Posts by Rich of Observationz
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While I'd agree that violence and bullying by children needs to be reduced, it's hard to judge where the full force of the criminal law needs to be brought to bear. If every kid who hits another ends up going through police action, suspension from school and a criminal record, we'll just get a lot of young violent criminals.
In general, I'd say that discharge without conviction should only be used in fairly exceptional cases, where a case should really not have reached court, but it wound up there and the judge needs to correct that. I'd think that working on making the long term effects of a conviction less devastating is better than not convicting those who are clearly due a punishment, but can make a case for disproportionate effects (For instance, one could envisage imposing a community sentence but suppressing all identification details, including withholding them from foreign states).
In the case in question, there is a reasonable argument that had the assault not had tragic consequences, the culprits would have got diversion and that lead the judge to reasonably sentence to a discharge without conviction,
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Hard News: UPDATED: Media Take: Election…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
I will wait for Slater, Farrar, Hooton and Odgers to be charged for their rather more substantive conspiracy, then. Think I'll be waiting a while.
(Paremoremo's convenient for Warkworth though - maybe they'll give Farrar day release to attend foo camp?)
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Suggesting Dotcom is @whaledump is libellous, I reckon, unless one happens to have beyond-reasonable-doubt evidence. The Lange defence doesn't apply to a direct factual accusation of criminal conduct.
I suspect a number of media sources will be hearing from m'learned friends.
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What you're saying is that all our parties, without exception*, are owned by huge foreign multinationals who do their best to obfuscate this through layers of flag-wrapping.
* I checked. Emersons ∈ Lion ∈ Kirin ∈ Mitsubishi
Boundary Road ∈ Independent Liquor ∈ Asahi -
Hard News: In The Green Room, in reply to tussock,
fairly unique in our potential for massive growth in renewable energy
Exactly. And there's an argument that by growing sustainably and taking a reasonable number of immigrants, we are easing the burden on more populous and strained ecosystems, like Europe and China.
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Before the early 20th century the Republicans were on the whole the more left-wing of US political parties. Lincoln was a Republican and Jefferson Davis a Democrat.
It wasn't until FDR that the current positions became fully entrenched.
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we always work .... and political junkies
Whoever gave you that buzzword should have explained that they didn't literally mean drug-dependent sociopaths?
(see also "helicopter view")
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Listen, they even say "please", a little politeness goes a long way.
She did stand down, after a mere 17 years.
Ok, so maybe politeness doesn't help.
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Prime Ministers on holiday don’t ever have arrangements in place in case their Director of the SIS needs to contact them
I'd actually believe that is the case, given that the NZSIS hasn't uncovered a single threat to national security in the 58 years it has existed, and has failed conspicuously to detect actual threats in their area of concern (Rainbow Warrior bombings, Israeli passport fraud).
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Which doesn't cover YouTube and iTunes, so why has Darren Watson been told to remove it from there?