Hi

Please at least ask a few questions before printing a bit of PR as news or credible information. Please, do not believe what we say but ask a few obvious questions from the Directors

Thanks

Max

The over-hyped PR spin campaign is starting to unwind as unanswered questions relating to ownership and the cost to local businesses has generated much anger causing the local Chamber of Commerce to pull away from supporting it.

This has not been helped by the heavy handed sales team and the accusations made to local shop keepers who say “no” that they are not supporting local trade!!

The heart of the issue is that the actual ownership and control of the real money ($50,000) that will be swapped for the Baroon discount money is in the hands of a few individuals via a privately owned company.

The shareholders, directors and managers comprise of a small tight group who opposed the local sports groups in the community Parklands project. They lobbied for a garden and to be able to develop some land as a green industrial park.

The leader of this group is Paul Veit who is a controversial wealthy South African property developer who has received much criticism in Maleny for the effects of higher rent rises on local business (see letters in Range News).

The Directors have pulled all information about themselves and the details of the costs to local business from the official web site. However a quick look at http://www.linkedin.co for the names of Sue Mihovilovich and Darren Mitchell to see a quite different tale of actual work experience in community development

The Baroon PR machine puts out that Paul Veit and his wife are simply retired informal supporters and also goes to great lengths to make sure that the group is not associated with their other formal positions that of being Directors of Maple St Co op and the Up Front Cafe Co op (Paul Viet, Fern Viet, Sue Mihovilovich and Kate Crawford). This is because in this role they have actually decided not to back the Baroon Dollar in the same way that they are demanding other businesses to.

Questions to the staff revived muffled embarrassment and the explanation offered is that the same directors reckon that they cannot afford the 5% discount that shopkeepers get hit with. They also say that most of the products and services they buy are from off the Range so the Baroon Dollar cannot be used and the few local suppliers of local produce want cash. They cannot afford to have these dollars in addition to the existing Bunya barter system.

So with the Chamber of Commerce comprising of all the main retailers and the two big Co-op’s saying no who else apart from the few die hard alternatives and Paul and his gang are left to buy the $50,000 worth of Baroon Dollars.

So far the media have been lazy and happy to reprint the PR hype without bothering to ask any of the key organizations why they are not supporting the scheme (scam) but now are starting to ask the obvious. When this happens watch Paul and his mates duck for cover and try to find someone else to blame.

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