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Contact Energy shareholders should leave and seek ethical investment elsewhere

J. James

Wednesday 22 October 2008, 7:32PM

By J. James

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After contact energy refused to heed suggestions to curb directors pay rises from its NZ shareholders, management backed by Australian investors has gone ahead and approved pay raises for its top Directors already in receipt of obscene salaries - this while telling thousands of customers they were in for a 10% electricity hike.

 

In the face of this - It’s the wage slave at the coal face that cops the abuse of irate over charged consumers - who need decent liveable wage pay rise – not those greedy directors lolling around in designer leather swivel chairs - brunching – lunching - dining - meeting at swash over priced egoic fuled functions to ply their business

Directors - spending up large - share in the triple million dollar profit$ - which always seem to defy gravity by continually trickling upwards - being as they are - unevenly distributed throughout what is known as the psychopathic greed filed corporation.

The problem here is that we are all in partnership with one another – only problem is it’s a dysfunctional one –  a master and servant relationship - a product of the Dominator culture as Raine Eisler puts it.

In this ideology/belief system - employer has more status/value/rights and money than employee – Landlord and renter, Husband and wife, Doctor and Nurse, Parent and Child - male and female - the power dynamic is uneven and skewed in favour of dominator rules and values

Equality – although strived for will always lose out, so also will social justice, also strived for but rarely achieved....there can be only in equality - imbalance

In this dominator culture where only the ‘strong’ survive - dominating - and by extension exploiting others, and environment - is seen as achievement and achievement is always rewarded – thus the desire for a different paradigm – but I digress…..back to the story ….

Phil Pike – Contact$ independent director and chairman is already paid a $1000 a day compared to call centre workers pittance – and for what - call centres are the real face of the business - the ones who offer goodwill with their pleasant phoney concern - building good corporate image in the public psyche – its they who need huge bonus’s and pay rises.

Contact energy - owned by overseas interests - which typically cares little for consumers in host countries has been stacking on the price rises for a while now.

I pay $28 a week through a direct debt to avoid disconnection notices to keep my account above the red - it started at $20, then jumped to $25 and is now $28 - a shocking amount for a 1 brm villa apartment with conscious ecologically aware occupants.

My seventy five year old mother, like many elderly forced by a medievil health system to be on the drug (rat poison) Warfarin - which thins out the blood to stop clotting – apart from making her skin paper thin it interferes with her natural body temperature, making her feel the cold more than most of us. Her choice like many of our elders -vfreezing in little pensioner units - is to cut back on food or freeze.

Many spend most of the winter in bed – shocking in a country so rich in mis-mangaged resources that its elders are forced into such action.

Shame on Nationals Max Bradford who initially opened the flood gates for corporate raids on our essential public assets, i.e owned by the people and kept in trust by their supposed representative government. Shame on National and shame also on Labour who have never rectified the situation despite lots of rumblings.

Unthinking governments and psychopathic corporations that reward their CEO’s with huge pay increases while knowingly disregard the pleas of consumers is the norm in today’s world – its called greed and we never get used to it or their behaviour or that of our absentee government whose puny reprimands are meant to placate and already burnt-out-on-BS public.

All Energy Minister Parker could utter was “it was a wrong time to put up fees” pointing to the looming financial debacle political commentators are calling a recession - while those getting bailed out are gleefully calling a free ride - and those with more expansive sight are praying will turn into global collapse in order to issue forth a more socially just age.

Whatever – the fact remains that in a resource rich nation such as NZzzzzzland over taxed underpaid ordinary workers are beind seen more and more as cash cow commodities who are fast coming to the end of their patience with inept government and profit driven greedy corporate psychopaths intent on feathering their nests at the expense of everyone else.

Our wallets – savings – and pensions can no longer stand the onslaught – we the people need to rise up and say no more – show our displeasure – hold a national day of unity and strike !!!

yeah right

With little to loose investors and share holders would do better to invest their money in ethical and possibly green business that have an eye on the future for social good rather than basic human greed and exploitation.

Solar energy or off grid energy would be ideal, eventually we will rid ourselves of the parasitic corporate energy company and become self powered in more ways than one.

Blessings to the dreamer and the dream

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