Pretty fly for a white guy

Written By: - Date published: 10:35 am, August 25th, 2010 - 57 comments
Categories: crime, Media, racism - Tags: , , ,

This morning we’ve been treated to the sight of the media celebrating one rich white guy (double murderer John Barlow) getting out of jail and another rich white guy (former National Minister Roger McClay) escape a prison sentence for stealing tens of thousands of dollars. You’ve got to love it.

The coverage of Barlow’s release on Breakfast was truly bizarre. Paul Henry referred to Barlow by his first name, the reporter on the scene asked him was he was going to have for dinner. It was like a hero returning to freedom. I wonder if we’ll see the same angle when double murderer David Tamihere (who, like Barlow, has also protested his innocence) is released. Somehow, I think not.

If you’re a poor Maori kid who steals $25,000 worth of goods over several offences, you’re probably going to jail. If you’re an ex-National Cabinet Minister who steals $25,000 from charities and the taxpayer, you get 300 hours community service. As far as I can see, the judge hasn’t even been required McClay to pay back the money.

Seems the rich old boys’ club is still in charge in this country.

57 comments on “Pretty fly for a white guy ”

  1. Bill 1

    A little detail on the McClay reporting.

    On the few occasions I came across this in the mainstream, I couldn’t help but notice that the fact he was an ex National minister was routinely omitted. I guess this could have been an accident or because the various media assumed everybody would know that he was a National Party minister?

    • Bright Red 1.1

      I noticed that too.

      • Edosan 1.1.1

        I did not know until I read this post that he was an ex National Minister. It’s working.

    • felix 1.2

      I noticed that as well. It’s the same framing we regularly see from some of the righties here (especially comedy, gitmo, & bilbo. higherstandard used to do it too. burt still does. It’s a very simple rule and it goes like this:

      Labour MP found wanting? Fuckin Labour.
      National MP found wanting? Fuckin politicians.

    • Mark M 1.3

      Googled Mclay fraud and of the 6 news sites referenced 5 stated he was an ex National MP or Minister.
      The one that didnt refer to him as a National MP or Minister was the Herald who had two articles.
      They did in the second article.

      You must have all been reading the one Herald article that didnt mention his National background.
      Both main TV channels stated he was from National

      • Bill 1.3.1

        I would have been either watching TVNZ news or Ch 3 news or listening to National Radio. Not reading their web based releases. And they never mentioned he was a National MP.

        National Radio still isn’t mentioning that he was a National MP. But they do say he was a children’s commissioner and names the charities he was involved with, which given their broad social focus would tend one to assume that he was an MP from a party of the left.

      • felix 1.3.2

        It’s possible I was looking at this one from 3 news.

        Or maybe this one from radio nz.

        Or maybe I just skimmed this one from the herald or this one from tvnz but failed to notice the word “national” ‘cos it was, like, not mentioned until several paragraphs in and really not made a point of.

        p.s. I think your google is broken, there are way more than six stories listed on mine.

      • Vicky32 1.3.3

        I have heard Nat Rad today and 3 News both mentioning this issue, and in dozens of newsbreaks on the radio and also 3 News, no journalist, not one, mentioned McClay’s having been a *National* MP! It was very carefully not mentioned, IMO…
        Deb

  2. Tigger 2

    Meanwhile Key is busy telling the Sentencing Trust (can’t use Sensible with their name…) how tough Nats are on crime…
    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1008/S00365/pm-talks-about-crime-with-sensible-sentencing.htm

  3. Thats where we need decent outraged citizens standing by with a bucket of pigs blood and entrails to throw over the murderous smarmy prick and a bucket of human shit to throw over the fraudulent fatcat scum who think their shit doesn’t stink…

    …and if a little shit and blood land on Paul Henry, we’ll just write it off as collateral damage and have good laugh about it over breakfast.

    • Bored 3.1

      Gotta agree with the Paul Henry collateral damage line, I think by looking at him that it has been happening (metaphorically) all his life.

      On the rich white guy, refer our comments a few days about this, seems that the old boys gang are working to form, as I said if you are a brown brother you are going to cop it.

      • pollywog 3.1.1

        No shit Bored…couple weeks ago i got breath tested in a standards booze bus roadblock with my lady beside me and all the kids in the back of the people mover.

        Naturally, i hadn’t been drinking, but of all the people who just blow and go, this arsehole cop asks for my license. I tell him i haven’t got around to replacing it since losing my wallet a few weeks earlier.

        So thats it, i’m forced to pull over, give my name, address and any criminal conviction. He does the routine check, then tells me about my conviction back in the day so all the kids can hear, and asks to see any identifying tattoos, which i have since had removed, from when i was a teenager.

        Then he checks all the vehicle stuff, current warrant, rego but over the diesel miles so i get the big lecture on what a nice guy he is for letting me off as long as sort it within 2 weeks and for not having a license.

        Only he’s not letting me off per se, as by now my lady, who’s white, has interceded cos she can see i’m just about to nut off at this prick and tell him to just do his job, book me or whatever and don’t make like he’s doing me any favours.

        So now he’s talking past me, as if i’m not there, to her and she’s all ‘yes sir, no sir, 3 bags full sir’. Meanwhile the older kids are pissing themselves laughing in the back at my irritation and the littles are starting to ask stupid questions about policemen.

        Nuthin’ but a power tripping dipshit 5oh fucktard who thinks hes doing a public service but all he’s doing is exercising his discretion to be a racist pig…if you ask me 🙂

        …and theres plenty of them around

        • Rhinocrates 3.1.1.1

          It’s called DWB – Driving While Brown.

        • Rex Widerstrom 3.1.1.2

          i get the big lecture on what a nice guy he is for letting me off as long as sort it within 2 weeks

          Without wanting to sound like one of Monty Python’s Yorkshiremen, wait till you’re arrested in front of your family, held in a filthy cell, fingerprinted, photographed, charged, dragged through the courts, pay thousands for a lawyer, only to hear a judge comment on how weak the case was when finding you not guilty.

          But no apology from him (or her), nor from the prosecutor, and certainly not from the smarmy cop sitting at the back who has the audacity to look offended that his bullshit charges didn’t stick. Wish I’d had the foresight to say what one guy said when I was waiting to formally hear my acquittal: “Thanks. Now where do I go to get my life back?”

          And then the next time, when you’re going through it all again, be told that you might well not be guilty of the offence with which you’re being charged but that you’ve “got it coming” because you “got away with” the prior offence. Then go through it four more times.

          And you can’t even console yourself that it’s not personal, it’s just racist piggery, because you’re white too and so it’s all down to the fact that the people meant to be “serving and protecting” us are “power tripping dipshit 5oh fucktards”. And no one in the system – from the local senior cop right up to the Prime Minister – gives a shit.

          • pollywog 3.1.1.2.1

            wait till you’re arrested in front of your family, held in a filthy cell, fingerprinted, photographed, charged, dragged through the courts, pay thousands for a lawyer, only to hear a judge comment on how weak the case was when finding you not guilty.

            uh yeah…can’t wait for that one 🙂

          • NickS 3.1.1.2.2

            Bring on the universal surveillance society, but only targeted at the police, in the form of “evidence recording”. For which without, a court case which relies on police witnesses would be rather problematic.

            Or at least the police should start weeding out the douchebags Stalin styles.

            • Rex Widerstrom 3.1.1.2.2.1

              Hear, hear, cameras on tasers, in patrol cars, superglued to their foreheads if needs be.

              Wouldn’t have helped me much though. They weren’t so stupid as to rely on “finding” something on me or in my car. A typical example was when my vehicle was set on fire. A few months later I’m arrested for arson and insurance fraud and told that “a car load of cleaners going to work in the early morning saw you do it and clearly identified you”.

              Only:
              1. I was elsewhere, with witnesses.
              2. I wasn’t insured and the arson meant I had to take the bus, which I bloody loathe (sorry, greenies).
              3. And of all the places I’d have chosen to have done it, right next to my parents’ house wouldn’t have been top of my list.

              That arrest lasted about 20 minutes, admittedly. But the others were just as laughable but far more complex and far more expensive to sort out – in time, money and emotional input.

              I’m not brown, so I think my offence was “answering back while in possession of a dangerous vocabulary” 😀

              • NickS

                Wouldn’t have helped me much though. They weren’t so stupid as to rely on “finding’ something on me or in my car. A typical example was when my vehicle was set on fire. A few months later I’m arrested for arson and insurance fraud and told that “a car load of cleaners going to work in the early morning saw you do it and clearly identified you’…

                Ye mind rending eldar things that’s utterly stupid, possibly more so than your other one 🙁

                You’d that the police who pull this shit would actually get in trouble for it, but I get the suspicion it’s put down to “human error” rather than “this officer is a complete idiot and should be kept away from anything more complex than a can-opener, let alone criminal investigations”.

              • Vicky32

                “”answering back while in possession of a dangerous vocabulary’ :-D”
                Very likely… In my experience, cops are not amongst the most well-educated of people!
                Deb

        • Bill 3.1.1.3

          “Meanwhile the older kids are pissing themselves laughing in the back at my irritation and the littles are starting to ask stupid questions about policemen.”

          Ah, you’ve no idea how thankful I was not to be slurping on a cuppa as I read that bit.

        • Bored 3.1.1.4

          Jeez Polly, makes me proud to be a honkey, you gotta wonder at the fuckwitism of the crew who pulled you over. Generally I have found the cops OK, especially when I have needed them, but there again Im a whitey.

          I did get batoned in 81 a few times though, it sort of taught me that anybody in a uniform would act as a gang against whoever thhey decided was not in the gang. regardless of right, wrong, morality,law, ethics etc, you just got the feeling that you were gonna get clobbered because you were there. Bit like being brown.

          • Descendant Of Smith 3.1.1.4.1

            Yeah but in 81 that went both ways. As a young rugby player being spat on by gangs of protestors as I walked down the street and having a jug smashed over my head cause I walked into a pub where I didn’t know protesters were gathering and just happened to have my club jersey on weren’t self-inflicted injuries either.

            There were plenty of us that both liked and played rugby and totally disliked apartheid – and in fact racism in New Zealand sport as well.

            There were plenty of jerks on all sides and there were more than two sides.

  4. roger nome 4

    Um – totally off topic, but It seems important enough to bring to peoples attention… Was anyone else struck by the apparent contradiction of the Employment Courts finding, in relation to the new 90 probationary employment law? The law demands nothing from employers by way of justification for a dismissal, yet the Employment Court found that the dismissal was “unjustified”. Can anyone help to clarify this please? Have Key or his representitives been in contact with the Employment Court judges and told them to interperate the legislation a certain way, or have the judges simply chosen to apply the natural justice precident, because the 90 day law goes against the very core of anglo-saxon legal tradition? i.e. the application of “natural justice” or the right to a fair trial.

    http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/employee-wins-in-first-90-day-3732746

    • Bill 4.1

      Perhaps ‘Good Faith’ provisions came into play because she should never have had to re-apply for her job because of a change of ownership, but should have been viewed as having continuous service? Meaning that 90 Day trial couldn’t lawfully be applied? Dunno. Just having a stab at possible reasoning.

      • Lanthanide 4.1.1

        I am 95% sure this is it, Bill.

        In her case the company being bought out counts as restructuring, and she should have been made redundant, with all the process that goes on around that. Instead, they made her sign a new contract and fired her under the 90 day provision. If, instead, they had done the restructuring jig properly, they probably would’ve gotten away with it.

      • Olwyn 4.1.2

        I seem to remember that this was the case; that the new law should not have been applied to her.

  5. millsy 5

    Dont forget Tracee Pigott, the white middle class real estate agent down here in New Plymouth who got acquitted for force feeding her foster daughter with hot sauce (among other things), as well as stripping her top off in the middle of the street.

    If she had been a young brown single mother on a benefit, she would be slumming it in Arohata now..

  6. roger nome 6

    hmm – actually the internet article provides a lot more information than the news did last night – looks like procedural technicality – not really a terst case.

  7. RedLogix 7

    So once again… anyone else thinking that the seven years Philip Field scored, maybe, just maybe something to do with his skin colour?

    That’s what I call, and called at the time, real racism. (Not the rather more flexible definition that Lew likes to dish out to folk who disagree with him.)

    • roger nome 7.1

      haha – true red, Lew is of the pedantic, symantic persausion. He reminds me of the rightist lawyer types we used to get at kiwiblog in the bad old days. Are you the same RedLogix that used to be botherd commenting over there?

    • pollywog 7.2

      REALLY ???..Taito got 7 yrs ???

      Fuck, that’s harsh…and what did he do again ? Try to help out some asian dude stay in the country in exchange for free labour ?

      I guess the lesson here is, people should only help out their own ‘kind’. Which explains the discretion the judiciary show towards white collar crims.

      Meanwhile i can hear the RWNJ’s saying we should all be grateful we aren’t women under sharia law. To which i say ‘Oh thank you massa i be good nigga for you massa…’

      • NickS 7.2.1

        Meanwhile i can hear the RWNJ’s saying we should all be grateful we aren’t women under sharia law. To which i say ‘Oh thank you massa i be good nigga for you massa ‘

        …Those fucktards just don’t get it, even when you point out clear as crystal examples of racism and sexism to them. But then again, they are usually delusional in first place, whether it be about history, science, economics or human rights.

      • Phillip Field, and enough of the Taito too, was a crooked bastard. Yes, and a crooked brown bastard. Its not just crooked white bastards who try to get away with things!

        • pollywog 7.2.2.1

          maybe so…

          …but the point is, if he’d been caught out for being a crooked white bastard, those crooked white bastards who hand out the sentences probably wouldn’t have sent him to the pokey to teach him/us a lesson ?

          i suppose them crooked white bastards think they were being consistent in showing no favouritism to elite crooked brown bastards as lower class crooked brown bastards trying to get away with things eh ?

          …just fucken’ lock em all up. That’ll learn us !!!

    • Bill 7.3

      Taito fucked with the white man’s preserve. Immigration. That’s a no-no.

      What’s more, he fucked with it in a way that would have smoothed the way for poor people. But that’s not all, that’s not all. The poor people whose immigration his actions could have helped were not white poor people.

      As an aside. Anybody know what happened to the people who were seeking to immigrate here? Leaned on to give evidence and then sent packing anyway, were they?

    • We should be marching in the streets over this,.You are correct Red/L. Phillip Field banged away on the words of a very dodgy character.
      All the Pacific Island people I have spoken to tell me Philip Field was only acting as Pacific people do . That a well paid influencial ex MP should recieve only community work for embezzling charatable organizations for underprivileged children stinks .This Thief should have been locked up .
      Where is raving Garth McVicar on this?

  8. Draco T Bastard 8

    Seems the rich old boys’ club is still in charge in this country.

    It’s always been there. I remember reading an opinion piece by a lawyer in the Granny detailing it a few years ago (Wish I could find it now). It’s very disturbing considering that our justice system is supposed to treat everyone equally.

  9. randal 9

    its a ll a question of mind over matter.
    THEY dont mind and we dont matter.

    • Bill 9.1

      Or a question of ‘What then?’, when there is neither mind nor matter within their craniums?

  10. MikeG 10

    Marty – Stuff reports that he has already repaid the money.

  11. KJT 11

    Can I ask again. Why was the proceeds of crime act not used on certain dodgy financiers.
    And then the SFO attacked the one who was probably least guilty.

    • MikeG 11.1

      My guess is that someone with good connections wants to pick-up South Cant Finance at a good (low) price from the Govt after they have bailed it out. That whole situation is appalling.

  12. Alex 12

    It makes one fully sick

  13. Rex Widerstrom 13

    Ahem… while agreeing that what Roger McLay did undoubtedly deserves punishment etc etc let’s be careful to remember that, in principle, no property crime deserves a prison term unless there are aggravating factors (e.g. breaking into someone’s home while they’re in it and terrifying them even if you don’t touch them) rather than secretly wishing he was banged up for the crime of being a Tory.

    Instead, Taito and Roger and the rest ought to be working their well-padded arses off repaying the community from which they stole, not soaking up another $90,000 of our money every year they’re in jail.

    • bryce 13.1

      hear hear

    • Most likely right RW.However this nasty sleazy crime by a well connected ”respected well paid white man certainly deserves more than the “light slap over the wrist” recieved by this trickster.
      I wonder who is the influence in such cases . White so called upperclass businessmen or the higher up Right-Wing organizations like the BRT.Most likely both. Its rather scary !!

      • Bright Red 13.2.1

        you don’t need direct influence. the judges and the BRT and McClay.. they’re all part of the same elite

    • Draco T Bastard 13.3

      /agreed

  14. Yeah, but one so-called rich white guy has just done about 16 years in prison – Barlow.

    McClay is a typical ex-National party minister who found a trough to stick his bloated head into. I thought he was a good guy, but once a Tory always a Tory! Enough of the racial quips – there are a few brown faces in the National Party now too!

    • pollywog 14.1

      Hah…That reminds me.

      Eskimo pies we used to be called sometimes when we tried to be whiter than white but brown on the outside.

  15. OleOlebiscuitBarrell 15

    But I thought you lefties thought that we shouldn’t be locking people up for “mere” crimes against property. Does that theory not apply when the perpetrator is white and well off?

    • felix 15.1

      I agree, it doesn’t make sense to lock people up for years just for property crimes. But who’s saying otherwise?

      The post isn’t.

      Maybe you imagined it.

  16. Vicky32 16

    Nandor Tanczos (I hope I spelled that right) has a very blog on the TV3 site about this kind of thing (sorry, I don’;t have a link.)
    Deb

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