Sam Fisher: Telco comes out tops in our brand new bitch list

Telecom's dubious TV ad featured its CEO out fishing. Photo / Supplied

Opinion

The Herald on Sunday is pleased to announce the launch of our Annual New Zealand Bitch List.

Every year, starting now, we will select the top New Zealand companies and individuals who have a bitch against the public.

The big surprise is that Telecom has continued to improve on last year's No. 1 ranking. Occupying the top spot, as well as places 2-11, 44 and 67-72, Telecom has dropped a lot of balls (or calls) to get ahead.

The telecommunications company, referred to by its foreign-based call centre staff as "Tilicum", managed to top the list by sending services overseas, running a bizarre XT TV campaign alongside XT service failures and a dubious ad featuring the CEO out fishing.

While it might have been more appropriate to see him on gardening leave, this coincided with the ex-CEO writing her memoirs and criticising Tilicum for some of what must have been her own decisions.

Our judges said Tilicum was definitely punching above its weight with a bitch against Kiwi ex-staff, customers, the public and shareholders, demonstrated through appalling strategic decisions and a plummeting share price.

In a failed attempt to nudge Tilicum off its perch, TelstraClear also started moving its New Zealand call centres to Asia. This was done mainly to ensure Sydney shareholders got a few more dollars towards their yacht club memberships.

The Aussie battlers will be disappointed with their No. 12 placing but that may be a higher ranking than their cricket teams' performances this year.

In a last-minute entry at No. 13, Chris Carter has a bitch against himself and Labour leader Phil Goff. In a politically suicidal attack, carefully packaged as a suicide letter, Chris Carter has continued his career train wreck by damaging himself, his party and his leader.

It may provide an opportunity for Goff to look strong and get a boost in his ratings or it could prove his polls are as naked as the emperor with new clothes.

National MPs, determined to get their noses into our trough, have achieved 14th place by targeting Labour credit card spending but, in a bitch-for-bitch swap, have confirmed National ministers have spent $1.007 million on domestic trips and $1.006 million on international ones. Ranking 15th, all by himself, the Minister for the Rugby World Cup, Murray McCully, had a romantic candlelit dinner with the International Rugby Board costing $2855.

There were apparently a lot of sweet nothings exchanged, which coincidentally is what we'll probably get back for the expenditure.

The outcome is now obvious. Sometime soon, no MPs will be able to spend a cent on anything. Which could rather take the fun out of having a Government. Or not.

Places 16 through to the early 40s are held by finance company directors and board members who lost mum-and-dad shareholders all their money.

Mark Hotchin and a list of other directors rolled into failure well before 2009/10 but they didn't seem to worry about numbers, so why should we?

Alan Bollard of the Reserve Bank has fallen a huge number of places but still maintains a real bitch against all of us.

He did keep the OCR (Official Cash Rape) low until this week, but given how weak the economy is, pushing mortgage rates up is a real hit.

His assertion that we should stop investing all our productive money in houses may well be true, but given the alternative - managed funds and shares (see places 16 to 43) - what choices do we have? It does keep a lot of bankers busy, though.

This year's remaining Bitch List is made up of murderers, P sellers, bad parkers, telesales people and the knob who tags my fence.