Outrageous misfortune!

Well done NZ Actors Equity - talk about biting the hand that feeds you!
“And the Oscar for outstanding effort in exporting New Zealand’s fledgling film industry offshore goes to… NZ Actors Equity and their ubiquitous spokesperson Ms Robyn Malcolm.”
To paraphrase Winston Churchill: “Never in the field of acting endeavour have so few, done so much damage to so many and achieved so little.”
It seems the selfish and posturing actions of a small part of the actors’ union and its Council of Trade Union head Helen Kelly, along with the very smug and self-appointed font of New Zealand’s conscience, Robyn Malcolm have thrown into jeopardy the filming of the US $500 million Hobbit movies in New Zealand.
Warner Bros says it is considering offshore locations for The Hobbit movies.
In a statement the studio said the actions of unions had caused it substantial disruption and damage and forced it to consider other options.
Both the Government and director Sir Peter Jackson have blamed union actions for the possible loss of the two-film Lord of the Rings prequel, saying the international ban put on the movie during employment negotiations had undermined confidence in New Zealand as a location.
"What they saw as a predictable and settled environment ... now looks, because of the actions of the unions, to be a much more hostile and unpredictable environment," Mr Key explained.
It was only a month ago when all was looking good for the filming of the Hobbit movies in NZ. Peter Jackson – a hero to many in the local film industry – for putting New Zealand actors and technical people on the international map by making the very successful Lord of the Rings trilogy in this country, was set to crank thing up for his latest production when a small bunch of actors – stirred up by their Australian union comrades and supported by the militant and anti-business president of the CTU Helen Kelly threw a rather large spanner in the works.
In a very dramatic – what else would you expect from these acting luvvies – bid at publicity, NZ Actors Equity demanded that the producers of the movies change the employment rules and employ all actors on their movies as full time staff rather than independent contractors as is normally the case. When Jackson and Warners said no; the actors union - in a huff of self-importance - immediately placed an international boycott on the movies and the proverbial really hit the fan.
After it became apparent that the posturing by the union and Ms’s Malcolm and Kelly was a real threat to these movies going ahead in godzone and the livelihoods of thousands of technical staff and others – who would also miss out if they were shifted from NZ – these people came out in numbers to protest heavily against the unionists and their stupid actions.
So now with the Government, Peter Jackson, the Warners studio and also thousands of affected technicians and other affected parties baying for the unions to pull their heads out of their collective rear ends with the movies all but lost – suddenly both Kelly and Malcolm are trying to play the victims (the latter being about as good as she is an expert on climate change ie not very!) and blaming everyone else but themselves for this utter debacle.
If Warners do pull the plug and the Hobbit movies are lost to New Zealand Robyn Malcolm and Helen Kelly et el will have no one else to blame, but their own hubris and blinkered 1970s thinking.
Both these outdated women and their outrageous industrial bumbling are relics of a bygone socialist era that has failed miserably. They should be put in a museum they belong, and not as representatives of the vibrant and flexible industry that New Zealand film making and acting has become in 2010.