THE MYTH AND THE REALITY

One of Dave Henderson's favourite themes over the years has been on how business has been 'suffocated' by bureaucratic red tape. Hendo has portrayed himself as the champion of the small business owner fighting the evil interests of the state.

This exercise in myth-making reached its peak in Henderson's celluloid hymn to himself. The movie We're Here To Help portrayed Hendo as 'David' up against 'Goliath' played by the Inland Revenue Department. Ayn Rand would have loved it.

But, as is usually the case with 'Hendo', the practice never quite matches the theory.

The self-styled champion of business owners is notorious for not playing a straight bat to the business owners he claims to support.

Take Jodie Devine for instance.

Ms Devine is a self-employed interior plaster and is owed some $2000 for work she did for the Minx bar and restaurant - which is part of Hendo's rapidly vanishing business 'empire'.

She recently took to protesting outside the restaurant in an effort to publicise her fight with Hendo. She might of well been trying to 'embarrass ' him into paying up - a somewhat forlorn hope given Hendo's implacable indifference to the plight of everyone he owes money to.

It will come as no surprise that Hendo is up to his old tricks again. He is disputing the bill which will probably ensure that Ms Devine will be forced into not inexpensive legal procedures in an effort to get Hendo to pay the bill.

Is Davy-boy at fault at all? Of course not! Why admit any responsibility when you can just blame someone else? In this case that 'someone' is the local Christchurch media, namely The Press.

He has claimed that The Press was behind Ms Devine's protest!

Full of righteous indignation Hendo has described The Press as 'nasty and pernicious'. Of course this is the very same Hendo who had no problems with the positive stories that The Press ran about him in the days before the property bubble burst and the chickens came home to roost.

Hendo went on to say:

'That The Press is so desperate for a story that they cooperate in turning a simple civil dispute into something sensational is childish. Go trade your mindlessness and nastiness somewhere else.'

Hendo has never been slow in coming forward to preach 'individual responsibility' to welfare beneficiaries but apparently it doesn't apply to him.

This whole affair has been somewhat of a bitter pill to swallow for Jodie Devine as she previously regarded Henderson as a hero of hers. Unfortunately she bought into the myth rather than the reality.

Said Devine:

'He took on the IRD and I admired him for that. I thought he was awesome especially when they did that movie about him. I knew I was dumb.'