need better systems’, ‘can you please train everybody like you trained the PowerUp team’ and ‘management could communicate with workers better’. Also, that the Contractors team needed to be larger. Nothing was changed, however.

At the end of 2015, 3 new team leaders were hired, and one was in charge of our new Contractors team. He asked my colleague to start doing the Contractors team job.
“But, I haven’t been trained,” she explained.
“Doesn’t matter,” the team leader replied. “Just watch what others do, and copy it.”
So, she did that, gradually trying to come to grips with it. Three months later she told me “I have no idea what I’m doing, but that doesn’t seem to matter.”
Six new workers were brought into the Contractors team, and they weren’t trained either. They were all asked to ‘Just watch what others do, and copy it’.

The team leader had no idea how to do the job, either. He was a micro-manager who didn’t want people to be trained, but forced us to focus on work rather than try to foster good morale. A work colleague made a complaint to HR about him. Then I made a complaint about him. Nothing changed.
Now, he’s asked me to do the Contractors job, too. I told his boss what this guy was like to work with, but the team leader was backed all the way. I was informed:

“This might be a good time to look at ‘the big picture’, such as if you’re happy where you’re living, your car, and your career”.

“We’re in a period of fluidity and transition that doesn’t lend itself to periods of training staff; and it’ll be that way for at least a year.”

“Perhaps what you see as a lack of training is simply a lack of empowerment or confidence.”

“Have a think about the opportunities that may arise to modify your communication methods with your team leader to better support him.”

“Your team leader’s role isn’t about communication with the team, or to ensure training. Don’t expect him to know how to do the job. He is there to ensure that people are doing their job. It’s an interesting balance.”

A survey went around staff members, who were asked to rate the company on communication, systems, and workers support. All the ratings were low. The CEO called an impromptu meeting where he stated he was very surprised by the results. An email from management went around suggesting maybe we weren’t unhappy with the company, it was something that was happening to us outside of work, instead. Another email said that management didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. A team was set up to offer solutions. One point put forward was that management stop ignoring suggestions to ‘get better systems’, ‘train everybody like the PowerUp team were’ and ‘management could communicate with workers better’.

My question is … is this a good work environment? Should I stop complaining? Or are management, in fact, the eccentric hippo who are slapping workers in the face with their bizarrely shaped schlong?

Thank you.

Crewe Murders – The Definitive Account

There has been a lot written about the Crewe Murders in New Zealand, but there are still some people who don’t know exactly what happened.
I’ve read the 1980 Royal Commission of Inquiry, and the 2014 Police Crewe Homicide Investigation Review.
This is the Definitive Account.

In June 1970, Len received a call from a stock agent. Len was the father of Jeanette, wife of Harvey Crewe. The stock agent told Len he’d been trying to contact the couple about a delivery, and they weren’t responding. Len went to the Crewe’s neighbour, Owen Priest, and asked if they could go to the Crewe farm together. Len stayed on the doorstep while Priest entered and encountered a very bloody scene. Blood-soaked carpet in the fireplace, saucepans containing diluted blood in the sink, dirty nappies on the refrigerator, and the Crewe’s small daughter in a cot. Len dropped off Priest at his property, and then took the baby to friends. Priest called the police. Len called the stock agent and said there was no need to keep contacting the Crewes.

Len told police he had actually gone to the farm by himself, discovered the scene, saw his granddaughter, and then left her and went to the neighbours for assistance. He said he had last seen the couple on the Tuesday night. The Crewe household was discovered the following Monday. The police went to people who knew Len, who told them he normally visited the couple several days a week. They indicated such a gap in visitation was abnormal.

The police asked Len; what have you been doing in the last week? Len stated he had been at his farm by himself and nobody else had witnessed this. He wrote this on a piece of paper. The police asked him why he was doing that. He said he was doing it so he could remember what he’d told them. The police asked if he would search for Jeanette and Harvey. Len said no, he wouldn’t. Police found a blood stain in his car, and had it analysed. Len claimed he had cut his finger. Police told him it was his daughter’s blood. Len had no explanation. A day later, Len contacted police and told them he remembered his daughter had cut her finger in his car.

Soon after, Len held a party at his house, stating he needed to relieve the stress of the situation.

Two months later, a body was found in the Waikato River. Police asked Len, at the side of the river, to identify his own daughter’s corpse. He said nothing, but nodded that it was her.

One month later, a second body was found. Len identified the body as Harvey. Police, in collecting the body, discovered that it was weighed down by an axle.

Police found that the couple had been killed by a single .22 rifle gunshot wound to the head. Police openly stated that Len was their main suspect in the deaths, but could not link a particular rifle to him.

Then, police gathered a few score rifles from the community. No rifles could conclusively be linked to the bullet fragments from the bodies.

However, the axle was discovered to be from the scrap heap on the farm of Arthur Thomas.

Thomas’s rifle had been tested by police, and considered it not to be connected to the case, and had been returned to him after testing. Mr Thomas’s wife and cousin had stated he was with them during the week the Crewes went missing. When wire wrapped around the bodies was linked to the scrap heap on the Thomas farm, police changed focus from Len, onto Thomas.

Thomas’s rifle was then re-collected.

A police officer in charge of the case asked whether the Crewe farm had been searched thoroughly for evidence. A theory had been previously put forward by another officer in charge, suggesting a certain area where a shooter could have been standing, and there was the suggestion by other officers that this area be searched thoroughly.

Police officers went to this area, and found a fired cartridge case.

The fired cartridge case was a perfect match to Thomas’s rifle.

Thomas was arrested.

At the first trial, prosecution claimed the Crewe baby had been fed by somebody over the period of days that her parents were initially missing. There was the suggestion that Arthur Thomas’s wife had done this.

Owen Priest and his wife said that they had heard rifle-fire at the Crewe farm at the time after Thomas’s rifle had been re-collected, and they had encountered police afterwards. This was never mentioned by the police to the defense team.

Prosecution told the jury that Thomas had taken a blood-covered watch to a local jeweler for repair. When the jeweler mentioned that he didn’t recognise Thomas, the police dismissed this.

Two prisoners, in exchange for certain benefits, claimed that Thomas had confessed to the killings in prison.

Thomas was convicted of double murder.

Despite the conviction, Thomas supporters claimed the rifle was never conclusively linked to the fatal bullets, that the wire and axle could have been collected from the scrap heap by anybody, and that there was reasonable doubt that Thomas was involved.

A second trial was ordered.

Len gave evidence that he had searched for Jeanette and Harvey’s bodies. The prosecution linked the axle and wire to Thomas’s farm, and ballistic testing showed the empty cartridge case had definitely come from Thomas’s rifle.

Thomas was convicted for a second time.

However, during the trial, a former police officer, Jack Ritchie, had written a letter to the Thomas supporters stating that, in his experience, the bullets that killed the Crewes had a certain marking on them, and the cartridge case found outside the Crewe house had other markings on it, and those types of bullets had never been placed inside those types of cartridges. This meant that Arthur Thomas’s rifle could not be conclusively linked to the killings.

The defense team travelled to Australia, where the bullets were manufactured, and were able to prove that the bullets that killed Jeanette and Harvey had been made before November 1963, and the empty cartridge case found outside the Crewe house was made after January 1964. The cartridge case had never held a bullet used in the killing.

British author David Yallop wrote a book called “Beyond Reasonable Doubt?”, in which he laid out the case against Thomas. Wire and axle that anybody could have taken from the farm; rifle could not be conclusively linked to the bullets fired; he had an alibi and no motive. Also, police had destroyed most of the evidence, so it could not be re-examined.

Prime Minister Robert Muldoon decided that Thomas should be released from prison.

In 1980, a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCOI) was conducted into the investigation of the case, and whether Thomas should ever have been arrested. They found:
The watch taken for repair to a jeweler was owned by somebody unconnected to the case, and it had been covered with animal blood.
Thomas had an alibi.
Thomas had no motive.
The axle and wire could have been removed from the farm rubbish heap by anybody.
The Thomas rifle was never conclusively linked to the bullets that killed the Crewes.
Police had used statements from prisoners against Thomas, despite the fact that those statements were contradictory and “delusional”. Police had rewarded the prisoners for these untrue statements.

The RCOI had two theories about the empty cartridge case found outside the house. Either the killer had taken an empty case that had been fired from Thomas’s rifle, ejected it outside the house, reloaded the rifle with different ammunition, killed the Crewes, and picked up those cartridge cases and left the first one while cleaning up the scene, and police could not find the case for four months; OR police had fired a bullet from the Thomas rifle in order to fabricate evidence. The RCOI decided the latter had happened.
Thomas, his family and some supporters were given some financial compensation for all they had gone through, although they couldn’t give back the over-9-years in prison, or the fact Thomas’s wife had left him.

The Governor-General at the time decided there was not enough evidence to convict police officers in a court of law for ignoring defense evidence, and manipulating or fabricating prosecution evidence.

Since 1980, Prime Ministers, and Ministers of Justice and Police have been asked to order an independent investigation into whether police officers should be held responsible for the handling of the case, and a fresh investigation into who was actually responsible for the killings. Governments have always refused, until 2011.
In 2011, the government asked the police to carry out an investigation into the handling of the case, and the suggestion of who may have killed the Crewes.
In 2014, the results of the police investigation were released. They stated that:
While police handling of the case was deficient; The axle and wire were removed from the Thomas farm rubbish heap.
The Thomas rifle was the only one linked to the bullets that killed the Crewes. Although most ballistics experts who examined the bullet fragments could only say the rifle “may” have fired the bullets, one expert, looking at photographs of the bullet fragments, stated it was “highly probable”.
Police did not state that Thomas had definitely murdered the couple.

Len, who had no alibi for the time of the killings or days of clean-up at the farm; who refused to search for his daughter and son-in-law, who knew the district and what was in people’s rubbish heaps well, who had a blood stain from his dead daughter in his back seat, and who lied about searching for the couple at trial; died in November 1992.