Libertarian Damien Grant is wrong most of the time and we argue endlessly about how wrong he is.
I immensely enjoy my time with him and love that he has an actual political belief structure, even if it’s based on a free market utopia that never existed nor never will.
I enjoy the joust of our debates, I enjoy hanging out with him, I enjoy his genuine friendship.
I think he’s funny and I’ve always liked how he attacks ridiculous ideas but doesn’t ridicule the person saying the idea.
He’s honest, he’s robust and he is a wonderful father and married way out of his league.
We are an odd couple, but I am proud to call him friend.
His current battle against Ritanz fires me up as it manages to amalgamate all the worst bits of little nz with the most petty of our angels.
Ritanz is the self regulated glee club of the Insolvency Industry who see Grant as a threat to their own price gouging oligopoly and as such are refusing his entrance into their membership based on trumped up assumptions of bad character for some white collar crime he committed nearly 3 decades ago.
In the perfect world of Ritanz, no one can ever redeem themselves and Old Testament amputations are the only acceptable justice.
Since his crimes almost 3 decades ago, Grant has built a successful company, hires dozens of people and contributes to his society. To block him from joining a registered guild for his profession and thus banning him from working in that field directly himself is the pettiest of our angels and it highlights why self regulation in NZ is such a scam.
I gleefully point this out several times a day to Damien.
This country is mishmashed with self regulated oligopolies all milking their dominance and refusing entry on the most spurious of reasons. The heavy hand of Government regulation with checks and balances and oversight is the only true gravity for meritocracy and if returned, the new Government must look at the current culture of self regulation throughout the country and ask if it’s working.
Until then, the old boy networks and closed shops of the landed gentry who have always dominated NZs business landscape will continue to enjoy their privilege.
Good luck Damien.
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Whether it is public or private regulatory behaviour has got out of hand in NZ. Over the past 12 months dealing with government departments has lead to farcical results such as rejecting site maps because there wasn’t a compass and another government department rejecting a warning sign because it was white and not blue.
I feel for Grant – its obvious that Fisk is screwing him and this is personal. I just have little faith that removing self regulation and putting in place government regulation is the answer.
NB my view of liquidators/receivers is that they are modern day grave robbers.
“Carpetbagger” yes -John Key was the beginning of NZ being sold out as he was a carpetbagger of the most extreme manner; – and he sold everything he could in the most ‘underhanded manner,’ just look at his record beginning with the sellout of NZ Rail Corporation to Fay’/Richwhite/Wisconsin rail as one example he netted $40 million to be the middleman in that fire sale he brokered while working in New York as a fund manager with NZ connections in 1991.
He is the lowest form of human we could have ever had to run NZ as PM. Our children and their descendants will all suffer for 50 years for his ruin and sellout of NZ.
Key was a carpetbagger as bad as we have ever seen.
Actually it is government that is the problem by preventing him practicing without registration. Government registration would be no different, probably worse.
From https://www.ritanz.org.nz/update-to-members-licensing-1-september-2020/
“Under the legislation, any individual who is not a member of an Accredited Body has to comply with section 57 of the Insolvency Practitioners Regulation Act 2019, in order to be eligible to apply to be a Licenced Insolvency Practitioner and to take Insolvency Engagements as from 1 September 2020.
Section 57 provides for an exemption for overseas practitioners, members of a recognised body, or members of religious societies from the requirement that states you must be a member of an Accredited Body.”
Obvious solution is to either move overseas while maintaining practice here, or (and I like this one better) set up a recognised body. Clearly the competition is needed.
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