Posts by Matthew Poole
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
carry a nice little spray bottle of ammonia mixed with chilli powder
(this is not illegal and is very good against aggressive dogs too; actually, I'd reccommend this for *everybody*You're sure about that? I'm pretty sure I read that the police would treat someone who carried oven cleaner (which is not a controlled substance) and used it in the event that they were attacked as having been carrying an offensive weapon. It has no place in your handbag (yeah, try convincing the cops that you were on your way home from a late-night house-keeping party), so the fact that it's not ordinarily illegal won't save you.
I cannot see any honest (see below for "honest" defined) use for ammonia and chilli, unless you've got some seriously fucked-up tastebuds, and the cops will likely take a similar view. Even if you don't get convicted, you really don't want the hassle of facing fairly serious criminal charges.The "police recommended" defensive weapon is a can of hair spray. Stings like buggery if you get it in your eyes, and it's something that'd be entirely legitimately (for values of "legitimate" that equate to "for the purposes of saying that you weren't armed") carried around. Aerosol deodorant is another one.
It's all very well to say that one has the right to defend themselves, but having things on you that have no purpose but defence in the event of being attacked is treated as carrying a weapon. There's a reason that people are advised to use their keys to enhance their punches.
-
And PS: The Preview button is still b0rk'd
-
The downside is that this erudition can rather dauntingly raise the bar for new entrants.
To be all intellectually snobbish, is that such a bad thing? :P
On the police state thing, remember that most of these people actually do want these rules. But only for other people. I cannot recommend enough Corey Doctorow's Little Brother (free download). It's yoof fiction, so it's a very light read for most people with moderate reading levels. I polished it off in about six hours of reading time. It's a very good exploration of just where some of the shit that's currently going on in the world could lead. And it talks about some pretty funky very-near-future ideas in technology.
Whenever people demand extreme measures in response to some particular recent outrage, I'm reminded of two quotes. The first is Ben Franklin's timeless "Those who would sell essential liberty in exchange for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security." The other is from Pastor Martin Niemöller, the classic "First they came..."First they came for the Socialists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak up for me. -
On the Harolds site the comments just seem to come out of thin air
Not aided by the arbitrary approvals process that leaves comments in limbo for hours. I've responded into threads with no comments that end up putting my contribution on the second or third page because so many people replied before anything was submitted.
And, really, I'd argue that KB and WO get far closer to online talkback. After all, the Herald only allows comments on some of its posts :P
-
Entirely off-topic, has anyone else discovered that the Preview button is functioning as the Post Reply button? And if this appears at this point, it's not a vice-versa situation.
-
I was just going to post something about some bus drivers in Auckland thinking they're Dale Earnhardt.
Quite a few of them. They treat red lights as advisory on a regular basis, too, which is quite scary when one is riding in them.
To be fair, as a cyclist I find bus drivers less obnoxious than car drivers most of the time. I've had a Link bus follow me over Grafton Bridge at a reasonable distance (I was doing 35+km/h, which probably helped), which makes a difference from the car drivers who routinely follow me at a distance that would be tailgating if I were in a car, even when I'm doing 40 (with GB's 30km/h limit).
Of course, buses are also a lot scarier when they misbehave. I'll pick being cut off by a car over being cut off by a bus every time, if only because a car's only about three times my length instead something closer to 10 times.
-
but, if they're premising their shoppers on foot traffic, then how they get into the city shouldn't matter. good public transport is as effective as paying through the nose for parking!
Depends on what they're buying. Around the corner (quite literally) from my home is a small strip of shops. They've historically been antiques retailers (the Market Rd/Great South Rd shops, for those familiar with the area), though recently there's been an up-swing in food outlets. The council wanted to remove all the parks outside the shops, to allow for a bus expressway. The retailers, understandably, objected. Antiques aren't something one carries home on the bus. I'm not sure of the final outcome, which I believe still hasn't been decided, but the point is that there are certainly some types of retailer who absolutely require that their customers be able to get moderately convenient access by motorcar. Either that or they start doing home deliveries of small lamps and other items.
-
Part of the payment for public transport comes from parking tickets.
That's a cool idea. I wonder what the parking fine income from the various Auckland councils would do for improving public transport.
I'm really pissed that they're giving money back.
Did you see the silly bint quoted in the Herald, who said that if she got one fine she wouldn't want the money back, but if it was two or three she thought it should be returned? I mean, really, isn't the definition of insanity doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting a different result?
If you park again in a place where you've been fined before for parking there, shouldn't the resultant fine be a mandatory stupidity tax? -
here are the links to this week's Media7
Part 2 of the podcast version refuses to work for me. If I wget it, I get a zero-byte file. The other three parts work fine.
-
I look forward to ... any inquiry/review of Police SOP
The ultimate tragedy would be if all the busy-bodying and criticism of the police response resulted in a change of SOP that sent unarmed officers into a situation that lead to them being shot to death.
I fully support the ARV concept, and think it's overdue for Auckland to have AOS-level officers on the streets at all times with firearms, but firmly believe that any meddling with how unarmed officers respond to incidents where shots have been fired is inviting disaster.