I’ve copped a bit of a mauling over at Kiwiblog because of my post here on Friday evening suggesting the social and economic policies Ruth Richardson imposed on New Zealand made her the most evil New Zealander of the 20th century.
David Farrar suggests I am comparing Richardson with the likes of Clayton Weatherston and Graeme Burton (despite most of their crimes being committed this century, not the last one).
I am not. The difference is that these two individuals are sociopaths who had no political motive. They acted only out of their own warped perception of what would get them what they wanted personally.
Since I’ve been called on this on the Kiwiblog thread, I’ve given some more thought to it. And I was wrong.
The most evil New Zealander(s) of the 20th century have never been identified – the person / people who bombed the Wellington Trades Hall in 1984, killing caretaker Ernie Abbott.
That was New Zealand’s only home-grown act of politically motivated terrorism.
g.blog 
Compared to the use of Massey’s Cossacks, the waterfront dispute of 51, the decision not to got to Moscow in 1980 but allow the Tour in 81 … it’s a tough field.
The difference between Richardson and the two murderers is she used a pen and oratory and the murderers used weapons.
@SPC 5:38 pm
Yep, fair call. I’m just trying to nut out the RWNJ boys who inhabit the KB comments thread for whom RR makes an erotic appearance in all their wet dreams.
If you want homne grown terrorism, consider the people who sought to impose their will by violent means and invaded various rugby grounds in 1981 (thereby overstepping the line from legitmate protest and into violence, destruction of property, and use of threats to impose their agenda). But it was all for a greater cause, eh?
The lefties just refuse to accept that the country was living on debt for the seventies and bankrupt by the mid-eighties, and if the reforms were not implemented NZ would have the IMF running the show and the assets would still have been sold.
It facinates me that lefties can lust for the money of others, so the lefties can spend it on what they think is important, and these lefties consider people who object to their lust to be the greedy ones.
@misanthropic curmudgeon 8:25 pm
The ’81 Springbok tour protests were planned as non-violent civil disobedience. For the most part, they were. Occasionally, a few people went past that, but in response to Police who had lost control (or were ordered to do serious shit – we’ll probably never know). I’m told methamphetamine was readily available to police officers who were struggling to cope with the violence levels expected of them. We’ll probably never know that for certain either.
But your comment assumes the 81 Springbok tour should have proceeded. It should not. It was orchestrated by racists there (the apartheid regime) and racists here (Muldoon’s administration) for their own political ends.
Somewhat ironic, MC, to see you defending Muldoon, who supported a centrally controlled economy to a far greater extent than the Greens would ever consider.
Wow, Toad, it has been interesting to see which bits of spin get repeated by which kiwiblog trolling regulars, in defiance of any understanding of actual history, or the effects of legislation on real people.
Loved how DPF hyped your important position within the Green party, so nice to be associating with such an important senior staffer 😉
I really wonder just how much reality ever enters the doorway of his cosy little troll-factory.
I’ve never noticed him being very accurate about anyone I know, unless they’re National party insiders (of whom I know a few …) so I just wonder who he thinks his golden intelligence source is?
Toad appears to be jumping the gun (again?) for I never condoned the police actions, nor Muldoons position (with the latter being an interfering oppressive statist in the Helen Clark mold).
Perhaps Toad ought read and engage with what is written, as opposded to assigning imagined associated positions to others and tangenting on those.
Lefties do not lust for the money of others. We just ask for our fair share of what we have earned to remain with us instead of being looted by the wealthy.
It is the wealthy right who are so jealous, of the little that ordinary people have left to them, that they want to take that as well.
If the country was bankrupt by the 80’s what do you think of the current NACT government.
By refusing to get rich bludgers to pay their fair share, and selling income earning assets, they are already headed for a bigger deficit than Muldoon’s.
Richardson is responsible for more deaths and ill health than any of those mentioned above.
From increased levels of suicide and decreased health and welfare spending, causing a depression in NZ when there wasn’t one elsewhere and as yet another proponent of giving our wealth away to offshore corporations, Richardson should be in jail for life along with her fellow criminals. Douglas, Brash, Key and Prebble.
So the deaths of Rewa Bryson, Simon Cole, Victor James Crimp, James Dickson, Sergeant Stewart Guthrie, Garry Holden, Jasmine Holden, Magnus Jamieson, Ross Percy, Vanessa Percy, Dion Percy, Aleki Tali and Leo Wilson at the hands of David Grey in 1990 is not as evil as the death of Ernie Abbott? Even though Dion and Leo were 6 year old children?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Toad was talking about Ruth Richardson – all you’re doing with the comment above is including tragic but unrelated facts as red herrings.
AFAIK, if David Grey had been adequately responded to by social agencies he was already in contact with, none of that tragic event would have happened. Nor the Burton murder in Queenstown, when a psychotic son released by the failing psychiatric services against the will of his parents, came home and killed his mother after going off his meds … but those were murders that were only obliquely political, in the sense that failed policy enabled them.
Ernie Abbott was an unintended victim of a terrorist attack which was intended to take out the entire hierarchy of the Trade Union movement, and was an explicitly political murder, which was never solved by the Police, despite Knigges Ave Police Station being almost directly across the road from the Trade Hall.
That and the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, resulting in the death of Fernando Pereira, the cameraman, by DGSE agents Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur, are the only two incidents of terrorist attacks in NZ; both during the ’80’s when there was massive political upheaval and, one may posit, interference in our political structures by the CIA, MI6 from the UK, and DGSE from France, due to our stated intentions vis-a-vis anti-nuclear policy.
Current hysteria about our SIS is playing into the hands of overseas intelligence agencies, who want NZ to allow more intelligence-sharing, and to relegate our service to even less of an active role in NZ, merely being conduits to serve the global intelligence networks.
The intention of the N/ACT Government to bring in American-style policies to the detriment of the NZ economy and especially NZ workers and unions is a known fact, relatively easy to confirm with only a cursory search of the published press releases of the past 3 months.
Why would anyone vote for a party that has systematically caused more job losses over the past 3 years, than the economy grinding down caused in the previous 3 years in the early phase of the recession. Which by the way is about due to be relabelled a crash, don’t you think?
I do not see how a political murder is somehow more evil than a non-political murder. The comment about Ruth Richardson was ridiculous because it was hysterical and patently untrue.
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Nope, Ruth Richardson still wins.
Some of her polices are still implemented and continue to cause evil or have been ‘enhanced’ to cause further suffering.
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