Havoc does DJ service for fines
The HoS report:
DJ Mikey Havoc has a debt to society – and is paying it off the same way he makes his living.
The former Push Push rocker, now a 95bFM morning DJ, amassed at least $20,000 in traffic fines over a number of years. …
The system allows people to carry out between 40 and 400 hours of work instead. The Department of Corrections website describes it as allowing “offenders [to] make compensation to society for their offending”.
So that would mean an affective rate of $50 to $500 an hour. And that is net. Normally you would need to earn around 20% more than that to cover tax. And what did he have to do?
Havoc confirmed he had arranged to clear the debt through work: “Shifting shit around and doing stuff other people can’t be f***ed doing”.
However, the Herald on Sunday has learned that Havoc’s punishment is remarkably similar to the work he does on radio in the morning – spinning records for students.
Havoc does the breakfast shift on 95bFM from the second floor of the Auckland University Student Association building. Then, according to AUSA general manager Tom O’Connor, Havoc works off his fines by playing music for students on campus – in the quad outside the radio studios.
O’Connor said the student association normally hired DJs to play for three hours over lunch for about $150.
“He is working as a DJ in the main quad, working for us free.”
I don’t think being a DJ is what most people would regard as community service.
It would be like me getting let off any traffic fines I incur, by doing community service as a blogger.
November 8th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Never worked out why you don’t get the alternative of 10 lashes/$1000 of outstanding fines. The wankers would be climbing all over each other to be first in the queue with their visa cards out (except for masochists of course).
Good for the sagging government tax take too!
November 8th, 2009 at 11:22 am
He says a lot of it is parking fines, from around the university.
Cant the dipstick get an all day park earlybird deal ( hes breakfast show) around shortland st for $15.
Then Walk up through Albert Park.
Bet the last part would be the too hard basket
http://www.tournament.co.nz/content/car_park.aspx?cpid=1
November 8th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Wish I could do DJ service for IRD “fines”
There is no wet bus ticket treatment if you are a functioning contributing member of society, oh no no can’t have that can we.
Forget to pay 44 bucks in PAYE and get a fine the equivalent of 2 speeding tickets.
November 8th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Could I convert my student loan into DJ community service hours?
November 8th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
sounds ok to me.
we are getting more mang for our buck compared with street sweeping,
November 8th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I had to pay my fines the old fashioned way, $10 a week. Then again, I’ve been in cattle class at the Auckland District Court too. My community service didn’t involve DJing but cleaning toilets in a halfway house.
November 8th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
What a crock of crap, do the crime do the time, just like the rest of society.
More progressive rubbish, make him clean toilets or pick up litter, then at least the community will get some value for money rather than playing crap music to a bunch of hairy legged schoolboys.
November 8th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
DPF said: “It would be like me getting let off any traffic fines I incur, by doing community service as a blogger.”
Only if a condition of the sentence was that all your posts must be supportive of the Labour Party.
You get [severely?] punished. Society benefits. Win-win. I’d support that!
November 8th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
aw whaddya expect..its good ‘ole softcock NZ…do the crime do no time…pfft…the place gets more ridiculous by the day
November 8th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
He should be forced to play nothing but his own old Push Push records, and endure all the students’ abuse and mockery and having things thrown at him etc. Not to mention the horror of having to hear the records…
November 8th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I’m not really surprised, just look at what happening with the diversion system in Auckland Central.
The scheme has been reduced to operating just 3 days a week, Interview times are being reduced and an emphasis placed on the number of people processed vs the actual outcomes.
Justice has left NZ and its been replaced by process, paper works and stats.
November 8th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Surely nobody expects a fat communist prick like Mikey to find a parking building and walk the rest of the way like us proles?
November 8th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Never heard of the guy
November 8th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Trust me, having to DJ some of the shit that gets played in the quad for AUSA is punishment in itself…
November 8th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
One rule for semi famous F grade celebs, one rule for the rest of us.
November 8th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Better still Countess, the bleating self-absorbed little tosser could catch the bus. “I was paying more in parking than I was earning.” Fuck me.
What a complete arse. Has never quite recovered from Newsboy’s relative success.
November 8th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
“Mikey Havoc” (wtf) sounds like one of those jumped up tossers who think the world owes him a favour.
“awww shit bro parking costs more than i earn”
“awww shit bro not mah fawlt im late da club was bangin last night”
“awww shit bro pass the bong”
November 8th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
What I find most odd about this matter is how the Courts simply take someone’s occupation at face value rather than requiring some sort of evidence.
Mr Havoc is a DJ because he says he is a DJ; clearly the requirements for being a DJ does not include any actual listeners to his radio show (he has none).
Using this standard the next time I get a traffic fine I shall inform the Court I wish to do community service and my occupation is “Time Traveller”; my community service will be to give various weather warnings to the farming folk to prepare them for, say, the winter of 2019 and presumably the Court will let me off without a requirement of any checking.
http://www.nightcitytrader.blogspot.com
November 8th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
So Mikey Havoc is getting paid at 5 to 50 times the minimum wage for blatantly and repetitively abusing the system? The minimum effectively salary he’d have to earn to get paid as much as he’s making by doing “community service” is $130,000 a year! Ridiculous.
To be honest, I’d rather he was just bankrupted.
November 8th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
The tragedy is they have this all ass about face. Corrections should be paying him NOT to play. Now that would be community service.
November 8th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Hmmm…
That’s just beggging for a compulsory v voluntary student membership debate.
November 8th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
The Havoc defense : I couldn’t find a car park close to work that was free.
This is the same Havoc that had weekly mutual masturbation like chats with Helen Clark.
November 8th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
The old bill gave this D4J a few months in the slammer ducking the arse bandits when my fines got a little over a $100.
November 8th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Any one see the dick on Media 7 a few weeks ago?
Turns out he’s a Troofer
Hey Mikey, I suppose thats the extent of the New World Order for you then.
Or is it?
You’d better pay your fines or the men in dark suits willl kidnap you and send you to a re-education camp.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:33 am
good on him fuck the parking wardens!!!!! hahaha classic… fairly typical of ol mikey id say… you’d expect any less from a rocker gone party animal/radio/ tv /star?… hahahaha
November 9th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Parking tickets????
Good lord does he HATE the planet or something. Feed him to the greens!
November 9th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Good grief, this is about PARKING TICKETS and people are talking about lashes? Get some perspective.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
It would be like me getting let off any traffic fines I incur, by doing community service as a blogger.
No, that’s your hobby. It would be more like you having to carry out research for charitable groups.
[DPF: Not quite because Auckland students are not really a charity. More like having to do research for the National Party and in return having $20,000 in fines dropped]
November 9th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Good grief themorgan, that post was A JOKE and you’re taking it seriously? Get a sense of humour.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
The actual substance of the story is that while AUSA is registered with Corrections to provide community service work, there is a rule that it can’t provide community work to an existing employee. Havoc isn’t an employee of AUSA, but AUSA owns 95bFM via a trust, so there could be a question over the arrangement.
But nearly everything else the HoS threw at the story is nonsense. He didn’t get “celebrity justice”, he made an offer to the court to work off his fines and it was accepted. Thousands of people do that every year. The Sunday News journalist Jonathan Marshall got a court to agree to to wiping $47,000 worth of parking fines this year by agreeing to place himself under a four-nights-a-week curfew!
It’s all very well to talk about cracking down, but that’s precisely why these people run up such huge debts — it’s the costs and penalties that accrue every time they don’t deal with it. Increasingly, the courts are agreeing to community service and the like just to put an end to the matter.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
DJing in the quad is not exactly what most of us hacve in mind when we hear the words “community service”. They should have made him go and play Vera Lynn records at an OAP home for 200 hours. That would have seriously fucked him up.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
@russel brown Do you have a link to that story? I’m horrified if that’s really the case. Sounds like an abuse of the system if you ask me. I’ll stay home 4 nights a week if you pay me $47k to do it? Hell I think a lot of people would offer that. How come I can’t get that when I get a parking ticket? 1 ticket would be about 2 hours at home for that. Disgusting.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Good grief themorgan, that post was A JOKE and you’re taking it seriously? Get a sense of humour.
Given the lunacy that often passes for discourse here you’ll understand it can sometimes be difficult to tell.
November 9th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
I just wanna know what sort of dipshit do you have to be to rack up $20,000 in parking fines?????
Surely that must be largely penalties for not paying and compounding interest, rather than the fines themselves? But still.
Anyway, the time he spends doing that DJing is time he can’t be doing anything else. If he was a doctor would anyone complain if he worked for free in an emergency ward to work off his debt? Basically the AUSA is getting a service it would otherwise pay for. He’s getting nothing for his time (except expunging his debt). Where’s the problem?
November 11th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Lordy . You’re a jolly old bunch aren’t you ?
Anyway , before you pop your jumpy gussets you my want to read my response to Russell’s post on Public Address.
Go to the public address System discuss bit- HardNews – - and its on page 4 of the comments
It will clarify things for you hopefully.
And for the record
* It wasn’t $20,000 . I never told him how much it was. Awesome journalism ! Pretend-y News !
* The AUSA asked me to dj in the quad . I thought then , as I still think now thats kind of weird .
So , as you were .
Perhaps tonight you and your friends can have some fun coming up with a list of other stories that would have probably been more important to have printed on page 3 of real grown up national newspaper ?
Keep up that looking down
mike havoc