I was tempted to make the award to the National Party caucus for sticking with Bill and Paula as leaders but it seemed to me that was a cause of celebration not denigration.
But there was one person who managed to attract attention for all the wrong reasons. For going on a racist rant that would have been embarrassing in the 1970s let alone now. And for breaching acceptable standards that egregiously that NBR showed him the door.
Spinoff has the background:
Bob Jones will be filing no more for the National Business Review after the deletion of his most recent contribution, which included a call for an annual “Māori Gratitude Day” (which he later renamed “Māori Appreciation Day”) and sparked online disgust, was pulled from the paper’s website.
The inciting passage in the property magnate and polemicist’s “Bits and Bobs” column, which carried the subheading “Time for a troll”, argued, “as there are no full-blooded Māoris in existence it indisputably follows that had it not been for migrants, mainly Brits, not a single Māori alive today … would have existed”. Ergo, he continued, “it’s long overdue for some appreciation. I have in mind a public holiday where Māori bring us breakfast in bed or weed our gardens, wash and polish our cars and so on, out of gratitude for existing.”
The column, which appeared in the print edition of the NBR on Friday, provoked angry responses when screenshots were posted on social media. “I couldn’t be more disappointed in the NBR for publishing this,” tweeted Herald columnist Lizzie Marvelly. “If you subscribe, feel free to voice your repulsion with cancelled subscriptions.”
There is a dispute about whether Jones jumped or was he pushed. He says:
“As a result I shan’t bother writing any more for NBRwhich I only did at the owner’s request to help them out. I’ve certainly got better things to do with my time.”
But NBR sees it differently. Again from Spinoff:
In what appears to be a different version of events to Jones’ statement that “I shan’t bother writing any more for NBR”, the source at the publication said the decision to terminate the column was made at its end, and communicated with Jones in a telephone conversation.
I am pleased that spouting such racist nonsense is now longer tolerated. And that even in these days of click bait there are some standards the NBR is not prepared to break.
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