GUEST BLOG: Jeremy Roundill – Spencer Family Mansion – a History of rich pricks
On the weekend, the New Zealand Herald ran a story about a mansion which is to be built in Stanley Point on the North Shore. The Devonport section is so big it covers 16 separate street addresses. With the current housing crisis in Auckland, it’s shocking that such a large property so close to the city is to be home to a single family. Or at least it would be shocking if this family didn’t have such a long and outrageous history.
The mansion is being built for Martin (Berridge) Spencer, on land the Spencers have owned for a while now. Berridge is the 4th generation inheritant of the Spencer family fortune, generated in 1890 when his great-grandfather Albert Spencer built the Caxton Printing Office in Auckland.
The Caxton Printing Office was founded with a Mr. Probert, who was bought out of his share in the business by Spencer five years later. It was eventually inherited by Albert Spencer’s son, Berridge Spencer Sr., who expanded the business following World War I, eventually establishing a monopoly on a wide array of paper-based household products. This was inherited in 1981 by his son, John Spencer (Berridge Jr.’s father), who sold it off 7 years later to Carter Holt Harvey for a tidy $300M. John Spencer’s wealth was estimated during the mid ’80s at around $675M, making him New Zealand’s richest man at the time.
Land owned by John Spencer on Waiheke island contains the Stony Batter Historic Reserve, a Category 1 Historic Place with a series of gun emplacements from World War II. Apparently annoyed with the public’s interest in our shared history, he launched a legal battle and eventually dumped a load of dirt to block a public road in an attempt to keep the rest of us out. After almost two decades of protest and legal battles with a $1.5M cost to Auckland ratepayers, the legal battle made it to the Privy Council, where Spencer lost.
Apparently unhappy with only costing the communities around him money, John Spencer along with his son Berridge, decided to try their hand at tax evasion. For 14 years they were, together, majority shareholders in TrustNet, a company specialising in setting up maze-like company structures to facilitate tax evasion. They both placed money in companies set up to hide their true locations and owners, ostensibly to evade tax themselves.
Having cost Aucklanders millions, and skimped on their own contribution to society by way of tax evasion, The Data Centre, owned and directed by Berridge Spencer installed a motion-activated sprinkler outside their premises. This has been at the entrance to The Data Centre, next door to the Starbucks on Queen St for over a year now, and is still visible and working. The sprinklers are an absolute disgrace, from a family who refuses to fund the social services we rely on to ensure people aren’t forced to sleep in Queen St doorways to begin with.
New Zealand hasn’t got as long a tradition of landed gentry as countries like Britain, but the Spencers certainly act with the impunity of English lords. The Spencers refuse to pay their fair share, and have no qualms about pissing on those who suffer as a result. That they’ve decided to build a mansion on a section, the likes of which the rest of us could never even dream, is just another slap in the face from our horrible, burgeoning upper class.
“just another slap in the face from our horrible, burgeoning upper class”
NZ particularly Auckland is becoming the showcase of obscene humanity as the cheats and criminals flock to these shores to carry on pillaging as filthy rich always do but since Auckland has the showcase of this breed already resident there in our dear leader.
They will naturally gravitate to that location just to emulate the evil man they call “our dear leader”
I don’t mind people having wealth but I do mind when the rules of society are not fair. Those with the most money have changed the rules so they can get away with anything they want and pay less taxes than everyone else so they get more money and power.
Having 16 sections going into one (or series of) McMansion is obscene in a country that used to espouse a fair society for all and with homelessness that does not need to happen!
As for making the tax payers pay to defend legal action of rich pricks, that has been happening for a while now and will be worse with the unitary plan.
BTW – from what I read into Chloe’s Mayoral candidate stance, she is advocating that improvements on land do not count as rates. Hence we have the situation that someone spending millions on houses will pay the same as someone who has a more modest house or none at all. It is the opposite of progressive taxation and more akin to an ACT approach. So under that rating system other rate payers will be subsiding this type of McMansion over a more modest house across the street on similar land value.
No one is too big or too smart to be taken down – eventually. For example, keep an eye on the once slow now speeding up demise of the Rothschild money magick Babylonian Empire. Not one you’ll see in MSM so a bit of research required. Days of needing to sleep in doorways are quickly coming to an end. Will the Spencers see that day? Probably not.
My lovely FIL used to give Spencer heaps when Spencer was twatting around the harbour on his enormous launch… alone.
A small victory!