Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Andrew, no no. You publicly put it out there that Al Gore has lied about climate change. So, let's publicly hear those lies and see them for what they are.
Well, I saw the An Inconvenient Truth for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and while I haven't looked into lists of inaccuracies, cannot believe there was not a single New Zealand audience to view his magnum opus that didn't stifle a laugh at the claim that Pacific Islanders were moving to New Zealand because their islands were sinking under rising oceans.
Not 'this might happen if we continue without fossil fuel burning ways' but 'climate change has happened already and the populations of whole Pacific islands have moved to New Zealand'.
Maybe it's the only lie, but given this howler I suspect there might be others.
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I'm joining the bloggers' boycott of the Subway chain over a disgraceful employment decision at a Dunedin branch, which saw a teenage employee not only dismissed but prosecuted for theft after she shared her free staff drink with an upset friend.
Me - I'm refusing to read all blogspot 'blogs after blogger did nothing for ages about that appalling CYFSWatch page.
Of course, as we all know, the police have a discretion not to bring charges for minor offending, so I'm sure common sense will prevail and the complaint won't be investigated or taken further...
It was investigated? Sure, but no charges will be laid.
Charges were laid? Um, what am I supposed to say next?
Me - I'm refusing to assist the police with any inquiry they have until they drop the charges.
And the Government may say they have no authority over prosecutions but I'm sure all of us refusing to pay our taxes can induce them to change their minds...
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the correct formal address for a bishop is "My Lord"
Or Bishop. I suspect in the Destiny Church, just Bishop. But when you meet him, feel free to go with "My Lord".
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I didn't expect a coherent explaination. Thanks.
I'm surprised I came up with it. But then I recalled the arguments O'Connor was putting forward in the past (police have a policy about laying charges for domestic assaults, etc.) and it just started to make sense - 2 and 2 actually added to 4 - and we have the answer.
Sorry it wasn't actually coherent 'though :-)
situations involving assaults in the home in the where the assault involves parental correction.
But you got my drift anyway...
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especially when someone like Greg O'Connor weirdly insists the previous version somehow forbade them from doing so
My understanding is that the police have an internal policy to bascially always charge in domestic violence situations - that the discretion was misused in the past when DV wasn't taken seriously (and even when it started to be taken seriously prosecutions still often weren't happening).
Greg O'Connor's view would seem to be that adding a subsection incorporating the police discretion will return the discretion that was taken from police in situations involving assaults in the home in the where the assault involves parental correction.
That is, the procedures in place to deal with assaults in the home that exist pre-amendment would have required charges and wouldn't have allowed discretion. The police could have amended their own guidelines to allow discretion again for assaults in the home (and probably would have done so), but this requires it. And that pleases Greg.
Hadyn - on the 10th (?) anniversary of the founding of Destiny, and it's expansion into a nationwide movement, Church leaders (excluding Pastor Brian, as he then was) decided they could use a Bishop. At least, that's how it was portrayed.
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but my question is whether the law sees the difference between a light smack and a violent beating. Isn't an assault an assault, beyond some (low) minimum threshold?
Well, up until now, one could have been saved by s 59 and the other shouldn't have been.
And a violent beating could see a charge of injuring, assault with intent, assault with a weapon, or cruelty, where a light smack couldn't.
You're right that the definition of assault doesn't recognise a difference (and the tort of battery doesn't either) - so if I lightly smacked you, for example that would be a criminal assault (and a tortious battery), but the law does recognise a difference (in sentencing or monetary damages etc.).
I was really getting at those people who were saying parents who have lightly smacked their children are child-beaters. I didn't have too much of a problem with people who said parents who lightly smack commit assaults (illegal assaults - no, but assaults - yes), but calling them "beatings" was **way** out there.
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But who, exactly, do you mean? I genuinely can't think of anyone as weird on Bradford's side as the "Timaru Lady", or the lovely people posting to CYFSWatch
The people who accused Simon Barnett of being a child molester and rapist?
Don't know who they were? "Timaru Lady" isn't exactly edifying...
And the people who see absolutely no difference between a light smack and a violent beating are kinda out there too (to be contrasted with people who see a difference,but just think both are wrong)
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Barnett certainly condemned the bill (I don't think he condemned the compromise so much as pointed out that he was in agreement with Clark and Bradford that it didn't really change anything that he had been opposing the previous night).
And he hardly predicted the falling of the sky - just that it will be illegal to lightly smack your children (which it will) and that it sends a rather confusing message to everyone that smacking is illegal, but don't worry the cops won't do anything (which it does).
He wants to parent within the law, and he'd like a situation where if he lightly smacks CYFS won't get even a chance to hold it against him. I doubt I agree with all his views, but he articulated his case brilliantly last night, and I suspect a lot watching agreed with just about everything he said - and I thought the request that Sue Bradford promise to resign in the event that the sky does fall down was pretty funny.
As far as the compromise goes, I'd have preferred Key's amendment of a week ago, I suspect so would Key, but he didn't have the numbers.
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Riddley - section 59 begins "every parent ... is justified"
The Crimes Act has this to say:
**Justified**, in relation to any person, means not guilty of an offence and not liable to any civil proceeding:
Earlier in this thread, David Haywood quoted Associate Professor Dawkins of the Otago University Law School as saying that under the present law:
provided the force is reasonable, the parent is not criminally liable. So much, then, for the claim that smacking is already unlawful.
He's right. The claim has no merit.
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Tony - there is a case to be made for just about everything. I've been avoiding making the pro-smacking case; I'm not a fan of smacking, I just don't think it should be illegal (much the same way I feel about smoking).
Whatever one think of the balance of the smacking/no smacking argument, and I'm not sure I agree with him, Simon Barnett did a hell of job articulating his view!