Zuru suck so much, making such a huge profit this last year, when ordinary Kiwis are doing it tough, all while paying a lot less tax than the rest of us too. Their businesses aren't even based in New Zealand, so l don't see what there is for the media to be celebrating. The rich get richer and fuck the planet a bit more. Woo hoo, l don't think so....
Repeat after me: 👏 billionaires 👏 shouldn’t 👏 exist 👏
We should nationalise the Mowbrays wealth. Give them a cool $5mil to live on. Ban them from ever doing anything ever again. Put the remaining $19.99 billion into literally anything else. For example: it costs about $1.2b to build a hospital. We could build and staff and resource 10 new hospitals and still have change left over.
The thing a lot of people forget is that money isn’t just luck, we as a society choose to allow this greedy disgusting accumulation of wealth at the expense of the wellbeing of other people. Wealth inequality is super easy to fix: you tax psychopaths like the Mowbray boys. You put in a wealth tax. You put in a capital gains tax. You bring in regulations that tax the creation of pollution (which is essentially what Zuru is creating).
We choose to have poverty. We choose to not fund healthcare. We choose to not fund education. We choose to keep spending money on the most ridiculous bullshit. We could change this all almost overnight.
Ewww I knew those names were familiar. The Glassdoor proceedings were so disappointing. Imagine wasting money on that instead of... improving the workplace you lead.
I think it's appalling that an employer with so many employees, would try to punish - and that is the correct word - a former, brassed-off employee. Quite apart from the completely unfair balance of power, it makes the company look to be extremely petty minded.
I would say the only way to voice your opinion via Glass Door, would be using a false name and address, which rather goes against the original intent.
Money talks. How these people can sleep at night knowing that their little customers are being given things that are very much responsible for trashing their planet and their adult lives, is beyond me. The very least this despicable family can do, is to give some of their much-vaunted billions to charities, which try to look after children and nature. Fat chance.
And I appeal to you all: stop buying new, plastic toys for children!
Excuse me, but I live on a boat. I get so annoyed with all boats being considered "luxury yachts". You couldn't buy a decent second-hand car for what my boat is worth! And I have wonderful parties, with lovely people.
😁 I guess your kind of boat isn't what gets all the same publicity as that afforded to arrogant rich (usually white male) people. Probably a good thing?
Zuru's business model is to make money by turning oil directly into landfill. And that's before you get into the Mowbray's themselves being thoroughly unlikable people.
I’m so very glad I wasn’t the only one who was blatantly disgusted by the article in the Herald this morning about these guys - there’s so many reasons to, but every time anything about them comes up my skin crawls actually.
I am so pleased you are doing this. I thought of you this morning when reading the news. Then I thought of all his victims. Then I thought about all the billionaires in the world and how none of them got there by being kind. Now I just feel hate towards them all. It reminds me of the days when anarchy was about taking power away from the rich. The billionaires can all go fuck themselves because what good do they really do?
It's funny how every now and then it gets mentioned that manufacturers should have some regulations and therefore responsibilities towards the environmental sustainability of their products- packaging, materials etc. Which they 100% should because there is only so much consumers can do with options. (Toys may not be the best example though as there are certainly better options available!) If that ever came into force then those human stains wouldn't have an income.
Speaking of shit toys I've recently seen one advertised (not zuru) that is some fluffy thing that you actually pull all it'd fur off to reveal a different colored fur underneath. By fur I mean plastic. How the actual fuck are companies allowed to do this!?
I'm so glad my daughter is past that stage. There are so many toys like the unicorn surprise things where the fun is unpacking the thing from its multiple layers of plastic packaging and seeing what the surprise inside is. Once unpacked there's just a load of plastic with some not-that-interesting plastic inside it. It gets put in a drawer and forgotten. Such a waste, and not fun to play with.
She's obsessed with books and reading now, which is awesome.
I pretty much had the same attitude, and she rarely managed to get the crap toys, but but then a grandparent buys the thing for them, or another parent does for a birthday present. I think the daftest thing she got was a toy where there were a load of plastic cat things that wouldn't look out-of-place in a cheap Christmas cracker, and they were embedded in some play-dough type stuff to "discover". I think she still has the box and the plastic tat in a box in our attic, never looked at since.
My eldest daughter is unfortunately right at this stage. One of her friends got a Zuru kittycorn thing for Christmas and now my daughter moans and laments about how she doesn't have one on a daily basis. I didn't get her one for her birthday because of remembering David's original post on Zuru but it is really wearing me down. The whole blind box/surprise thing so common in toys right now is awful too.
I remember in my youth receiving home-made "blind box surprise" presents - it was a way of cash-strapped parents making presents more fun & seem more substantial. I guess it got commercialised like everything else. Lord knows I'm glad I DON'T know what "Kittycorn" is 😱
My 7yo desperately wants the skull smashers (same thing I assume). The big ones of course that are are close to $100 for a load of plastic. We are resisting as well but it's unrelenting. I can think of so many other things that I'd rather spend $100 on!
Truly revolting people, I wrote an article about them last year, and their political influence:
"Perhaps one thing to take from all this. Next time you’re buying a toy for you kids, or your grandkids, at the Warehouse or Toys R Us. When you come across a collection of bright, colourful toys from Zuru. Don’t just think of it as buying more plastic.
Much better to think of it like this - when you buy Zuru you are helping Nick, to help the National Party, to get elected."
Please do an exposé on these idiots and their landfilling company. Insane with how aware we are of plastic and the damage it does to our environment and we allow these idiots to fill our country with it, not to mention the slave labour and it apparently being a horrible place to work.
One other thing that I find amusing (in an I'm smiling so hard so you cant see me weeping way) is that "NZ's biggest company" is at diametric odds with the "clean green" NZ myth that was never fucking real.
Same! I mean the "clean green" can be aspirational going forward, but not until we stop celebrating the polluters just because they are rich, and/or allowing harmful practices that contribute to the opposite outcome.
I have never bought anything from Zuru for my kid. They all look shitty quality and is just a bunch of bits that get lost or binned. Someone bought her a Zuru uni-something with wings. She was pretty unimpressed by it. Yet they dominate the toy aisles.
Anyway, just another reminder that it's impossible to be a billionaire and be a good person. Or even a moderately okay person. Someone is always losing out. Or lots of someones.
I got blocked by Nick Mowbray for asking about Zuru's tax status in NZ (their companies sit under a Hong Kong based umbrella). He had plenty to say about NZ politics and what the country should do, but is he paying his fair share? I remember he once said Zuru was paying taxes... income tax. He didn't even recognise it was his employees paying that income tax, not zuru.
He probably sees it as “these people wouldn’t be in a job and paying taxes if it weren’t for me, so in effect I AM paying NZ tax”. Yes it’s stupid but given how arrogant he seems to be, I’d bet money that that is how he thinks.
That was exactly it. I do think he's a bit thick, it's incredible how people can succeed with just a will to screw people over but very limited knowledge of anything else.
Disgusting behaviour. I consider reaching billionaire status a moral failing, so I can't say I'm surprised, but yikes.
I totally agree. 100%, Rowan.
Yes, exactly! Billionaires should not be, and they should certainly be deeply ashamed to exist!
Might just be me, but hearing about a company suing their former employees would do more to deter me from working there then any bad review.
Maybe this is why I'm not a billionaire.
Zuru suck so much, making such a huge profit this last year, when ordinary Kiwis are doing it tough, all while paying a lot less tax than the rest of us too. Their businesses aren't even based in New Zealand, so l don't see what there is for the media to be celebrating. The rich get richer and fuck the planet a bit more. Woo hoo, l don't think so....
Repeat after me: 👏 billionaires 👏 shouldn’t 👏 exist 👏
We should nationalise the Mowbrays wealth. Give them a cool $5mil to live on. Ban them from ever doing anything ever again. Put the remaining $19.99 billion into literally anything else. For example: it costs about $1.2b to build a hospital. We could build and staff and resource 10 new hospitals and still have change left over.
The thing a lot of people forget is that money isn’t just luck, we as a society choose to allow this greedy disgusting accumulation of wealth at the expense of the wellbeing of other people. Wealth inequality is super easy to fix: you tax psychopaths like the Mowbray boys. You put in a wealth tax. You put in a capital gains tax. You bring in regulations that tax the creation of pollution (which is essentially what Zuru is creating).
We choose to have poverty. We choose to not fund healthcare. We choose to not fund education. We choose to keep spending money on the most ridiculous bullshit. We could change this all almost overnight.
Ewww I knew those names were familiar. The Glassdoor proceedings were so disappointing. Imagine wasting money on that instead of... improving the workplace you lead.
The workplace sounds... yeah. That's another story.
I think it's appalling that an employer with so many employees, would try to punish - and that is the correct word - a former, brassed-off employee. Quite apart from the completely unfair balance of power, it makes the company look to be extremely petty minded.
I would say the only way to voice your opinion via Glass Door, would be using a false name and address, which rather goes against the original intent.
Money talks. How these people can sleep at night knowing that their little customers are being given things that are very much responsible for trashing their planet and their adult lives, is beyond me. The very least this despicable family can do, is to give some of their much-vaunted billions to charities, which try to look after children and nature. Fat chance.
And I appeal to you all: stop buying new, plastic toys for children!
I have never bought my niece and nephew anything plastic for Xmas and their birthdays, I have only ever bought them books.
Me too. I also fossick around op shops for cool old wooden toys.
Well said!
Why are parties on boats always with the worst people?
You get enough money and arrogance and you *always* end up on a boat.
Or. its Big Pussy in the Sopranos "Not in the face!"
Excuse me, but I live on a boat. I get so annoyed with all boats being considered "luxury yachts". You couldn't buy a decent second-hand car for what my boat is worth! And I have wonderful parties, with lovely people.
Worm boats excepted!
😁 I guess your kind of boat isn't what gets all the same publicity as that afforded to arrogant rich (usually white male) people. Probably a good thing?
Indeed! Whatever else I am, I'm not rich - at least as far as money is concerned. Mercifully, there is more than one form of wealth
Because once you're on the boat you're stuck there for the duration. No one can say 'this sucks let's go' Makes you look more popular 😎
I would never go to a party on a boat and I detest it when people want to bus me somewhere. If I have no options to leave, I'm not going.
Omigod yes, staff christmas parties where there's a bus there and back? Special kind of hell
Zuru's business model is to make money by turning oil directly into landfill. And that's before you get into the Mowbray's themselves being thoroughly unlikable people.
That has been the plastics industry playbook since forever. I recommend 'Crimes against nature', by Jeff Sparrow, for an illuminating read.
I’m so very glad I wasn’t the only one who was blatantly disgusted by the article in the Herald this morning about these guys - there’s so many reasons to, but every time anything about them comes up my skin crawls actually.
I am so pleased you are doing this. I thought of you this morning when reading the news. Then I thought of all his victims. Then I thought about all the billionaires in the world and how none of them got there by being kind. Now I just feel hate towards them all. It reminds me of the days when anarchy was about taking power away from the rich. The billionaires can all go fuck themselves because what good do they really do?
Lemmy said it best: "Come on baby, eat the rich. Bite down on that sonofabitch"
It's funny how every now and then it gets mentioned that manufacturers should have some regulations and therefore responsibilities towards the environmental sustainability of their products- packaging, materials etc. Which they 100% should because there is only so much consumers can do with options. (Toys may not be the best example though as there are certainly better options available!) If that ever came into force then those human stains wouldn't have an income.
Speaking of shit toys I've recently seen one advertised (not zuru) that is some fluffy thing that you actually pull all it'd fur off to reveal a different colored fur underneath. By fur I mean plastic. How the actual fuck are companies allowed to do this!?
I'm so glad my daughter is past that stage. There are so many toys like the unicorn surprise things where the fun is unpacking the thing from its multiple layers of plastic packaging and seeing what the surprise inside is. Once unpacked there's just a load of plastic with some not-that-interesting plastic inside it. It gets put in a drawer and forgotten. Such a waste, and not fun to play with.
She's obsessed with books and reading now, which is awesome.
When my kid points at rubbish toys at the shop I just tell him it's shit and he won't get anything like it and pick something else! He'll learn early.
I pretty much had the same attitude, and she rarely managed to get the crap toys, but but then a grandparent buys the thing for them, or another parent does for a birthday present. I think the daftest thing she got was a toy where there were a load of plastic cat things that wouldn't look out-of-place in a cheap Christmas cracker, and they were embedded in some play-dough type stuff to "discover". I think she still has the box and the plastic tat in a box in our attic, never looked at since.
My eldest daughter is unfortunately right at this stage. One of her friends got a Zuru kittycorn thing for Christmas and now my daughter moans and laments about how she doesn't have one on a daily basis. I didn't get her one for her birthday because of remembering David's original post on Zuru but it is really wearing me down. The whole blind box/surprise thing so common in toys right now is awful too.
I remember in my youth receiving home-made "blind box surprise" presents - it was a way of cash-strapped parents making presents more fun & seem more substantial. I guess it got commercialised like everything else. Lord knows I'm glad I DON'T know what "Kittycorn" is 😱
My 7yo desperately wants the skull smashers (same thing I assume). The big ones of course that are are close to $100 for a load of plastic. We are resisting as well but it's unrelenting. I can think of so many other things that I'd rather spend $100 on!
Truly revolting people, I wrote an article about them last year, and their political influence:
"Perhaps one thing to take from all this. Next time you’re buying a toy for you kids, or your grandkids, at the Warehouse or Toys R Us. When you come across a collection of bright, colourful toys from Zuru. Don’t just think of it as buying more plastic.
Much better to think of it like this - when you buy Zuru you are helping Nick, to help the National Party, to get elected."
It's not paywalled if you want to check it out:
https://nickrockel.substack.com/p/nationals-mega-donors
Very enlightening - thank you. I think I picked up on the mega-donor story without having name recognition as to their background.
Please do an exposé on these idiots and their landfilling company. Insane with how aware we are of plastic and the damage it does to our environment and we allow these idiots to fill our country with it, not to mention the slave labour and it apparently being a horrible place to work.
One other thing that I find amusing (in an I'm smiling so hard so you cant see me weeping way) is that "NZ's biggest company" is at diametric odds with the "clean green" NZ myth that was never fucking real.
Oh, rarely has a company given so little shits about the environment. The stories that need to be told, but everyone running scared.
Same! I mean the "clean green" can be aspirational going forward, but not until we stop celebrating the polluters just because they are rich, and/or allowing harmful practices that contribute to the opposite outcome.
I have never bought anything from Zuru for my kid. They all look shitty quality and is just a bunch of bits that get lost or binned. Someone bought her a Zuru uni-something with wings. She was pretty unimpressed by it. Yet they dominate the toy aisles.
Anyway, just another reminder that it's impossible to be a billionaire and be a good person. Or even a moderately okay person. Someone is always losing out. Or lots of someones.
I got blocked by Nick Mowbray for asking about Zuru's tax status in NZ (their companies sit under a Hong Kong based umbrella). He had plenty to say about NZ politics and what the country should do, but is he paying his fair share? I remember he once said Zuru was paying taxes... income tax. He didn't even recognise it was his employees paying that income tax, not zuru.
He probably sees it as “these people wouldn’t be in a job and paying taxes if it weren’t for me, so in effect I AM paying NZ tax”. Yes it’s stupid but given how arrogant he seems to be, I’d bet money that that is how he thinks.
That was exactly it. I do think he's a bit thick, it's incredible how people can succeed with just a will to screw people over but very limited knowledge of anything else.