Posts by Kyle Matthews
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
It's just not a good look, but while helen makes political hay just remember that she oversaw his promotion several times while aware of the allegations against rickards so we'll just have to wait and see as always, the teflon has to be wearing thin by now for this government.
"Oversaw his promotion several times" would be overstating the situation a great deal IMHO.
I don't know at exactly what level the government has a direct involvement with the appointment of police officers to positions. I'd hazard a guess that the government approves all people at Assistant Commissioner and above (so that's all the assistants, the deputy, and the commissioner). I couldn't imagine they'd approve inspector or superintendant appointments, they probably only go as high as the commissioner's desk.
So the government I'd imagine would only have approved one of his promotions - to assistant commissioner. Whether or not that involved Helen Clark in any serious way I'd be surprised - it might have been one of 20 appointments from the public sector that flew across the cabinet table for approval in any week.
The Minister of Police probably would have had some active role - at least seeing his CV, maybe getting to meet him before his appointment was made, but the PM would only be involved to that depth for a Commissioner appointment.
I don't even think the Prime Minister is his employer. If it's not the Commissioner of Police, then it'd be the State Services Commissioner surely?
-
You conveniently forgot to mention the damning evidence presented by the defence about the accusers. In the Nicholas case, the accuser had made numerous allegations of rape against many men. None of her allegations have been substantiated. Of course, one of her allegations was that she had been raped by a group of Maori men riding horses and wearing ski masks. She subsequently admitted that this claim was false.
I'd be curious to hear from someone with legal qualifications (if there are any reading this), as to whether it's a contradiction that the jury wasn't allowed to hear about the convictions for similar activities of two of the accused, yet they were able to hear attacks on the complainant's past history of complaints.
To me if the defendant should be judged solely on their actions in relation to this particular charge, shouldn't witnesses/complainants be similarly treated? (Or, vice-versa, both sets of histories should be brought into play?)
-
One thing no seems to be considering here is the wisdom of lodging these charges in the first place, given not just the difficulty of securing a conviction but also the impact on the victim of a not guilty verdict.
I would suspect, if anything, that likelihood of following a case through to prosecution would be just as likely, and most likely more likely, if the defendants are police officers, particularly high ranking police officers, than ordinary members of the public. Simply for political reasons, there would be no way that the police would want to be seen to protecting their own these days, they have an unfortunate culture of it in the past.
Also, I think there's a general rule, that if the police prosecute someone, you can assume two things. Firstly, that they are confident that the person 'did it'. They won't always be right on that point, but much more likely to be right than wrong. They've done the work, collected the evidence, spoken to witnesses, complainants, defendants etc. They'd have been confident that these people committed these crimes.
Secondly, they'll consider that they have a reasonable chance of getting a conviction. They also won't always get this right as well, particularly with a difficult historical case like this, but they won't send a case to court when they know in all likelihood they're going to lose.
I spoke to a police officer who was involved with the case of the two kids who went missing in the Marlborough Sounds New Years Eve a few years ago. The officer said that they absolutely new the guy had done it. The evidence was clear, everything pointed towards the fact that the defendant had killed them and then worked hard to cover up the facts. It was simply a matter of convincing a jury of that, which they did.
So I'd lay fairly good odds that the prosecution was correct, but they just didn't have either of the most recent cases tight enough, and things didn't fall for them the way they wanted in court. That's unfortunate if they are guilty but got off, but it's also what happens in our justice system.
The claims made by Rickard's brother that the prosecution was brought to stop him eventually being Commissioner of Police, I regard as laughable. Rickard's hopes of getting that job disappeared once it became apparent during the investigation that he'd been manipulating and doing dodgy stuff with members of the public. Any appointment for senior police jobs is thoroughly vetted, and you can bet 'information that came to light during internal investigations of historical behaviour' would set of sirens well before the commissioner level. He wouldn't have gotten his current job if this had come to light before his application.
Even before the prosecution started, his career was in tatters, and I can't imagine he'd work in the police again. He'll Perf out if he's lucky and take his superannuation.
-
I have no problem with laws that are not always applied. Of course Parliament doesn't want theft of a pen prosecuted, but it sometimes wants theft of office supplies to be charged so it hasn't carved out an office supplies exception.
No MP I've heard talk about this bill wants parents who lightly smack to be charged. Ever.
I feel like you've made my point here. To transpose into your office supplies sentence:
Parliament doesn't want 'light smacking' charged, but it sometimes wants 'smacking' to be charged, so it isn't going to carve out a smacking kids exception.
Personally I don't think there should be any exemptions to this law to remain, even the ones that the select committee has currently put in regarding child safety or safety of others. No police officer is even going to think twice about arresting and charging someone who aggressively pulls a kid from out in front of a car for their own safety. The exemptions have been put in as a recognition of the paranoia that is being carried along with the idea of this bill - there's a lack of understanding of how police and crown prosecutions work, and that's causing fear that laws are always applied.
The boundaries between 'charge this person' and 'don't charge this person' will always be figured out by the judicial system, in the mangled interaction of prosecution, defense, judges, and juries. Parliamentary law is way too blunt an instrument to figure out those details of exactly where the boundaries lie. This is nothing new.
-
And I don't think Parliament should pass a law it doesn't want enforced under any circumstance.
Well, parliament already has a whole heap of laws which are not always applied - most of the crimes act this applies to. You can steal something trivial from work and not get charged, you can kill someone in self defence (sometimes), and you can break the speed limit if you're rushing to the hospital in a life and death situation. They are only sometimes applied, and assault on children, similar to assault on adults, will only sometimes be charged.
Laws are written in a time and a place, and can't account for every situation that society faces. That's why discretion is given to police in these situations. Pete Hodgson grabbed Madeline Flanagan here in Dunedin and admitted that it was a mistake. No charges were laid even though technically it was assault.
Exactly where the boundary will lie if this law gets passed, between 'prosecute' and 'not', isn't entirely clear. No doubt there will be some people up in arms that people are being prosecuted who shouldn't, and possibly some who say that more should be prosecuted. At least the police will have the law backing them up when they choose to take action, rather than having to worry about 'just how hard you can hit a child'.
-
I'd also throw this in: would the govt-owned rail network be of some help to Rod's plan?
Look, I know it's gotten bad out there, but I'm not sending emails by train, no matter how close they go to my house. And don't even start me on streaming video by railway. The 'buffering' takes ages!
-
I just checked the stats on the sites I'm involved with and Vista is just hitting 1%....not good for Redmond surely, after a month or so. The overwhelming attitude I've encountered is "why bother, what does it offer", and the hardware specs are off putting for most. Releasing a new OS doesn't excite anymore in the way that, say, a new phone, or even a natty website does. The geeks have moved on.
I think also (and related), people have discovered that with XP, Windows at least had a moderate operating system. It's not OS X 10.4, but it's significantly ahead of the mess that was 95, 98, and the joke that was ME. I have XP home on my computer at home, and it works OK, and my software doesn't crash all the time like it did with my computer before, which was 95.
And given that some of the stuff that they've put in Vista sounds like stuff I don't want, I'll probably look at installing XP on my next PC computer, assuming I can't afford a mac (dual boot... *drool*).
-
What I was trying to say is that (in a democratic situation) you sometimes can't get the outcome you want. But isn't the second-best result still better than the third-best result?
I suspect Sue's argument would be (and I haven't seen or heard her give an in-depth explanation of her reasoning for threatening to withdraw it):
1. If it goes through with his amendment, then it would be much harder in the future to get Sue's vision of it passed. I think sometimes it's easier in politics to make one large step, than make one small step, and then try to get parliament to make the second small step. No future government would make this a focus, no mainstream groups would pick it up because 'well the new law isn't perfect, but it's not too bad', or 'we just did that law' etc.
2. Tactically, no doubt she's working hard on lobbying people to get them to vote down the amendment. One of her methods is no doubt to say 'if you vote for his amendment, then things won't change at all'. It's a threat, and might be seen as non-constructive, but this is parliamentary politics. Threats and non-constructive behaviour are one of the ways you get the job done.
Who knows whether she'll actually withdraw it if the amendment passes. Given that she's a very principled person and generally does things that she says she's going to do, I'd put my bets on 'yes, she will'.
-
It has even been claimed that the abolition of physical punishment will result in a generation of 'girly-men' who will be unsuitable All Black material.
There's an interesting, but irrelevant survey I want to see done! Proportion of All Blacks who were smacked as children vs proportion of the general population.
And a breakdown. Keith Robinson, I bet he got smacked. Carter - bet his Dad couldn't lay a hand on him he was so slick. Richard Loe - he probably beat his parents.
-
It's the Chocolate Frog technique, specially designed for long car journeys, with squabbling children in the back seat.
At the start of the trip, buy a packet of chocolate frogs. Open them, and leave them in view, in the front seat somewhere.
When the behaviour in the backseat gets just too much to cope with anymore, wind down a window, and throw a chocolate frog out.
If there are any left at the end of the journey, the children may have them.
OK, smacking children is bad.
Throwing chocolate frogs out the window uneaten. That's criminal. Especially the mint ones. Lock yourself up now.