Owen Glenn

Two interesting stories in the SST on Owen Glenn, but first a little mystery.

A reliable source tells me that  that a crew member on Glenn’s boat, Ubiquitous, told a family member that a recent guest on the boat, when in the Mediterranean, was Labour Party president Mike Williams. Mr Williams it is reported spent several days on board.

It is also reported that Mr Williams left the boat hastily, after receiving a phone call from the Prime Minister who was not amused he was there.

Maybe someone could ask Mr Williams if he was on the boat as reported, and why he left.

Anyway first we have Matthew Hooton:

Owen Glenn is flying back to New Zealand to sink Helen Clark, Winston Peters and the corrupt government they lead.

I love Matthew’s subtle style.

Clark may soon have reason to regret the disgusting way she treated Glenn when he was here for the opening of the University of Auckland’s new Owen G Glenn Business School, to which Glenn donated more than $7.5 million. For Glenn, the immigrant schoolboy from Mt Roskill, who never had an opportunity to attend university himself, this was the culmination of his more than 40 years of success in business.

Clark ruined his day. Her almost unbelievable rudeness to the biggest benefactor of her own party and the country’s largest university shocked all decent New Zealanders. In public, she uttered not one word to Glenn, nor would she look him in the eye, and she sent her prize thug Trevor Mallard to keep him away.

Worse, Clark is believed to have turned on Glenn in private with angry words being heard through the walls by those in the next room.

It was meant to be a day of glory for Glenn, and he was treated as a leper.

Glenn will also have been fully briefed about the vicious smear campaign launched against him by Labour ministers and Beehive apparachiks. As usual, it was Mallard who sank furthest into the slime, reportedly advising people privately to check for scars on Glenn’s forehead, implying Glenn has received some type of brain surgery or electroconvulsive shock therapy. These are not nice people who surround Clark.

People may think Matthew is making this up. But not only did I hear the same thing at the Senate party in Wellington, the SST itself reports the smears in its main article on Glenn:

It can hardly have helped when Labour’s deputy, Michael Cullen, started describing Glenn as “confused”, and when rumours began to circulate in political circles that perhaps Glenn’s memory wasn’t quite what it was since his surgery last year to treat a life-threatening subdural haematoma (bleeding on the brain), something Glenn had openly discussed with the Herald in February.

The article quotes Cactus Kate on Glenn:

More recently, the acerbic blogger “Cactus Kate” (the nom de plume of a Hong Kong-based New Zealand lawyer) took Glenn’s political temperature during a long conversation with him in Auckland’s Soul Bar in 2002, and came away convinced there had been a meeting of right-wing minds. Writing earlier this year, she recalled that, “I didn’t hold back on the government of the day and Mr Glenn was extremely supportive of the idea that they were all things evil … He did not seem to like the `sisterhood’, unless they were hot and invited him to watch. He bemoaned the lefties in New Zealand and their sexual habits … “

I suspect Mr Glenn donated to Labour because they were the Government, rather than any firm ideological commitment to centre left causes.

Anyway Tuesday will be a fascinating day.