Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Russell:
You're not going to get any argument from me that politics and health go together like me and a bottle of tequila - things get messy and incoherent PDQ. I'm not going to get into any kind of 'partisan stoush' because you've pointed out no party has clean hands on that score. (And I think it's fair comment to point out Labour wasn't entirely scrupulous about jumping on every health horror story bandwagon while in Opposition either. to be coldly cynical about it, Health is always going to be a gut-issue on the political radar. Admitting that it's often about picking the lesser evil off a menu of less than ideal options is never going to get you face time or poll traction.)
How you get around it is quite another question, and I don't have any simple answer for you. The Sunday Star Times could do a lot if the Herceptin story they ran was the rule for health coverage, rather than an all too rare exception. It's so much harder for politicians to get away with the bullshit, when the plebs are well-informed by a media doing their jobs.
ross f.:
Can you prove to me that everyone except the toxic trio are lying - and explain why? There's a difference between showing all due scepticism about what you read in the paper, and hypocritically accusing others of... well, hypocrisy.
TracyMac:
I don't really want to get into an entertaining - but pointless and gross - sidebar about how 'normal' gang-bangs and toys are to your average sexually-active adult. (I may be a screaming queen, but I've never viewed intercourse as an exercise in crowd control or logistics. Far too lazy to write all the thank-you notes or wash up afterwards.)
But let's look at another story in this week's Herald on Sunday about a 24 year-old man screwing a 17 year-old girl. Illegal? Well, no. Gross to many- sure, though I'm in no position to talk as I'm 28 years younger than my partner.
So what's the issue: He was her drama teacher. And that raises some pretty clear questions of professional ethics and abuse of power. IMO, you can say the same thing about Rickards - he hasn't been convicted of any crime, but you've got to ask whether he's ever displayed at any point the character and good judgement you can reasonably expect from a very senior Police manager in 2007.
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Ben:
Well, you do have a point there - remeber when Jim Bolger got char-grilled for making the true but impolitic observation that the problem with health is that people die? (I'm pretty sure then Health Minister Jenny Shipley could have put him in an ICU ward in a heartbeat,) Of course, you'd have to be sociopath not to feel for anyone with cancer who feels their chances of survival are being obliterated by heartless bean counters. But porn-star spin ("look the budget's bigg, getting bigger all the time and don't ask what I do with it") isn't that helpful. Asking what we expect from a public health systen, and whether anyone can possibly deliver it, is much more difficult/ just isn't helping.
Ruth Laugesen and the SST- who I've been highly critical of in the past and will be again, I'm sure - deserve credit for trying to bring more light than heat to a complex and emotionally fraught issue. Having said that, you do have to point out that the SST hasn't exactly been shy about slapping a photogenically awful patient clutching their kiddies on page A1, and implying that the health system is run by Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
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Well, I think Rickards is going to be shit out of luck if he's trying to position himself as an ultra-butch Donna Awatere-Huata, toting his daughter around like this season's 'it' purse. Ugh... I'm not trying to minimise how deeply creepy that women's mag photo was, if I say it was the least disturbing part of that interview. If he'd been convicted, I don't think it would have taken too much tweaking to be presented as a shocking insight into the mind of a very, very disturbed man.
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I know calling Laws a deeply hypocritical joke is like saying 'fire hot, water wet, and look both ways before crossing the motorway during rush hour', but was I the only person who read that column with three words going through my mind: Antoinette. Beck. Resignation.
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Oh, yes... Babel is the cinematic equivalent of Mike Leigh and Spike Lee co-editing The Guardian. Alejandro González Iñárritu and his writing partner Guillermo Arriaga are full of worthy (if banal) sentiments beaten to death by a disjointed narrative that is very clever but I can never quite see the artistic necessity for.
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I would think that IF the Police had done their jobs properly 20 years ago and these alledged acts had reached a Court in a timely manner, there would likely been more public confidence in the outcome.
Philip, you're peaching to the Amen corner on that one. :) I guess there's a streak of innate conservatism in me that believes "out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing is ever made." No human institution is always going to produce perfect outcomes in an imperfect world that has human being in it. I'm no reactionary, but a conservative - change is necessary and impossible, but I'm reluctant to throw out the imperfect but tested by time and experience for a whole new set of problems, without very careful consideration. At least there's a little light among all the heat - which is pretty cold comfort but better than nothing.
As for your second set of points - well, I'm going to go away and resond to them very carefully.
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Peter:
My apologies for the misattribution.
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Philip Wilkie:
Well,sorry, I'm not convinced by Tom's argument that perhaps not bringing these charges at all would somehow be 'better' for the victim. Here's a shocking revelation: I think there are a plenty of victims of violent crime - including rape - who never report it precisely because they don't want to have to spend months - or even years - reliving it over and over, let alone having their character and mental health dragged through a very public mill as part of a defence startegy. And I'm not an idiot, I spent enough time as a hack to know prosecutors have to make margin calls about the likelihood of a successful outcome every day of the week. Rape cases are always difficult to prosecute, full stop; with so called 'historical' cases, the difficulties increase exponentially. But let's not pretend those margin calls go the other way too - just because fraud or tax evasion cases are often extremely complex, and the evidence is highly technical and wide open to interpretation by an inexpert jury doesn't mean they're never pursued, or shouldn't be. The same in cases of alleged medical malpractice.
peter Cox wrote:
Maybe someone just doesn't want Clint Rickards to be police commissioner in the future, can't say I'd disagree at this point.Check out S. 4 of the Police Act, where the Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner are Prime Ministerial appointments. If 'someone' (nudge nudge, wink wink) didn't want Clint Rickards to become Police Commissioner, the remedy is to convince the Prime Minister to appoint someone - anyone - else if those positions fall vacant. Much more efficient that spending millions of dollars, generating years of negative media coverage of an enormously politically sensitive arm of the civil service, and (I guess) somehow convincing dozens of officers to fit up a very senior officer on false allegation brought by multiple women. Gee, I'm the right-winger around here. Aren't I the one who's supposed to regard Helen Clark and Rob Robertson as creatures of unbounded malevolence who will stop at nothing to do down their enemies?
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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.
Tom, would you like to look in the eyes of someone who's just made a complaint that they'd been the victim of a sex crime and say, "well, you know there's a very low conviction rate for this kind of offence, they're difficult to prosecute at the best of times, and you're going to be subjected to months - if not years - of stress and public humiliation either way. So sod off, go home and have a good cry because we're not going to waste our time on you..." I couldn't - and it must be bad enough when prosecutors have to say they've investigated, and just don't have enough evidence to lay charges. Which doesn't mean - desipite what Rickards and some in the blogosphere seem to think - doesn't mean the complainant is therefore a lying psycho slut.
But remember, just because the circles you move in are well informed that doesn't necessarily mean everybody else's are. There's a lot of people out there for who news and current affairs are of no interest. So they can be blissfully ignorant of details you and I take for granted.
Thanks for stating the obvious. To use a bad (and meaningless) cliché of Helen Clark's, folks 'inside the Beltway' too easily forget that not everyone hears - or even much cares about - the sin-sational gossip and hot steaming poop-scoop that obsesses political junkies and media-political-legal insiders.
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I'm thinking about the arguments I'd make if I was representing Rickards, as disgusting a thought as that is.
Eww... but seriously, Span:
Maybe, maybe not - but I truly hope the Police make sure he's gone one way or the other. I'm no employment lawyer, or a mind reader, but what Rickards said didn't look like an emotional outburst from a distraught man to me. And he's not the only employee to think about here: I know one officer (female) who told me a couple of months back that she wasn't exactly overjoyed when he became Auckland District Commander and Assistant Commissioner in the first place - and if he's reinstated, she will either transfer out of Auckland or quit. And this isn't some hyper-sensitive petal who is prone to hysterics or making idle threats.
If there's enough officers like her out there, it might well be more of a liability to keep him around. It might also be more trouble than it's work to keep him at arm's length, so to speak, from the managers, fellow officers and jurists he so vocally expressed his contempt for yesterday.
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