Soper’s daily whinge and smear against the government.
He really is a nasty piece of work.
This time he has a go at Golriz Ghahraman.
What a slimeball.
Remember how John Key’s new government in 2008, came in on a raft of two track dirty politics and soft media infotainment spin? And then they were like the deer in the headlines, without much of a plan, so…..
The most expensive proposal from the summit was for an equity investment fund involving the Government and private banks as partners.
…
The most expensive single pledge given yesterday came from Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall, who said the Tindall Foundation would put $1 million towards “bottom-up” training that helped improve people’s access to information and services.
…
At the summit, Mr Key said the public-private investment fund would be “a pot of investment money to help New Zealand companies get the access to share capital they need to grow their cake and therefore to create jobs”.
…
Mr Key said completing the walking track would cost about $6 million.
Adding a cycle track would create huge tourism opportunities.
He singled out for mention a possible public-private fund to help increase tourism.
He also said he wanted to fast-track implementation of National’s youth guarantee scheme which covers the transition from school to training or study.
But she admits that her profile page on the Green Party website, which states that she has put African leaders on trial for abusing their power, “could be clearer”.
Theres a slight difference between prosecuting war criminals and defending war criminals
[lprent: You are simply lying at several levels. But I think this is easier to demonstrate rather than explain at any level..
1. There is no significiant difference between defending and prosecuting. Both are part of a court process that leads to judgement.
2. Her bio actually said – read it carefully
Her studies at Oxford, and work as a lawyer for the United Nations and in New Zealand, have focused on enforcing human rights and holding governments to account. Golriz has lived and worked in Africa, The Hague and Cambodia putting on trial world leaders for abusing their power, and restoring communities after war and human rights atrocities, particularly empowering women engaged in peace and justice initiatives.
3. Putting people on trial is not a prosecution prerogative. It applies to both defense and and prosecution.
4. I think you are trolling and as a local prosecutor and judge, we clearly don’t need a defense. Therefore there should be no trial to look at the actual circumstances.
5. Banned for 1 month for crimes against robust debate..
6. This is not arbitrary in anyway. It is a simple matter of arbitrary lynch mob justice without due process.
And since Golriz Ghahraman has experience of both, she knows an infinite amount more about the difference than you do, but then so does the stenographer.
Yup, from sewer to MSM as the National party smear machine cranks up and all the MSM journos gather around the outflow pipe mouths agape. After all, Farrar negates the need to think, or to resrach, and he helpfully even writes your questions for you.
Soper in particular seems to have decided to wage a misogynistic war on anyone who dares to commit the crime of being young, female and more powerful than him. Linda Clark got it 100% right when she pretty much name checked him and his attitude and told he needed to wake up or ship out.
It’s obvious what the Nats and their MSM enablers are trying to do. The accusations are going to come thick and fast through to the end of this parliamentary session (ie. just before Xmas) leaving a trail of perplexed voters to gather around the barbecues wondering whether they made the right choice voting for Labour/Green or NZ First – whichever. It doesn’t matter the claims are nothing more than garbled rubbish. Its the first part of a slow, subliminal manipulation of their minds.
I noted the sharp edge of cold fury in Barry Soper’s voice at the first stand-up media interviews which followed Winston Peters’ announcement. I knew then he was going to take a vicious approach and he has clearly influenced the little wife, Heather DPA.
That’s kinda the thing about human rights; even the worst of the bad guys have some. It’s part of the complexity of being a human rights lawyer that sometimes you’re defending them.
Ban me if you want, I believe what she did was wrong.
[RL: I don’t care what you believe here, I do care that you dropped a controversial comment with no supporting argument or citation. That ‘smells’ very much like typical hit and run troll behaviour. I moderate on behaviour not content; make your case honestly and I’m unlikely to intervene.]
You realise that without defence lawyers we can’t put people on trial at all? If you want genocide and other human rights abuses to be prosecuted, you have to have court staff.
Take your notion to its logical conclusion and you’re effectively saying that the International Court of Justice enables war crimes, and that our court system enables murder.
There is a role for defense lawyers in the legal system and we need a legal system. That doesnt mean I have to like or endorse those who choose to defend heinous crim inals.
No. That isn’t what you said. Your endearments and endorsements have no value, so with-holding them is of no consequence. However, you made a very specific allegation against people who work on legal defence teams – that their job enables crime.
Are you now backing down from that into a vague sense of disapproval? If so, how about you take some personal responsibility for your disgusting false accusation?
That’s not actually the role of a defense lawyer, any more than the role of a prosecutor is “to get an innocent person convicted”.
Often the morally bankrupt or hard of thinking reduce the functions to simply “get a guilty criminal acquitted” or “innocent person convicted”, but the role of the court is to try to determine the truth. The prosecution present their case, the defense present the case as it appeared to the defendant, and the court decides. Neither party in an adversarial system is allowed to mislead the court, AFAIK. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Why is it unreasonable to point out that Golriz Ghahraman acted for the defence in the genocide trials. When you read her bio on the Green website it gave the impression she was prosecuting genocide, not just in Cambodia but also in Rawanda.
Now I have no problem with her acting for the defence, but she should not have given the wrong impression.
It is not unfair for a journalist to point that out. It is not the act of a slimeball to do so, nether is it sexist.
This site is always saying how terrible National MP’s on the basis they are all psychopaths and liars. But you can’t stand even the slightest adverse comment about those from the left.
What about accusing her of enabling genocide? Which is what “the left” is actually defending her against.
Can you help me understand right wing thinks on this issue please? When you collaborated with Nicky Hager, were you enabling war crimes or Al Quaeda?
What about the Law Commission? You definitely must’ve enabled some pretty serious crimes there, and I don’t just mean the things the National Party wanted 😉
Yes, if we use that ruler to measure Golriz every lawyer that ever defends a criminal is somehow implicated in the crime.
It’s crucial that the crime and the analytical dissection of it after the event are mutually exclusive.
If Golriz’s bio implies she rode around the world on a big white stallion solving the war crime woes of the world, if we all agree everyone is entitled to a quality defence, she did. I lie in mine, I was useless at Rugby.
My comment was in response to Ed’s initial comment, but there have been so many other comments added, it is distanced from that – probably also the result of using an iPhone.
David Farrar on Kiwiblog put the issue in quire a reasonable way, but some of the commenters on his site, not so much. But then some commenters on any of the main political sites use extravagant language accusing people of all sorts of things, and acting from the basest of reasons. The Standard is certainly not immune from that.
DPF put it in as appalling a way as Phil Quin did – as a propaganda call to all those on the right who’d like to skip the human rights stuff and get on with the punishments.
Some one on radio recently was saying how much was paid by observers to watch when they had really brutal punishments. I don’t think that human nature has left those of today unconcerned about the niceties of justice and rule of law, more enlightened than in the past.
There are some amazing things in this piece: If a crowd was denied the spectacle of an execution on the allotted day, occasionally there was some gruesome compensation. In England in 1221, Thomas of Eldersfield was reprieved from hanging at the last moment; in a show of mercy, he was blinded and castrated instead. Robert Bartlett describes the scene: ‘the eyes were thrown to the ground, the testicles used as footballs, the local lads kicking them playfully at the girls’. http://www.historytoday.com/sean-mcglynn/violence-and-law-medieval-england
David Farrar on Kiwiblog put the issue in quire a reasonable way
Farrar? You say “reasonable” because it suits you. “Tendentious” and “disingenuous” are words that come to my mind. You know perfectly well that the Penguin never lets his hands get dirty in public and encourages his troll farm to do the dirty work for him.
but some of the commenters on his site, not so much
What a pity that because we lack your smarmy manners we’ll never be admitted to your gentleman’s club of “reasonable” men. Oh dear.
But in fact at the Rwandan Tribunal she was representing the war criminals in the genocide of around eight hundred thousand Tutsis. She complained about how poorly resourced the defence was. It was as though the United Nations didn’t really believe in the process, she opined.
Ah, I see. He’s the type of person who thinks that people once accused of a crime shouldn’t have any defence and would probably do away with the trial altogether. And, once the trial is over and they’re found guilty, say that the lawyers who made up the defence team are just as bad as the ones found guilty.
Ed (1) … proof Natz (through Joyce) still pulling the strings of msm, with NZH dredging up whatever is possible to smear the coalition government, regardless of how truthful or inconsequential it is!
Golriz was doing her job, as most lawyers are expected to do. Look at Key’s former job as a currency trader. Bet some of the activity there wasn’t above board! Was that ever challenged by msm? No!
Congratulations to Prince Harry and Megan Markle for there engagement there wedding is good for OUR worlds society.
I only advocate Vapours as a tool to give up smoking as I’m using Vapours to give up. The only thing we should be breathing into our lungs is clean air we need to set a age limit R 18 and a display/advertising restrictions to limit the appeal and take up of vaping by our youth. PS your a bit out numbered Hillary you need a lady friend on the breakfast show Ka Pai
But The Treaty adam is between Maori and the Monarchy – not the NZ Govt. This is an issue that if NZ were to progress towards complete independence from England would need to be resolved.
I agree with your comment Adam, but I also have to say, it’s awesome when two people fall in love and get married for the right reasons, his mum would have be thrilled.
But she is no leader of ours. She has done absolutely nothing as our Head of State. She was very polite in how she told Maori to piss off when ask to have some honour and look at the treaty her institution signed.
I now see that the national opposition is attempting to stall the new government’s plan to stop labour/NZF/Greens coalition “17 goals” and run then out of time, by jaming Labour with over 6200 “spam” questions.
So Jacinda needs to show Government “leadership” and need to rush through an urgency bill to reverse the national party changes they (national) placed to allow this attempt to close down the new government, and restore the former system preventing this “tea party style” abuse of our parliamentary system..
“The Government is going all out to tick off all 17 goals on its 100-day plan.
A hundred days. Just over three months. It sounds like plenty of time until you blink and realise a month has passed since the Government was sworn in. They have until February 3.”
I think you are right cleangreen. It is time Ardern showed some steel and dealt with these National ratbags. There is nothing nice about the Natz, they are at war and need to be exposed for their spiteful anti democratic behaviour. New Zealanders deserve better.
Labour coalition only have – 6th 7th 8th, – 12th, 13th, 14th December; – and the xmas party celebrations need to be be put in there somewhere we assume too.
hey have their budget to release and befre 3rd February need to make good on the ’17 goals’ as the ‘100 day pledge’ to NZ.
Labour have just six more days in parliament these emails this year, so we are screwed unless Jacinda can change the legislation today.
Or else Labour are left bound up with these 6200 ‘spam’ emails now and labour now has no choice but to pass a ’emergency bill’ to stop “email spaming” forthwith.
it is preventing government to function under legislation national passed. Remove all National legislation labour must in all areas also.
I knew national would leave ‘hand grenades’ to stymie this new government so they need to remove all national toxic legislation now.
That sitting calendar for 2017 is the one originally in place prior to the election and is now out of date.
Following the swearing in of the new government a revised sitting programme for the remainder of 2017 was drawn up in conjunction with the proposed sitting calendar for 2018.
So Parliament will sit for the next four weeks from today, Tues 28 Nov through until 6pm Thurs, 21 December – not just the two weeks originally planned (6th 7th 8th, – 12th, 13th, 14th December).
Is is highly likely that Parliament will also go into urgency in order to get the PPL legislative amendments through and possibly other legislative business prior to the Christmas/New Year close down – including possibly reversing some Nats legislation.
Thanks for giving us the updated sitting schedules veutoviper,
I went on the usual site but being that the new government had “a minefield” of changes that were needed to be made with the whole moviing of the old tired national mob out into the ‘lower government’ buildings and the new labour coalition Government newly placed on the ninth floor of the ‘Beehive building’.
We know only to well how difficult that two weeks it took to get the new Government communications up and running.
I understood all this as I was employed by the ‘fourth largest communication company globally’ (Bell) and used to place new systems in Government buildings also.
As our many NGO emails went un-anwered for weeks until we got hold of a Government secretary and were told that a “new communication system was in the process of being installed” and they had problems, so I guess this is catch up time for all.
The Parliament website has actually been very quickly updated this round after the election. The new MPs were listed etc within a day of the election etc. and other needed amendments up very quickly.
However, I did find it took a few minutes to relocate the link on the Parliament website to the revised sitting schedule for 2017. I knew that it had been changed but it was not immediately visible because it was included in the article re the proposed 2018 sitting programme.
Having worked in government for many years in Wellington (including very closely working with and in the Parliament precinct), I am pretty sure the actual Parliament website (and related staff etc) would have been unaffected by the physical moves, changes to communications etc related to the change of government, relocation of MPs and parties. Fun days, but actually very much highly planned and managed chaos!
All good now we need to ‘stand in line with national waiting for the reples from the 42 emails we have sent the new government’.
Now our NGO representing many communities wonder if the national email nonsene has now prevented the Labour coalition government from responding to other questions for the community also now?
So that puts the public interest now behind national party’s own interests, and that means national wont care about their own impact upon our communities interests?
Maybe national should have thought clearly how their ‘obstruction’ process over 6200 emails of questions was going to impact on all NZ communities.
An interesting take by the ever-pedantic Graeme Edgeler, but i also suggest people read the comments which put things into a bit more perspective in terms of National’s actions while in government. In particular, it is worth reading Katherine Moody’s comment here
This includes a number of replies by Key and his ministers to very similar diary related questions while in government. The wording of these replies is not only similar to one another of these Nat Ministers, but also to that now being used by the new Labour/NZF/Green government Ministers.
Examples:
Hon Bill English (Minister of Finance) replied: As Minister of Finance I have a large number of meetings in Wellington and around New Zealand. I do not believe it is a good use of staff time to itemise my meetings or engagements, nor attempt to list the names of every person I met over the course of a month. If the member is interested in a specific issue or organisations then I might be able to provide more detailed information.
Hon Steven Joyce (Minister for Economic Development) replied: I hold a large number of meetings both formally and informally each month with a wide range of people and discuss a wide range of topics. I do not consider it reasonable use of official’s time to provide the Member with a comprehensive list of all such meetings, nor is it feasible as the information requested is often not specifically captured by my records. If the Member could be more specific about a particular area of interest I would be happy to consider his request.
English just on on Morning Report claiming National had raised the bar for transparency in government over the past 9 years and that Labour needed to up their game as they were stuck in time a decade ago. LOL. This from the party that totally subverted the OIA request process over the past 9 years.
Hypocrite.
He was also asked if Smith was right in claiming National won the election. He wouldn’t say yes or no but his reply was something like “well we got the most votes
and that’s really unusual”.
Yes Grey it was rough waking up to English in full Billshit mode.
National admitted at one stage during the last 9 years that it did its best to stymie OIA requests and it is legendary how under-resourced the Ombudsman became under the Nats with massive delays.
Ian Lees-Galloway was excellent on Morning Report this morning talking about Paid Parental Leave and how Labour has cooperated with the Nats on this despite Amy Adams negativity-worth a listen.
Here is a link to the excellent Ian L-G interview (via the related RNZ news article with a lovely picture of Ian holding Willow Jean Prime’s baby as an added bonus).
And for anyone wanting to hear/see the Bill English Morning Report interview, here are the links.
(The first one is a lead-in to the actual interview with English. The actual interview was pretty soft with no real challenges from Espiner and the interview ended on a weak excuse by Espiner that the reception was not good as English was on his cellphone).
Talking about hypocracy we met S Joyce twice in three years and the fisrt meeting he was ‘slightly prepared to assist our comittee about saving our Gisborne/Napier rail.
But in the second meeting he was aggressively ‘aloof’ as he proudly publiclly announced that ‘his study’ he produced (since debunked by BERL) was proof the rail must close.
Joyce said the rail is ‘not worth re-openning’.
Later it was our Labour MP Phil Twyford as acting transport spokesperson that placed his ‘expose’ on the web how S Joyce as Minister of Transport allowed kiwirail to remove the $200 Million from kiwirails maintainence fund and at the select committee he was at kiwirail admitted is was that which closed the napier gisborne rail.
So S Joyce is both a true liar and a possible criminal for intentionally causing the destruction of part of the publically owned rail services and harmed the SOE.
“By any international standard the last government was open and transparent, and this government, as with many other things, has expressed these high-minded intentions and then fails to follow through.”
Mr English said the previous National-led government lifted the bar a long way on transparency.
“We stressed the early release of cabinet papers, the full release of budget documents, including draft reports which had not really been done before.
“The extensive release of data because that’s such an important part of being able to monitor what a government is doing and how it is doing it.”
PS….thinking that a ‘leftish’ government would be uncomfortable with such a heavily redacted justification for legislation that removed the rights of New Zealanders I did email the Head Office and requested that the blanked out bits of this document be revealed.
Heard nothing yet. I guess they’re busy trying to spin not releasing documents their coalition partner said would be released.
So the last Government (National) recieved 105 emails from our NGO over five years as I am secretary of it, and only two of the 63 National ministers only answered (on one small section of only of a small”side issue”.)
Question
1/ Is this because we are not officially a government agency but an NGO Puckish Rougue?
And more to the point (PR) question two; –
2/ Are we to expect the same from this new Labour lead government too (PR) Puckish Rouge; – or are you just another “PR” for the last corrupt government ?
Rail is the enemy to a former national Government with a man running it (s joyce) who is rightly called “the tarseal king” who we believe he has interests in trucking we have been informed.
The show must go on I don’t see these people logic in following me around everywhere I go Im sure there are other people that deserve there attention. My neo liberal neighbour must have run out of fireworks you see there are a lot of these people in this little suburb they use fireworks to try and intimidat me. My dates were wrong it’s been 13 years of harassment from the Gisborne man and about 3 1/2 years that he landed his glider on the farm. The Rock one time I got challened to drink a jar of rum can’t remember what happened but a m8 told me I was getting a long with the best crayfishmans daughter lol the next time this guy 2 weeks before try to fight me I put him in his place he made out he was over it and his m8 challenged me to drink a jar of rum woke up the next morning broke ribbs squash nose this guy waited till I fell asleep and attacked me that was a good lesson I don’t get pissed and always have a gard up. Kia kaha
All 84,000 civil servants will receive a year-end Annual Variable Component (AVC) of one month’s pay – higher than the 0.5 month they received in 2016, according to their Public Service Division.
That would motivate those lovelies in MBIE and Treasury and DPMC to pull their finger out and make some serious moves.
I am all for the Singapore model; top tax rate of 22%, no CGT, corporate tax rate of 17% etc
Yeah, and then they take you to the cleaners through indirect taxation.
As mentioned, Singaporeans have been told that we pay low income taxes, but when you compare income taxes with indirect taxes, you would see that Singaporeans pay 3.5 times as much into indirect taxes than direct taxes, whereas Swedes and Finns pay about the same indirect taxes as direct taxes, and the Danes pay only about a lesser 70% of direct taxes into indirect taxes
That’s kinda the thing about human rights; even the worst of the bad guys have some. It’s part of the complexity of being a human rights lawyer that sometimes you’re defending them.
Thanks. I get human rights are universal and our system provides support for all sides and I struggle with it. I struggle that mass murderers get more rights than the many they murdered. I struggle that a sicko can do sicko things throughout their life and at the 11th hour have a big realisation and seek forgiveness. I struggle with these moral dilemmas.
Working the defence is something I couldn’t do. My personal revulsion at someone’s deeds would really interfere with fulfilling my obligations to that person’s defence.
Personally I’m of the opinion that someone that deliberately interferes with someone else’s human rights should forfeit their own. However, even in that mindset, there’s still the issue of determining what culpable deeds have actually been done. But as a general view, it’s at odds with the whole philosophical structure around justice that we’ve built up over time. And I’m really not interested in trying to think through the wrinkles of trying to replace that structure, especially since there’s no chance significant change will happen. At best there will be tinkering around the edges.
Personally I’m of the opinion that someone that deliberately interferes with someone else’s human rights should forfeit their own.
as I think you clearly understand, the whole point of a trial is to determine culpability as an outcome, not as an apriori assumption. Or to put it in the more familiar parlance “innocent until proven guilty”.
That’s not just a human right, it’s a very real protection we afford defendants due to the enormous disparity of resources between the state and the individual. From this came another famous legal dictum ‘that it’s better ten guilty people go free than one innocent person be convicted”. In other words it is a concious feature of our legal system to weight the odds in favour of the defendants. Even culpable ones.
Part of the problem here is the internet has let us all indulge our fantasies of playing at judge, jury and executioner to the extent that these old and important ideas have become diminished, sometimes dismissed altogether.
Those are all points that need to be repeatedly hammered, particularly with the likes of Quin that don’t get it.
But I think your point below at 8.2 expresses a key idea most concisely: if the accused doesn’t have a capable defense team, then the whole process lacks legitimacy. In that context, the defense is just as important as the prosecution for delivering justice. For the victims as well as broader society.
Ghahraman said she has never met Quin, but that his comments showed “an embarrassing lapse in understanding”.
“No one is saying there is no such thing as genocide. It’s like saying a defence lawyer [defending someone charged with murder] in our justice system here is a murder-denier.
The whole point is that in order for a trial to have any legitimacy it’s essential for the defendants to have access to a legal defense. Someone has to do this. Quin’s failure to understand is not just embarrassing, it’s kind of chilling.
Very odd. His point seems to be that defence lawyers somehow endorse their client’s alleged crimes and that to be a defence lawyer you mustn’t have strong morals.
Quin seems a vindictive type and I suspect he’s jealous of other’s achievements.
I read the opposite. That he didn’t have much problem with the green website (I did read that somewhere but can’t find it), but that she chose to work on the defence team saying, “of all the ways to save the world, she chose to send killers back to the villages where their victims’ families are trying to rebuild their lives.”
Most likely Quin has just picked up the ‘doofus of the week’ award off Nick Smith, but it’s an especially bizarre charge to lay against her, given what I personally understand of Gharaman’s family story,
What about mob lawyers – are they just giving their clients a fair go. Lawyers are just like other people – fallable, greedy, stupid and selfish – and with all the qreat qualities too, like compassion.
I get the system and I find it challenging as well.
All those things may well be true in general marty, but in this instance it’s was a young barrister doing tough work, (pro bono IIRC) in a tough environment for all the right reasons.
Indeed that’s the main focus of the interview; the vast gulf between the realities on the ground in Rwanda and NZ.
There are lots of jobs I couldn’t and wouldn’t do and I have some admiration and at least respect for those that can, even with the personal cost that this must entail for them. This is one of those cases.
I think moral questions are often the most intellectually interesting.
I think yes and also no if they ignored evidence in their defence/legal/work with the company to ensure the company could continue to make profit. Hard to prove though ☺
But isn’t that the task of lawyers working for a company to protect the “rights” of the company to sell it’s wares? And you are aware that National’s Chris Bishop worked for Phillip Morris?
And the task of a defence lawyer is to protect the rights of their client – no matter how heinous their crime may have been.
Should a rapist be given a fair trial or a paedophile? Of course they must -otherwise our society descends into lawlessness, such as was the case in Rwanda. If the accused were to receive no defence, then the subsequent conviction would have no more merit than the summary justice they metered out to those they slaughtered.
Unfortunately Marty – as G.E. Moore (a late British Philosopher) explained “goodness” is like “redness” – it is a simple concept that cannot be broken down into constituent parts. Either you perceive redness or you don’t.
I can only say that by their actions you shall know them. Does Gloriz act in a good way or a bad way? Having met her and seen the work she has done (not only acting as a defence lawyer) she is a good person – as are all the Green MPs.
I hope that is of some help.
I agree with your comments about legal process Redlogix.
But Im not sure though if thats the issue here. Isn’t it that Ghahraman and the Greens deliberately fudged her role in the Riwanda war crimes legal process so that the punters would assume that she was on the side of the angels; not the devils, so to speak.
She was perfectly open about what her role was in Rwanda before the Election – because she was a Green candidate – such news was decided not to be published by the MSM – because of “lack of space”. Well I guess it’s much more important to tell us about Bill’s smile
I have no problems with her being on the defense team though why you’d volunteer is beyond me but her profile page on the Green website was, at best, misleading:
“Golriz has lived and worked in Africa, The Hague and Cambodia, putting on trial world leaders for abusing their power.”
Says nothing about defending world leaders either and she herself says “could be clearer”
How those panama papers working out Puckish Rouge? Or the polls buddy? How many more lies do we have to suffer though? Oh wait – you could just revert to type as a racist we all know you are…
Still spinning and lying I see – Oh well can’t be helped, I suppose. It’s what you do.
“Golriz has lived and worked in Africa, The Hague and Cambodia, putting on trial world leaders for abusing their power.”
Says nothing about defending world leaders either and she herself says “could be clearer”
Completely irrelevant. How long is the bio? A few paragraphs?
When I do my three page CV I barely touch the surface of anything on my work history. You’re looking at what I did ina company for 2-4 or even 11 years in a single paragraph. It was like that from when I was 26. By that time I’d had a 10 year work history and several degrees. It had skim paragraphs about time in the army, working as a farm hand, as a barman, a factory machine operator, technical salesman, factory manager, and computer support.
If you want to be be a idiot, then go ahead. Just don’t be surprised if people sum up your CV as “FOOL”
US is seeking the extradition of a British guy (Lauri) for stuff English courts didn’t lay charges over. And apparently …
The US government know that their claims against Lauri will never be tested in court. The way extradition works means that prosecutors do not have to show any evidence to the British authorities. And because those US prosecutors reserve the right to try Lauri three times, in three different districts, with a potential sentence of 99 years, they know he would be under enormous pressure to accept a plea bargain.
Ninety-seven per cent of federal defendants in the United States never get a trial because they are offered a choice of either accepting years in prison if they plead guilty or risking decades to have their day in court. What Lauri is being offered in the United States is not a trial but blackmail with a potential life sentence attached.
GROVEL.
State-sponsored adulation of shepherd-murderer moves into overdrive
Tuesday 28 November 2017
RNZ National, 7:24 a.m. GUYON ESPINER: …. [drily amused] I’ve been taken to task for asking what Harry’s going to wear. SUSIE FERGUSON: It’ll be a uniform, of course! GUYON ESPINER: Of course it will. ….. [grovel, grovel…]
three, a.m. show, 7:25 a.m. DUNCAN GARNER: Royal correspondent Dicky Arbiter, good morning! DICKY ARBITER:[beaming] The Twitter universe has come alight! …[widens his eyes to indicate his great joy]… Like any young couple in love, they’re not hiding their love for each other! AMANDA GILLIES: She wore a BEAUTIFUL new coat, designed by Line the Label. What does this mean for dress designers in the U.K.?….[grovel]…. DICKY ARBITER: They’ll look on her as they did Harry’s mother—as a clothes horse rather than a work horse. They do a tremendous amount of good work; let’s focus on what they DO rather than on what they wear, for a change. DUNCAN GARNER: Yeah, I’m WITH you on this! DICKY ARBITER:[worshipfully] Harry was a soldier. He was at the sharp end in Afghanistan. …. The couple meeting and they see each other across a crowded room, and that’s IT!… They just clicked, just like a jigsaw puzzle. … Younger people see them as role models. ….
7:52 a.m. DUNCAN GARNER: Are you interested in the royal engagement? Some of you are. Some of you aren’t at all! That’s next!
…Advertisements (paid ones, not free ones for the Royal Family)….
7:54 a.m. DUNCAN GARNER: Okay, welcome back. So much feedback for the royal wedding!
MARK RICHARDSON: Prince Harry was happy before this American came along. Well maybe not happy, but he was having a good time.
AMANDA: He wasn’t happy, he’s said that.
DUNCAN GARNER: Our poll question this morning is: “Do you care about the royal engagement between Prince Harry and Mehan Markle?” Well, not everybody does, it seems. Stuey says: “There are lots of unsung heroes in the community. He’s a privileged pillock and welfare beneficiary.”
The others in the studio—Gillies, Richardson, and social presenter Shannon Redstall—titter with pity and amusement.
DUNCAN GARNER: The woooorld of Stuey! I tell you what, Stuey, you can be the producer for the next sixty-threee minutes, and you can decide what’s going to be on the television.
8:02 a.m. DUNCAN GARNER: Coming up on our panel is Rawdon Christie, broadcaster and royalist. We’ll be talking about Prince Harry, because Stuey hasn’t had enough of that yet…
8:35 a.m. DUNCAN GARNER: All right, some things we don’t know about Meghan Markle. Everybody’s talking about this right now! …She has two adopted dogs, Bogart and, and…. AMANDA GILLIES: Guy. DUNCAN GARNER: Yes! You know that? …. Mark, you seem sad. MARK RICHARDSON: He was my guy. He was my royal guy!
8:42 a.m. DUNCAN GARNER: We can’t get away from royal news today! It appears the royal couple may be related….
Thanks, cleangreen, for those very kind words. I do it all by ear, usually. This morning I scribbled it down freehand up to 8 o’clock, and the rest I did on my computer as I listened.
My transcriptions are not always spot on, though, and have elicited some controversy here….
Prince Harry has been photographed groping and kissing girls in a London nightclub. Britain’s The Sun newspaper printed pictures – taken earlier this summer – of Harry and his brother Prince William, partying at London’s Boujis nightclub. … He had his hands all over her and was kissing her on the face. At one point he reached his arm around her and gave her a proper grope on her breast. …. http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/royal_family/Britains+Prince+Harry-22051.html
Groping and snorting in Las Vegas…
The giggling prince’s demeanour here is a world away from his attitude following the firestorm of controversy that engulfed him after his fun and games in his hotel room. He and his friends took over a £1,000-a-day VIP bungalow at the MGM Grand Hotel for one of its infamous Wet Republic pool parties.
These raucous alcohol-fuelled events are popular in Vegas and involve several thousand young people attempting to get as drunk as humanly possible while pulling members of the opposite sex in the fierce sunshine.
By the end of the day, say those with intimate knowledge of such events, the pools contain more urine than water and couples are openly having sex.
“GROPERS” is presented by GroperWatch, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
No.1 George Herbert Walker Bush; No. 2 Bill O’Reilly; No. 3 Al Franken; No. 4 Robin Brooke; No. 5 Lester Beck; No. 6 Arnold Schwarzenegger; No. 7 Joe Biden; No. 8 Rolf Harris; No. 9 Harold Bloom; No. 10 Sir Jimmy Savile; No. 11 Dr Morgan Fahey
You have great memory recall; – I guess nmy chemical poisoning back in 1992 while last working in Canada hurt my brain as I now have poor memory recall.
Especially if I now get exposed to some perfume’s, diesel exhaust, synthetic rubber smells, and many others.
That is why I love things to be ‘cleangreen’.
So I need to use a tape recording and a “very patient wife of 45 yrs” to transcribe the event. (she is my one love, – once married; – us both)
If you’re going to run this series, you really ought to read up a little about “consent” – what it means and how it might be relevant to these posts. Because otherwise you could just end up looking like a grumpy old man who needs to get laid.
I find his scribbing of public affairs issues quite refreshing.
Especially since the ‘media’ fail to cover ‘in depth’ public affairs issues today Morrissey is trying to expose them in a transcibed way and if the persons involved dont like their words repeated were are we left then????
His sources include “The Sun” and “The Daily Mail”.
Geat “credible” sources of info.
Interesting how the Left like to lambast the media; until a story is published that suits their way of thinking
Different Morrissey comment, Cleangreen. This is the one about gropers, not the radio transcript.
My issue with it is it makes no case for the sexual activity being non-consensual and yet lumps it in with the activities of people like Rolf Harris and Jimmy Saville. What makes a “groper” is lack of consent, not the fact of touching someone.
Fair comment, Milt, assuming Prince Harry respected the women he groped. I find that highly unlikely. The women seemed to be initially upset but were eventually flustered into smiling and accepting the mistreatment. Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein indulged in similar behaviour, and their victims were socialized into grinning and bearing it, or simply keeping quiet.
Sure, give that coke-snorting lout the benefit of the doubt if you want. You think someone who kills shepherds from the sanctuary of a helicopter gunship, then soaks up the adulation of the Murdoch press which dubbed him “The Big H”, gropes only willing women at those orgies.
Addled dotard shows his condescending racist slip.
President Trump: "We have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her 'Pocahontas.'" pic.twitter.com/9zML2RVFtP— CSPAN (@cspan) November 27, 2017
President Trump: "We have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her 'Pocahontas.'" pic.twitter.com/9zML2RVFtP
WASHINGTON—For a year and a half, President Donald Trump has been denounced by Native American leaders for calling Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.”
He just did it again — at an event honouring Native American war heroes.
Trump held a White House ceremony on Monday to celebrate Navajo “code talkers,” who used their language to transmit secret messages during the Second World War. After complimenting the code talkers, Trump said, “You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.”
[…]
The jab at Warren was not the only part of the Monday event that was called offensive. Trump decided to make the speech in front of a portrait of president Andrew Jackson, who is notorious among Native Americans for signing the 1830 Indian Removal Act that forced Natives off of their land and produced thousands of deaths.
Trump also referred to his chief of staff John Kelly as “the chief.” And he suggested he was not personally familiar with the history of the code talkers.
“And I have to say, I said to General Kelly, I said, general, how good — here he is, right there, the chief; he’s the general and the chief — I said, how good were these code talkers?” he said.
Kelly’s response, according to Trump: “Sir, you have no idea. You have no idea how great they were.”
Glyphosate. Another 5 years for it as part of Roundup by the EU on the basis of it possibly being carcinogenic but one can’t be sure till enough people die.
It came up after WW2, where chemicals were used regularly to deadly effect.
Glyphosate was first synthesized in 1950 by Swiss chemist Henry Martin, who worked for the Swiss company Cilag. The work was never published.[18]:1 Stauffer Chemical patented the agent as a chemical chelator in 1964 as it binds and removes minerals such as calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, and zinc.[19]
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) maintained their current classification of glyphosate as a substance causing serious eye damage and as a substance toxic to aquatic life, but did not find evidence implicating it to be a carcinogen, a mutagen, toxic to reproduction, nor toxic to specific organs.[17]
Monsanto’s last commercially relevant United States patent expired in 2000….
Farmers quickly adopted glyphosate, especially after Monsanto introduced glyphosate-resistant Roundup Ready crops, enabling farmers to kill weeds without killing their crops. In 2007, glyphosate was the most used herbicide in the United States’ agricultural sector and the second-most used in home and garden (2,4-D being the most used)…
In many cities, glyphosate is sprayed along the sidewalks and streets, as well as crevices in between pavement where weeds often grow. However, up to 24% of glyphosate applied to hard surfaces can be run off by water….
In 2015, 89% of corn, 94% of soybeans, and 89% of cotton produced in the United States were genetically modified to be herbicide-tolerant….
Use of glyphosate to clear milkweed along roads and fields may have contributed to a decline in monarch butterfly populations in the Midwestern United States.[172] Along with deforestation and adverse weather conditions,[173] the decrease in milkweed contributed to an 81% decline in monarchs.[174][175] The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a suit in 2015 against the EPA, in which it is argued that the agency ignored warnings about the dangers of glyphosate usage for monarchs.[176]… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
Seems like they are prepared to throw stuff at bees and as long as they keep flying, then the bad individual or combined effects of these chemicals is downplayed.
Then on Radionz we are suffering from leptospirosis which there have been another 93 in NZ for half the year. On and on and our environment and health constantly compromised.
The NZ Initiative a RW thinktank. And lying in heaps.
(Looking at the link that beatie gives above.) They present themselves as cool and rational and informed. They cherry pick the information they disseminate. They quote macro information, quote averages, and then present us with little direct information about individual groups.
With double the income-per-person than what was in 1970, a minimum wage up 50 per cent (inflation adjusted) and better medical care boosting life expectancy and reducing child mortality, you’d think New Zealand would be in its heyday.
It sounds good – double the income of 1970 – how was the inflation adjustment done, what was the base line, apples with apples? Housing has gone up horrendously since 1970, rentals are up, accommodation supplement always trails and the system is its own moral hazard. So that wouldn’t be rosy, but it isn’t mentioned. Instead we hear about child mortality, a nationwide measure, and life expectancy which is a population measure that is of vague concern to someone trying to manage on a pension.
Dr Bryce Wilkinson is just another RW fellow traveller packing a good story against beneficiaries whose opinion and solutions are discounted when pitted against a comfortable professional RW bottom, or even an erect spinal column of bias which is the healthy method of IT work now; (standing, perhaps they could let Peter try it out).
[Peter] has experience in technology and IT but isn’t able to sit in an office chair for longer than three minutes without getting excruciating pain.
“They should do a proper work assessment to see what my experience is and what jobs I can do based on my ability. I’m happy to work from home,” Peter said.
“To me they’re just trying to save costs without any care for the long-term solutions for the beneficiary.”
Wilkinson said a beneficiary’s shortage of money was a symptom rather than a cause of poverty. Instead efforts needed to be made to address drug addiction, alcoholism, mental illness, low skills, poor parenting and a lack of understanding of work habits.
Policies that increase job and income growth must be valued to complement welfare. The report stated the welfare system should “nourish rather than smother self-help”.
“State welfare support is a balancing act. A good system must guard against beneficiaries who could work but do not. This is a waste of human potential and an unwarranted burden on their fellow citizens.”
One notices, one does, the little homily at the end from the stern but just and prudent arbiter of these lives of people who are faulty and unable to take advantage of opportunities that are commonly available, for those who have the ability to exert themselves./sarc
The slimy words of callous, self-centred people are for the purpose of impressing their peer group in society, as to whose fault it is that ‘these people’ are languishing out there. However the dossier that TS has built up over the years gives us examples that ensure we understand the problem in the round, the whole vicious circle that ensures that the welfare system doesn’t work, because the RW don’t want a good, working, society of happy people. Such people are harder to squeeze the last juice out of.
Its now settling down now,holiday time ,to respect our coalition government,as others chance to talk about democracy,as three political parties say, this is our march to our lands care.
I reckon the only reason the nats want to see it is because they want to know why and how they missed out, they just aren’t handling losing the election very well at all.
It’s funny (strange) how so many are going through this small item from Golriz sieving it word by word like someone panning for gold.
Yet Key was here for decades and I don’t think anyone went through his past sorting out where his money actually came from. Did anyone actually know how much he made from selling out a day before… from buying a penthouse that was being rezoned …. from not paying his full tax or by selling a day after the withholding period… etc. And it seemed to be his money that was the main attraction, that gave him gravitas. Once he had that it was such a laugh that he was okay, so free to not care about cheeky comments about peeing in the shower and other things like sitting in a cage with a jerk and a microphone.
Is anyone allowed to ask English what the contents of his 200 or so texts to his lady friend were about. I am sure Nz ers want to know. In the interest of transparency and all.
But Floyd those texts (270 odd wasn’t it) were to do with his electorate – sort of like the electronic equivalent of “notes” between him and his local secretary. He didn’t believe they came under the auspices of the OIA. Now, someone else has said that just in the last 24 hrs. Oh that’s right, the Prime Minister. I guess she has taken her cue from the previous Prime Minister.
While we’re talking about Ms Ghahraman, my other problem with her is that she is a refugee who seeks to bring in more refugees. Feels a bit like a Trojan Horse scenario
A.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Like companies who bring in migrants with work experience rather than hire and intern train up local graduates, replacing those who migrate to Oz (for higher wages) with another immigrant.
New Zealand companies just a Trojan horse back door into Oz.
There are around 20 million refugees in the world today.
Every year around 5 million people are forced for one reason or another to flee from their homes and to seek refuge in another country.
NZ accepts 750 refugees per year.
And you make that offensive comment!
🙄
Your “other” problem!? Why fear something that may never happen? It only exists in your mind because you let it exist there and cling on to it. Let it go and be free of your fears.
Well i can’t avoid the whole bloody country. Anyway you need to be more compassionate and less judgmental imo. Bigotry must be addressed in this country. You can actually hurt people you know.
The Standard is a place for heated debate, as you can well see by reading the posts on pretty much any day. I wouldn’t go round talking like this offline.
I never want to see one of our MPs smiling in a photo alongside a man found guilty of inciting genocide (in an International Criminal Tribunal, and sentenced to 15 years).
We can do without her in NZ. I would like to see her resign as an MP.
No, you didn’t change your mind one bit; you were just a bit slow in making up your mind. It’s funny that so many people seem to go on about changing to improve ‘things’ while in fact they are rooting for status quo and the very last thing they’ll want to do on Earth is to change their (own) minds. I say these people have it back to front big time; reality is not in your head, it is everything but and all outside of your head. Don’t think too long about it as it might change your mind in irrevocable ways.
There is a reason that the Greens almost halved their voter support and lost seats this election…fringe party lunacy, shows what a bastard and undemocratic system MMP is (Winston 2017 may be the straw that broke the MMP back…eventually, and finally). Just as ex National MP Shane Ardern..
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Writing on The Spinoff, Danyl Mclauchlan argues that we have a vacuum in our political system, in that there is no longer an anti-establishment party anymore:I think there’s a vacuum in our political system. There are obvious problems with the status quo but no real critics offering reform. It’s a ...
Stuff today has a piece about the government discovering it has been oversubsidising polluters for a decade under the Emissions Trading scheme:The Government is pledging to urgently fix an issue within the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), after it emerged some polluters are likely being over-compensated with taxpayer-funded carbon credits. [...] ...
The Marlborough District Council, tired of public scrutiny, wants to increase the amount it charges for LGOIMA requests:The cost of requesting official information from Marlborough's government agency could almost double after a jump in "fishing expeditions". Charges could be raised from $60 to $100 an hour for information supplied by ...
When Winston Peters was caught money laundering donations and stalking journalists, the Greens were conspicuous by their silence. It was another example of how getting along with their government partners was eroding their values and their own reputation. It was obviously unsustainable, and so now James Shaw has finally spoken ...
I am among the most pro-free speech people I know. I don’t doubt there are others more strident than me, but I’m certainly up there. And my support for freedom of expression isn’t limited to opposition to government-imposed restrictions. It extends to a belief that employers should have limited powers ...
With over 69,000 confirmed cases and 1,600 deaths, here’s your round-up of the latest coronavirus news. New disease and virus have now officially been named On the 11th February, the WHO Director General announced a new name for the disease: COVID-19 which is short for coronavirus disease 2019. The naming ...
The eastern Bay of Plenty town of Ōpōtiki is getting a new harbour, which will create 1,850 new jobs in the region, in a new round of regional services funding announced by Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones. Ōpōtiki's harbour is currently unusable by most ships, but it will receive ...
Darroch Ball MP, New Zealand First Spokesperson for Law and Order New Zealand First Law and Order spokesman Darroch Ball has submitted the ‘Sentencing (Priority of Interests in Sentencing) Amendment Bill’ – a Members Bill which introduces a new overarching ‘priority and weighting provision’ that courts must follow when sentencing ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, New Zealand First Deputy Leader A total delivery of 2,000 new Police Officers has been achieved. New Zealand First Deputy Leader, Fletcher Tabuteau attended the latest police graduation of Recruit Wing 335 in Porirua today. Mr Tabuteau said, “Increasing police numbers and boosting their resources was one of ...
Taupō District mayor David Trewavas has welcomed today’s announcement from regional economic development minister Shane Jones outlining $5.87m of funding for the re-development of the Taupō Airport. The bulk of the investment ($5 million) will come from the Provincial Growth Fund, while the rest will be from the New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has defended multi-million dollar provincial growth fund money for Northland water storage. The New Zealand First leader, along with Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones, were recently in Dargaville to announce up to $12.745 million PGF funding top-up for water storage initiatives in the ...
One of our most immediate priorities upon forming Government was to get people out of sleeping in cars, garages, or on the street and into safe and warm housing. Since then, we've made major progress towards breaking the cycle of homelessness, including expanding Housing First, building more state houses, and ...
Kids learn better with a full stomach. That's why we launched our Lunches in Schools programme, which is already providing free and healthy school lunches to thousands of children so they can focus on what's important - learning. ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP based in Clutha-Southland This afternoon to a crowd of over 100 people in Mataura -- Mark Patterson, New Zealand First List MP based in Clutha-Southland launched a parliamentary petition regarding the aluminium dross issue in Mataura, Southland. The petition asks that the ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Spokesperson for Finance, Fletcher Tabuteau has welcomed Statistics New Zealand’s latest report as a timely reminder of the value that this Coalition Government brings to every day New Zealanders: “This Coalition Government has meant a ...
Today New Zealand First made a pledge to campaign at the election to fund St John Ambulance the 90 per cent it has asked for. Government funding would allow St. John’s to achieve fully funded status. Leader of New Zealand First, Rt Hon Winston Peters publicly declared his determination to deliver ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order Newly released Police data shows once again the number of fleeing drivers have continued to skyrocket with a record 512 incidents occurring in December – almost tripling the number of incidents occurring just ten years ago, says New Zealand First Law and ...
While the Provincial Growth Fund has provided $2 million to set up temporary water supplies in Kaikohe and Kaitaia, Regional Economic Minister Shane Jones said he is greatly concerned that there are “issues” in implementing the projects. The Minister said the immediate solution was to pipe water from a bore ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP for Clutha-Southland NZ First is calling on Rio Tinto to accept its responsibilities to the Southland community and enable the immediate removal of the toxic Aluminium Dross from the Mataura Paper Mill site. New Zealand First List MP for Clutha-Southland, Mark Patterson ...
The Coalition Government has announced that a further $500,000 will be given to help residents in Southland and Otago to speed up recovery efforts from the floods. It follows prior government assistance of $200,000 earlier this month where the Southland Mayoral Relief Fund received $100,000 to support communities impacted by ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones was on RNZ’s Morning Report talking about the recent droughts in the Northland region and what the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is doing to alleviate its impact. The PGF recently announced a funding of $2 million for temporary water supplies to Kaikohe and Kaitaia, ...
Speaking to The Country’s Jamie Mackay, New Zealand First MP and Cabinet Minister Shane Jones talks water storage, plant-based meat imitation, and superstar Hollywood director James Cameron. While water storage may have its critics, Minister Jones defended the scheme by saying: “unless we invest and continue to invest” in this ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones is accusing northern iwi leaders of selling out Māori by voting for ideologically-driven court cases rather than practical steps to increase water supply. “I just think that iwi leaders who think that water issues are going to be solved by perpetually fighting in the ...
A dairy owner in St Kilda, Dunedin was delighted to hear that an attempted robbery of his establishment was foiled by a government-funded security system. Sean Lee was delighted at how well the anti-theft smoke system worked. When a knife-wielding man entered the store, the shop assistant immediately pressed a ...
Customs says it stopped more than three tonnes of illegal drugs coming into New Zealand last year. This includes 1,180kg of methamphetamine, 329kg of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine precursors, which could have been converted into 246kg of methamphetamine, 739kg and 6469 pills of MDMA or Ecstasy and 60kg of cocaine. Offshore, ...
Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Up to $2 million will be allocated from the Provincial Growth Fund to set up temporary water supplies in Kaikohe and Kaitaia where drought is biting hard, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. Drought conditions in Northland have led to ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Law and Order New Zealand First welcomes the deployment of an Eagle Police helicopter in Christchurch in what is a step towards fulfilling its long-standing goal to increase the use of police helicopters for the front line, particularly in addressing the scourge of fleeing drivers. Christchurch leads ...
It may have been the first sitting week of 2020, but our Government is already in full-swing - managing a strong economy, investing in infrastructure, and working to break the cycle of homelessness. Read below for all that, and more... ...
In a heated debate in Parliament, National's Deputy Leader Paula Bennett claimed that “nearly 1600 patched gang members have been added” since the Coalition Government took power. To illustrate her point, she altered a chart used by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to show her government’s progress in housing to instead ...
Speech by the Rt Hon Winston Peters at Parliament’s Opening 2020 "We all need insurance" This year New Zealanders are going to have a clear choice to make That choice is between: Optimism versus pessimism; More progress versus back to the future; Investment versus divestment; Unity versus division. New Zealand ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has slammed the Board of Auckland Airport following the airport's runway closing twice within two weeks due to maintenance. Around 2,000 passengers were affected by last week’s runway closures, according to 1NEWS. Another maintenance closure on January 24 saw two international flights and three domestic flights ...
It’s my pleasure to be in Sydney today for our annual meeting, Prime Minister. It’s fair to say that since we last met, tragedy and disaster have befallen our two countries. They say that in moments of that nature, the true character of an individual comes to the fore. I ...
Travel restrictions introduced for Iran from today No exemptions for students from China to enter the country Increased health staff presence at international airports The Government has announced a suite of new actions as it steps up its response to the rapidly changing global spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. This ...
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor has today classified the drought conditions in Waikato and South Auckland as an adverse event for the primary sector, unlocking $80,000 in Government support for farmers and growers. “This is recognition that the extreme and prolonged nature of this dry spell is taking its toll on ...
The Crown accounts are in a strong position to weather any economic uncertainty as a result of coronavirus, with the books in surplus and expenses close to forecast, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Treasury today released the Crown accounts for the seven months to January. The operating balance before ...
Supporting New Zealand to make most of digital and data driven technologies will be the focus of a new Digital Council that begins its work today. Minister for Government Digital Services, Kris Faafoi, and Minister of Statistics, James Shaw, have confirmed the group of experts chosen to advise the Government ...
Safety and climate change resilience are behind South Island regional roading projects that are being brought forward as part of the New Zealand Upgrade Programme, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. As part of the NZ Upgrade, $300 million was allocated for regional investment opportunities. “I’m pleased to ...
Digital and air connectivity in Fiordland are getting a big boost, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. As part of the $12 billion New Zealand Upgrade Programme announced in January, $300 million was allocated for regional investment opportunities, to be administered by the Provincial Development Unit. “I’m pleased ...
West Coast ports and roads will benefit from an investment of $18.6 million to improve safety and resilience and enable future economic growth, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. The $12 billion NZ Upgrade Programme announced last month allocated $300 million for regional investment opportunities, to be administered ...
Regional roading projects that will improve safety and resilience are being brought forward as part of the New Zealand Upgrade Programme, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. As part of the NZ Upgrade, $300 million was allocated for regional investment opportunities. “I spend a lot of time in ...
The Eastern Bay of Plenty will finally get the harbour development it has wanted for decades, thanks to a $79.4 million central Government investment, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. This game-changing project will revitalise the township of Ōpōtiki and the wider Eastern Bay of Plenty, creating hundreds ...
Regional New Zealand will be a hive of activity in the coming months as the New Zealand Upgrade Programme delivers on its promise to modernise our infrastructure, prepare for climate change and help grow our economy. As part of the $12 billion NZ Upgrade Programme announced by the Government last ...
A milestone has been reached with the graduation of more than 2,000 new Police officers since the Coalition Government took office in October 2017. Police Minister Stuart Nash says the graduation today of Wing 335 marks a surge of 2,023 new officers, and coincides with some significant breakthroughs against organised ...
Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Minister, Kris Faafoi, and the Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, have welcomed a new cyber security qualification as a step towards countering cyber threats and keeping New Zealanders safe. Attending the launch of the new Level 6 Diploma of Cyber Security at Auckland’s Unitec Institute ...
Government Ministers today celebrated 20 years of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park/ Ko te Pataka kai o Tikapa Moana/ Te Moananui a Toi, and recognise there is much to celebrate and so much more to do to give nature a helping hand. Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage said “New Zealanders care deeply about nature.I want to ...
Prepared remarks on coronavirus by Finance Minister Grant Robertson to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and Massey University. Good morning ladies and gentlemen, The topic of this speech is the Budget 2020 priorities. But, given the considerable interest that I imagine is in the room about COVID-19 coronavirus, I do ...
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e ngā rau rangatira ma. Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa. Ni sa bula vinaka. Namaste Thank you Shamima, Hon. Minister Vuniwaqa, community leaders and Women’s Crisis Centre staff for your warm welcome. It’s an honour and privilege to officially ...
The Government has released a comprehensive response to ensuring New Zealanders get a fairer deal at the petrol pump. This follows the Commerce Commission fuel market study which found motorists were paying more than they should for petrol and includes: Fuel Market Bill drafting, to pass mid-year Industry consultation in ...
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e ngā rau rangatira ma Tēnā koutou katoa Ni sa bula vinaka As-salaam alaikum It is a privilege to be here today. Thank you for welcoming us to your house of prayer. Thank you for your warmth. Thank you for greeting ...
Taupō Airport is to be upgraded and expanded through a $5.9 million Government funding boost, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. “Taupō Airport is the gateway to the Central North Island. It is essential for both keeping local people and businesses connected, but also to bring more people ...
The Minister of Housing Megan Woods has confirmed the Government is working with Rotorua Lakes District Council and Te Arawa for the second place-based assessment to better understand the housing and urban issues affecting the city. “Every New Zealander has a right to a warm, safe and secure place to ...
19 new community homes (in addition to 14 opened in December) delivered in Takanini, Auckland 500 people housed by CORT Housing Trust by end of March 2,290 new public housing homes delivered in Auckland (November 2017 – December 2019). Another nineteen new public housing homes are being delivered in Auckland, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Minister for Trade and Export Growth David Parker met today with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to discuss ways to strengthen ties between New Zealand and India. “India is a priority relationship for New Zealand. We share common democratic traditions, growing two-way trade, extensive people-to-people links, ...
Speech to the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) Delhi, India Wednesday 26 February 2020 [CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY] The Indo-Pacific: from principles to partnerships Distinguished guests, good afternoon and thank you for your invitation. It is good to be here at a time where New Zealand needs less of an introduction than ...
Tihei mauri ora Te Whare e tu nei Te Papa e takoto Tēnā korua No reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa Ni sa bula Vinaka It is a real pleasure to be here today, and to have the honour of addressing you all. If you’ll indulge me I’m ...
Improved air quality to support better health and environmental wellbeing is the focus of proposed amendments to air quality regulations, says the Associate Minister for the Environment, Hon Nanaia Mahuta. “Although our air quality is good in most places, during winter certain places have spikes in air pollution, mainly from ...
The remote eastern Bay of Plenty community of Raukokere will receive a Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) investment of $10.6 million for a water storage facility, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones says. “This is great news for the rural community. The landowner, Te Whānau a Maruhaeremuri Hapū Trust, will use ...
The Lake Ōkaro lakebed has transferred to Te Arawa Lakes Trust, Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti Kelvin Davis announced today. Kelvin Davis joined Te Arawa at Te Papaiōuru Marae in Rotorua to celebrate the reinstatement of Te Arawa Lakes Trust as a key decision maker over the bed ...
New legislation is being proposed which aims to reduce the stress and financial hardship caused by late payments to small businesses. The Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash is considering stricter rules around payment practices between businesses. “Late payments from large organisations to smaller suppliers can be crippling for these ...
A new partnership programme between the New Zealand Police and Fiji Police will focus on combatting transnational organised crime and enhancing investigative skills, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on the first day of her visit to Fiji. The programme will see: · New Zealand Institute of Environmental Science and Research ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama met today in Suva, and renewed their commitment to continue to strengthen Fiji-New Zealand relations on a foundation of shared values and equal partnership. The Prime Ministers acknowledged the kinship between Fijians and New Zealanders, one that has endured over ...
A $19.9 million investment from the Provincial Growth Fund will help develop essential infrastructure for an industrial hub in the Bay of Plenty town of Kawerau, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones says. “The funding will go to three projects to further develop the Putauaki Trust Industrial Hub, an industrial ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing $8.3 million on a roading package for Mahia that will lead to greater and wider economic benefits for the region and beyond, Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced at an event in Mahia today. The $8.3 million announced consists of: $7 ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed new reporting showing the Coalition Government is on track to meet its child poverty targets, with 18,400 children lifted out of poverty as a result of the Families Package. Stats NZ has released the first set of comprehensive child poverty statistics since the Government ...
Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter today announced that Bikes in Schools facilities have been rolled out to 20,000 more kiwi kids under this Government. She made the announcement at the opening of a new bike track at Henderson North School in Auckland. “Bikes in Schools facilities give kids ...
Benefit settings rise in line with wages as of 1 April Main benefits will increase by over 3 percent, instead of 1.66 percent, on 1 April with the Government’s decision to annually adjust benefit rates to increases in the average wage. The Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, said ...
Strengthening New Zealand’s political and business ties with India will be the focus of Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters’ and Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker’s visit to India this week. The Ministers are co-leading a high level business delegation to India to support increased people and economic engagement ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio continues to champion for greater Pacific participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers with the announcement of the Toloa Awards, with 8 recipients of the Toloa Community Fund and 13 Toloa Tertiary Scholarships. “The Toloa Programme encourages more Pacific peoples ...
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has extended the date for people to have their say on proposed changes to improve management of whitebait across New Zealand. Submissions were due to close on 2 March 2020 but will now remain open until 9am on Monday 16 March 2020. “I have ...
The endangered toroa/Antipodean albatross has new international protection for its 100,000km annual migration, thanks to collaborative efforts led by New Zealand, Australia and Chile. Today, 130 countries agreed to strictly protect Antipodean albatross at the Conference of Parties on the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild ...
No sales to under-18-year-olds No advertising and sponsorship of vaping products and e-cigarettes No vaping or smokeless tobacco in smokefree areas Regulates vaping product safety comprehensively, - including devices, flavours and ingredients Ensure vaping products are available for those who want to quit smoking Vaping regulation that balances ...
Yesterday New Zealand confirmed the first known case of Covid-19 in the country. As the virus approaches global pandemic status, what progress is being made in developing a vaccine? Siouxsie Wiles explains where we’re at, and how the vaccines work.The race to find a vaccine for Covid-19 is under way, ...
By RNZ News Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed today that a suspected case of Covid-19 coronavirus has tested positive in New Zealand. Ardern said the person was in their 60s, and was a citizen of New Zealand who had recently travelled from Iran via Bali. The person had previously ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Happy February 29! It doesn’t come round very often, so make sure you enjoy it. But why do we have these extra days? Well, if we didn’t, the seasons would gradually move around the ...
New Zealand Pompe Network Allyson Lock, MNZM An open letter to New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern “Know us by our deeds”. This was the headline next to your picture on the cover of Time Magazine, for all the world to see. I saw it. I’m ...
Analysis: The government faces economic strife and uncertainty as the coronavirus continues to spread, four men charged in National's donations case plead not guilty, and more revelations about NZ First's "slush fund". ...
New Zealand’s first case of COVID-19 has just been confirmed. Here’s what we know so far.What’s the latest?Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed New Zealand’s first case of COVID-19 coronavirus. New Zealand is the 48th country to have a confirmed case of the virus. What do we know about the patient?The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University Review: Leviathan, directed by Yaron Lifschitz. Circa in collaboration with Co:3 Australia, MAXIMA Circus and CircusWA for Perth Festival. As the audience takes their seats, two feet poke out from beneath the curtain. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Bailey, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland If you’re hot and sticky even before your daily commute, you might ask why you sweat so much. Sweating is usually the body’s way of stopping you overheating. But for some people, sweating becomes ...
At a tense press conference in Sydney, the New Zealand prime minister has just issued a stark challenge to Australia over its treatment of NZ citizens. Here’s what she said. We appreciate that many Kiwis have taken up the opportunity to live and work in Australia – many more than has ...
New Zealand has widened, not narrowed, its coronavirus travel ban despite universities pleading for an exemption for international students The Government has extended its coronavirus-related travel restrictions to include Iran, while resisting calls from universities to provide an exemption for international students from China. Health officials will also monitor an ...
The Serious Fraud Office has today received a referral from NZ Police in relation to Phil Goff’s election expenses. The SFO will be assessing the matter and has no further comment at this time. ...
The series, a collaboration between Spinoff Members and Verb Wellington, kicks off with a discussion on politics and the media. As all right thinking people know, there are a mere 204 days until the general election. To get in the mood, we’re launching a new series of live events. And not ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Picador, $20)What are you even up to, Auckland.2 Eleanor ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson insists NZ is in a strong position to weather the fallout from coronavirus, even though Australia has declared it a pandemic. He underlines the Crown accounts are buoyant, the fundamentals of the economy are strong and careful management has seen the economy continue to grow in ...
On the heels of the arrival of The Outsider on NEON, Jean Sergent explores how screen adaptations of Stephen King’s work are able to take on a life of their own. Stephen King, the 72 year old horror author from Portland, has a better work ethic than you or I and ...
Iwi are too reliant on investments in property and primary industries, restricting returns for their members, according to a new report. The annual Iwi Investment Report by consulting firm TDB Advisory, showed the country's eight largest iwi with a collective $9 billion worth of assets, had weak growth in the ...
Announcing a package of regional capital projects worth about $190 million, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones mentioned climate change. He said Regional New Zealand “will be a hive of activity in the coming months as the New Zealand Upgrade Programme delivers on its promise to modernise our infrastructure, prepare ...
The people of India have been holding mass protests all over India ever since the anti Muslim and anti working class Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was enacted into law on 12 December 2019. The state has made many attempts to suppress the rising ...
New Zealand consumer confidence remains high, according to the ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Index. The index was down just one point on last month to 122. "Consumers are feeling pretty happy with their lot at the moment - the lifting housing market is making homeowners feel richer, job opportunities are ...
Jacinda Ardern has described difficult conversations with Australia as being "gnarly'' - but says the trans-Tasman relationship is strong enough to get through them. ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s contentPolitical donations Yvette McCullough (RNZ): Transparency International warns need for political funding reform is urgent Gordon Campbell: On where the ...
Continued strong demand for chicken, burgers and tacos has resulted in another strong year for Restaurant Brands. The fast food operator's net profit for the year ended December fell nearly 16 percent to $30.1m, but that was for a 44-week period, versus the year earlier's 52-week period. That company changed ...
The New Zealand share market opened lower on Friday, following a sixth day of world market losses as investors respond to the economic threat of coronavirus. The NZX benchmark top 50 index opened down 1.5 percent, after last night's 0.9 percent fall. The benchmark top 50 Index has fallen more ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maggie Tonkin, Senior Lecturer, English and Creative Writing, University of Adelaide Review: Dance Nation, directed by Imara Savage. State Theatre Company South Australia and Belvoir for the Adelaide Festival Dance is at the heart of playwright Clare Barron’s Dance Nation, from the ...
The Government’s response to new revelations that one of the country’s biggest fishing companies, Talley’s, and its managing director has donated tens of thousands of undisclosed dollars to the New Zealand First Foundation is unacceptable. “The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Michelle Grattan talks with Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher about the week in politics, including the implementation of an emergency plan to tackle the spread of coronavirus, the major parties’ policies on climate change, national security ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euan Ritchie, Associate Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University On Churchill Island, southeast of Melbourne, small cone-shaped, shallow holes (digs) puncture the grass. They’re widespread, and reveal moist soil below ...
The University of Auckland's Tim Dare examines what SkyCity's 'de-platforming' of controversial speaker Peter Singer might mean for free speech In work first appearing in the late 1970s, Princeton Philosophy Professor Peter Singer argued that in a limited range of circumstances parents ought to be able to ask doctors to end ...
By Stefan Armbruster of SBS News in Brisbane Thousands of New Zealanders who are denied disability support are hoping Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will take the issue up with her counterpart Scott Morrison when they meet today. Despite paying taxes and the NDIS levy, New Zealanders who have come ...
The Maori Development Minister Nanaia Mahuta and her Australian counterpart have met in Sydney and formally agreed to share ideas on how to better support each country's indegineous people ...
Apparently you have a vacancy on your programme after Kanoa Lloyd decided she didn’t “need to see a homophobic Pasodoble or a xenophobic Cha Cha.” Now, we have to admit we don’t know what a Pasodoble is. But we do know xenophobia when we see ...
Public services are increasingly migrating to the internet, but as the government prioritises digital interaction many of the people who need those services the most are left behind, according to a new report. Pita, an elderly gentleman, received a letter from the IRD that claimed he hadn’t paid his tax obligations ...
By Felipe F. Salvosa II in Manila Philippines Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon has dismissed comments by Senator Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go that “politics” is behind the filing of a proposed concurrent resolution calling on regulators to temporarily allow television giant ABS-CBN to operate as Congress deliberates on its ...
The Serious Fraud Office has received a referral from NZ Police in relation to Lianne Dalziel’s election expenses. The SFO will be assessing the matter and has no further comment at this time. ...
Employers are encouraged to sign up for Road Safety Week 2020 (4-10 May), and join hundreds of communities, schools and organisations running activities to raise awareness of road safety issues. Brake, the road safety charity, which coordinates the event, ...
A poem by US National Youth Poet Laureate Kara Jackson.i woke up and the day caught me in its mouth like a strand of yarni am usefulthe motivation for a scarf, maybe some stitch started to be finishedi will make up someone’sheat i will be a fireso intricate it can be worn i ...
The euthanasia debate took an unusual turn this week when Vision NZ, the political party associated with the Destiny Church, made an unexpected policy announcement. It appeared that Vision NZ supported voluntary euthanasia, but just for one person, co-host of TV3’s The Project, Kanoa Lloyd. The now former campaign manager ...
State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes has today announced the findings of an inquiry into how Budget-sensitive material was accessed at the Treasury. The inquiry, led by Ms Jenn Bestwick, was launched by the Commission at the request of the Treasury ...
A scathing report into the accidental release of sensitive Budget 2019 information by the Treasury has found poor procurement processes and governance failures by senior leadership were to blame for security flaws in its website not being identified earlier The inquiry into the accidental release of Budget 2019 information prior ...
The Port of Tauranga's first half result is flat, despite a drop in cargo handled through the country's biggest port. The port company's net profit dropped 1.4 percent to $48.3 million in the six months to December, but was otherwise flat after accounting for a tax adjustment of $0.6m. Revenue ...
For those mothers who gave birth by non-elective Caesarean section, feelings of sadness – even of failure – can be overwhelming, writes Janice Sharan.I’m sitting next to my 15-month-old. He’s sleeping peacefully, his mop of dark hair damp with sweat, lips pursed and his chest rising and falling as he ...
Today is the last day Kiwibank will accept cheques, and its customers will no longer be able to make a payment by cheque. Inland Revenue and ACC will also follow suit on 1 March. The number of cheques has been going down by about 20 percent year-on-year and last year ...
Television New Zealand has reported a strong increase in first half profit, driven up by an increase in advertising revenue. The state-owned broadcaster made a net profit of $15.8 million in the six months to December, beating the year earlier by $5m or 47 percent. "Strong ratings performance for our ...
Air New Zealand has launched its latest safety video that moves away from celebrity appearances to push an environmental message on New Zealand's endangered native birds. The video A Journey to Safety takes a different approach from the widely criticised video of two years ago - called a 'weird mish-mash' ...
A report into how sensitive documents were accessed by the National Party before last year's Budget has found Treasury governance, oversight and risk management processes fell short. ...
In the lead up to Children’s Day in New Zealand on Sunday 1 March, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) Aotearoa NZ President Dr Jeff Brown says the wellbeing of children and their whānau must remain a priority for all of society, not only ...
A Kiwi firm is trialling a mobile device and app that could test for Covid-19 in hospitals, schools, factories and homes anywhere in the world within 40 minutes No-one wishes harm on anyone, but sometimes a crisis is also an opportunity to quickly develop new technologies and systems to solve ...
Ahead of the forthcoming public meeting on Monday 2 March regarding the Newlands Volunteer Fire Brigade former Ohariu MP Hon Peter Dunne is extending his best wishes to all those involved in the current campaign to keep the station open. "Although ...
Sure, the new wave of RTDs might have cool labels and no carbs or whatever, but for Sam Brooks, none come close to the perfection held within that little yellow can.RTDs are coming back, if they were ever really gone. I remember the halcyon days of getting drunk off Purple ...
The ongoing strike by NorthTec tutors steps up a notch today with a public rally. For two weeks the members of Te Hautū Kahurangi | New Zealand Tertiary Education Union have been on strike. The action has meant not completing attendance registers; ...
The cut price fuel retailer, Waitomo says the Government’s proposed changes to the fuel market will mean customers will be able to see if they are getting fleeced. ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will use today’s meeting with counterpart Scott Morrison in Sydney to tell him his Government is deporting Australian criminals to New Zealand. ...
Coronavirus: Finance Minister Grant Robertson - NZ in shadow of the biggest economic uncertainty in recent times; and A2 Milk result: Net profit leaps 21% on China sales. ...
Thousands of Kiwis are expected to attend the March for Life in Auckland this Saturday (29 February). With Parliament just days away from voting on a Bill to liberalise abortion-up-to-birth in New Zealand those marching will be making a public stand ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Tormey, Professor of Politics, University of Bristol Of the many issues thrown up by Brexit, one of the most pressing is the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom. Brexit was in large measure a revolt by a certain section of English ...
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Soper’s daily whinge and smear against the government.
He really is a nasty piece of work.
This time he has a go at Golriz Ghahraman.
What a slimeball.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11948555
And there there is Trevett’s petty attack.
‘Ardern flourishes in ‘swamp of secrecy’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11948523
The Herald really does not like this government.
And it has miserable puppets who would sell their soul for a pay cheque.
I wonder if Soper can see the irony in his closing line;
“It’s just that one side has been consistently and conveniently highlighted over the other.”
Didn’t take long to get from Kiwiblog and Whaleoil to the Herald did it.
Brilliant observation.
Remember how John Key’s new government in 2008, came in on a raft of two track dirty politics and soft media infotainment spin? And then they were like the deer in the headlines, without much of a plan, so…..
2009 John Key’s much touted Job Summit, threw up “3 Big Ideas”. Audrey Young raved in the NZ Herald:
The Thiel deal,worked out rather well.For Thiel of course,although Joyce said it was Labour’s fault.
Spinning like a spinning thing:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11948524
But she admits that her profile page on the Green Party website, which states that she has put African leaders on trial for abusing their power, “could be clearer”.
Theres a slight difference between prosecuting war criminals and defending war criminals
[lprent: You are simply lying at several levels. But I think this is easier to demonstrate rather than explain at any level..
1. There is no significiant difference between defending and prosecuting. Both are part of a court process that leads to judgement.
2. Her bio actually said – read it carefully
3. Putting people on trial is not a prosecution prerogative. It applies to both defense and and prosecution.
4. I think you are trolling and as a local prosecutor and judge, we clearly don’t need a defense. Therefore there should be no trial to look at the actual circumstances.
5. Banned for 1 month for crimes against robust debate..
6. This is not arbitrary in anyway. It is a simple matter of arbitrary lynch mob justice without due process.
]
And since Golriz Ghahraman has experience of both, she knows an infinite amount more about the difference than you do, but then so does the stenographer.
I bet she also knows that saying you prosecuted war criminals sounds a lot better than saying you defended them
there’s a slight difference between ‘defending war criminals’ and working as an intern on a defence team for the war criminals
That line of attack is an attack on the entire justice system. Shall we start listing which National Party MPs have worked as defence lawyers?
Everyone who works in a courtroom enables the prosecution of alleged offenders.
Didn’t take long to get from Kiwiblog and Whaleoil to the Herald did it.
It never does. The Herald should cut out the middle-man – ditch Soper and put DPF on a retainer for its right-wing propaganda stories.
Yup, from sewer to MSM as the National party smear machine cranks up and all the MSM journos gather around the outflow pipe mouths agape. After all, Farrar negates the need to think, or to resrach, and he helpfully even writes your questions for you.
Soper in particular seems to have decided to wage a misogynistic war on anyone who dares to commit the crime of being young, female and more powerful than him. Linda Clark got it 100% right when she pretty much name checked him and his attitude and told he needed to wake up or ship out.
It’s obvious what the Nats and their MSM enablers are trying to do. The accusations are going to come thick and fast through to the end of this parliamentary session (ie. just before Xmas) leaving a trail of perplexed voters to gather around the barbecues wondering whether they made the right choice voting for Labour/Green or NZ First – whichever. It doesn’t matter the claims are nothing more than garbled rubbish. Its the first part of a slow, subliminal manipulation of their minds.
I noted the sharp edge of cold fury in Barry Soper’s voice at the first stand-up media interviews which followed Winston Peters’ announcement. I knew then he was going to take a vicious approach and he has clearly influenced the little wife, Heather DPA.
+111
Good analysis Anne. Anyone who thought winning the election was winning the war needs to think again. These sort of attacks will be relentless.
Ghahraman is a genocide enabler
A.
[RL: This smells like a particularly silly attempt at trolling. End it here. No further warning.]
How exactly do you come up with that piece of nonsense, Antoine?
She defended one of the most heinous acts of the 20th century.
A.
Repeat of my comment to marty mars below in case you miss it.
Have you read Andrew Geddis’ piece on Pundit?
https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/did-golriz-ghahraman-do-anything-wrong
That’s kinda the thing about human rights; even the worst of the bad guys have some. It’s part of the complexity of being a human rights lawyer that sometimes you’re defending them.
“She defended one of the most heinous acts of the 20th century.”
That’s a silly claim to make. They defended the person accused, not the act.
Antoine is a dog felcher.
Do I have this game right? It looks like fun but I’m not clear on how to play.
@RL
Ban me if you want, I believe what she did was wrong.
[RL: I don’t care what you believe here, I do care that you dropped a controversial comment with no supporting argument or citation. That ‘smells’ very much like typical hit and run troll behaviour. I moderate on behaviour not content; make your case honestly and I’m unlikely to intervene.]
A.
Bot Antoine, I see you added can’t read to the list of your idiocy.
If you need help with a word, feel free to ask.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Trolling
You realise that without defence lawyers we can’t put people on trial at all? If you want genocide and other human rights abuses to be prosecuted, you have to have court staff.
Take your notion to its logical conclusion and you’re effectively saying that the International Court of Justice enables war crimes, and that our court system enables murder.
Is that what you’re saying?
No!
There is a role for defense lawyers in the legal system and we need a legal system. That doesnt mean I have to like or endorse those who choose to defend heinous crim inals.
A.
No. That isn’t what you said. Your endearments and endorsements have no value, so with-holding them is of no consequence. However, you made a very specific allegation against people who work on legal defence teams – that their job enables crime.
Are you now backing down from that into a vague sense of disapproval? If so, how about you take some personal responsibility for your disgusting false accusation?
Grow a spine.
To work to get a guilty criminal acquitted, enables more crime of the same sort. I don’t resile from that
A.
First the verdict, then the trial. Joseph Nzirorera would be proud of you.
That’s not actually the role of a defense lawyer, any more than the role of a prosecutor is “to get an innocent person convicted”.
Often the morally bankrupt or hard of thinking reduce the functions to simply “get a guilty criminal acquitted” or “innocent person convicted”, but the role of the court is to try to determine the truth. The prosecution present their case, the defense present the case as it appeared to the defendant, and the court decides. Neither party in an adversarial system is allowed to mislead the court, AFAIK. Correct me if I’m wrong.
And it’s ok to work for a company that sells a product that kills people and has killed more than the all of Rwanda?
No! That is bad too
Chris Bishop
I never liked Bishop
Why is it unreasonable to point out that Golriz Ghahraman acted for the defence in the genocide trials. When you read her bio on the Green website it gave the impression she was prosecuting genocide, not just in Cambodia but also in Rawanda.
Now I have no problem with her acting for the defence, but she should not have given the wrong impression.
It is not unfair for a journalist to point that out. It is not the act of a slimeball to do so, nether is it sexist.
This site is always saying how terrible National MP’s on the basis they are all psychopaths and liars. But you can’t stand even the slightest adverse comment about those from the left.
What about accusing her of enabling genocide? Which is what “the left” is actually defending her against.
Can you help me understand right wing thinks on this issue please? When you collaborated with Nicky Hager, were you enabling war crimes or Al Quaeda?
What about the Law Commission? You definitely must’ve enabled some pretty serious crimes there, and I don’t just mean the things the National Party wanted 😉
Yes, if we use that ruler to measure Golriz every lawyer that ever defends a criminal is somehow implicated in the crime.
It’s crucial that the crime and the analytical dissection of it after the event are mutually exclusive.
If Golriz’s bio implies she rode around the world on a big white stallion solving the war crime woes of the world, if we all agree everyone is entitled to a quality defence, she did. I lie in mine, I was useless at Rugby.
OAB,
My comment was in response to Ed’s initial comment, but there have been so many other comments added, it is distanced from that – probably also the result of using an iPhone.
David Farrar on Kiwiblog put the issue in quire a reasonable way, but some of the commenters on his site, not so much. But then some commenters on any of the main political sites use extravagant language accusing people of all sorts of things, and acting from the basest of reasons. The Standard is certainly not immune from that.
DPF put it in as appalling a way as Phil Quin did – as a propaganda call to all those on the right who’d like to skip the human rights stuff and get on with the punishments.
Some one on radio recently was saying how much was paid by observers to watch when they had really brutal punishments. I don’t think that human nature has left those of today unconcerned about the niceties of justice and rule of law, more enlightened than in the past.
There are some amazing things in this piece:
If a crowd was denied the spectacle of an execution on the allotted day, occasionally there was some gruesome compensation. In England in 1221, Thomas of Eldersfield was reprieved from hanging at the last moment; in a show of mercy, he was blinded and castrated instead. Robert Bartlett describes the scene: ‘the eyes were thrown to the ground, the testicles used as footballs, the local lads kicking them playfully at the girls’.
http://www.historytoday.com/sean-mcglynn/violence-and-law-medieval-england
Here is some homework for you in case you hadn’t caught up with these. Good primary school info.
http://primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/tudors/other.htm
David Farrar on Kiwiblog put the issue in quire a reasonable way
Farrar? You say “reasonable” because it suits you. “Tendentious” and “disingenuous” are words that come to my mind. You know perfectly well that the Penguin never lets his hands get dirty in public and encourages his troll farm to do the dirty work for him.
but some of the commenters on his site, not so much
What a pity that because we lack your smarmy manners we’ll never be admitted to your gentleman’s club of “reasonable” men. Oh dear.
Come on wayne, we have all looked at the whale oil – we are far from that gutter.
Have you ever put a comment there about the sexist, homophobic, and racist garbled crap that comes out of those sad excuses for human beings mouths?
Wayne has never experienced racism or sexism directed against him personally and therefore it does not exist or at least is not significant.
If you can’t see why it’s unreasonable, you need help.
Ah, I see. He’s the type of person who thinks that people once accused of a crime shouldn’t have any defence and would probably do away with the trial altogether. And, once the trial is over and they’re found guilty, say that the lawyers who made up the defence team are just as bad as the ones found guilty.
Yeah, got it.
Ed (1) … proof Natz (through Joyce) still pulling the strings of msm, with NZH dredging up whatever is possible to smear the coalition government, regardless of how truthful or inconsequential it is!
Golriz was doing her job, as most lawyers are expected to do. Look at Key’s former job as a currency trader. Bet some of the activity there wasn’t above board! Was that ever challenged by msm? No!
Natz will give itself a breakdown at this rate!
Congratulations to Prince Harry and Megan Markle for there engagement there wedding is good for OUR worlds society.
I only advocate Vapours as a tool to give up smoking as I’m using Vapours to give up. The only thing we should be breathing into our lungs is clean air we need to set a age limit R 18 and a display/advertising restrictions to limit the appeal and take up of vaping by our youth. PS your a bit out numbered Hillary you need a lady friend on the breakfast show Ka Pai
Monarchy, we don’t need no stinking monarchy.
But The Treaty adam is between Maori and the Monarchy – not the NZ Govt. This is an issue that if NZ were to progress towards complete independence from England would need to be resolved.
Paraphrasing from ‘Blazing Saddles?’ lol
I agree with your comment Adam, but I also have to say, it’s awesome when two people fall in love and get married for the right reasons, his mum would have be thrilled.
Give me monarchy not Trump or Key or Shipley. Let’s have the real thing not the nouveau riche.
You want a genuine old English German lady who thinks her shit don’t stink? WTF for?
She speaks more nicely than you. I like a bit of style in my leaders.
But she is no leader of ours. She has done absolutely nothing as our Head of State. She was very polite in how she told Maori to piss off when ask to have some honour and look at the treaty her institution signed.
Oh, and i don’t want to be your leader.
Ah but will she then be deported like all the other foreigners married to Brits.
So your show is more gender equality Ka pai
I now see that the national opposition is attempting to stall the new government’s plan to stop labour/NZF/Greens coalition “17 goals” and run then out of time, by jaming Labour with over 6200 “spam” questions.
So Jacinda needs to show Government “leadership” and need to rush through an urgency bill to reverse the national party changes they (national) placed to allow this attempt to close down the new government, and restore the former system preventing this “tea party style” abuse of our parliamentary system..
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/11/how-the-government-s-tracking-on-its-100-day-plan.html
“The Government is going all out to tick off all 17 goals on its 100-day plan.
A hundred days. Just over three months. It sounds like plenty of time until you blink and realise a month has passed since the Government was sworn in. They have until February 3.”
I think you are right cleangreen. It is time Ardern showed some steel and dealt with these National ratbags. There is nothing nice about the Natz, they are at war and need to be exposed for their spiteful anti democratic behaviour. New Zealanders deserve better.
Yes garabaldi;
https://www.parliament.nz/media/3552/2017-sitting-programme.pdf
Labour coalition only have – 6th 7th 8th, – 12th, 13th, 14th December; – and the xmas party celebrations need to be be put in there somewhere we assume too.
hey have their budget to release and befre 3rd February need to make good on the ’17 goals’ as the ‘100 day pledge’ to NZ.
Labour have just six more days in parliament these emails this year, so we are screwed unless Jacinda can change the legislation today.
Or else Labour are left bound up with these 6200 ‘spam’ emails now and labour now has no choice but to pass a ’emergency bill’ to stop “email spaming” forthwith.
it is preventing government to function under legislation national passed. Remove all National legislation labour must in all areas also.
I knew national would leave ‘hand grenades’ to stymie this new government so they need to remove all national toxic legislation now.
That sitting calendar for 2017 is the one originally in place prior to the election and is now out of date.
Following the swearing in of the new government a revised sitting programme for the remainder of 2017 was drawn up in conjunction with the proposed sitting calendar for 2018.
https://www.parliament.nz/en/get-involved/features/sitting-calendar-proposed-for-2018/
So Parliament will sit for the next four weeks from today, Tues 28 Nov through until 6pm Thurs, 21 December – not just the two weeks originally planned (6th 7th 8th, – 12th, 13th, 14th December).
Is is highly likely that Parliament will also go into urgency in order to get the PPL legislative amendments through and possibly other legislative business prior to the Christmas/New Year close down – including possibly reversing some Nats legislation.
Thanks for giving us the updated sitting schedules veutoviper,
I went on the usual site but being that the new government had “a minefield” of changes that were needed to be made with the whole moviing of the old tired national mob out into the ‘lower government’ buildings and the new labour coalition Government newly placed on the ninth floor of the ‘Beehive building’.
We know only to well how difficult that two weeks it took to get the new Government communications up and running.
I understood all this as I was employed by the ‘fourth largest communication company globally’ (Bell) and used to place new systems in Government buildings also.
As our many NGO emails went un-anwered for weeks until we got hold of a Government secretary and were told that a “new communication system was in the process of being installed” and they had problems, so I guess this is catch up time for all.
No problems, cleangreen.
The Parliament website has actually been very quickly updated this round after the election. The new MPs were listed etc within a day of the election etc. and other needed amendments up very quickly.
However, I did find it took a few minutes to relocate the link on the Parliament website to the revised sitting schedule for 2017. I knew that it had been changed but it was not immediately visible because it was included in the article re the proposed 2018 sitting programme.
Having worked in government for many years in Wellington (including very closely working with and in the Parliament precinct), I am pretty sure the actual Parliament website (and related staff etc) would have been unaffected by the physical moves, changes to communications etc related to the change of government, relocation of MPs and parties. Fun days, but actually very much highly planned and managed chaos!
veutoviper thanks for that.
All good now we need to ‘stand in line with national waiting for the reples from the 42 emails we have sent the new government’.
Now our NGO representing many communities wonder if the national email nonsene has now prevented the Labour coalition government from responding to other questions for the community also now?
So that puts the public interest now behind national party’s own interests, and that means national wont care about their own impact upon our communities interests?
Maybe national should have thought clearly how their ‘obstruction’ process over 6200 emails of questions was going to impact on all NZ communities.
Maybe the government could answer the questions properly: https://publicaddress.net/legalbeagle/questions-but-no-answers-with-thanks-to-david/
An interesting take by the ever-pedantic Graeme Edgeler, but i also suggest people read the comments which put things into a bit more perspective in terms of National’s actions while in government. In particular, it is worth reading Katherine Moody’s comment here
https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/legal-beagle-questions-but-no-answers-with/?p=377313#post377313
This includes a number of replies by Key and his ministers to very similar diary related questions while in government. The wording of these replies is not only similar to one another of these Nat Ministers, but also to that now being used by the new Labour/NZF/Green government Ministers.
Examples:
Hon Bill English (Minister of Finance) replied: As Minister of Finance I have a large number of meetings in Wellington and around New Zealand. I do not believe it is a good use of staff time to itemise my meetings or engagements, nor attempt to list the names of every person I met over the course of a month. If the member is interested in a specific issue or organisations then I might be able to provide more detailed information.
Hon Steven Joyce (Minister for Economic Development) replied: I hold a large number of meetings both formally and informally each month with a wide range of people and discuss a wide range of topics. I do not consider it reasonable use of official’s time to provide the Member with a comprehensive list of all such meetings, nor is it feasible as the information requested is often not specifically captured by my records. If the Member could be more specific about a particular area of interest I would be happy to consider his request.
English just on on Morning Report claiming National had raised the bar for transparency in government over the past 9 years and that Labour needed to up their game as they were stuck in time a decade ago. LOL. This from the party that totally subverted the OIA request process over the past 9 years.
Hypocrite.
He was also asked if Smith was right in claiming National won the election. He wouldn’t say yes or no but his reply was something like “well we got the most votes
and that’s really unusual”.
Yes Grey it was rough waking up to English in full Billshit mode.
National admitted at one stage during the last 9 years that it did its best to stymie OIA requests and it is legendary how under-resourced the Ombudsman became under the Nats with massive delays.
Ian Lees-Galloway was excellent on Morning Report this morning talking about Paid Parental Leave and how Labour has cooperated with the Nats on this despite Amy Adams negativity-worth a listen.
Here is a link to the excellent Ian L-G interview (via the related RNZ news article with a lovely picture of Ian holding Willow Jean Prime’s baby as an added bonus).
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018623290/adams-parental-leave-bill-unnecessary-galloway
And for anyone wanting to hear/see the Bill English Morning Report interview, here are the links.
(The first one is a lead-in to the actual interview with English. The actual interview was pretty soft with no real challenges from Espiner and the interview ended on a weak excuse by Espiner that the reception was not good as English was on his cellphone).
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018623288/govt-backsliding-on-transparency-pledge-bill-english
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018623286/national-slams-govt-as-secretive-disorganised
100% veutoviper,
Talking about hypocracy we met S Joyce twice in three years and the fisrt meeting he was ‘slightly prepared to assist our comittee about saving our Gisborne/Napier rail.
But in the second meeting he was aggressively ‘aloof’ as he proudly publiclly announced that ‘his study’ he produced (since debunked by BERL) was proof the rail must close.
Joyce said the rail is ‘not worth re-openning’.
Later it was our Labour MP Phil Twyford as acting transport spokesperson that placed his ‘expose’ on the web how S Joyce as Minister of Transport allowed kiwirail to remove the $200 Million from kiwirails maintainence fund and at the select committee he was at kiwirail admitted is was that which closed the napier gisborne rail.
So S Joyce is both a true liar and a possible criminal for intentionally causing the destruction of part of the publically owned rail services and harmed the SOE.
Hypocracy pure and simple.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1302/S00183/kiwirail-admits-lack-of-maintenance-led-to-wash-out.htm
Grey Area (4) … you quote the following …
“English just on on Morning Report claiming National had raised the bar for transparency in government over the past 9 years ….”
Aha, now I see. English preparing for his new position, when the knives come out … as a comedian.
Okay, so I’m more than a tad uncomfortable with Ardern’s reluctance to release the 33/38 page coalition discussion document….
But, but, Bill ‘the Lizard’ English’s sanctimonious prattle is genuine high end, puke making hypocrisy…. http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/344807/new-govt-has-no-follow-through-national
“By any international standard the last government was open and transparent, and this government, as with many other things, has expressed these high-minded intentions and then fails to follow through.”
Mr English said the previous National-led government lifted the bar a long way on transparency.
“We stressed the early release of cabinet papers, the full release of budget documents, including draft reports which had not really been done before.
“The extensive release of data because that’s such an important part of being able to monitor what a government is doing and how it is doing it.”
This …. http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/informationreleases/ris/pdfs/ris-moh-fcc-may13.pdf Bill, is not ‘raising the bar’.
PS….thinking that a ‘leftish’ government would be uncomfortable with such a heavily redacted justification for legislation that removed the rights of New Zealanders I did email the Head Office and requested that the blanked out bits of this document be revealed.
Heard nothing yet. I guess they’re busy trying to spin not releasing documents their coalition partner said would be released.
SSDD.
Well thats the thing isn’t it, you can say things in opposition that you can’t say or do when in power
its easy to talk transperancy when you’re the opposition but a different story when you’re in power as Jacinda “transparent” Ardern is now discovering
Puckish Rougue; –
So the last Government (National) recieved 105 emails from our NGO over five years as I am secretary of it, and only two of the 63 National ministers only answered (on one small section of only of a small”side issue”.)
Question
1/ Is this because we are not officially a government agency but an NGO Puckish Rougue?
And more to the point (PR) question two; –
2/ Are we to expect the same from this new Labour lead government too (PR) Puckish Rouge; – or are you just another “PR” for the last corrupt government ?
I’d have thought that if you campaign on openness and transparency then you should be open and transparent when in power
And donkey did the same, and I did not see you complaining when he was not transparent.
Just pointing out your hypocrisy Puckish Rogue, just your hypocrisy.
Predictable reply from an ‘obstructionist’ so do us all a favour & get over loosing Puckish Rougue eh!
You failed to answer question 1+2 I asked you; –
Yet is it because you are you afraid too?
If so then you are guilty of what you claim Labour coalition are guilty of , now that we clearly see you are doing now?
So dont blame Labour for not answering your fabricated 6200 spam emails (PR).
You are totally wrong if you think labour will be stymied by your oppostion party’s little plan as the labour coalition wont be stopped.
Sitting on a 2016 report into the benefits of rail because it doesn’t fit with dinosaur National Party “thinking”, that’s being transparent.
1000% Grey area.
Rail is the enemy to a former national Government with a man running it (s joyce) who is rightly called “the tarseal king” who we believe he has interests in trucking we have been informed.
+ infinity Grey Area
The show must go on I don’t see these people logic in following me around everywhere I go Im sure there are other people that deserve there attention. My neo liberal neighbour must have run out of fireworks you see there are a lot of these people in this little suburb they use fireworks to try and intimidat me. My dates were wrong it’s been 13 years of harassment from the Gisborne man and about 3 1/2 years that he landed his glider on the farm. The Rock one time I got challened to drink a jar of rum can’t remember what happened but a m8 told me I was getting a long with the best crayfishmans daughter lol the next time this guy 2 weeks before try to fight me I put him in his place he made out he was over it and his m8 challenged me to drink a jar of rum woke up the next morning broke ribbs squash nose this guy waited till I fell asleep and attacked me that was a good lesson I don’t get pissed and always have a gard up. Kia kaha
So he beat you up because he thought you hassled his daughter when you were pissed?
In Singapore, when the economy starts doing really well again, the public servants get a one month bonus:
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/civil-servants-to-get-one-months-year-end-bonus-as-economy-does-better
All 84,000 civil servants will receive a year-end Annual Variable Component (AVC) of one month’s pay – higher than the 0.5 month they received in 2016, according to their Public Service Division.
That would motivate those lovelies in MBIE and Treasury and DPMC to pull their finger out and make some serious moves.
I am all for the Singapore model; top tax rate of 22%, no CGT, corporate tax rate of 17% etc
https://www.guidemesingapore.com/business-guides/taxation-and-accounting/personal-tax/singapore-personal-income-tax-guide
Oh I also forgot, The People’s Action Party is Centre Right.
Someone called ThatcherForEver is all for a police state? Quelle surprise…
Along with someone called “Ad”, such a strange world we live in..
The policy is possible without a police state of any kind.
Better to have a motivated public service, just like the private sector.
Bonuses or at-risk components for number of children taken out of poverty. Start there.
Singapore voted for it
What’s your point , Milt?
My point is that right-wing authoritarians are usually keen on police states. Unfortunately, left-wing authoritarians often have the same problem.
Yeah, and then they take you to the cleaners through indirect taxation.
As mentioned, Singaporeans have been told that we pay low income taxes, but when you compare income taxes with indirect taxes, you would see that Singaporeans pay 3.5 times as much into indirect taxes than direct taxes, whereas Swedes and Finns pay about the same indirect taxes as direct taxes, and the Danes pay only about a lesser 70% of direct taxes into indirect taxes
https://thehearttruths.com/category/how-much-tax-are-singaporeans-really-paying/
Bonus payments are a dubious incentive. Empowering people to do their jobs and do them well works out better in the long term.
100% Molly right with you there.
Probably this will blow up – I was a bit surprised that she was on the defense team.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11948524
Have you read Andrew Geddis’ piece on Pundit?
https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/did-golriz-ghahraman-do-anything-wrong
That’s kinda the thing about human rights; even the worst of the bad guys have some. It’s part of the complexity of being a human rights lawyer that sometimes you’re defending them.
Thanks. I get human rights are universal and our system provides support for all sides and I struggle with it. I struggle that mass murderers get more rights than the many they murdered. I struggle that a sicko can do sicko things throughout their life and at the 11th hour have a big realisation and seek forgiveness. I struggle with these moral dilemmas.
Working the defence is something I couldn’t do. My personal revulsion at someone’s deeds would really interfere with fulfilling my obligations to that person’s defence.
Personally I’m of the opinion that someone that deliberately interferes with someone else’s human rights should forfeit their own. However, even in that mindset, there’s still the issue of determining what culpable deeds have actually been done. But as a general view, it’s at odds with the whole philosophical structure around justice that we’ve built up over time. And I’m really not interested in trying to think through the wrinkles of trying to replace that structure, especially since there’s no chance significant change will happen. At best there will be tinkering around the edges.
Yep I’m a bit like you on all that. I tend to imagine neutral is a fallacy in a lawyer anyway but compartmentalism isn’t.
Without wanting to selectively misquote you:
Personally I’m of the opinion that someone that deliberately interferes with someone else’s human rights should forfeit their own.
as I think you clearly understand, the whole point of a trial is to determine culpability as an outcome, not as an apriori assumption. Or to put it in the more familiar parlance “innocent until proven guilty”.
That’s not just a human right, it’s a very real protection we afford defendants due to the enormous disparity of resources between the state and the individual. From this came another famous legal dictum ‘that it’s better ten guilty people go free than one innocent person be convicted”. In other words it is a concious feature of our legal system to weight the odds in favour of the defendants. Even culpable ones.
Part of the problem here is the internet has let us all indulge our fantasies of playing at judge, jury and executioner to the extent that these old and important ideas have become diminished, sometimes dismissed altogether.
They are just ideas not truths or absolutes, they are human conceived and made and thus are fallable and subjective.
For instance, innocent until proven guilty etc is mocked by police and judicial discrimination based on skin colour!!!
Those are all points that need to be repeatedly hammered, particularly with the likes of Quin that don’t get it.
But I think your point below at 8.2 expresses a key idea most concisely: if the accused doesn’t have a capable defense team, then the whole process lacks legitimacy. In that context, the defense is just as important as the prosecution for delivering justice. For the victims as well as broader society.
There is also the idea, that the defense is as robust and lawful as possible, reducing the chance of a mistrial or a later successful appeal.
The justice system needs to be robust and competent and lawyers with integrity on both sides will improve it.
Her final quote nails it:
The whole point is that in order for a trial to have any legitimacy it’s essential for the defendants to have access to a legal defense. Someone has to do this. Quin’s failure to understand is not just embarrassing, it’s kind of chilling.
Very odd. His point seems to be that defence lawyers somehow endorse their client’s alleged crimes and that to be a defence lawyer you mustn’t have strong morals.
Quin seems a vindictive type and I suspect he’s jealous of other’s achievements.
He seems unhappy with the website info where it played up certain aspects.
I read the opposite. That he didn’t have much problem with the green website (I did read that somewhere but can’t find it), but that she chose to work on the defence team saying, “of all the ways to save the world, she chose to send killers back to the villages where their victims’ families are trying to rebuild their lives.”
He must find all defence work reprehensible.
He’s a dickhead bigtime
Most likely Quin has just picked up the ‘doofus of the week’ award off Nick Smith, but it’s an especially bizarre charge to lay against her, given what I personally understand of Gharaman’s family story,
It’s kind of right wing nut job.
What about mob lawyers – are they just giving their clients a fair go. Lawyers are just like other people – fallable, greedy, stupid and selfish – and with all the qreat qualities too, like compassion.
I get the system and I find it challenging as well.
‘Everyone’ hates defence lawyers until they’re accused of something.
Quote – Al Capone or genocidal mass murderer?
All those things may well be true in general marty, but in this instance it’s was a young barrister doing tough work, (pro bono IIRC) in a tough environment for all the right reasons.
Indeed that’s the main focus of the interview; the vast gulf between the realities on the ground in Rwanda and NZ.
There are lots of jobs I couldn’t and wouldn’t do and I have some admiration and at least respect for those that can, even with the personal cost that this must entail for them. This is one of those cases.
And on that I think we wholeheartedly agree.
Marty is it ok for a lawyer to work for a company that sells a legal product that has lead to the death of millions world wide?
I think moral questions are often the most intellectually interesting.
I think yes and also no if they ignored evidence in their defence/legal/work with the company to ensure the company could continue to make profit. Hard to prove though ☺
But isn’t that the task of lawyers working for a company to protect the “rights” of the company to sell it’s wares? And you are aware that National’s Chris Bishop worked for Phillip Morris?
And the task of a defence lawyer is to protect the rights of their client – no matter how heinous their crime may have been.
Should a rapist be given a fair trial or a paedophile? Of course they must -otherwise our society descends into lawlessness, such as was the case in Rwanda. If the accused were to receive no defence, then the subsequent conviction would have no more merit than the summary justice they metered out to those they slaughtered.
Yes I understand all that and I still find it morally murky for me.
Unfortunately Marty – as G.E. Moore (a late British Philosopher) explained “goodness” is like “redness” – it is a simple concept that cannot be broken down into constituent parts. Either you perceive redness or you don’t.
I can only say that by their actions you shall know them. Does Gloriz act in a good way or a bad way? Having met her and seen the work she has done (not only acting as a defence lawyer) she is a good person – as are all the Green MPs.
I hope that is of some help.
I have no issue with her at all btw. I like having her in parliament.
I agree with your comments about legal process Redlogix.
But Im not sure though if thats the issue here. Isn’t it that Ghahraman and the Greens deliberately fudged her role in the Riwanda war crimes legal process so that the punters would assume that she was on the side of the angels; not the devils, so to speak.
Therein lies her and the Greens problem.
She was perfectly open about what her role was in Rwanda before the Election – because she was a Green candidate – such news was decided not to be published by the MSM – because of “lack of space”. Well I guess it’s much more important to tell us about Bill’s smile
I have no problems with her being on the defense team though why you’d volunteer is beyond me but her profile page on the Green website was, at best, misleading:
“Golriz has lived and worked in Africa, The Hague and Cambodia, putting on trial world leaders for abusing their power.”
Says nothing about defending world leaders either and she herself says “could be clearer”
How those panama papers working out Puckish Rouge? Or the polls buddy? How many more lies do we have to suffer though? Oh wait – you could just revert to type as a racist we all know you are…
Still spinning and lying I see – Oh well can’t be helped, I suppose. It’s what you do.
Look a squirrel!
You’re a joke, but you’re not very funny.
Completely irrelevant. How long is the bio? A few paragraphs?
When I do my three page CV I barely touch the surface of anything on my work history. You’re looking at what I did ina company for 2-4 or even 11 years in a single paragraph. It was like that from when I was 26. By that time I’d had a 10 year work history and several degrees. It had skim paragraphs about time in the army, working as a farm hand, as a barman, a factory machine operator, technical salesman, factory manager, and computer support.
If you want to be be a idiot, then go ahead. Just don’t be surprised if people sum up your CV as “FOOL”
And we have a lawyer in Parliament who worked for a tobacco company….
(tobacco related deaths are around 5 million per year)
http://www.who.int/tobacco/publications/surveillance/fact_sheet_mortality_report.pdf?ua=1
This caught my attention. Not sure why they feel we need more cops but anyway…..
https://www.rt.com/news/411027-new-zealand-police-recruitment-video/
US is seeking the extradition of a British guy (Lauri) for stuff English courts didn’t lay charges over. And apparently …
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/lauri-love-hacker-activist-prison-sentence-extradition-america-aspergers-autism-death-sentence-a8076541.html
Been following this one. Why is any country sending their people to the US with its atrocious record of human rights abuses and shonky legal system?
True.
GROVEL.
State-sponsored adulation of shepherd-murderer moves into overdrive
Tuesday 28 November 2017
RNZ National, 7:24 a.m.
GUYON ESPINER: …. [drily amused] I’ve been taken to task for asking what Harry’s going to wear.
SUSIE FERGUSON: It’ll be a uniform, of course!
GUYON ESPINER: Of course it will. ….. [grovel, grovel…]
three, a.m. show, 7:25 a.m.
DUNCAN GARNER: Royal correspondent Dicky Arbiter, good morning!
DICKY ARBITER: [beaming] The Twitter universe has come alight! …[widens his eyes to indicate his great joy]… Like any young couple in love, they’re not hiding their love for each other!
AMANDA GILLIES: She wore a BEAUTIFUL new coat, designed by Line the Label. What does this mean for dress designers in the U.K.?….[grovel]….
DICKY ARBITER: They’ll look on her as they did Harry’s mother—as a clothes horse rather than a work horse. They do a tremendous amount of good work; let’s focus on what they DO rather than on what they wear, for a change.
DUNCAN GARNER: Yeah, I’m WITH you on this!
DICKY ARBITER: [worshipfully] Harry was a soldier. He was at the sharp end in Afghanistan. …. The couple meeting and they see each other across a crowded room, and that’s IT!… They just clicked, just like a jigsaw puzzle. … Younger people see them as role models. ….
7:52 a.m.
DUNCAN GARNER: Are you interested in the royal engagement? Some of you are. Some of you aren’t at all! That’s next!
…Advertisements (paid ones, not free ones for the Royal Family)….
7:54 a.m.
DUNCAN GARNER: Okay, welcome back. So much feedback for the royal wedding!
MARK RICHARDSON: Prince Harry was happy before this American came along. Well maybe not happy, but he was having a good time.
AMANDA: He wasn’t happy, he’s said that.
DUNCAN GARNER: Our poll question this morning is: “Do you care about the royal engagement between Prince Harry and Mehan Markle?” Well, not everybody does, it seems. Stuey says: “There are lots of unsung heroes in the community. He’s a privileged pillock and welfare beneficiary.”
The others in the studio—Gillies, Richardson, and social presenter Shannon Redstall—titter with pity and amusement.
DUNCAN GARNER: The woooorld of Stuey! I tell you what, Stuey, you can be the producer for the next sixty-threee minutes, and you can decide what’s going to be on the television.
8:02 a.m.
DUNCAN GARNER: Coming up on our panel is Rawdon Christie, broadcaster and royalist. We’ll be talking about Prince Harry, because Stuey hasn’t had enough of that yet…
8:35 a.m.
DUNCAN GARNER: All right, some things we don’t know about Meghan Markle. Everybody’s talking about this right now! …She has two adopted dogs, Bogart and, and….
AMANDA GILLIES: Guy.
DUNCAN GARNER: Yes! You know that? …. Mark, you seem sad.
MARK RICHARDSON: He was my guy. He was my royal guy!
8:42 a.m.
DUNCAN GARNER: We can’t get away from royal news today! It appears the royal couple may be related….
I think you’ll find it was Mihinirangi Forbes.
Thank you, it was Mihi Forbes. That slurping and licking sound coming from Espiner’s microphone somewhat diverted my attention.
The groveling continues….
Jim MORA: What is it about this union that makes people so joyful? Is there hope for the world in it, or what?
…..extended groveling from Mora and his two Panelists continues for three minutes….
The Panel, RNZ National, 4:46 p.m.
Awesome transcribing there Morrissey,
Is that done by electronic voice recognition or done manually by you?
I as a secretary need the program if it is done electronically.
Thanks, cleangreen, for those very kind words. I do it all by ear, usually. This morning I scribbled it down freehand up to 8 o’clock, and the rest I did on my computer as I listened.
My transcriptions are not always spot on, though, and have elicited some controversy here….
Morrissey….did you catch the most deft of wee digs from Mihingarangi Forbes this morning while interviewing a Central Otago Community Leading Light? they were discussing the recent deluge and Mihi pronounced the guy’s name how it is spelled, rather than how he pronounces it. She apologised, of course, and had another go…http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018623287/shovels-out-in-roxburgh-after-flash-floods-tim-cadogan
I am absolutely positively 100% sure she was not tangentially referencing this…
https://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/haere-mai-everything-far-ka-pa
I missed that, Rosemary. I think Mihi Forbes is a great journalist.
GROPERS
No. 12: Prince Harry
Groping in England….
Groping and snorting in Las Vegas…
“GROPERS” is presented by GroperWatch, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
No.1 George Herbert Walker Bush; No. 2 Bill O’Reilly; No. 3 Al Franken; No. 4 Robin Brooke; No. 5 Lester Beck; No. 6 Arnold Schwarzenegger; No. 7 Joe Biden; No. 8 Rolf Harris; No. 9 Harold Bloom; No. 10 Sir Jimmy Savile; No. 11 Dr Morgan Fahey
Shit, now using The Sun and Daily Mail as your news sources….
Putting aside their smirking and winking approval of Prince Harry’s appalling behaviour, what is inaccurate in either of those accounts?
Morrissey,
You have great memory recall; – I guess nmy chemical poisoning back in 1992 while last working in Canada hurt my brain as I now have poor memory recall.
Especially if I now get exposed to some perfume’s, diesel exhaust, synthetic rubber smells, and many others.
That is why I love things to be ‘cleangreen’.
So I need to use a tape recording and a “very patient wife of 45 yrs” to transcribe the event. (she is my one love, – once married; – us both)
Thanks for all that information morrissey.
If you’re going to run this series, you really ought to read up a little about “consent” – what it means and how it might be relevant to these posts. Because otherwise you could just end up looking like a grumpy old man who needs to get laid.
Shit Psycho Milt,
Thats a bit harsh on Morrissey,
I find his scribbing of public affairs issues quite refreshing.
Especially since the ‘media’ fail to cover ‘in depth’ public affairs issues today Morrissey is trying to expose them in a transcibed way and if the persons involved dont like their words repeated were are we left then????
Democracy is born from free speech.
His sources include “The Sun” and “The Daily Mail”.
Geat “credible” sources of info.
Interesting how the Left like to lambast the media; until a story is published that suits their way of thinking
Different Morrissey comment, Cleangreen. This is the one about gropers, not the radio transcript.
My issue with it is it makes no case for the sexual activity being non-consensual and yet lumps it in with the activities of people like Rolf Harris and Jimmy Saville. What makes a “groper” is lack of consent, not the fact of touching someone.
sweet, yes correctly stated thanks PM.
Fair comment, Milt, assuming Prince Harry respected the women he groped. I find that highly unlikely. The women seemed to be initially upset but were eventually flustered into smiling and accepting the mistreatment. Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein indulged in similar behaviour, and their victims were socialized into grinning and bearing it, or simply keeping quiet.
Who gives a rat’s ass whether he respected them? Get hold of a dictionary and look up the word “consent” before you go posting about it.
Sure, give that coke-snorting lout the benefit of the doubt if you want. You think someone who kills shepherds from the sanctuary of a helicopter gunship, then soaks up the adulation of the Murdoch press which dubbed him “The Big H”, gropes only willing women at those orgies.
I have a bridge to sell you if you’re interested.
Sure, give that coke-snorting lout the benefit of the doubt if you want.
I hope like fuck no-one ever asks you to sit on a jury.
Addled dotard shows his condescending racist slip.
WASHINGTON—For a year and a half, President Donald Trump has been denounced by Native American leaders for calling Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.”
He just did it again — at an event honouring Native American war heroes.
Trump held a White House ceremony on Monday to celebrate Navajo “code talkers,” who used their language to transmit secret messages during the Second World War. After complimenting the code talkers, Trump said, “You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.”
[…]
The jab at Warren was not the only part of the Monday event that was called offensive. Trump decided to make the speech in front of a portrait of president Andrew Jackson, who is notorious among Native Americans for signing the 1830 Indian Removal Act that forced Natives off of their land and produced thousands of deaths.
Trump also referred to his chief of staff John Kelly as “the chief.” And he suggested he was not personally familiar with the history of the code talkers.
“And I have to say, I said to General Kelly, I said, general, how good — here he is, right there, the chief; he’s the general and the chief — I said, how good were these code talkers?” he said.
Kelly’s response, according to Trump: “Sir, you have no idea. You have no idea how great they were.”
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/11/27/trump-just-called-elizabeth-warren-pocahontas-at-an-event-honouring-native-american-war-heroes.html
Kelly’s response, according to Trump: “Sir, you have no idea. You have no idea how great they were.”
Stated with military precision and accuracy…
He’s like that insect alien inside a human skin suit off men in black. No. Fucking. Idea.
Glyphosate. Another 5 years for it as part of Roundup by the EU on the basis of it possibly being carcinogenic but one can’t be sure till enough people die.
It came up after WW2, where chemicals were used regularly to deadly effect.
Glyphosate was first synthesized in 1950 by Swiss chemist Henry Martin, who worked for the Swiss company Cilag. The work was never published.[18]:1 Stauffer Chemical patented the agent as a chemical chelator in 1964 as it binds and removes minerals such as calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, and zinc.[19]
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) maintained their current classification of glyphosate as a substance causing serious eye damage and as a substance toxic to aquatic life, but did not find evidence implicating it to be a carcinogen, a mutagen, toxic to reproduction, nor toxic to specific organs.[17]
Monsanto’s last commercially relevant United States patent expired in 2000….
Farmers quickly adopted glyphosate, especially after Monsanto introduced glyphosate-resistant Roundup Ready crops, enabling farmers to kill weeds without killing their crops. In 2007, glyphosate was the most used herbicide in the United States’ agricultural sector and the second-most used in home and garden (2,4-D being the most used)…
In many cities, glyphosate is sprayed along the sidewalks and streets, as well as crevices in between pavement where weeds often grow. However, up to 24% of glyphosate applied to hard surfaces can be run off by water….
In 2015, 89% of corn, 94% of soybeans, and 89% of cotton produced in the United States were genetically modified to be herbicide-tolerant….
Use of glyphosate to clear milkweed along roads and fields may have contributed to a decline in monarch butterfly populations in the Midwestern United States.[172] Along with deforestation and adverse weather conditions,[173] the decrease in milkweed contributed to an 81% decline in monarchs.[174][175] The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a suit in 2015 against the EPA, in which it is argued that the agency ignored warnings about the dangers of glyphosate usage for monarchs.[176]…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
(No heading for honey bees though)- so :
http://www.glyphosate.news/2016-06-27-study-shows-honeybees-are-starving-because-of-roundup.html
and
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/11/03/glyphosate-is-no-bee-killer/
and
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-honeybees-dont-have-a-chance-in-the-midst-of-pesticides_us_58c1ec02e4b0c3276fb7831c
and
https://phys.org/news/2015-10-glyphosate-acetamiprid-toxicity-honey-bees.html
Seems like they are prepared to throw stuff at bees and as long as they keep flying, then the bad individual or combined effects of these chemicals is downplayed.
Then on Radionz we are suffering from leptospirosis which there have been another 93 in NZ for half the year. On and on and our environment and health constantly compromised.
Good research greywarshark;
I will make use of the details and links thank you.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11947570
More ‘blame the victim’ bullshit. Apparently throwing more money at beneficiaries won’t help. Why not? It helps everyone else.
The NZ Initiative a RW thinktank. And lying in heaps.
(Looking at the link that beatie gives above.) They present themselves as cool and rational and informed. They cherry pick the information they disseminate. They quote macro information, quote averages, and then present us with little direct information about individual groups.
With double the income-per-person than what was in 1970, a minimum wage up 50 per cent (inflation adjusted) and better medical care boosting life expectancy and reducing child mortality, you’d think New Zealand would be in its heyday.
It sounds good – double the income of 1970 – how was the inflation adjustment done, what was the base line, apples with apples? Housing has gone up horrendously since 1970, rentals are up, accommodation supplement always trails and the system is its own moral hazard. So that wouldn’t be rosy, but it isn’t mentioned. Instead we hear about child mortality, a nationwide measure, and life expectancy which is a population measure that is of vague concern to someone trying to manage on a pension.
Dr Bryce Wilkinson is just another RW fellow traveller packing a good story against beneficiaries whose opinion and solutions are discounted when pitted against a comfortable professional RW bottom, or even an erect spinal column of bias which is the healthy method of IT work now; (standing, perhaps they could let Peter try it out).
[Peter] has experience in technology and IT but isn’t able to sit in an office chair for longer than three minutes without getting excruciating pain.
“They should do a proper work assessment to see what my experience is and what jobs I can do based on my ability. I’m happy to work from home,” Peter said.
“To me they’re just trying to save costs without any care for the long-term solutions for the beneficiary.”
Wilkinson said a beneficiary’s shortage of money was a symptom rather than a cause of poverty. Instead efforts needed to be made to address drug addiction, alcoholism, mental illness, low skills, poor parenting and a lack of understanding of work habits.
Policies that increase job and income growth must be valued to complement welfare. The report stated the welfare system should “nourish rather than smother self-help”.
“State welfare support is a balancing act. A good system must guard against beneficiaries who could work but do not. This is a waste of human potential and an unwarranted burden on their fellow citizens.”
One notices, one does, the little homily at the end from the stern but just and prudent arbiter of these lives of people who are faulty and unable to take advantage of opportunities that are commonly available, for those who have the ability to exert themselves./sarc
The slimy words of callous, self-centred people are for the purpose of impressing their peer group in society, as to whose fault it is that ‘these people’ are languishing out there. However the dossier that TS has built up over the years gives us examples that ensure we understand the problem in the round, the whole vicious circle that ensures that the welfare system doesn’t work, because the RW don’t want a good, working, society of happy people. Such people are harder to squeeze the last juice out of.
RWNJ pays a woman to pretend to be a victim of sexual assault in an effort to discredit reporting about the sexual assault of women and girls.
Take a bow filth, that really does take the biscuit.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approached-the-post-with-dramatic–and-false–tale-about-roy-moore-sje-appears-to-be-part-of-undercover-sting-operation/2017/11/27/0c2e335a-cfb6-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.e4b342b2a612
Looks like it’s Project Veritas and James O’Keefe again, huh? Such a charming lad.
Thread.
Interesting but there appears to be a patch with two bits that don’t join up.
Don’t know how that gets straightened out.
Its now settling down now,holiday time ,to respect our coalition government,as others chance to talk about democracy,as three political parties say, this is our march to our lands care.
Who in the national party,is going to release the conversations with New Zealand First,who they attempted to negotiate a control deal.
good point.
The 38 page doco that the Nats are trying to obtain from the Coalition has been reduced to 33 pages because someone changed the FONT size!!!
I reckon the only reason the nats want to see it is because they want to know why and how they missed out, they just aren’t handling losing the election very well at all.
I reckon the Nats wouldn’t recognise a real coalition agreement if it hit them 😉
Time the duck,to say,open debate,speakers are open to say,under discrection.However,general debate,is not allowed with notes.
It’s funny (strange) how so many are going through this small item from Golriz sieving it word by word like someone panning for gold.
Yet Key was here for decades and I don’t think anyone went through his past sorting out where his money actually came from. Did anyone actually know how much he made from selling out a day before… from buying a penthouse that was being rezoned …. from not paying his full tax or by selling a day after the withholding period… etc. And it seemed to be his money that was the main attraction, that gave him gravitas. Once he had that it was such a laugh that he was okay, so free to not care about cheeky comments about peeing in the shower and other things like sitting in a cage with a jerk and a microphone.
I think was liked the powerful finance industry that owns NZ’s corporate media.
He was a useful puppet for them
Golriz isn’t.
Is anyone allowed to ask English what the contents of his 200 or so texts to his lady friend were about. I am sure Nz ers want to know. In the interest of transparency and all.
But Floyd those texts (270 odd wasn’t it) were to do with his electorate – sort of like the electronic equivalent of “notes” between him and his local secretary. He didn’t believe they came under the auspices of the OIA. Now, someone else has said that just in the last 24 hrs. Oh that’s right, the Prime Minister. I guess she has taken her cue from the previous Prime Minister.
Many thanks to all the teachers in NZ you have a very important job and I take my hat off to uses Ka pai
Bill,cleaned up.
Lets give im a good kickin then make him shout.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
While we’re talking about Ms Ghahraman, my other problem with her is that she is a refugee who seeks to bring in more refugees. Feels a bit like a Trojan Horse scenario
A.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
What an unpleasant contribution.
Yep horrible bigoted attitude not needed in our country imo.
Like companies who bring in migrants with work experience rather than hire and intern train up local graduates, replacing those who migrate to Oz (for higher wages) with another immigrant.
New Zealand companies just a Trojan horse back door into Oz.
That seems like a separate issue which perhaps will be addressed by tightening immigration rules…
A.
Still no retraction for that shameful comment?
There are around 20 million refugees in the world today.
Every year around 5 million people are forced for one reason or another to flee from their homes and to seek refuge in another country.
NZ accepts 750 refugees per year.
And you make that offensive comment!
🙄
Your “other” problem!? Why fear something that may never happen? It only exists in your mind because you let it exist there and cling on to it. Let it go and be free of your fears.
That sounds like terrible advice
Your choice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upādāna
Do you approve of dirty politics as highlighted by Nicky Hager?
It would appear so…….
I do not.
Do you retract your shameful comment at 30?
No.
Shameful.
But on reflection, I will add that she seems like a very nice person and you probably can’t blame her for giving it a go
A.
Where did you grow up
NZ
Well i can’t avoid the whole bloody country. Anyway you need to be more compassionate and less judgmental imo. Bigotry must be addressed in this country. You can actually hurt people you know.
The Standard is a place for heated debate, as you can well see by reading the posts on pretty much any day. I wouldn’t go round talking like this offline.
A.
I do, because not doing so would be disingenuous.
Why wouldn’t you?
Uh, I changed my mind after seeing this: https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/344871/green-mp-under-scrutiny-for-role-in-rwandan-genocide-trials
I never want to see one of our MPs smiling in a photo alongside a man found guilty of inciting genocide (in an International Criminal Tribunal, and sentenced to 15 years).
We can do without her in NZ. I would like to see her resign as an MP.
A.
No, you didn’t change your mind one bit; you were just a bit slow in making up your mind. It’s funny that so many people seem to go on about changing to improve ‘things’ while in fact they are rooting for status quo and the very last thing they’ll want to do on Earth is to change their (own) minds. I say these people have it back to front big time; reality is not in your head, it is everything but and all outside of your head. Don’t think too long about it as it might change your mind in irrevocable ways.
There is a reason that the Greens almost halved their voter support and lost seats this election…fringe party lunacy, shows what a bastard and undemocratic system MMP is (Winston 2017 may be the straw that broke the MMP back…eventually, and finally). Just as ex National MP Shane Ardern..