Sandringham dairy worker Janak Patel’s killing and the migrant class friction we refuse to acknowledge
Having been just given a new position of trust – a potential step up the ladder in his dream of someday running his own business – Auckland dairy manager Janak Patel decided not to back down one night when a man with a black bandana rushed into his employer’s business with a knife.
Without much time to think, the 34-year-old newlywed grabbed a hockey stick and chased after the masked bandit, who would later be identified as Ōtāhuhu resident Frederick Gilbert Hobson, 35.
Details of the robbery in November 2022 and the fatal confrontation that followed have been made public for the first time following Hobson’s guilty pleas to murder and aggravated robbery this morning in the High Court at Auckland.
Patel – who had only months earlier immigrated to New Zealand and just days earlier moved from Hamilton to Auckland to watch over Rose Cottage Superette in Sandringham while its owners were travelling overseas – had initially been in a back-room living area of the business when Hobson burst in around 8pm holding the knife and a brown paper bag.
There is an interesting class war race tension at the heart of this terrible act of violence in Sandringham that no one wants to talk about.
We have disenfranchised Māori and Pacifica youth attacking business primarily staffed by exploited Indian and Chinese migrant workers while the white middle class fear of this crime is pimped by corporate media crime porn clickbait and exploited by Right wing Politicians.
It’s an immigration friction point clusterfuck of exploitation and no one wants to acknowledge that dynamic in all of this.
Frederick Gilbert Hobson was a 501 who fought Janak Patel, a worker who was so desperate for his job that he felt forced to chase Hobson down the road and attempt to confront him.
Hobson’s desperation vs Patel’s desperation ended in a killing that is now exploited for white suburban get tough on crime knee jerks.
Nothing has been learned and nothing has been gained.
Just the casual murder of each other in a rat race of despair.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.
All kiwis should be employed first and imigration needs to be stopped right now to allow that to happen .That would also give us time to build the required homes and services needed for 5.3 million people .Continuing to flood the country with cheap labour will acheive little except more of these crimes by desperate people .Till we stop poverty at all levels NZ will not progress .
Overall I agree with you although there is an expectation gap between certain employers & potential workers, the employers expect slaves & some workers expect to start with gold-plated conditions of employment. Stopping the flood of immigration is a necessary first step but there will still be work that needs to be done, we are in an unfortunate situation with the current government that only looks after the top layers of society so I expect things are only going to get worse.
This isnt really a case of ‘NZ workers first’, because a lot of dairies are now owned by Indians and Chinese, as most NZer either dont have the capital to be able to buy a dairy, or would rather be landlords than work 12 hour days and 7 days weeks running a shop.
Unfortunately exploitation of cheap migrant labour is the foundation of our economic system.
We exploit our own let alone migrants
Low wages, high costs & exploitation, that’s us.
That is counsel of despair – and fundamentally untrue.
NZ is the birthplace of the 8 hour day for godsake – the foundation of our economic system is much more functional – what we have now is a despicable perversion of it, which Labour, to their undying shame, have embraced.
Gordon Walker It was Bill English who expanded importing exploitable immigrant workers to help maintain a low income economy. He did it in a nasty way, dubbing young New Zealand males unemployable work-shy druggies. This was nonsense. Lack of support structure for foreigners, let alone basic necessities like housing, seemingly didn’t matter to English, when have-nots are expendable and easily replaceable. Their exploitation of each other is awful, but is more or less a continuation of unconscionable government policy.
The societal outcomes show the immigration rate in the last two decades set too high.
Migrant labour exploitation.
Cases of slavery.
Deunionised labour.
Suppression of wage growth.
Lack of investment in upskilling local labour.
Suppression of productivity growth.
Stressed roading and infrastructure networks.
Housing crisis.
Jacked up rents.
Homelessness.
Street people.
Car dwellers.
Decreased home ownership rates.
Unaffordable 1st home building.
Extreme house price (and debt)to income ratios.
Dodgy migrant developer building practices (OSH and building permit signoffs)
and other “unintended” consequences
these are all intended consequences