A grateful nation - yeah, right.

eMAIL newsletter ^ | November 14 2003 | Rodney Hide

[shaggy eel]

“The Queen and I bid you a very warm welcome home. Through all the great trials and sufferings which you have undergone at the hands of the Japanese you have been constantly in our thoughts. We know from reports we have already received how heavy those sufferings have been. We know also that these have been endured by you with the highest courage. We mourn with you the death of so many of your gallant comrades. With all our hearts we hope that your return from captivity will bring you and your families a full measure of happiness which you may long enjoy together.”

-- King George VI: Telegram to returning POWs

Telegraphist Ross Lynneberg returned home from his war at 4pm Tuesday 27 November 1945. He started work next morning at John Newton and Sons soap factory. He worked his entire life. He never grumbled.

Mr Lynneberg is of a generation the like of which we will never see again.

He had been mobilised early in 1940. He served through the Pacific with the Royal NZ Navy. Our government then transferred him to the Royal Navy. He and three comrades were shipped through to Hong Kong.

The timing was poor. Very poor. He arrived in Hong Kong the day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. That same day they attacked Hong Kong. The colony fell on Christmas Day. The Japanese took Mr Lynneberg and a great many others prisoner.

Conditions were bad. Very bad. Mr Lynneberg suffered malnutrition and dry beriberi. His fellow POWs died at the rate of several a day. He was held in Hong Kong for nine months. He was then shipped through to Japan.

On 27 September 1942 Mr Lynneberg found himself one of 1,816 POWs stowed into three holds on the freighter “Lisbon Maru” bound for Japan.

Mr Lynneberg was in number one hold.

“It was impossible for everyone to lie down at the same time so many of us took turns and many were unable to sleep for more than a few minutes because of their beriberi. The latrine was a covered trough on the deck while drinking water was from a tank on deck but those who partook of it went sick with a type of dysentery.”

It was a shocking trip. It was about to get a lot worse. The “Lisbon Maru” carried no Red Cross markings to signal that POWs were stuffed in her holds. On the night of 31 September, the submarine USS “Grouper” got on her tail believing her to be a troop carrier. She waited for first light. At dawn she fired six torpedoes and caught the “Lisbon Maru” on the stern with one. The “Lisbon Maru” was mortally damaged.

The Japanese commander Lt Hideo Wada ordered the hatches battened down. He then transferred the 778 Japanese troops that were on board to the destroyer “Toyokuni Maru” leaving the guard, crew and POWs on board.

“Our next request was to go to the latrines but this wasn’t granted so the few buckets we had amongst us were used and were soon overflowing. We asked to empty them but were not allowed so by the evening the air was thick and nasty tasting due to the smell associated with dysentery. We also learnt there was no food available and with sunset they battened us down completely by covering the hatch with a tarpaulin and drove in wedges to keep it in place. To top this off the heavy steel wire cables used in the towing effort to reach shallow water were placed on top.”

There was now no means of exit and no fresh airflow. The conditions worsened very rapidly.

“The air had now become very thick and even the fittest of us were sweating and panting, while several of the sick who had been sent to our hold were raving mad and were screaming out for air and water alternately. I myself had about a mouthful of water left in my water bottle which every now and again I’d empty into my mouth, sluice it around and return it back to the bottle for next time.”

“That night I spent checking my watch wondering, among many things, why the minutes went around so slowly.”

The men in number two hold managed to get into contact with RN men in number one hold by tapping code on the bulkhead. They could talk to those in number three hold through a vent. They learned that conditions in number one were similar to their own. The conditions in number three were getting desperate.

Number three hold was taking water. The pumps had to be manned. Each man would do about six strokes on the pump before fainting because of the extreme heat and lack of air. In number two hold, in similar conditions, they found that by lying flat and not moving they remained conscious. Two men died in hold number one from diphtheria.

By dawn 2 October, twenty-four hours after the torpedo had struck, the ship began to lurch and stagger. It was clear that she was going to sink. Since all requests to the Japanese had been ignored or refused, Lt Colonel Stewart authorised a small party to attempt a break out.

One of the men produced a kitchen knife that had gone undetected by the Japanese. Lt HM Howell climbed the ladder in pitch darkness to attempt to cut an opening. Trying to hang on with one hand, while thrusting the knife with the other was too much -- Howell gave up due to lack of oxygen.

At 08:10, Captain Shigeru sent a flag message to the “Toyokuni Maru” requesting permission for “all” to abandon ship. The reply was that a ship would come alongside and take off the Japanese guards and crew, but not the POWs.

At 09:00 Lt Howell tried again. This time he succeeded.

Lt Howell and Lt Potter plus one or two others climbed onto the deck. They saw some gunners trying to get through the portholes from number three hold onto the well-deck. Howell and Potter unscrewed a bulkhead door and let them out.

They then walked slowly toward the bridge asking to be allowed to address the captain of the ship. The Japanese opened fire with their rifles, killing one man, and wounding Lt GC Hamilton. They fired again, hitting Lt Potter and one or two other ranks who had climbed onto the deck. Lt Potter subsequently died. The remaining men returned to the hold and reported to Colonel Stewart that the ship was very low in the water and evidently about to sink.

Suddenly the ship lurched, and began sinking by the stern, the water rushing into the now open hold. The forward section remained protruding from the water for about an hour.

Lt Colonel Stewart gave the order to abandon ship. The Japanese soldiers and sailors standing aboard ships alongside fired at the escaping prisoners including those swimming in the water.

Ross Lynneberg survived the mad rush out of number one hold.

“The hatch boards were slid aside making an opening to fresh air and causing a mad scramble up the stairs -- people trampling over screaming bodies that would never leave the hold. Many of the dead had been crushed under foot in the mad rush to leave the hold after which there were some of us sorting out items we wished to salvage.”

“Having collected the articles I wanted, I made my way on deck to find it over-crowded, with the sea breaking over the hatch next to our vacated one, the stern was well under with the bow well up. I stood for a few minutes then asked why they weren’t taking to the water and was told by many that they couldn’t swim. To this my response was that it was a good time to learn and if they weren’t going over the side then make way for one who would be.”

About four Japanese ships were standing-by but they made no attempt to assist the prisoners. Ropes were dangling from the ships. As prisoners tried to climb them they were allowed to get within inches of the deck, only to be kicked back over the side.

The plan changed once Chinese junks and sampans started picking up POWs. The Japanese realised that if they could not kill them all then they had to look like they were trying to effect a rescue.

The Japanese had intended to let the prisoners all drown. The aim was to blame the Americans for the loss.

The POWs could have all been saved had the Japanese transferred them at the same time they had transferred their own troops.

Mr Lynneberg was a very good swimmer. He swam one-and-a-half to two miles against a fast running current. The Japanese boats were using their props to kill POWs in the water beside him but Mr Lynneberg managed to avoid being sucked under. He eventually managed to scramble aboard a Japanese patrol boat.

“On the day the Lisbon sunk we were lucky for the sun was shining and it dried and warmed us but for the following two days it was cold, wet and windy -- so cold was it that three or four who were too weak to move about at night and keep themselves warm were found frozen stiff in the morning. The other two lads and myself took turns sharing my shirt -- we would cuddle together, rub each other’s back -- in fact we tried practically all possible promotions of circulation to try and keep ourselves warm. As for food -- that was still missing although the Japs when they picked us up, supplied us with hot milk and biscuits -- so except for an occasional stew our meals for the next two days was the rice that the Japs hadn’t eaten made into rice balls and then you had to be lucky to get one or a portion off one from your chums.”

On 5 October all the prisoners who had been recaptured were assembled on the dock at Shanghai for a roll call. Of the original 1,816 prisoners, 970 answered their names. 846 had perished. The “Lisbon Maru” had proved a death ship.

Thirty-five of the worst dysentery patients were left in Shanghai and the remainder were taken aboard the SS Shinsei Maru. Five men later died. “One we buried at sea on our way to Japan was NZD RNVR Murdo Stewart [from Christchurch] who died on 10 October 1942, the night before we reached Japan.”

On arrival at Moji en route for Osaka fifty more very sick prisoners were dropped off at Kokura with a similar number at Hiroshima. Five hundred went on to Kobe and the remainder to Osaka. 200 died during the first winter from diphtheria, diarrhoea, pneumonia, and malnutrition.

Mr Lynneberg spent the remainder of the War at Osaka 1 and 2, and Notogawa POW camps. “[On my arrival at Osaka] I was suffering badly from malnutrition and dry beriberi so that while the fit boys started work after about six weeks, those like myself who couldn’t work were sent to a place called a hospital which was located under a grandstand in a sports arena and here at least five lads would die each 24 hours. The number of patients were around 90-100 and every few days a lorry would bring in fresh cases, some of whom had not survived their journey -- many of the remainder so far gone that they survived only a few hours.”

Miraculously, and through extreme will power and physical toughness, Mr Lynneberg survived. He recovered. After three months he was shifted back to the camp and was sent to work in cement works, a foundry, on the wharves, at a timber yard and reclaiming land from a lake.

There was a grim humour occasionally in the camps. Mr Lynneberg remembers some of the graffiti in the toilets: “At the going down of the Sun [Japanese] and in the mourning we will remember them”.

Mr Lynneberg had a very tough war. He suffered malaria. He was subject to cruel and unusual punishment and probable medical experimentation: “About this time we were subjected also to what I think were experiments -- using us as guinea pigs -- for on returning to camp after work for some days we were given injections, the method used certainly not being of our hygienic standard.”

“On one occasion a Yank was made to settle into a fire tub of water where next morning he was found frozen dead.”

“Then while working near the camp one day a B29 went over head and later we heard an explosion and saw a column of smoke rise skyward with a large mushroom top. I thought good work for it seemed as if the bomber must have hit an ammunition factory and this gave us another three days in the camp before returning to work. One afternoon on our return to camp from a working party there was a strange Jap officer asking if anyone knew anything about radiation poisoning -- we had never heard of it. Shortly after this while at work a guard came cycling on to the job site shouting something to our guard who immediately dropped his rifle and took off on the push bike never to be seen again.”

Mr Ross Lynneberg lived where so many had died. He made it home to his family and his fiancée. He started work the very next day. He worked hard all his life. Only when researching his memoirs did he discover that he hadn’t been paid his full wages while a POW. He discovered the error after requesting his service file.

The deal had been that he was to be paid by the Royal Navy and topped up to the Royal NZ Navy rate of pay by the New Zealand government. There was what they call in the military an “administrative oversight”. There was no pay for him when he arrived in Hong Kong. His pay sheets had not been organised. The paymaster advanced him $HK30 because he had no pay and no money. His pay was to be sorted out but the Japanese put paid to that. He was subsequently notified missing presumed dead and even his top-up pay was stopped. His top-up pay was at least sorted out upon his return home.

The confusion over his base Royal Navy pay was that his father was banking his service pay. His father was working a double-shift at the soap factory and also putting the pay from one shift in the same account for his son. Mr Ross Lynneberg simply assumed that the tidy sum in the account when he arrived home was from his Royal Navy pay.

Having discovered the error, Mr Lynneberg wrote to Minister of Defence Hon Mark Burton on 29 March 2000. He explained that his pay was outstanding. The Minister responded two months later simply to confirm his war service and to conclude, “As this matter is entirely at the discretion of the British Authorities, there is unfortunately nothing that I can do to assist you in obtaining the arrears of pay which you are seeking”.

Not satisfied, Mr Lynneberg wrote to me on 8 January 2002. I went to see him. We had a great day together. Mr Lynneberg is healthy, fit and very quick-witted. I very much admire him. I obtained his service file both from New Zealand and Great Britain. I researched his case.

I set his case out to the Prime Minister on 19 March 2002. Mr Lynneberg and Mr Burton have been corresponding ever since.

I calculated that Mr Lynneberg was owed 313 pounds, 12 shillings and three pence from both the New Zealand and British governments.

Hon Mark Burton finally concluded on 26 September 2003 that Mr Lynneberg is owed 238 pounds and 10 shillings all from the British government. He then concluded -- once again -- that there was nothing he could do.

Adjusting for inflation, and converting to New Zealand dollars, Mr Lynneberg is owed $NZ17,500 not including interest.

Our government accepts that Mr Lynneberg was short-changed. They just don’t accept any responsibility for it. They say there is nothing that they can do.

This week the Holmes Show highlighted Mr Lynneberg’s plight. Hon Mark Burton explained on TV: “It is not an isolated case. There may be any number of people with any number of grievances they want resolved and we can’t simply in an ad hoc way see the government pick those things up”.

It’s true that there are many New Zealanders with a grievance wanting a hand-out. But I know of only one POW with his pay outstanding.

Prime Minister Helen Clark in the House declared that I was, “Asking the New Zealand government to pay the wages owed by another government.”

This is true too. I believe New Zealand taxpayers should pay the wages owed to Mr Lynneberg. It doesn’t look likely that the Brits will pay up. So we should. It was our government on our behalf that sent Mr Ross Lynneberg to war.

I believe that we owe Mr Lynneberg and his generation more than we can ever repay them. But we surely owe Mr Lynneberg the pay that our government promised. He signed up to fight for our country. Our government agreed to pay him wages -- and to top up any shortfall from his Royal Navy pay. Well, it was short. The government admits that at least. We owe him his top-up. Let’s pay him -- and let two governments wrangle forever about whether the bill should be picked up by British or New Zealand taxpayers.

Let’s not leave it to an 82-year-old veteran to fight for the pay that he is owed with the British government half-the-world away.

Mr Lynneberg has fought his war. He deserves our support and respect.

Mr Lynneberg sat up in the public gallery in our parliament at question time this week. It was the first time he had been to parliament since he was a school pupil. I asked the Prime Minister about the pay that he is owed. Our Prime Minister ducked and weaved to try to blame his pay woes on the British. It was the day after Armistice Day.

MPs were very moved by Mr Lynneberg’s plight. They wanted to have a whip around to make up his pay. But Mr Lynneberg thanked us and politely said no. He doesn’t want charity. Just his pay.

In the same year that Mr Lynneberg wrote his first letter to Hon Mark Burton, Brian Gary Rees was convicted for assault, for carrying a knife in a public place, resisting arrest and fraud. At the time of his crimes Rees was the same age as Mr Lynneberg was when he once again stood on New Zealand soil home from his war.

Rees beat 51-year-old Mr Michael Shanks unconscious. Mr Shanks had gone to the aid of two women Mr Rees was abusing. For his trouble, he suffered a broken nose and cheek bone, a chipped tooth and cuts to his nose and tongue.

Rees was sentenced to two-and-a-half years jail on 7 March 2000 for the assault. He received other jail sentences, but these were to be served concurrently. Taking into account remand time, parole and good behaviour, he was due for release in April or May 2001, after just 13 or 14 months. But there was another “administrative oversight” and he was not released until late September.

So he served only one year and seven months of his two-and-a-half year sentence. But that still meant that he had been kept in jail 149 days more than he legally should have been. I would have said good job. But our government paid Rees $42,000 compensation. He got $281 a day for each extra day he was in jail, even though his actual jail term was much shorter than his sentence.

The Japanese held Mr Ross Lynneberg prisoner for 1,374 days. He doesn’t even get paid the wages he was due, let alone the $281 a day that we had to pay to Rees. One man served his country. The other is a thug. One gets a pay out. The other doesn’t even get paid.

The Prime Minister wrote to me last year declaring me “disingenuous” for comparing Mr Lynneberg’s case to that of Rees’s. Mr Lynneberg, she wrote, “was the victim of particular circumstances in the Second World War over which the New Zealand government had no direct control. Rees, on the other hand, was the subject of an administrative mistake by a government agency.”

She neglected to note that Mr Lynneberg was a serviceman. And that Rees was a criminal.

And so Mr Lynneberg still has not been paid -- after all these years. Around-and-around the political-bureaucratic merry-go-round he goes.

I have had so many questions for Mr Lynneberg each time that we have met. I asked him why he started work the day after he returned home. Why not take some time off to recover and enjoy time with his family and fiancée? His laconic reply: “Working in the soap factory was a whole lot easier than working for the Japanese.” He is from another time. He is of a different generation.

Mr Lynneberg is a living piece of history. He witnessed the bombing of Hiroshima. Here is the man living that we see in grainy film clips emerging gaunt and starved from Japanese POW camps. Those poor men looked more like stick insects than human beings. I can’t imagine how he survived what he did.

He is not as Minister Mark Burton implies just another whinger wanting a handout.

I watched him looking down on our parliament with bemusement on his face. He will see off this Prime Minister and Minister of Defence. He will see me off from parliament too. Mickey Savage was Prime Minister when he went off to fight.

But I will get him his pay before I go. We owe it to him.

We won’t see his like ever again. We do truly need to remember them. Not only those who died. But those like Mr Lynneberg who lived.

You can read a copy of Minister of Defence Mark Burton’s letter admitting that Mr Ross Lynneberg’s pay was 238 pounds and 10 shillings short but that there is nothing that he can do to assist him with the shortfall:

http://rodneyhide.com/HideSight/Addenda/20031114.php

HideSight is a regular column from Rodney Hide MP sent from his Epsom office. To subscribe to HideSight visit http://rodneyhide.com or read the HideSight archive at http://rodneyhide.com/HideSight/Archive/

[shaggy eel]

A long read but very worthwhile. An illustration of how values have shifted.

[shaggy eel]

ping

[shaggy eel]

ping

[91B]

Thanks for posting the story of this extraordinary man.

Helen Clarke is a blithering boob (I've seen her question time performance a few times on C-SPAN).

[shaggy eel]

,,, you mean Parliamentary question time?

[AMNZ]

Excellent post and good timing. We just had our Veterans Day - about the only honor most of these guys that served so well will get. Unforunately, our scoundrels get more than they should, same as yours.

[shaggy eel]

,,, I posted this long account from Saint Rodney because it's a very good example of how those who have built NZ in many different ways are being trampled by Klark's deconstruction agenda as she redistributes the wealth.

It's certainly close enough for Veteran's Day, which is called Armistace Day here.

[11B3]

Check this out for similarity!

RUSS CARMACK | THE NEWS TRIBUNE War veteran a living reminder - Glenn Oliver, 84, on left, greets students as they leave the Veterans Day program in the Stanley Elementary School auditorium Friday. They also pause to shake hands with other honored veterans, Ken Leavens, 84, and James Alwood, 81. Oliver survived the Bataan Death March and the sinking of a prisoner of war ship.

Survivor among survivors

ANGIE LEVENTIS; The News Tribune

Nearly 60 years ago, a Japanese "hellship" full of American prisoners of war sank in the Pacific Ocean, taking the lives of all but eight of the estimated 1,800 aboard.

Only three Americans are alive today who remember the sinking of the Arisan Maru, one of the worst maritime war losses in American history.

Former Cpl. Glenn Oliver of Tacoma is one of those last three survivors.

"It's difficult to talk about," Oliver said. "I worked with those men for 21 months, several hundred of them. It's ... difficult."

The 84-year-old World War II veteran is a walking miracle - a "survivor among survivors," said retired U.S. Army Col. Gerald Schurtz, past-president of the Bataan POW Association in New Mexico.

Oliver endured the Bataan Death March, a bloody 6-day trek of more than 70 miles in which American prisoners who fell behind were killed or buried alive.

He was beaten, starved and forced to watch his fellow soldiers executed during three years as a prisoner of war. Then on Oct. 24, 1944, he escaped what should have been a certain death at sea.

"I was awestruck when I heard his story," said Steven Depuydt, a music teacher who invited Oliver to meet students at Stanley Elementary School during a Veterans Day assembly last week. "We're fast losing our World War II veterans, and I wanted the children to hear this piece of history."

Today, Oliver plans to spend Veterans Day quietly flying his flag in memory of all the men and women who died protecting their country - especially the estimated 1,800 aboard the Arisan Maru, whose graves lie beneath the waves somewhere off the coast of the Philippines.

Honeymoon in training

Oliver was in his early 20s when he joined the National Guard in 1939. On Feb. 10, 1941, three days after marrying his high school sweetheart, Esther, he was called to active duty and shipped away from his hometown of Aitkin, Minn. Oliver spent his honeymoon in training.

His tank battalion was sent to the Commonwealth of the Philippines in the fall of 1941. On Dec. 7, bombs shook Pearl Harbor and thrust the United States into war.

Ten hours and 45 minutes later, the Japanese hit Clark Air Field roughly 60 miles north of Manila, where Oliver was stationed.

"They bombed the heck out of us," he said. "At first we thought they were our planes."

The Japanese needed a stepping stone to control Asia, and the American stronghold in the Philippines was an inviting target. Oliver and his fellow soldiers fought alongside novice Filipino forces.

They held on for five months before retreating deep into the Bataan Peninsula and eventually surrendering. When the end came on April 9, 1942, the captors realized they had nowhere to house their 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners.

The exhausted, wounded men were forced to march between 50 and 100 miles from the southern tip of the peninsula to a POW barracks named Camp O'Donnell.

They were kicked, beaten and deprived of food. Many who fell behind were bayoneted, and Oliver remembers that many men carried their fellow soldiers to save them from execution.

Only about 54,000 reached the camp. Oliver was a prisoner in enemy hands for nearly three and a half years.

"It was 1,270 days," Oliver said. "One thousand, two hundred and seventy days."

He went four months without a bath. He ate rice boiled into paste twice daily and sometimes, on a lucky day, a small cat or dog. He dug graves for his fellow POWs with a short-handled spade.

Oliver has kept several testaments of his days as a prisoner, including a copy of the 1944 Japanese directive demanding that he and all other POWs be exterminated. He has a translated version provided by the U.S. government:

"Whether they are disposed of individually or in groups, or however it is done ... beheading, poisonous gasses in prisons or through decapitation, dispose of them ... aim to not allow the escape of one single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces."

Bound for Japan

Oliver thought he'd been saved when Allied forces attempted a return invasion in the fall of 1944.

He was wrong. The Japanese rounded up as many American and Filipino prisoners as possible and crammed them into the holds of freight ships, destined for Japan.

On Oct. 10, Oliver was forced aboard the Arisan Maru. It bore none of the white crosses that should have marked it a prisoner of war ship, a violation of international law. For 14 days, Oliver lived with prisoners plagued with dysentery and malaria in a cavity so small he couldn't stand up or lie down.

Some prayed for death. Not Oliver.

"I wanted to come back to my wife," he said.

While some men in hellships went crazy, Oliver made historical notes in his pocket Bible and clung to thoughts of Esther.

On Oct. 24, an American submarine torpedoed what appeared to be an enemy ship. The Japanese crew sealed Oliver and his fellow prisoners inside and escaped, taking all lifeboats.

The ship split in two. Oliver survived by clinging to the front side of the wreckage.

He piled planks under his chest and held on for several days, treading water as the 20-foot waves crashed around him.

"When I woke up, there was no one in sight. I don't remember a lot of that," Oliver said. "Suddenly, it was morning ... I don't know, I might have blacked out."

Weak and hungry, he was finally rescued by a passing ship. It was the enemy.

Once again, Oliver was a POW until the war ended in the fall of 1945. Then he was hospitalized for more than a year.

He said the hardest thing was getting used to sleeping in a bed for the first time in almost four years.

"I slept in my tank, under my tank, next to my tank, on cement and on a dirt floor in the POW camp," Oliver said.

He went home to Esther, and they had two daughters and six grandchildren. He was called up to active duty again for 19 months during the Korean War. He's lived in Tacoma for more than 50 years.

"These men dodged death several times over. What they've lived through is nothing short of an out-of-this world experience," said Schurtz, past-president of the Bataan POW Association. His father and uncle were forced aboard another Japanese hellship, the Oryoku Maru; his father died.

Oliver is a living reminder of near-forgotten history. He flips through a photo album encasing his Purple Heart certificate, Red Cross postcards from his wife and a roster of all the men aboard the Arisan Maru. His finger runs down the columns and pages of names that are gone but not forgotten.

"All those men," he said, closing the album.

[91B]

I think so. I figured it was like Prime Minister's question time in the UK (which we can watch any week that Parliament is in session on C-SPAN, I know, I'm a nerd). Anyway< I thought her performance was pretty sad.

[Neophyte]

You know what, John? I've just returned home after about 40 days overseas and found here the same sad story.

The wealth, or whatever has left of it, is continuing to be redistributed, and the only real beneficiaries are the bureaucrats and the Labour sycophants.

It's a shame that the government refuses to find about 20 grand for an elderly war veteran whose grievancies are perfectly justified, but in the same time spends millions on Maori Television, their own crazy travelling expenses and whatnot...

With my long experience of living under Communist regimes, the only comment I have is as following: why am I not surprised?

[Travis McGee]

Wow! I'm passing this to my sister in Christchurch.

[Brian Allen]

Peking KKKlark's ilk favor only groups.

Ross Lynneberg, poor bastard, is an individual.

Next?

Hugs and kisses -- B A

[PS: Anyone down and under there know how to set up http://www.freenewzealand.com ? Web page designer/Webmaster Wanted!]

[AMNZ]

I keep urging shaggy to get his A into the political game down there. NZ needs Klark beaten badly. I'm going to pry him a little harder next month while I'm down there.

[Brian Allen]

<< I keep urging shaggy to get his A into the political game under down there ... >>

Me too. I'll also be under down there to see him soon and will also give him a bit of a FResh nudge.

[blackie]

Good stuff ~ I get Sir Rodney's "HideSight" ~ I recommend it to everyone!

http://rodneyhide.com

[shaggy eel]

I think so. I figured it was like Prime Minister's question time in the UK (which we can watch any week that Parliament is in session on C-SPAN, I know, I'm a nerd). Anyway< I thought her performance was pretty sad.

,,, you're no nerd. More Americans need to look outside their own country from time to time. I wish I could get C-SPAN. Clark is only in Parliament about 42% of the time for question time. She has no ability to handle criticism at any level - similar to Mugabe, Castro and her other peers.

[shaggy eel]

,,, welcome home Serge! BUMP

[91B]

Thanks for the nerd vote of confidence, but I really don't mind, I love politics and I enjoy watching how our cousins in the Anglosphere deal with the issues. The questions that day involved some sort of scandal (prisons maybe?) and she was getting it from both conservatives (I think) and a Maori Green. They were hammering her pretty hard and she was giving one and two word responses (generally yes or no with almost no elaboration). She didn't look like she was a particularly articulate leader. Any chance that you guys will be able to get rid of her anytime soon?

[shaggy eel]

,,, gentlemen, you're flattering me. The coming new year will be a busy one for me. I'm venturing into provincial New Zealand in a small business sort of way. Accordingly, I may be on FR a bit less regularly. Brian's FreeNZ site is one of the most promising avenues of growth for the cause that I can imagine.

Also, I've thought for some time that the capacity to tap into FM bands in order to engage younger listeners is presently well under-utilised here. The last person to run a political station here was Lindsay Perigo with his Radio Liberty effort. What we really need here is a Rush Limbaugh medium - like Perigo was trying to create. He managed to create a following.

[shaggy eel]

Any chance that you guys will be able to get rid of her anytime soon?

,,, here's hoping for that possibility. The centre right Party is NATIONAL. Today it's deputy [Nick Smith] finds out whether he survives a challenge from Gerry Brownlee. What a drama. Don Brash recently toppled Bill English in a leadership coup. Now is the time for this Party to sort out it's pecking order and start hitting hard if it wants to contest an election. Labour is serious about keeping power and has structures and ongoing payments in place to ensure that. The road has never been tougher for NATIONAL and it will need knowhow and a lot more boldness to navigate to that end. Presently, the Party able to pitch objective questions and cause ripples is ACT. In my view, NATIONAL is still very much in disarray.