Racketeers apply two-prong scare threat pincer  Overseas scammers have stepped up their assault on domestic New Zealand internet users in a two-fold pincer movement. The first pincer is a series of telephone calls that seek to alert the user of the perils that they face from the existence on their computers of unwanted bugs of various descriptions. This is run in harness now with the placement on the computer of an actual bug that talks back to the user and alerts them to the existence on their computer of viruses in the spyware category that have turned up on the…

Engineering Students Must Rub Shoulders with their Workforce Canterbury University’s dining firewall between its students and its campus site construction force personnel represents the most valuable control experiment into the causes and effects of the nation’s quality control and productivity problems which is the separate development of management and those who actually do the work. Canterbury University in the middle of the last century was a crucible of engineering science, notably seismic science. A series of earthquakes which coincidentally began in Christchurch demonstrated that the post World War 2 surge in seismic technology has somehow tapered off and that there…

As its future hangs in the balance a veteran EU trouble shooter weighs up the Union, past and present. Five questions now for Michael Lake.........  From the MSCNewsWire reporters' deskFew officials have been involved in the EU at such a high level for so long and in so many sensitive postings as New Zealand-born Michael Lake, former EU ambassador to Turkey and to Hungary. Along the way he served also in New York, Brussels, and Tokyo. He was witness to the EU and participant in its operations from the outset of Britain’s membership when he was literally drafted in to…

President of UK Football Foundation now takes Five Questions..... Lord Pendry is familiar in New Zealand within sporting circles. He retains too a constant guardian-angel like role over the nation, most recently when in the House of Lords he challenged the Government over the need to control the validity of labelling for Manuka honey. He was for many years the Labour Member of Parliament for Stalybridge and Hyde. In 2000, he was appointed member of the Privy Council on the recommendation of Tony Blair. After the 2001 election he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Pendry of Stalybridge. An…

Reinforces New Zealand connections with doomed Atlantic Liner  New Zealand’s connection to the world’s most famous shipwreck the Titanic has become reinforced with the entry by Ocean Gate into the passenger tour business starting next year with scheduled dive tours to the wreck. Ocean Gate is organised by Stockton Rush (pictured above) who is part of the family of the late Stockton Rush 11 who invented the high end terrestrial tourist business in New Zealand. United States oilman Stockton Rush 11 developed Takaro Lodge in the South Island southern lakes district as a conservation and tourist centre for the rich.…

BNZ parent National Australia Bank is major force in introducing Islamic banking Rugbyman Sonny Williams made it clear that he was no longer going to prance around pitches attired in kit promoting usury. Rugby officials instantly kicked for touch. They heaped upon themselves sackcloth and ashes. All Black branding sponsor Bank of New Zealand kept quiet. It might have been viewed though as another publicity opportunity. BNZ parent National Australia Bank is a major force in opening up Australasia to Islamic investors from the Gulf and Southeast Asia that seek to adhere to religious principles such as bans on interest…

Renting turned out to be as dangerous for production engineers as for families. The putting into financial play in the late 1980s of the nation’s castings, forgings and machining engineers had the effect of stripping out their ownership of their own sites and thus leaving them prey to the real estate sector and its exorbitant demands. New Zealand’s short lease regime and even shorter rent review periods effectively threw the nation’s medium to heavy production engineers into the hands of the non-productive property sector. This bitter harvest coincided with the disappearance from New Zealand of its merchant banking capability. There…

Better known today as an existential author and public ethicist John Wareham (above) originally burst upon the national commercial consciousness with a series of proclamations and books that explored the changing nature of New Zealand management techniques and attitudes that began to take shape in the later 1960s. He expanded his management consultancy into Australia and then to the United States. The onetime New York resident has returned to live in Wellington. Five questions for John Wareham... You once claimed that the unsuitability of a wife for an achieving careerist would become grounds for divorce. How do you see this…

What a Difference three years has made to the Media Class Out the book came on its triennial pre-election rotation shaming mission this time of the military. Broadcasters adopted solemn visages to hype the soufflé. Print columnists responded piously in their customary and secondary Pavlovian pick-up role. The public responded. With indifference. The media class had flailed away at the usual levers. They were no longer connected. Less than a year has passed since the two New Zealand newspaper chains first lodged their merger application with the Commerce Commission. Yet industrially it is an epoch ago. It is as if…

Ground floor opening for the state to back IT manufacturing lost. Progeni’s Perce Harpham explains what went wrong...   During the 1980s Australasia’s version of Silicon Valley was New Zealand’s Hutt Valley. Here, a coalition of public and private enterprises had anticipated the screen graphic presentation techniques that would later become standard fixtures. At the forefront of these developers was Progeni led by Perce Harpham (above). Progeni had developed its desk top computer for the global marketplace. It needed just one thing which was a local user base in education. But Apple, whose Steve Wozniak was a constant presence in…

French Polynesia begins in New Zealand He looks like the star of a television series set in the 1950s about British country doctors or family solicitors of those solid and dependable times. But former French premier Francois Fillon considered by the English-speaking world to be a shoo-in for his country’s presidency is now looking anything but a winner. In recent weeks the Mr Clean of europolitics has found himself be-spattered in every variety of calumny and remarkable even for a country renowned for its political spoils system. The hapless Mr Fillon is looking less and less like the fulcrum around…