INVERCARGILL - TAKE BACK YOUR TOWN

We took to cooking and stuff over the weekend so left the heady debates on the middle east to Lambcut who likes writing and talking about it - a lot.

However, we have been musing over a story that we saw in the Southland Times late last week about self styled gang leader Shaun Te Kahu writing a letter to property developer and entrepreneur Louis Crimp about their gang headquarters which was torched.

Crimp owned it and in a curious oversight didn't realise that there had been no mortgage payments on the property for a decade.

He took back the property but in less that 48 hours it was burnt to the ground.

Te Kahu - who is not Ngai Tahu's finest son, shows some literacy skills but little else.

The letter is a mixture of whinging about the sentimental attachment he and his brother Chaz had to the place, and not so veiled threats about rebuilding the gang presence back in Invercargill.

Te Kahu's letter in full

Koe Louis,

Shaun Te Kahu here. I writing to you concerning what I just witnessed on TV. I'm in total disbelief. Shocked and totally gutted. As well as my brother. We are original founders of mongrel mob Invercargill.

That place held sentimental value to us. I wasn't aware of that mortgage loan back from 89. When I become president I honestly wasn't aware of that bill. Otherwise, I would've paid it. To find out 20 years later was a slap in the face. I received your correspondence like December just gone.

I couldn't do much from my cell. I was told you approached others down there. I honestly believe you weren't talking to the backbone at all. I'm the backbone. Me and my brother. I was in Springhill Prison when I got your notice.

So I wasn't in a position to do anything positive. I'm back in Chch now. I'm due to come back Invercargill ways anytime next year. I'm a local from Invercargill just like everyone else in the town. I've made the wrong choices, no ones perfect. I won't deny the mob are a bunch of thugs. I accept we've mucked it all up. But I am prepared to make a change for the better of us and the community. We have given back to the community as well. My contribution was AK47s and shotguns and other weapons. That was something no other gang has done ever in Invercargill. Just politics in the gang scene got in the way. The town has been quiet since I've been in jail. I'm in a better frame of mind now. What I like to know is where do we go from here? I got the impression you and the city council was trying to crush the mob by taking way my headquarters. The bill was unrealistic aye. Why would the mob pay you that amount of money when the mob could go and buy another house and rebuild right in the town. We chose Severn cause it was the right location for us. And there's another headquarters in Mataura.

I'm prepared to make amends to you when I get out. I'll compensate you on the condition you give what's left back 2 us which is nothing now. But ashes. Otherwise you give me no choice but to rebuild in town.

Til I hear from you.

Yours sincerely SHAUN TE KAHU

Paparua Prison

It is astounding that he admits to introducing AK47's to the town and to fuelling the gang warfare that has dogged the southern town for years.

Invercargill doesnt need arsewipes like the Te Kahus . They are wreckers and haters and just stupid enough to be dangerous to innocent people.

Even the Mongrel Mob never held these guys in high regard until they managed to torch the historic headquarters of the Road Knights which had been a symbol of the pasty white racist underbelly of Invercargill.

Sadly this gross play in the gang sandpit gained them some misplaced creds.

When Te Kahu does get out of prison there is no way he should be allowed back inside the town boundary.

What we would like to see on the big sign that welcomes people to Invercargill is - Proud to be Gang Free.