Retrieving Roger Sutton’s Corpse from the Cross of Shesus. | Mansplaining Individualism & Freedom v. Identity Feminism. | Also, Peter Ellis & Christchurch

“… behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison.”

(Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being.)

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The person we choose to share our lives with will have many differences, we are all unique, but, many similarities also, and almost certainly, surely, a shared base of values, especially pertaining to those concerned here. That has to be. Roger Sutton is not the only one with a public profile in this story. I keep asking myself would journalist and wife Jo Malcolm be the sort of woman who would marry then raise a family with the ‘sexist, harassing monster’ Roger Sutton has been portrayed by those denouncing him with ‘raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison’ ? And the answer, from what I know of her, albeit only via the press, is no, she doesn’t strike me as a woman who could a) be attracted to such a man, and b) put up with such behaviour. [Snip.] That spousal relationship does not square up in any way with Mr Sutton’s supposed wrongdoing … [Snip] … Sutton’s is a personality type, not a crime, but Christchurch is hard on its effusive sons; remember Peter Ellis …

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There are important questions regarding the actual / contextual facts; possibly – because we don’t know who the complainants are - the participants *; and timeline surrounding the cruci-fiction of Roger Satan Sutton at the end of this piece: but explication first.

[* If you’ve already gone to the slogans ‘victim blaming/shaming’ then you may need to unlink from the mothership so you can think for yourself before reading this piece.]

It’s unconscionable to me that the sanguine Roger Sutton, whose [obvious] professional talents have been lost to the Christchurch rebuild due to his resignation on staff complaints of sexual harassment, has only been able to inspire his family to state the case for his defence that he is not the enemy of civilisation, or even womanhood, in which he has been cast by the identity politick. It is further worrisome that any person making such a reasoned defence on his behalf, given Mr Sutton’s seeming good character, risks being thought of as a sexist, or worse, in these hersterical progressive times, sexual pariah, ostracised because we sadly see a new McCarthyism stalking language and thus thought throughout the West, such as his wife and sister-in-law found out when on their defence they had to endure an actual public shaming.

I’m thinking of re-naming this blog: Changing the Narrative.’ This piece is another way of interpreting the information we have via the media regarding the sexual harassment claims against CERA boss (resigned), Roger Sutton. It’s changing the narrative to provide a different perspective that confronts the assumptions of reportage up until now.

Evidence and Matters Defended:

I’ve held onto this post since the weekend of 6 and 7 December. On that weekend proud (per his Twitter bio) Marxist, Giovanni Tiso - from this time forward called his leitmotiv Mr Ban & Boycott - a man with the cold heart of the ruthless partisan, and echoing the censorious arrogance of the Scottish Police, had been trying to organise a boycott of the Sunday Star Times on its editorial decision to accept a guest column from MP Judith Collins. Against his thuggishness I and (quite reasonably) Fairfax Media employees, were arguing he was happy to destroy the livelihoods of 40 or 50 professional journalists, most of them left-liberals, for the sake of his bile and vendetta against a single politician and his maniacal need to hear or read nothing that is not Tiso. Frankly, just lately, I’ve had a gutsful of the tyranny of the offended; of bullies trying to muzzle the free expression of ideas, no matter how good they feel is the justification of their umbrage taking. Regardless, mine was a doomed enterprise because for Marxists the first expendable casualties in the Class War are individuals; that’s why Marxist societies end always in brutality, just as they start by force and coercion to follow their liturgy. Although Giovanni’s not the subject of this post: applicable to the case of Mr Sutton, at least that will be my supposition, a(nother) RadFem – that’s  radical feminism for the bewildered – Twitter account is; namely a RadFem 101 account which was also promoting Tiso’s ban and boycott umbrage-taking against Fairfax.

As with most RadFem accounts it was anonymous; and yes I realise there are valid reasons for that, but that validity is repudiated when these accounts are then used to spew bile and slander without consequence for the offenders – recalling Thorny, who in an abuse of anonymity blogged I was a privilege laden misogynist because, wait for it, I chipped a single tweet into her Twitter timeline. Anonymity requires greater responsibility because of that, not less, but the notion of responsibility is anathema to a Progressive Church which socialises responsibility in the exact same manner crony state capitalists socialise losses under Keynesian socialism. Regarding the account itself, given this last week I’ve read other of these Twitter accounts arguing the need for genderless pronouns - (FFS! – For Fuck Sake, for the bewildered), that is, not granny, granddad, mum, dad, aunt and uncle, but some genderless signifier making us all equally nondescript - let’s take this denial of individuality to its evil conclusion: I won’t name this node of the collective, not even its signifier, I’ll leave even the anonymous …  anonymous, and let’s live the dream, subtract gender and personality, and call her henceforth, It. (Remember how the aim of Newspeak in 1984 was to render language down to as few words, thus as little difference, as possible? The It accounts have taken ‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,’ frighteningly to heart; the dangers of a purely contemporary language stripped of historicity, where men are not allowed, even, to use the word beautiful. For the Left the current largely ludicrous inequality debate is about enforcing the redistributive police state to expunge difference from society in totality.)

Its Twitter bio listed It as first a feminist. Great to there; I’m a feminist too: all thinking (classical) liberals are. But in short order came the problem; It lists Itself as ‘Misandrist’ and, from memory – although it follows logically from misandry, Progressive. … For those bewildered who live and work in the rarefied environment of the real world – It is also, as frighteningly as predictable, a Ph.D student – a misandrist is one who ‘hates men’. Misandry is a, quote, ‘hatred of men’.  Indeed, applying Its brand of identical-shackled stereotypical group-think, fair to assume, I think, another public service candidate in the training.

Of course It was similarly unperturbed at the prospect of journos losing their jobs, so I changed topic to what It was hoping to achieve with Its misandry. Fair to say the debate then trod well-heeled ground: all the tropes came out:

‘It’s not Its job to educate me.’

‘It is under no obligation to me.’

‘This debate was not all about me.’ (Primarily because the individual *me* doesn’t exist with identity politickers.)

While all this time It was retweeting my tweets to the Sisters: this being a standard tactic of Ittyness: it’s a type of cynical, sigh oh-so-world-weary all-knowing irony thing they have going on.

In very short order, the dude and bro memes arrived: these two words code for patriarchy: it’s not too complicated, after a few times you hardly need an enigma machine to decode their dogma.

Anyway, we finally got to ‘fuck off bro’ and that was the end of all contact. After, importantly, I was called a creep for using a smiley face emoticon at It in one tweet: because in the absence of body language I try to use emoticons as a sop to reconciliation. And there was also one interjection from a male drone Twit It account who’d been on a force-fed diet of David Cunliffe speeches, and had to announce his solidarity with the Sisters by stating how ashamed he was to be a man having to, quote, ‘listen to my dribble.’

Pretty standard night on Twitter I guess. Except these It accounts are serious because as I suspect the case of Roger Sutton may prove, they have won the day: they are coming to rule our increasingly progressive societies where language is being policed for our thoughts to see if they, thus we, are to be found wanting according to the straitjacket of the identity politick … enter stage Left every Tiso campaign. I’ll use a quote from Liberty Scott to highlight how insane the premise of identity politics is:

‘… the leftist structuralist identity politics philosophy that dominate the mainstream media and universities states that the actual content of communications is not what determines their meaning and intent, but the identity of the person making it.  That identity determines if a person is one of power (i.e. male of European descent, of Christian/Jewish or atheist belief and heterosexual and able-bodied), then their views are automatically deemed to be about "consolidating power" which in the perverse zero-sum world of the structuralists, is only gained by "oppressing the vulnerable".

From this, before moving to the case of Mr Sutton proper, a necessary detour and a summary of identity-bound Ittyness.

It may well be this particular It might hold Its ‘Misandrist’ bio tag is there as satire. No. While doubtless the intent, I don’t reckon so in actuality by the way she ran that account in this instance, and experience tells me it’s coming from the heart. That is, while in jest, it’s not, also – satire, as with humour, requires distance, and these accounts don’t have that type of reasoning self-awareness. Indeed, the standard response to me saying ‘well I’ve written about this or that here …’ is the idiot proud response they’ll never read anything by me, because the mindless mantra, no obligation, and it’s not all about me, though, in truth,  they won’t read anything non-Itty, so they are sadly accounts of wilful ignorance. I think it barely hyperbolic to say the It accounts have their own cultural revolution thang going on: the giant step backwards for women and men. Because further counting against this as satire is the number of times I’m running into these hate accounts and this ‘meme’ since Thorny did her hatchet job, right through to the example in my last literary ramble where even a loving endearment between a married couple, in the form of a husband publicly and jocularly thanking his wife for 'putting up with him' on their anniversary, was weaponised against him by an It account from within the legal profession – you bet that’s significant - in the cause of the new stridency we’re brought down to under heel of correctspeak and correctthink. These It accounts veer to the vicious always. At the base of it always is that affected world-weariness, and that they are sick and tired of being our mothers, blah, blah … to which I could reply, ‘well if you insist on sounding like our mothers …’ but that would take me further off topic. I would summarise the It accounts as follows, as they ultimately connect to the crucifiction of Mr Sutton:

Its’ seems to believe a civilised society and whatever their standard of equality is, will somehow result from hating half of that society and demonising them. I would love to point out the flaw in this plan, but then that would just be mansplaining.

Its’ don’t go about relationships based on an enlightened, reasoned individualism, on relating one on one with people on their own unique terms, but – and the irony is insightful - as objects; other Its – when I think about it lets remove the possessive apostrophe because under their ethic individuals ultimately must possess nothing, certainly not volition. Its see themselves as interacting with Things called males that represent a bundle of pre-conceived prejudices.

The above Twitter timeline with this particular It is my argument that any society structured on identity politics in an intolerant society that breeds hate.

Moreover, any society that is based on an ethic other than individualism, that can’t therefore revel in difference and uniqueness, is on its way to the joyless tomes of a radical Marxist feminist Taliban. Irony again.

As intimated, identity politick comes not from reason, but dogma. It is becoming yet another faith driven damned liturgy: thou shalt not …

A society that does not celebrate difference is headed for the Gulags.

A society that polices language as the Progressives now do is the Gulag.

An It mind mired in the infantile stereotypes required of identity politics, is set for a bitter life, and they will impart that bitterness to all they touch, including the work place.

Getting controversial now, and to my point.

If you’re wondering where the hapless Mr Sutton fits into this, it’s here. Is it possible this identity politick has an agenda being carried out particularly through the civil service? This is not a conspiracy theory, but based on the evidence. Again, some particular anonymous It Twitter accounts that are definitely working in the public service come to mind, one of which I debated a long time ago because I thought 'her' attitude to a new male recruit on her section, and his questioning – and when you start a new job, it’s best you ask questions, don’t try and wing any damned thing - was atrocious and smeared in prejudice. Her, sorry Its complaint seemed to be – and she was live tweeting her character assassination of the new male employee from her government department - that he was taking his questions to It, which to this It was a course of action taken by the poor sod loaded with patriarchal assumptions. At least I think that was it; I guess I’m so immured of patriarchy I had trouble pinpointing the exact nature of his crimes. The alarming fact of that exchange being she was obviously his section leader, or at least, someone of authority on that floor; I tried to tell this It that what she was doing was unprofessional, appalling, and the ‘I have no obligation’ meme doesn’t in any way apply when you’re the damned boss (FFS … For Fucks Sake for the bewildered again). Toxic. Its response? To idiotically retweet my tweets to the Sisters. That It would have been out of my office, pronto. That It would be a disaster employed by any private sector firm, and thus that episode was further significant for me, and changed, again, how I view the world. That It leads me to view the case of Mr Sutton with a different knowledge to that within the paradigm it has been reported up until this point.

To get ‘all about me’ in order to expedite this, my personality would look to be, from what I read in the media, the opposite of ‘resigned’ CERA boss Roger Sutton. I grew up with four sisters and learned by osmosis to put the toilet seat down and to make my 6 foot 3 frame small in the presence of women who don’t know me. We were a happy, though prudish household. From that I never step into another’s physical space, and hate mine being invaded. When you meet me – and no one on social media is likely to – I will always be at least three paces away from you. If you put your hand out – woman or man – I’ll shake it, but I’d rather not. That gesture seems as strange as wearing ties to me. If you want to hug me, I really would rather not, I don’t like touch with people I don’t know, but I will without getting bent out of shape over it, because I realise some (many) people just are huggers – in my life mainly women - and don’t understand those few of us who aren’t. But I will never instigate physical contact; I will be well spoken because my face to face persona has not had the body signals shorn off as it does on social media, and I don’t like crass crudity, which is an inane, tedious form of wit.

It would thus appear obvious that Roger Sutton and I are two very different individuals. In comparison to my reticence and prudishness, he is effusive and risqué, he refers to people as ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey’, so veers, even,  toward the camp. He is a hugger, that most wretched thing, apparently, nowadays, though only if you are a man. And because of this his manner of conducting himself has led to his Shakespearean undoing. But did he deserve the stigma of sexist, sexual monster that has been piled on him for the sin of his difference? His professional life and reputation all but destroyed?

From my reading of the facts that are available: a categorical no. What has happened to him, as with the Rosetta scientist Matt Taylor, who after landing a washing machine size human-made artifact on a comet, had his character eviscerated by the It accounts because of his shirt, is *crazy* and out of all proportion. Look at the most significant cross against him, G-string Friday, in context.

Quoting The Press, Saturday 6:

Not all in the group who were there for the G-string Friday incident saw it in a negative light. Another female staff member recalls the incident as fairly innocent fun.

The conversation, she says, started with Sutton telling a large group about cycling behind a large woman and seeing her G-string underwear.

Then the group had a ribald conversation, which got more ridiculous, and Sutton suggested, jokingly, having "G-string Fridays", she says. No-one appeared to take offence and anyone could have left the group if they wished.

However X decided she needed to take a stand and outlined her concerns to a senior Cera manager on September 15. Some incidents from the previous three years were mentioned.

Get that poor sod Sutton down from the Cross of Shesus to which he has been bullied, please.

So Sutton never went to his female staff suggesting they have a G-string Friday: he was simply bringing into the office a random anecdote from the street and he and the staff kicked it around – as happens. And based largely on this he had to have his character and reputation shredded? Really? For this? As a human being he has been demolished and snuffed out as far as a public life is concerned, indeed, if you were just off a plane, amongst all the scuttlebutt you’d think he was a rapist, and all this with the reported grave consequences for his private life (and his children), FOR THIS? The words witless, humourless, and, again, agenda, come to my mind.

Also concerning is that the complaint short-circuited Sutton’s Christchurch bosses and went direct to a desk in the State Service in Wellington – is that correct? That’s how it was reported initially, but I don’t know if that has changed. I’d like to see some journalism on an authoritative timeline plus any relationships being acted out between the ministries. I'd also be interested in knowing what type of Twitter accounts are run - if applicable - by the complainants and respondee in State Services, Wellington. Are some It accounts involved here? We’ll probably never know as they will be anonymous. Further, at the time of the Wellington complaint Sutton was already trying to correct and make amends for his hugger nature, and risqué jokes, including seeing a shrink to no doubt re-shape himself into some type of non-Sutton persona – fleeting images of A Clockwork Orange when I write that. Sutton, and Rosetta mission scientist Matt Taylor, will never be comfortable in their own skin again: they have had to undergo the mind-wash, a real one, to switch off a part of them which made them who they were. And to return to the timeline of the complaint, yet that remedial process entered into by Sutton seems to have been sabotaged before it *could* have had any effect. Apparently this was because the G-string Friday incident was one pair of undies too far for the ultimate complainant: however, as I have shown, G-string Friday was bullshit. As that incident is explained in the Press, nearly every man other than the drone It accounts and a few prudes might as well resign.

Think on this. Are you a hugger? Do you by nature hug your close acquaintances on greeting and in parting? What are the rules on this and can you be sure that without context – because on the information reported so far we have no context around the hugging as we do finally G-string Friday – Mr Sutton’s hugging was grossly inappropriate, as opposed to an expression of his effusive personality? All of us have our foibles, and remember the It account above called me a creep solely on the basis of in one tweet I used a smiley face emoticon to try and keep our ‘debate’ lighter and a bit civilised. That little emoticon makes me a creep … extend that frame of mind to Sutton; without facts in Sutton's case how can we say there is no comparison to such absurdity.

Regardless, I am the stand-offish chalk to Roger Sutton’s misguided cheesiness, and he should have been mindful of his behaviour circa 2014, but when you read The Press of December 6, and the reality of the G-string comment within the context above, plus yes, that inappropriate hugging, which seems to have been an inherent part of his nature -  perhaps instilled in him from a loving family background when growing up - if a man could be said to be stitched up by an agenda which may be networking through the public service workplace, then he was that man. And my very different personality could no more survive in that thought-policed environment than his effusive behaviour could.

And there’s something other which has been at the back of my mind since ‘that’ televised news conference to announce his resignation. The person we choose to live our lives with will have many differences, we are all unique, but, many similarities also, and almost certainly, surely, a shared base of values, especially pertaining to those concerned here. That has to be. Roger Sutton is not the only one with a public profile in this story. I keep asking myself would journalist and wife Jo Malcolm be the sort of woman who would marry then raise a family with the ‘sexist, harassing monster’ Roger Sutton has been portrayed by those denouncing him with ‘raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison’ ? And the answer, from what I know of her, albeit only via the press, is no, she doesn’t strike me as a woman who could a) be attracted to such a man, and b) put up with such behaviour. That spousal relationship – without recourse also to Mr Sutton’s sister-in-law who on her defence of him became victim to the predictable, bullying progressive shaming - does not square up in any way with Mr Sutton’s supposed wrongdoing; Jo Malcolm’s description of her husband indicates the actual man of Roger Sutton, the individual, who is not public enemy number one, quite the opposite, his is a personality type, not a crime:

She says she is baffled that his "hugs and jokes" have been misinterpreted and that Mr Sutton is simply a "touchy-feely" person.

It would be interesting to see the results of removing ‘touchy-feely’ women from the work-place. And related, as a society many appear confused why hardly any men choose teaching as a career anymore: I’m not confused at all when a ‘touchy-feely’ personality ‘type’ is equated to sexual harasser in the bureaucratic office, and then something much worse in the schools: Christchurch, particularly, has plumbed those depths before, in the form of Peter Ellis.

But a final point before moving to Mr Ellis. In a long ago iteration I worked in a government office that was majority staffed, in the section I worked, by women, and where my bosses were usually women. It was one of our biggest government departments with even thirty years ago, I would estimate, equal male / female representation at every level through to the current female Commissioner. No glass ceiling there. And I loved it: as stated I grew up with all sisters, I have four (step) grand-daughters, a feminine environment is my norm, but you bet that office was as ribald as it was fun. The Animal Farm styled double standards becoming evident in the policing of language and thought by the new identity It-fascists is as hard to stomach as it is imponderable and nihilistic.

Anecdote: Peter Ellis – Witch Hunts in Christchurch.

So we find discussion of G-string Friday that occurred in the CERA office was not ‘an’ actual scheme thought up by Sutton as a serious proposition: it was a random, unplanned anecdote brought in circumstantially, then treated, briefly, by almost all staff, as a bit of a joke. Poor taste, yes, but even me making that qualification is born of the new wowserism that reigns,  where all matters vis a vis a woman’s body shape are thought-crimes: well not quite, as stated, these topics can get very Animal Farm, with some voices more equal than others in Itty circles, allowed to criticise and in-joke.

On the back of that anecdote, let me usher in from one of Christchurch’s dark, underground rooms where skeletons are kept, the lifeless visage of Peter Ellis, and the travesty of justice and mob insanity which was the Christchurch Civic Creche case.  At the time of the Civic Creche case I was flatting in Christchurch with the boyfriend of a Civic Creche employee: she was not one of those who went to trial (thank God). All of us directly and indirectly close to that case knew the charges against initially the women involved, and Ellis, were fantastical. Totally batshit crazy. It was with incredulity therefore we all watched the madness that unfolded. Fortunately the women were exonerated, but not Peter. His life has been destroyed.

Here was Peter’s crime: he was an eccentric, effusive, ‘gay’, camp, even, bubbly personality who loved working with kids, and not surprisingly they loved him. Let’s spell it out: he was a hugger, touchy-feely type personality.

What happened? Incited by a woman complainant with previous form for complaints of child molestation against males in the education sector, who convinced a Christ-afflicted cop of same, they managed to form a mob in which reason and with that consideration of Peter as a unique individual, were expelled, emotion and insane agenda were input, and we got what will always arise from that milieu: a witch hunt. (Watch that terminology get deconstructed by the Its.)

Here’s Peter’s demise in the broad brush strokes, and I Godwin you not:

Why the gas chambers? Common good of the Volk.

Why the Gulags? Common good of the Soviet people.

Why the Pol Pot death camps? Common good of those individuals not tortured and killed in the camps.

Every tyrant in modern history has been happy to snuff our individual lives (en masse) in the cause of the common good.

Why Peter’s conviction? Mob rule and agenda pursuing yet another psychotic iteration of their common good society, versus coming to each and every individual on their own terms, that is, an enlightened individualism.

In the case of Peter Ellis, I’m not over-reaching with the Godwin examples above. It’s criminal what a baying mob, with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison, backed up by agenderised tertiary trained social workers and the judiciary, did to this once gentle man. I see after all these years Don Brash with author Lynley Hood are calling for an inquiry into his conviction, in view of a pardon … unsurprisingly, Brash is a classical liberal who understands every individual life and reputation takes precedence over ‘the group’ and the cause. It has to.  The wise learn from atrocities such as happened to Peter; they chiefly learn to question everything reported, every agenda. That’s why the Tisos’ and the Its are dangerous. They do not work at the level of the individual, but, like every tyrant, at the level of all individuals are expendable toward their ends.

For progressives, Marxists, et al, ends justify means. For libertarians, individuals come first. My blog tells you where the civilised, free society lies.

I leave you to draw your own conclusions, possibly, between Peter Ellis and Roger Sutton and the nature of witch hunts.

Signing Off From It.

Regarding the It account that described in this post: I don’t actually employ staff, I work in equal partnership with Mrs H and we like our own company too much, plus we are not prepared to lose our freedoms to the inflexibility of employment law loaded against employers; but could a productive workplace and satisfied customer-base live with the malignancy of these It Twitter accounts and their avowed hatred of half the population – who will be included in ones customers? No. How do you screen that cancer out before you let it in? Once you start going down that route, you understand how Its misandry damages the Itty cause, doesn’t promote it. Indeed, promotes nothing good, public or private, at all.

This does explain, however, why men like me look to reduce our involvement with business, an eye to our savings and early retirements, looking to withdraw from the suffocating, rigid hives our societies have become, and withdraw peacefully to our garrets.

Hopefully – though I hold little hope – by the time this particular It account finishes Its Ph.D and enters the public service, I say HOPEFULLY, she has become a grown up, human, able to encompass difference and conduct adult relationships. Whatever, she’ll be pleased to know I won’t be there anymore, even if she would not recognise me away from this format.

Thanks be in my life to that woman who was one of the true heroes of the last century, that exponent of individualism and reason, Ayn Rand. For never forget the over-arching agenda of the It accounts on social media: Marxism, Progressivism, the gutter prison societies from history, because from A Clockwork Orange, Queen of Thorns, It, and all these hate accounts take us directly to 1984. And don’t take my word for it; How Feminist Propaganda is Destroying Men’s Lives, by Virginia Hales, gives a sobering insight into the angry, sullen brutality – sheer brutality - of this It brand of Marxist identity bound feminism, which I can write with authority that feminists from the 60s and 70s, such as Mrs H, rightly find loathsome, and sad in its historical wrong turn to advocacy of lives mandated and coerced by yet another busy-body clique carving out its influence with the Arrogance of Altruists in Wellington, telling us how to live, ready to sacrifice any individual to their bloodied cause of the common good.

With It-speak, It-think, It-behaviour and It-rule in the ascendant, and the legal notion of a private individual long ago executed by tax statute and then in law upon law upon law that individual  enslaved to the common good, in the cause of which a male will soon find himself on the wrong side of the burden of proof – as, note, we all are in tax cases, and that’s significant - with no right to remain silent in rape cases, two central tenets of Western jurisprudence about to be sacked, and yet his words judged weightless and meaningless under Itty newspeak wanting to bring into our statutes War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and every other Orwellian contradiction, I fear we are all Peter Ellis and Roger Sutton now. And this is the vicious society of the identity politick mob.

Update 1: Staff Organise Farewell Function

So Roger Sutton was such a sexist monster to work for, his staff have gone out of their way to organise an offsite function to give their farewells?

Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) staff have chipped in for a farewell to their former chief executive Roger Sutton.

Staff organised the afternoon tea, being held today at an "off-site" location, and have also done some baking.

"Some at Cera have personally contributed towards it with cash or baking etc," a Cera spokesman said.

All Cera staff have been invited to attend the farewell for Sutton, who finishes his employment there this week.

It would be held during the working day and would not receive any taxpayer funding, the spokesman said.

Attendance was up to each individual staff member.

Acting Cera chief executive John Ombler would represent Cera at the event and make a speech, the spokesman said.

"The purpose of the afternoon tea is to recognise the service Roger has given to Cera and the recovery, and to respond to the wishes expressed by some staff to have an opportunity to farewell him. The matters which led to Roger's resignation will not be discussed at the function."

Chalk up another – explained above - individual human travesty for Christchurch. What has happened to Roger Sutton is appalling, but par for the course in It-land. And if you’ve clicked through to here from Twitter and read this without reading my argument for Sutton’s defence above, then read it, don’t shut your mind off and judge me from the brutal bile of the It-Twit-Accounts.