The Companies Act 1993 defines a phoenix company as being, in relation to a failed company, a company that at any time before or within five years after the commencement of the liquidation of a failed company, is known by a name that is also a pre-liquidation name of a failed company or is a similar name. When phoenix company arrangements are established in which the new company created bears a similar name, similar assets and similar management structure to a failed company, the purposes of such companies are usually part of a scheme either to circumvent obligations to creditors of the failed company (avoid debts owed) or to mislead the public into believing they are dealing with the same entity as previous, possibly as part of an attempt to mislead creditors of the previous company.
Steve Crow and salacious, sordid, tawdry and boring porn sleaze (Erotica Expo) versus Triumphs of human imagination that "raise the human spirit" (World of Wearable Art).
Editorial: A sight to raise the human spirit (The Dominion Post Last 26/09/2009)
OPINION: Two impresarios featured in the news this week: [Stephen Peter Crow and Suzie Moncrieff]
One panders to salacious instincts; the other lifts the human spirit. One is pornographer Steve Crow, the other is World of WearableArt founder Suzie Moncrieff. No prizes for guessing which is which.
Fortunately for Wellington, Mr Crow chose Auckland for his latest Boobs on Bikes parade a publicity stunt that no longer even has the virtue of being novel. [Read more…]
Negative backlash ends Steve Crow’s New Plymouth Sleaze Porn Promo 2009. Erotica Expo Lifestyles & Boobs on Bikes Dead
Backlash Ends Sexpo Plans
Lyn Humphreys – Taranaki Daily News
15 September 2009
Boobs on Bikes and the Erotica Lifestyles Expo are not coming to New Plymouth this year following a public backlash.
“It was going to happen but with all the controversy we’ve been copping and all the negatives from everywhere, it’s not happening now,” Erotica’s owner and porn mogul Steve Crow said from Auckland yesterday.
Steve Crow and his Inglewood brother, David Crow, bought the New Plymouth and Districts RSA at Strandon and also bailed out the debt-ridden club last year.
The two are planning an extensive development for the site, named the Te Ara project.
Amid negative reaction, Steve Crow last month promised the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce that the site would not be converted into a brothel, strip club, adult shop or “anything at all to do with the sex industry”.
But Mr Crow’s Erotica lifestyles expo website advertises a three-day expo at New Plymouth’s Te Ara at 434 Devon St East for $20 a head in November. When contacted by the Taranaki Daily News yesterday, Mr Crow admitted that the expo, which would have been at Te Ara, included strip shows.
However, recent bad publicity and a public backlash from New Plymouth people have caused him to pull the pin.
“I just think it’s going to backfire if we do,” Mr Crow said.
What’s behind Boobs on Bikes? By political activist John Minto
Article from the Stuff News Archive (2009): Political activist John Minto wrote ……..
John Minto: 2014 Candidate -Mana Party
[Photo Source: http://yournz.org/tag/john-minto/]
Most people seem to think the Boobs on Bikes parade is tasteless and tacky but nothing to get steamed up about. Just harmless fun and a bit of titillation to warm up a cold winter perhaps.
Certainly we have plenty of people hung up about sex and nudity but the protest at the parade was not a bunch of prudes averting their eyes at the sight of silicon-implanted breasts. Instead it was a warning cry about the deep damage being done by the hard-core porn industry with Boobs on Bikes organiser Steve Crow at the heart of the problem.
[Note: The next Boobs on Bikes event has been announced as scheduled for 7 October 2015, – rescheduled says Crow – from August 2014, “To coincide with the shift in dates for the Erotica Lifestyles Expo“].
I’ve seen material pictured and quoted from some of Steve Crow’s publications which is quite depraved. For example men speaking about women in a way no reasonable people would speak about their neighbour’s dog.
Denise Ritchie of the [registered charity CC30599] group Stop Demand [Foundation] (the demand side of the sex-for-sale industry) points out that sex-related crimes against women and children do not take place in a vacuum but rather are underpinned by the hard-core porn industry. This is where for example videos of simulated rape, incest and all manner of sexual violation against women and children are produced and sold commercially.
I don’t have to buy his filth if I don’t want to but if Crow’s activities are making our community a less safe place for me and my family, and other women and children in particular then I have a right and a duty to object.
This is serious money. So is there a connection between Steve Crow’s promotion of hard-core porn and sexual violence against women? I have no doubt there is a strong, direct link. There can be no doubt that the abusive behaviour of some people is stimulated by this Crow-type pornography.
Denise Ritchie points out that two months ago a 60 year old Wanganui man was convicted for performing sexual acts on his severely handicapped wife after watching a pornographic video with two other men, one of whom he invited to “join in”. It would be only the deliberately naïve who refuse to see a connection in this case and more widely. I have no doubt that the glorification of rape on a pornographic video will reduce the seriousness of such behaviour in the minds of enough men so as to increase the risk to women generally.
To quote Ritchie once more, “our Chief Censor [Mr Bill Hastings at that time], our pornography investigators and global research are unanimous in reporting that hard core pornography, which makes up the bulk of Steve Crow’s commercial interests and profits, is increasingly cruel, misogynistic and degrading of women.” We should all be very concerned at the messages this material is sending to men.
Forget about the boobs on bikes. These are the entertaining sideshow to a porn industry which is making the country less safe for all of us.
Stephen Peter Crow promoting Erotica Lifestyles Expo
Steve Crow: ‘Long-standing identification’ with Boobs on Bikes parade. (Photo: Stuff News 27/04/11)
According to Stop Demand, a 2006 Treasury report estimated that sexual violence in 2003/2004 cost the New Zealand economy no less than $1.2 billion. $827 million of this is the loss of quality of life for victims, across an estimated 16,500 sex offences.
Source: What’s behind Boobs on Bikes by John Minto. Published 09/03/2009
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/blogs/frontline/1880536/What-s-behind-Boobs-on-Bikes
Note 1: Stop Demand Foundation is a registered charity (CC30599) that was registered with the Charities Commission on 30/06/2008. Its website is www.stopdemand.org A message to men on its website states:
“Sexual violence, exploitation and denigration of women and children is overwhelmingly a men’s issue. We need men’s proactive support to stop it.”
To find out about the governance of Stop Demand go to: http://www.stopdemand.org/wawcs0153449/WHO-WE-ARE.html
Note 2: Stephen (Steve) Peter Crow has 33 criminal convictions for distributing objectionable material. Source: Sunday-Star Times 26 October 2003.
See: The People Vs. Steve Crow,” by John Landrigan, North & South (Issue 207, June, pages 82-90). “Besides the porn baby [controversy], collectively he, his ex-business partner Fiona Gibb and Vixen Direct [Ltd] faced 135 criminal charges last year. Crow pleaded guilty to 33 of the lesser charges – for the distribution of objectionable material … he still faces seven regulatory infringements to a law he does not agree with.”
Note: 3
Mr Crow had criminal convictions for distributing objectionable material and the inquiry was treated as an employment issue.
Police are told not to associate with people with a criminal history.
See full article: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10392287
Chief Censor Bill Hastings and Hardcore Pornographer Steve Crow
In a press release issued last year to explain why his Office had banned the Otago University student magazine Critic, which featured a controversial essay on drug rape, Chief Censor William (Bill) Kenneth Hastings described a male pornographer whose profile was also featured in the magazine, as one “who makes a living by filming the extreme degradation and humiliation of women for sexual arousal.” [1]. The man concerned has done well financially making obscene hard-core pornography, just like flamboyant 50-year old New Zealand pornographer Steve Crow – dubbed NZ’s “Porn King” by the media. Crow became infamous in 2002 for seeking unsuccessfully to use the facilities of the Waikato District Hospital to film the birth of his aspiring ‘porn star’ Nikki’s baby, so he could incorporate the birth scene into his sleazy porn film entitled “Ripe” [2].
Crow, who recently failed in his bid for the Auckland mayoralty, continues to promote his most visible enterprise Erotica Adult Lifestyles Exhibitions (“SeXpo”), promoting it via his “Boobs on Bikes” parades of topless pornstars in various New Zealand cities. He boasts that his business is the largest supplier of “adult” explicit sex publications (DVDs etc.) to the New Zealand commercial market. According to a North & South report, [in 2002] “he, his ex-business partner Fiona Gibb and his company Vixen Direct” faced no less than “135 criminal charges” – pleading guilty to 33 of the lesser charges – relating to the distribution of “objectionable” publications [3]. A Listener report in 2004 notes that he remains perfectly happy to be called a “pornographer” and a “sleazeball” [4]. He is managing director of the so-called “adult entertainment” (porn) empire CVC Group Ltd.
Hastings, like Crow, also has a job dealing with hard-core porn sleaze, earning about $190,000 a year censoring publications featuring the extreme degradation and humiliation of women for sexual arousal, paedophilia, sexual violence, necrophilia, bestiality, sex involving human faeces, and other “objectionable” content. However, one key difference between the two men is that Crow invests his own money into making, watching and selling degrading moral filth, while Hastings gets paid by the tax-payers of New Zealand to watch and re-watch it and study it in excruciating detail.
Hastings, dubbed “Mr Clean” in a recent NZ Herald article [5] and his dream team, predominantly women, operate from a plush office on the 4th Floor of BP House in Wellington, with spectacular commanding views over the harbour. They write lengthy reports that provide the legal justifications for why this hard-core porn garbage can be viewed by those 18 years of age and older – classifying most of it as serving the purpose of “entertainment” – serving the purpose of adult sexual titillation etc. Hastings would maintain that by writing these lengthy reports detailing the finer nuances of all these explicit and degrading sex acts, etc. they are strictly fulfilling the requirements of the legislation by viewing and classifying the publications. [Read more…]