Trickle-down in action – crumbs for the masses:
Waikato Tainui education grants for 2014
Hundreds of students will receive an education grant. Last year the total for education grants came to $900,000. In addition, one individual will receive between $1 and $2 million. Tribal members numbering tens of thousands will receive nothing. The elderly who apply for a grant will be subject to strict conditions before they receive assistance. The ‘one individual’ is not constrained by such conditions and is free to drink booze at luxury casinos with millions of dollars worth of tribal donations to his shonky Ururangi Trust.
In the meantime Mike Pohio of Tainui Group Holdings has been talking big about his multi-billion dollar inland container depot. What a load of rubbish. It just doesn’t add up. People talk about taking billion dollar risks while the vast majority of tribal members have not received a single dollar from the tribe!
Mad Mike Pohio knows all about dodgy investments. Flashback to 2011 and Tainui Group Holdings owes loads of cash to the banks and are about to crash. Mike went and sold off Tainui’s stake in the Ryman company for $58 million. They called it a windfall at the time. We called it madness as the market was in a massive slump. We called it right because the market has hit highs since the selloff – those shares would be valued at $176.6 million today!
Tainui Group Holdings sell Ryman shares and loose $118 million
Although to be fair to Mad Mike you will not be surprised to learn of Tuku Morgan, Maxine Moana, & Shcaffhausen’s involvement in the crazy decision which led to the tribe missing out on $118,625,000.
Happy Holidays!
The latest Tainui news from Eraka's Blog 
Jan 09, 2014 @ 11:19:03
Well, I guess it was too much to hope that your toxic rantings would cease, so in that sense 2014 looks like being as hate-filled and envious as ever. We did enjoy your absence between Sept 15 and December. Where were you? Rehab…? Prison…? Comatose…?
Why is that, alone among all the Iwi in New Zealand, Waikato has to endure the only blog dedicated to fuelling hate, envy, distrust and discord among its own tribal members. And you print this stuff for all the world to see?! I’m sure other Iwi have their own raruraru and i’m sure there is probably dissatisfaction with the performance of some tribal authorities, but Waikato has the only blog that puts everything out in to the public domain for all and sundry to read. You really are a bunch of disgusting fuckwits and i can only hope that your hate results in you getting cancer and dying particularly painful and drawn out deaths. Soon.
You talk of the rank and file tribal members getting nothing. You dismiss the education grants as crumbs and talk of ‘strict conditions’ around the kaumaatua grants. If, by ‘strict conditions’ you mean the old duffers need to provide a receipt for their hearing aids, or glasses or dental treatments then you are correct. The only other ‘conditions’ are that they can only get one $500 grant per year, then yep, they’re strict conditions.
Education grants – ANYONE who whakapapas to Waikato Tainui can get an education grant to help with whatever NZQA certified course they want to undertake. The tragedy is that each year only roughly 600 of 65,000 tribal members ever apply for a grant. I guess the other 64,600 tribal members are too busy doing…. what, exactly? to think about improving their situation.
The people you are so eager to trash are people who have got off their asses and are doing things. Whatever you may think of them, they make a contribution, they get up in the mornings, they have jobs, they have ambitions. What do the people you purport to represent have? Those that have nothing, generally do nothing. What exactly would you do for these people? You always criticise but never have any ideas or plans to put forward of your own.
The fact is that if you belong to a Marae, or have a project that benefits Waikato-Tainui or want to better yourself through education then the tribe has a number of grants available to help – and in the last ten years that has meant around $30 million in total distributions. But if you want to sit at home and do nothing, expecting that you are entitled to some share of the settlement money just because of who your ancestors were, then you are going to be badly disappointed. “Nothing for nothing” is how it should be.
Jan 13, 2014 @ 16:15:05
Helloo… if you read the artical correctly you will notice that we aren’t trashing the members of the iwi who received grants for their education at all. We just put up the numbers. Stating facts – for instance who do you think receives millions of dollars solely because his ancestors are who they are, or were? He hasn’t been successful at anything besides stabbing his friends in the back and loosing loads of Tainui cash at gambling. Nothing for nothing as you say – but the same fella keeps getting everything for nothing. Could you answer that?
Jan 13, 2014 @ 16:23:19
The artical highlights the fact that the majority of the tribe receives a mere pittance. 2 tiers of iwi membership has emerged. The tribal elite and everyone else. The have’s and the have not’s. Guess where all the money goes?