Updated post 11.9.14 at 6:24 p.m.
The Otago Daily Times was tipped off about its [Studio 29] closure by a caller who described it as a private bar for a “boys’ club”.
However, a number of girls were allowed in….
Mr Davies confirmed the room was now considered “outdated” for the stadium, and the decision to close it had been made in April.
That being said we had already done lots of photography!
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### ODT Online Wed, 10 Sep 2014
Taps turned off at stadium’s ‘bar for the boys’
By Chris Morris
Last drinks have been called for a male drinking bastion buried deep within the bowels of Forsyth Barr Stadium. The call has been made by Dunedin Venues Management Ltd chief executive Terry Davies, who confirmed the closure of “Suite 29” following a review launched earlier this year. The small room – in the main south stand near the venue’s service entrance – was used as a private social space for DVML staff, high-profile sports stars and other guests, with beer provided.
Read more
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A bit of a rundown….
[Mr Davies] was not aware of any behavioural problems associated with the room, but expected staff would have to find other places to socialise after work.
Behaviours/behavioural problems, indeed.
Ahhh, the stories to tell from Carisbrook, the farm, and Fubar…. the whole continuance, but with the closure of Suite 29 where will DVML staff, executive and friends meet now? And Mr Hansen, we hear he’s doing terribly well and enjoying his flatscreen TVs (2).
“Activities at Suite 29 included ‘celebrity’ attendances to underage drinking and other things. The twitter feed clearly shows the beer line that comes direct from the Speight’s tanks at the stadium.” [Anonymous]
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SAMPLES
Images from the deactivated @29suite Twitter account – due to the lack of space here we’ve held back on publishing too many of the tweets photographed, nevertheless you’ll get the flavour:
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HAPPY DVML PASTIMES
A spot of horse owning….
Rock Of Tara racks up 30th win for Tweedie
Last updated 05:00 18/12/2012
http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/sport/racing/8091489/Rock-Of-Tara-racks-up-30th-win-for-Tweedie
Cars are fun….
Wanting shareholders to help buy things like a car and well, horses….
Oh yeah. They run treasure hunts at work….
Important friends help with the sheep….
Munted farm produce (or they eat well)….
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PAST COMMUNICATIONS
Things that make us go Hmmm….
● Ask about Suite 29 and how it’s used to fund a staff member’s horse and racing car and how staff are bullied into buying space sold on the wall to fund the hobby.
● That tickets are sold to staff to fund Suite 29. It’s only for boys and invited girls who tow the line.
● Ask about the beer keg system installed into this area and who paid for that and the huge amounts of beer. [Also, worth asking where the plumbed-in keg came from and who paid for it. The free beer from Lion!!!]
● Ask if it’s ok for the staff member to use the corporate suites to carry out extramarital affairs.
● Ask the staff fired from the Dunedin Centre about the bullying tactics and how the technical staff had to be moved down there because they feared the staff member’s bullying.
● Use of stadium equipment at the farm.
● Use of language by the staff member in the office which creates a terrible unprofessional ‘rugby culture’ at the stadium.
● An invoice for a taxi to Big Stone Road! Worth over $100.
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THE ANTECEDENT – Dug Out, Carisbrook
Run by the same types….
Cheers!
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
*Images: Screenshots by whatifdunedin – from a photographic series based on a web of Twitter accounts
What if? Dunedin... 
They talk about “optics” when concerned to promote the best image of yourself and your enterprise, so thanks for the pictures which tell a thousand tales. Who is going to ask all the great questions (above) and of whom? Who knows in a few months or years this may turn out to be a scandal like some we have read of over in England recently?
raymac97, make it a few months: CST invoices.
No brains and oh so typical of the entire rugby ethos. Are we surprised? All involved should be sacked and all ill-gotten gains recovered. Now.
The question that bothers us most, more than flatscreen TVs going out the back door of the stadium at night, is WHY no responsible member of staff attending the DVML staff meeting (supposedly held in March 2014) at which a manager told all present that he had lost a loaded firearm (alleged to have been a loaded rifle) at the stadium MADE NO IMMEDIATE CALL TO THE POLICE
Submitted to Mc.P. – My first in a while …Let’s see how it goes…
ANOTHER JOB FOR DELOITTE
Another depressing page of this miserable pro-rugby stadium saga opens…
“The room had run at no cost to DVML, with cash contributions from those using it”…
Unless the beer and other etceteras were supplied free to DVML by the brewers concerned, or the beer and said etceteras were bought and brought to Suite 29 by those who drank them, then it certainly did run at a cost to DVML.
It may not have run at a loss, but the term ‘contribution’ that is used here is interesting. ‘Payment’ usually covers the full cost of something. ‘Contribution’ is usually used to describe payments that fall short, to a greater or lesser extent, of covering the full cost of something.
I suppose the question, if the beer and etceteras were paid for by the ratepayer, is just how much did these ‘cash contributions’ fall short of the cost, and exactly who were these ‘cash contributions’ paid to, and how were they recorded and matched up with the individuals’ consumption of the beer and etcereras. And, I suppose, where did the cash itself come from?
If the beer was supplied by the ratepayer, then I would expect DVML to be able to have these figures to hand, and to be in a position to supply accurate answers to these questions in response to a LGOIMA or Bidrose request, and without any of the usual tiresome whining about ‘commercial sensitivity’ – as this was clearly not a commercial, contractual or employment arrangement, which involves properly recorded payments in full – not ‘cash contributions’. I would also expect Ms Bidrose as the CEO to whom DVML answers to make that request.
As we are looking at regular drinking over some four years and not only staff but unspecified quantities of unspecified ‘guests’ too, within a well-populated community/code/culture that is noted for heavy and binge drinking with various unpleasant associated outcomes at the highest level, then the beer and the money involved may be considerable – maybe into the tens of thousands of dollars, and possibly more. As the activity occurred within a sealed room within a large and usually locked/unused professional rugby stadium, the lack of complaints about behaviour is unsurprising, and no guarantee that poor behaviour did not occur as an outcome of this activity.
As this activity is apparently a carryover from Carisbrook, which was a wholly ORFU owned facility at the time the activity was transferred, this looks like it may be another ORFU expense (like slap-up black tie dinners) whose cost has been transferred to the ratepayers.
If the beer and etceteras came from DVML and they can’t/won’t supply the data noted above, then this looks like another job for Deloitte/the Police.
What kind of liquor license does this sort of bar have to have? It’s not like the staff lunch-room where staff chip in for a couple of doz after work on Fridays. It’s not a locker system where each member of a club has their own bottle of liquor from which they can shout another member, but never accept money in return. It appears to have been running semi-commercially even if not making a profit. I am long out of touch with the various regulations and categories of licensed (or exempt) drinking establishments but I am sure someone out there knows the current regs.
More photos added to post.
Boorish behaviour from the peasantry that is Otago rugby. It’s not just mateship, but a feeling of inadequacy that makes joining the tribe so important. Something like small cock syndrome?
Did they remove the @29suite account after you first published?
No Mike. The account was gone some time ago – we mapped the week it was taken down.
ah – well done
I reiterate the point. There is a photo of a tap in the wall of this room producing beer with no sign of a till or receipt book. If this tap leads to a pipe that in turn leads to the tanks filled with ratepayer owned beer, then there is no way of either figuring out directly how much DVML owned beer has been drawn out through that particular tap or relating it directly to any ‘cash contributions’ to DVML.
There is an accounting term for this phenomenon: ‘shrinkage’. Shrinkage in my professional experience has always been a particular problem in hospitality and specifically with booze. ‘Shrinkage turns up in the accounts and at stock take as, for example, paid invoices for 100,000 litres of beer, till receipts for 90,000 litres going over the counter and 2,000 litres ‘stock in hand’ left in the tank. If the start stock was zero, then the 8,000 litre difference is ‘shrinkage’.
In badly managed hospitality operations which are struggling financially, stock shrinkage over and above normal operational expectations is the first thing that you look for when called in to remediate matters. It is usually there, significant, and staff related. If you sell 100,000 litres of beer through an operation, inevitably some will end up on the floor, in the tray below the pumps etc etc, but this figure for normal ‘operational shrinkage’ is usually small and predictable for any particular type of operation, and the bigger the operation, the tighter these predictions become. For a large operation using stable keg beer pumped in and out of large tanks, I would expect operational shrinkage to be small and easily measured against other equivalent operations.
FB is an operation of this type. The expected operational shrinkage above might be c. 2000 litres for example. Any shrinkage that is above these expectations (6000 litres in this case) needs to be investigated.
If DVML’s accounts are in anything like reasonable order (I know, I know….), then it should be possible to estimate pretty precisely how much beer has come out of that tap over the last four years (Beer into tanks – beer sold – operational shrinkage – change of ‘stock in hand’ over period = Suite 29 tap). Using the same accounts, this can then be compared with recorded ‘cash contributions’ (if any) to DVML that are related to Suite 29 and said tap to find out how much has been taken (loads?) and how much has been paid for it (stuff all?).
There appears to be a lot of tinned and bottled stuff around on Suite 29 too. Suite 29’s ‘take’ of this stock can be easily estimated in the same way. Bottles/cans purchased – bottles/cans sold – operational shrinkage for bottles cans – change of ‘stock in hand’ bottles/cans over period = Suite 29 consumption of bottles/cans.
As Suite 29 is now a photo recorded and widely reported reality my position would be that the onus of proof would be on the denizens of Suite 29 to prove that the booze stock shrinkage that has occurred since 2011 over and above operational expectations didn’t happen via Suite 29 rather than for me to prove that it did.
Then it’s time to go hunting. Ms Bidrose – That means you.
Not only is there a tap on the wall, there is also a power strip plugged into the wall being used in a similar manner.
(on the plus side we may have found the missing hunk of Carisbrook turf that was helicoptered out at ratepayers’ expense)
Oh dear Rob, you are published by ODT and, Abridged.
It’s ‘p’rogress.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/315433/taps-turned-stadiums-bar-boys#comment-62060
but didn’t publish mine, perhaps because I included a link here and mentioned the firearm ….
LOL Mike – be careful !!!
(they followed that link btw – our Stats show)
Oh wait, there we go, they did publish a portion of it carefully excising the meaty bits and removing the link to the embarrassing stuff.
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{Thought earlier you must’ve seen you were first off the rank and had posted another comment since :) Link http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/315433/taps-turned-stadiums-bar-boys#comment-62033 -Eds}
Is the “some girls were allowed in” a stripper reference?
Are lips sealed.
It’s a criminal offence to carry a loaded firearm in a public place.
There is no excuse for carrying a loaded firearm around town, unless you’re a member of the armed offenders squad in the middle of an AOS callout. As for leaving one lying around, that should mean “bang” goes the owner’s firearms licence, no excuses.
Prosecution/sentencing is a little heavier than just ‘losing’ your firearms licence.
I would’ve said it should mean instant dismissal from your job. That before any prosecution takes place – if a lout actually brought a loaded rifle to work(!), in his vehicle(!), or was too drunk to know he left it at home, unsecured(!). And, did he have a firearms licence anyway(!).
Depends on how important it is to you. A fine is “only money”. Imprisonment isn’t likely and if this is the only offence would be brief, but losing one’s firearms license means missing the duck-shooting season, no hunting, no protecting stock from dog attacks, no easily putting injured stock out of its misery, no competitive shooting – and no certainty that you’ll ever be judged sensible enough to get another license for the rest of your life.
Arms Act 1983
53 Careless use of firearm, airgun, pistol, or restricted weapon
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1983/0044/latest/DLM73301.html
•Warning: Some amendments have not yet been incorporated
Heavy penalties, and rightly so. Firearms are not toys. Anyone privileged to use them should remember it’s not a ‘right’ in NZ, and if you prove yourself to be irresponsible you lose the privilege and can face prison and a hefty fine. In reality the maximum penalties are unlikely for a first offence.
Actually since this is Dunedin and there are various layers of mateship and mutual backscratcher alliances, there is a chance that the worst that would happen, to SOME careless firearms owners, would be a talking-to and a warning that should this sort of thing happen again the police would be unable to choose not to bring a prosecution. OTHER careless firearms owners, different story perhaps?
Yeees -_-