Mark Hotchin

What is it with the mainstream media. Check out these articles from the past week, all have one thing in common. The silly and unnecessary addition of  ”is the brother of Mark Hotchin” or something similar in articles about John Hotchin.

Nathans directors ‘could have been more conservative’
New Zealand Herald
A fourth director, John Hotchin, younger brother to Hanover’s Mark Hotchin, pleaded guilty to similar charges in February and was sentenced in early …

Hotchin fronts up to Nathans trial
Stuff.co.nz
Hotchin, brother of former Hanover Finance director Mark Hotchin, had earlier pleaded guilty to three charges of making untrue statements in a Nathans …

John Hotchin testifies against former directors
TVNZ
John Hotchin is the brother of Mark Hotchin, whose failed finance company Hanover is also being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office and the Securities …

Nathans came close to merger - Hotchin
Stuff.co.nz
Nathans Finance – co-founded by John Hotchin – was close to being merged with another finance company owned by his brother, Mark Hotchin, just six months …

This article in the NZ Herald doesn’t even mention John Hotchin’s name in the first sentence, only that of Mark Hotchin.

John Hotchin admits Nathans Finance documents wrong
New Zealand Herald
The younger brother of former Hanover director Mark Hotchin pleaded guilty to Securities Act breaches in February. His sentence was reduced from a jail term …

That is just from the last 72 hours and all the stories have nothing at all to do with Mark Hotchin other than it is his brother appearing in court ratting on his former mates.

I wonder how long it is before the media reports that someone with the same last name as former Hanover director Mark Hotchin was caught jay-walking in Levin on the weekend.

Cactus Kate has picked a rather unsavoury scab in her article about the Herald and APN who appear to have confused the ethical lines between advertising, content, editorial and the high moral ground.

As readers will well know the Herald has been running a remarkable campaign of denigration about Mark Hotchin and Hanover, especially in the pst 10 or so days with story after story after story about how Mark Hotchin got scammed in a Ponzi scheme.

They posted an editorial as well taking the moral high ground and ticked off a judge and sounded all po-faced and sage in talking about name suppression. They spent a not inconsiderable amount of money with top end of town lawyers, reputed to be well over $100,000 attacking a victim’s rights to privacy as ordered by a court through a suppression order.

Sure I attacked suppression orders myself, but I only named kiddy fiddlers, rapists and thugs. This is why I have been so hot under the collar about this. The Herald went after victims and played for the high moral ground in doing so.

What Cactus Kate has done, and I am slapping myself for not thinking of this myself, is go straight to the source and asked Carrick Graham, spokesperson for Hotchin/Hanover about how much Hanover loot the Herald pocketed, all the while knowing that the two principals of Hanover were the victims in an elaborate Ponzi scheme.

2006 – $342,695 (Only November on)
2007 – $1,146,280
2008 – $328,807
2009 – $94,469 (all for FAI Finance)
Total – $1,912,251

So The Herald, knowing as they did that the principles of Hanover had been scammed, continued to repeatedly take truck loads of loot for their advertising.

Cactus Kate rightly points out the ethical dilemma for the Herald in continuing to accept their advertising revenue and also waxing lyrical in cu/paste opinion pieces about Hanover and their various investment vehicles. She also quite correctly asks whether or not the gamblers investors in Hanover would have been more influenced by the Herald opinion pieces by Adam Bennett and Maria Slade amongst many others along with the millions in advertising featuring a former newsreader spent with the Herald than with the prospectus proffered by some spotty investment advisor across the desk of one of myriad of advisory houses who likewise pocketed Hanover coin.

I just bet that Hanover’s and Hotchin’s lawyers are licking their chops with joy, salivating at quenstioning  gambler investor after gambler investor just exactly where they obtained their investment advice from: “Was it from advertising? Or perhaps you read something in the paper? Or did you actually read and digest with some solid research from a truly independent investment analyst the prospectus provided by Hanover?”

You can see where that is going to end can’t you. Badly…for the investors and possibly for APN.

The Herald took the high moral ground in spending huge amounts of money in overturning a victim’s name suppression, they stood on a pedestal and proclaimed their moral righteousness when all along they should have been on the naughty step for palming almost $2 million in investors cash to enable Hanover to take more investors cash from them, all the while knowing that Mark Hotchin was subject to a name suppression order.

Their retrospective moral righteousness is nothing but shameful hypocrisy. I wouldn’t mind betting that Cactus Kate has much more information about other media outlets and journalists and the large amounts of cash they similarly received. If she wasn’t so busy working in her Guangdong sweatshop she could bother to return my emails.

Not content with breaching their confidentiality agreements of 7 years ago, with Mark Hotchin and Kerry Finnigan, the Herald is really going gang-busters today with Hotchin Over-use Syndrome (HOS). Now I’m no mate of Hotchin but when I read that banal article today it really ticked me off.

In their article they used one and half pages and 3157 words to say almost nothing. In that 3157 words they used the name of Mark Hotchin no less than 8 times. About once every three paragraphs.

This is almost as bad as Jock Anderson’s repeated cut and paste of Mark Hotchin’s name and details in order to help Barry Colman sell a few more issues of the NBR. Between the Herald and NBR they are really challenging David Farrar as the cut and paste king.

The NZ Herald has sat on this story for more than seven years and then when it suited them to put the slipper into Mark Hotchin, they regurgitated it two weekends in a row purely because it contains, and due to their HOS contains a lot, the name of Mark Hotchin.

The Herald and the NBR should be giving Mark Hotchin a cut of all the additional revenue they are scoring through the over use of his name.

The worst thing about their continued campaign to denigrate a man who hasn’t even been charged with anything is that he can’t retaliate because the authorities have tied up all his cash in an attempt to starve him of legal oxygen. This is not only a case of state authorities bullying someone who is innocent and not even charged with anything but also a case of the media bullying him as well through the gratuitous use of his name so they can sell a few more newspapers.

It seems that the names of Hanover and Mark Hotchin can sell newspapers in the good times and now in the bad times. And all the while it is the media outlets that have creamed it off of their backs, good news or bad news.

What would be good is some honest reporting of the situation, and some honest analysis using facts and not emotion. Fat chance of that happening. Between Jock “Cut Paste” Anderson and Fran(k) O’Sullivan the truth seems to get slaughtered along the way.

While I am slamming the Herald I may as well ask why they haven’t as yet started legal proceedings to over-turn the name suppression of the prominent politician who is fighting over a couple of dogs in the Family Court. Exactly the same reasons they trotted off to court and spent over $100,000 with their top notch lawyers over-turning Mark Hotchin’s name suppression and at same time destroying any pretense of protecting victims of crime from ever having their details revealed apply in this case, and it is far more relevant because it is happening now, not seven years ago. In fact in this case there are no victims, no children, just a couple of silly adults and some silly dogs.

Surely the Herald should exhibit some consistency, or was it just the chance for another free hit on Mark Hotchin that drove them to assail victims rights in such an egregious manner?

It is only a matter of time before questions are going to be raised under parliamentary privilege.

A senior political figure and his ex-wife are arguing in the family court over who gets the couple’s two dogs.

The names of the man, his new partner, his ex-wife and their dogs have all been suppressed.

Evidence of an alleged dog-napping by the man’s ex wife, to be referred to as D, was given at the Auckland Family Court yesterday.

D spotted the dogs being walked by her ex-husband’s new partner in an upmarket suburb of Auckland last November.

D was with an employee at the time. The employee fought back tears as he described to the court what the dogs meant to D. He also cannot be named because doing so could identify the parties.

“I’m aware the couple never had children, so the couple’s dogs were kind of like kids,” he said.

This is going to explode, sooner or later. The more it is reported and the more suppression remains the more people will be interested to know who.

It is actually farcical that name suppression is being used in the first place. Sure it is in the Family Court but name suppression in the Family Court is designed to protect children not the political and personal reputation of adults.

Similarly why is the NZ Herald not seeking an urgent overturning of name suppression in this case like they did over Mark Hotchin 7 years after teh fact. This case is far more relevant as it is happening right now not seven years ago.

The NZ Herald spent over $100,000 with their top shelf lawyers having the name suppression of Mark Hotchin and Kerry Finnigan overturned, why aren’t they now in court demanding openness and transparency in the court process concerning a senior political figure?

Cactus Kate has a brilliant post that exposes silly old Jock Anderson as a worse cut and paste merchant than David Farrar.

Knowing the age of Jock Anderson he probably has a shortcut saved so he can easily paste:

Director John Hotchin (brother of Hanover Finance’s Mark Hotchin)

…into his articles.

Jock is better than this so one can only assume that this silly nonsense is editorial manipulation by Barry Colman to sell newspaper for pay-wall subscriptions.

When reputed journalists resort to cut and paste activities like this, it is no wonder we call them repeaters.

scha·den·freu·de

[shahd-n-froi-duh]

–noun
satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else’s misfortune.
Origin: 1890–95;  < German,  equivalent to Schaden  harm + Freude  joy

Bernard Hickey, the NZ Herald and Stuff are all crowing about Mark Hotchin again. It is almost gleeful. A touch of H-Utu. This time about his name suppression and falling for a dirty Ponzi scheme back in 2o04. They are mocking a victim. They don’t mock the victims of all the other frauds out there so why mock the victim in this case?

The point of name suppression in many cases is the protection of victims, in this case Hotchin was the victim and yet the NZ Herald saw fit to seek to overturn a permanent name suppression order designed to protect victims. They did what Judge David Harvey said could not be done, that the only people who could overturn a court ordered permanent name suppression was either the victim or the court who ordered it in the first place.

It appears now that any name suppression can be validly challenged by any news organization or indeed any interested party seeking to crucify a victim.

My campaign against name suppression was for the removal of the practice for the criminals. The Herald’s actions and the gleeful vitriol and running of sensationalist headlines by financial commentators who are themselves a bunch of broken-arses by comparison. There is a old line that if you can’t do, you teach and if you can’t teach, you write about people who do. This fits the financial correspondents perfectly, who collectively probably don’t muster enough in assets to cover the amount lost by Hotchin and Finnigan in the Ponzi scheme.

Using the logic of Bernard Hickey:

Hotchin was given permanent name suppression, which has only now been lifted after a challenge from the NZHerald. Strategic Finance boss Kerry Finnigan was also duped and also got name suppression.

If only the Rotorua District Court judge James Weir hadn’t granted permanent suppression, thousands of Mum and Dad investors might not have lost over NZ$500 million in Hanover and over NZ$300 million in Strategic Finance…and counting. Thanks for that.

then none of these people should be anywhere near running a company or even investing or indeed offering advice:

Victims from big business include hedge fund manager Arki Busson and US property magnate Larry Silverstein, who is currently working to rebuild the World Trade Centre in New York.

A number of large banks, including UBS, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America, were also named in the filing.

From the world of politics, trusts belonging to the family of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger appear, as does the name of current New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg.

The full list of Bernie Madoff’s wealthy and famous victims is available on the internet in an easily accessible format. Is Bernard Hickey suggesting that none of those people should ever run a company or give investment advice and all should also be a target of derision for having the temerity to fall for a complex and elaborate long-term fraud?

In a Ponzi scheme, the Bank cops a flogging too, and are essentially part of the fraud. I hope that Bernard’s bank isn’t the same one as the bank used by Papple and West, Westpac. I note that Bernard Hickey has all the Westpac investment products listed on interest.co.nz….given his new position shouldn’t he really be recommending to his readers that, since they participated and fell for the Ponzi scheme themselves then investors in Westpac would be best to take their money elsewhere.

Then again, some already did that when they walked out of the country with $10 million of Westpac’s cash. Funny thing is, I didn’t see Bernard Hickey telling Westpac customers to stop investing in the bank when they couldn’t keep track of $10 million. So long as Westpac keeps the cheques coming to interest.co.nz then Bernard will stay mum.

The logical conclusion of Hickey’s farcical suggestions and “analysis” is that anyone, and I mean anyone, who has had an accountant nick cash from their firm, handed over funds to a Nigerian 419 fraud, or “invested” in a Ponzi scheme, or indeed thought Amway was a path to success, should be barred from running a company.

What is worse though is the history of the Herald’s involvement in this case. They clearly, back in 2004, used Hotchin and Finnigan as a confidential source for their story:

One prominent company director told the court he did not want the public to know he was “conned” for more than half-a-million dollars.

The man, who has been granted name suppression by Judge James Weir, said he was advised to apply for suppression because it would be better if the Papples and West were not publicly associated with his companies.

It was revealed in court that the man had been a director of 71 companies, including a prominent finance company, although he said he had recently moved to Australia and had resigned from a number of directorships.

It was important for him not to be connected with the Papples and West, as he had been “duped into doing an investment with people who conned me for a lot of money”, he said. “I don’t want to make that public.”

The man had told the court he invested $561,066 with the trio.

He received a payment of $120,000, followed by a further three sums totalling $336,000.

The Herald has known about this for 6 years and they shamelessly used the confidential information for their story then used that information 6 years later to over-turn a name suppression case. People should be very wary of providing confidential information to a Herald journalist from now on, they will turn on you and cut your heart out just to sell papers. They will betray a confidence to justify a taudry headline.

Not only that during this whole time they ran Hanover ads in their paper, and on their website,. They have performed the business equivalent of raping the victim all over again except they did it to sell papers.

Bernard Hickey isn’t much better, he too took advertising revenue from Hanover. Did he know about this all along? Remember Bernard Hickey still writes for the Herald.

In the interests of fairness, surely the Herald and Bernard Hickey should pay back all the “dirty Hanover cash” they took while sitting on this information for 6 years. If the investors should have been told back then, then their cash for advertising is just as tainted as anyone elses.

To get back to the name suppression issue, the wonder is that the Herald isn’t in court seeking the overturning of every person’s name suppression but then a great many of those people won’t sell tell many papers, but Mark Hotchin’s name does.

Bernard Hickey and other financial media might like to think and enjoy the schadenfreude but they should really hang their heads in shame at their utter hypocrisy and breach of their own ethics and standards that they hold so dear as the reason why they are superior to bloggers. If they had even a modicum of decency they would apologise and pay back all the filthy loot they took in advertising revenue and related puff pieces at the time.

If I was Mark Hotchin, or even one of his advisors, I would be laying a complaint with the Press Council for breaches of ethics.

Cactus Kate must have plenty of time on her hands while she is sunning herself in Bangkok. I say this because she has put out two posts showing that she is continuing her crusade to hold the statutory authorities and the media accountable for their apparent sloppiness in their investigations and repeat-age surrounding Mark Hotchin.

It also shows her impartiality that she is looking with increasing incredulity at the actions of the authorities toward New Zealand’s second most hated man after Clayton Weatherston.

Freezing orders in law are meant to not be granted lightly and be temporary in nature while investigations are completed and with some certainty that charges will be anticipated. Hotchin’s very blanket freeze order was the first under the relevant sections of the Securities Act, however there is reasonable precedent prior for fraud allegations and other New Zealand legislation allows freezing of assets.

The SFO investigation into Hanover was meant to be well completed at Christmas. As was the Securities Commission’s as to whether to lay criminal charges. It has dragged on and on. Regardless of the reasons it is now becoming ridiculous.

Hotchin has even claimed that he hasn’t been told what is being investigated. That is there is no specific reference to what he is being investigated for other than a general poke and feel around based on HUtu (Hanover Utu) and sensationalism running rampant in the media and in the public along with all other finance companies. A “fishing expedition” as we call it.

S60G of the Act broadly allows freezing in three situations:

- criminal prosecution have begun
- civil proceedings have begun
- where securities commission are carrying out an investigation into acts or omissions by the defendant.

I like her new name – HUtu. However on the face of it this really does seem to be a trawling exercise to try to find something, anything, just something in order to save face. Now correct me if I am wrong here, but i thought fishing expeditions were illegal. Perhaps under the auspices of the SFO they can be as broad as they like but I’m pretty sure that normally authorities need to be pretty specific about what they are after before they go after it.

While Hotchin isn’t the favourite public figure in New Zealand, this case is making for ridiculous precedent. In the meantime Hotchin has had to pay bills, sort creditors and keep businesses moving and progressing. He also owes money to the IRD. I wonder what the IRD feels about the freeze order and whether they will apply to have it lifted themselves to be paid? The taxman waiteth for no one.

No other decision-making director of Hanover has been subject to such an order, no attempt either has been made to freeze Eric Watson’s New Zealand based assets let alone his foreign ones. Hotchin has wore the entire Hanover matter on his own despite in each instance being just one of several directors.

While the general public seems to care none about any swanky car driving, long lunching businessman having anything frozen, which is fine, but everyone should care about antiquated orders such as this seeking to deny an accused (if he’s even that as again there’s been no charges) even the right to the basic presumption of innocence let alone speed in the investigation.

Cactus makes a good point. The lefty blogs are wanking on endlessly about the Urewera 17 being denied open justice and yet remain strangely silent on apparent singling out of a single director who has yet to be charged. Those same liberal panty-waists are the same one who cry a river of tears about the presumption of innocence regarding pedos and rapists and that is the reason why name suppression should be retained, yet remain silent on the public vilification in the media of an uncharged man and the use of the judiciary to cosh the same man under the authoritative thumbs of incompetent investigators who haven’t found a thing in 5 months.

The inconsistency is obvious:

I will give an example of what has happened to Hotchin using a street level scenario. Right now Headhunters, Black Power, Highway 61 and Mongrel Mob gangs happily launder money through bank accounts in New Zealand under guises of associates and members. Most known to Police and the Organised Crime Unit they stick their all ill-gotten gains into banks, property and other investments or assets. I’ve even heard of a charitable trust structures being used by gangs to have “donations” paid into.

Do the authorities freeze their assets on suspicion of fraud or while being investigated? Of course not because gangs are constantly under investigation. They let gangs hold assets because they haven’t got enough evidence to bust them. They are continually investigating them yet their assets stay in tact while this happens and they watch the accounts. The Organised Crime Unit doesn’t just slap a freeze order on the account suspecting they’ve got the money from drugs, guns or crime. All money from gangs comes from some sort of crime, by definition. They aren’t making anything through legitimate 9 to 5 jobs. Its all from drugs, guns, security, extortion, blackmail and protection.

Imagine the outcry from civil libertarians and Hone Harawira if government agencies went around and froze every bank account of a suspected underclass dirty tattooed mainly Maori gang member? Well there’s no outcry when same happened to the nicely dressed middle-class white male.

Cactus also give Fran(k) a serve for her inconsistency.

Oh it is unfair that the totally peer-less Urewera 18 cannot have a jury trial by their peers or delay justice anymore for the terrorist group. Fran O’Sullivan drafted this rather compelling argument that China’s human rights record may be close to New Zealand’s using the Urewera model.

But we can freeze Mark Hotchin’s assets for four months without charge, without specific details given to him as to what he’s been investigated for and with no signs of any progress in an elongated investigation spanning some months and prior investigations to this.

I bring the Urewera 18 up as Justice Helen Winkelmann is it is pertinent as she is the Judge both denying Urewera 18 a jury trial and Hotchin, any sense of fair play when it comes to the freeze order. The media and public say one is a travesty, yet the other is not.

Oh now that is very interesting. The same judge, the same treatment against accused, or in the case of Mark Hotchin, still not accused. The media and the pinko luvvies are metaphorical marching int eh streets for alleged terrorists but not for a white guy who talks funny and wears a suit. There is a word for that, and since I am not in parliament i can use it,…hypocrisy.

As usual Cactus gets down to tin tacks in the most intimidating yet honest way.

All leads to the conclusion that while John Key Prime Minister can stand up at a meeting and say about the man who cost hundreds of millions in bailout money – “I like Allan Hubbard”, left as the most vilified man in New Zealand is a bloke who hasn’t cost the New Zealand taxpayer a cent in a corporate bailout welfare such as SCF, hasn’t plotted terrorist activity like card-carrying vigilante racist Tame Iti or like the gangs sold “P” to your kiddies or gang raped your daughters.

Ain’t that the truth. I am fast coming to the conclusion that something very rotten is happening. Ultimately with Hanover the investors gamblers all voted to toss their lot in with Allied and when they lost their chump change they all of a sudden have buyers remorse. That is not a crime, especially not when they all voted for it. Nice but dim Allan Hubbard meanwhile was running a nice Ponzi scheme, the New Zealand equivalent of Bernie Madoff and he got bailed out. Each taxpayer in New Zealand has lost far more in SCF involuntarily and compulsorily than the individual gamblers lost in Hanover through their own voluntary actions.

The Slowly Sinking Tabloid is indeed sinking. The statistics show that.

Unfortunately the pinko editor David Kemeys, who likes to run intereference for all his Labour pals including Len Brown is also deluding himself.

In todays newfangled Slowly Sinking Tabloid they published this little self congratulatory piece (below). Except it only barely mentions the real statistics that show that they are a slowly sinking tabloid.

No wonder they are having to resort to making sure bad stories about Labour and Len Brown never appear online and simply making shit up about Mark Hotchin, along with bullying of media commentators and pushing bogus polls in order to try to staunch the leak in the dam of readership figures.

I wonder how long it will be before Fairfax calls David Kemeys in for a meeting with the bosses about his crap newspaper. Probably about the time they start getting the legal letters about their defamation of Amanda Hotchin.

The HoS has out done itself today with a stupid article about who Mark Hotchin has hired to help him with his PR. And the person they finger as the mastermind behind the genius strategy of telling Mark Hotchin’s story instead of letting repeaters make shit up, is…Carrick Graham…WTF!

It’s not like it is Michelle Boag, that really would be a story then. Then we hear the tired old bullshit about him being Doug Graham’s son blah blah blah. I’m surprised they didn’t include me in there because Carrick once dated my sister and that my father was the President of the National party since they were going for the long bow. They are trying to say in this article that Mark Hotchin is the same as an evil tobacco company, yet they ignore the facts that tobacco is a legal substance that through taxation contributes a significant amount of the tax revenue. They are legal entities entitled to as much advice as the next person, same as Mark Hotchin.

No doubt the HoS repeaters and editors, though, think the man is such a pariah he isn’t allowed to engage advice when it is clear that the ComCom and SFO are running a negative PR campaign against him, such is the lack of progress in their cases and the MSM just run their press releases verbatim hoping to fit up the target to make up for their lack of progress.

Worse it appears that the Herald on Sunday has a “Get Hotchin” department as well, when they are actually, you know, supposed to be reporting the news not making it up. That is the domain of blogger don’t you know.

The MSM and the state authorities have so denigrated Mark Hotchin that they now even try to malign the people helping him. No wonder Mark Hotchin is hitting back. I would, given the appalling lack of objectivity displayed by the media so far.

Cactus Kate has a round up of the poor efforts from yesterday. The Herald yesterday managed toi scare up one of those investors who lost his “life savings”. Cactus analyses his stupidity, as that is the only way you can describe it:

So Mr Hepburn lost a grand total of $2,950 from a piddly $5,000 investment and he’s crying to the Herald. The value of his house has probably dropped that in a week at some point. I am not blaming the Herald for finding this time wasting muppet but Mr Hepburn really needs to take a look at himself and perhaps redirect his anger towards someone more deserving, like the Herald delivery paperboy for coming 5 minutes late in the morning. He’s the kind of GOC that would ring the Herald Editor and blame him for the paperboy being late.

Hell, I know people who have lost that much on one race at Ellerslie. Even DPF lost about that on iPredict and he was happy about it. I can’t wait for a proper analysis of precisely how many so called Mum and Dad investors lost their shirt in the whole Hanover/Allied mess. If this guy is the best that repeaters can scare up I would suggest that the whining and wailing from the past 3 years is nothing more than that.

The most astonishing thing in all of this is that these so-called investors all voted to go with the Allied deal. It seems that they got tucked badly by Rob Alloway and now have voters remorse. That hardly makes it Mark Hotchin’s fault they were astonishingly stupid to go from one finance company to a worse one. Cactus Kate invites Mr Hepburn to write to her:

It is time that the myth was debunked that these “Ma and Pa Investors” lost life savings. If $5,000 is a man’s life savings then he has about a trillion things to be angry about really. As I have previously published, $500 million divided by 16,000 investors is an average loss of just $31,250, many I assume were corporates as well that skewed this average upwards. And the Herald is giving wind to a trumped up idiot losing $2,950.

Let’s be having you then. A please explain letter to the prickly one. Can’t hardly wait.

Cactus Kate completely destroys Jock “Itch” Anderson at the NBR for his world exclusive equivalent that Mark Hotchin’s grandma’s cat has fleas.

There is no other way to describe this nonsense really, other than fraud. The predilection of the mainstream media, if you can call NBR, that has a weekly readership less than my daily readership, mainstream, to embellsih any story remotely connected with Mark Hotchin as though he is evil incarnate is actually not only journalisticly bankrupt, intellectually fraudulent and an actual fraud on the reader when they expect people to pay for this drivel from behind a paywall.

The way the mainstream media, particularly the Slowly Sinking Tabloid, has denigrated Mark Hotchin, usually in fact free, breathless repeating of every nasty rumour around town could actually be classed as a full blown character assassination by broken arsed, lazy, and frankly jealous repeaters.

The way they have framed the characterisation of Mark Hotchin could lead to scenario where John Key walks into Queen Street in front of the Civic, waits till the crossing lights go then shoots an old lady in the head in full view of 10,000 witnesses who will swear on a stack of bibles that it wasn’t that nice Mr Key what shot that lady, but in fact that nasty Mark Hotchin, whose grandma’s cat has fleas.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not fan of Mark Hotchin, never met him, probably never will, but seriously the media in the country are shocking in their repeatage of anything to do with him.

If I was Mark Hotchin I would start telling the truth about the dodgy pricks at Allied Finance. If their lawyer can argue in the High court that Hanover’s book is great and talk out of his arse before the SFO that the same Hanover book is rubbish then he should really look at standing in Epsom for the new right wing party with an ability to tell pork-pies like that from both orifices.

If it is good enough for the SFO and the ComCom to run an underhand negative PR campaign, leaking documents to tame media hacks, then it should be just fine for Mark Hotchin to start front footing these cowards. He started last night on Close Up let’s hope he keeps it up.