Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Cindy Kiro's stance on Youth Justice lacks punch

Cindy Kiro, the pointlessly useless Children's Commissioner has whipped herself into a lather (that has got to be illegal!) over Nationals plan to to something about some of our moronic, wasted youth by putting them in "boot camps".

Tougher, longer sentences have not deterred criminals and all the evidence suggests initiatives that are punitive, employ shock-tactics, or use corrective training as the basis for reforming young offenders are largely ineffective.

"The most effective ways of reforming child and youth offenders focus on addressing the issues in their lives rather than just dishing out punishment. Reform comes from teaching them new skills for addressing their problems. "The hype around escalating serious youth offending and alleged public concerns about unsafe communities is not supported by data. The figures have stayed quite steady for the past 10 years. voxy.co.nz


Ciro underplays the seriousness of the problem and ignores the fact that "tougher sentences" are not being applied at all, in fact quite often young offenders do not get punished or get made to takes responsibility at all and that is the problem we are talking about here.

Kiro's stance is yet more evidence that she is out of touch, ignorant of the facts and not doing her job properly.


c Political Animal 2009


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Promise of Bailout bad omen for taxpayers

Seems John Key is a socialist in drag:

Prime Minister John Key has signalled that the Government could step in as a last resort to prevent renowned whiteware maker Fisher & Paykel from collapsing. Stuff.co.nz

F& P have been ripping kiwis off for 75 years with overpriced poorly made whiteware and now taxpayers could be bailing it out because of its bad management.

This is something Labour would have contemplated so is clearly the wrong thing to do.

I own shares in Sky City Entertainment and they employ 5000 people, more than 3 times of those working at F & P.

Would they bail Sky City out?

No.

Dumb Johnny dumb, let the company fold. 


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c Political Animal 2009

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Monday, February 16, 2009

Fisher & Paykel Appliance's profit downgrade continues fine tradition

Today's poor trading update announcement for Fisher & Paykel Appliances [FPA.NZ] was really of no surprise to the market as a whole and to those insiders who traded the stock down over the last week because they knew this announcement was due soon.

There will be more bad sales updates to follow methinks because today's indication only covers the last few months of trading since the previous profit announcement at the end of 2008.

I wrote back in May 2007 the main reason why I see the company having problems and it ain't the recession or the exchange rate:

While the left of Lenin media and every two-bit polly and union rep have a go with their own wide of the mark opinion, blaming the F & P move on a high dollar and high costs the fact is that F & P have never been competitive but are now being forced to by the market reality of cheap well constructed and better designed appliances coming from the very places that Fishers are now moving to...Share Investor Blog 2007

I see today that John Bongard, Company CEO, is still blaming outside influences beyond his control. Sales are down but that shouldn't account for a halving in profit.

It is bad management of costs, poor product at high costs and a siege mentality to selling that still lingers from the days when the company wouldn't allow any other brands in a store if they sold their product.

Bongard continues that tradition accepting today that he wouldn't say no to a taxpayer handout if it was offered one.

Bongard needs to fall on his sword for poor management over his tenure and now would be a good time.

I wrote on January 21 that the company was "looking fair value" at $1.32 but countered that with a warning that appliance makers were going to be hit hard.

This is clearly going to continue for sometime and likely to get worse before it gets better and there could be another profit downgrade before the company profit announcement in May.

The opportunity presents itself now for savvy investors to buy a stake in the company for less than half the price it was less than a month ago.

Fisher & Paykel are contemplating a capital raising on a pro-rata basis which means that any existing shareholder will have a right to purchase x amount of securities when it begins so if you are looking to get a stake a dilutionary effect on the share price will likely happen so you could well get shares for less than today's closing price of NZ $0.65c , down 35c on the day.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances @ Share Investor

Fisher & Paykel Appliances looking fair value
Fisher & Paykel: A Tale of Two Companies
Fisher & Paykel Appliances: In a spin over nothing

Fisher & Paykel Appliances Financial data


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c Share Investor 2009

Fletcher House is built on hard times

Fletcher Building Ltd [FBU.NZ] will be one of the biggest recipients of the New Zealand Government pulling out all the stops to get infrastructure built to "stimulate" the economy and whatever your political views on Government economic stimulus', as a shareholder you would have to be pretty pleased with taxpayer dollars coming Fletcher's way.

Fletcher Building made much of the fact earlier this week when releasing their latest profit result that they are now celebrating their 100 year anniversary.

This is clearly significant because over this time the company has weathered countless recessions, a depression and two world wars.

During the Great Depression, Fletcher Building constructed buildings such as the Auckland Civic Theatre, The Auckland University Arts Building and Wellington Railway Station.

In the late 1930s Fletcher's mobilised themselves quickly enough to become the dominant force in the newly created "government housing" sector and when WW2 hit they ameliorated raw material supply problems somewhat by simply manufacturing their own building products.

My point is here that they manged to get through the depression, so far the worst economic downturn in living memory, there is no reason to believe that they cant do the same during this big downturn.


As at 6:15 pm, 13 Feb


To a certain extent the bad times have made the company what it is now and as history repeats itself Fletchers are set to build from this once again and move towards another upturn.

I have pointed out before that every cloud has a silver lining and in Fletcher's case it is infrastructure.

Even before the big downturn that started in September 2008 and the recession that bit in New Zealand in January 2008, Fletchers had a massive backlog of commerical and infrastucture building on their books.

Thanks to cash being thrown at infrastructure in New Zealand, Australia, America and other markets that they operate in, that list of infrastructure is going to grow.

In fact Fletcher Building is somewhat of a barometer when it comes to the health of the economy as a whole.

Building companies are the first to feel the effects of a downturn and the first to show the inevitable turnaround.

Fletcher Building's profit announcement last week was as expected, marked down, and the outlook for the next year looks uncertain at the moment but as I said earlier the money being thrown around in Fletcher Buildings operating markets looks set to push them through the hard times.


Fletcher Building @ Share Investor

Fletcher Building down tools in the short term
Why did you buy that stock? [Fletcher Building Ltd]
A solid foundation for the future
Fletcher Building raises profit through canny management
Fletcher's got game


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Fletcher Building History - Auckland University


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c Share Investor 2009