Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: If wishing made it so ..., in reply to Lilith __,
Don’t know why Auckland always seems to lag way behind in public transport initiatives, given its population and size.
Because the last time National were in power, they flogged off our council-owned transport services and we ended up with a multi-private-player tendered mess with no way for the Council to enforce anything across all providers. Just getting to this point required a law change late in Labour’s term to allow a change in how transport routes are tendered, amongst other things. Imagine that Auckland’s bus providers are cats with ADHD, then imagine trying to herd them…
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Hard News: If wishing made it so ..., in reply to Steve Barnes,
Auckland’s $98 million public transport ticketing project is in deep troubleHow much???
Calling it “Auckland’s” is deeply misleading. It’s a national smart-fare system (ETA: including the comms standards) developed by the old ARTA and the NZ Transport Agency. That figure is high, but it’s inclusive of work to allow the back-end systems to be used in support of smart-card public transport ticketing in other parts of the country. That figure includes rolling out hundreds of on-board readers for buses and ferries, plus installing on-platform infrastructure for trains, and that includes all of the data back-haul.
It’s actually not as horrendous as it sounds. It’s the whole system, not just the computing back-end.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Keir Leslie,
The point at which I said the Police would have no discretion over arresting people was ... where, exactly? If you want a massive overreach in statutory power, that would be it.
As for my use of "arbitrary", how dare I use a plain-English word in its plain-English meaning. I was also not the first (or second) person to use the 'a' word in this thread. Someone else went there first.
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
He says some principals told him they tried to deter poor families in other ways. One said she removed the names of undesirable students from her school’s ballot for out-of-zone enrolments.
Leaving aside the rest of it, if that’s true, some metaphorical heads should be rolling.
I read that, and was completely disgusted. These schools should be named and shamed, not allowed to continue their discriminatory (and possibly illegal) zoning practices behind a veil of secrecy.
Looking at the zones of the likes of Grammar it's blatantly obvious that they're being drawn up to encompass the "best" parts of their surrounding area.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Keir Leslie,
It would be nice, Keir, if, just once, you could argue the whole post instead of resorting to hunting for precise, legalistic definitions of individual words to support your incapacity to engage on the intended level. You know perfectly well that I'm not using the word "arbitrary" as it's been defined by the judicial process. That includes your need to turn words such as "will" into "regularly" which, as Sacha observes, are not synonymous.
Doesn’t it worry you that your proposals are generally repugnant to the liberties of the subject? Isn’t that one of the those things that gives you pause?
Actually, no. If you act like a douche-knuckle in public because you've had too much to drink, I have absolutely no problem with the cops locking you up for 12 hours for the protection of yourself and others. We already provide for people to be held until their sobriety returns sufficient to allow them to make their own way to their place of residence. As you have observed, there exist legal protections, at least in theory, against the Police using their powers of arrest and detention just because they don't like the colour of your skin or the style of your hair. However, in practice those protections are very theoretical.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I would imagine that a blanket policy of locking up everyone caught fighting would either have to develop so many exceptions as to not be a blanket policy, or would in fact be the introduction of arbitrary arrest into New Zealand law
Woah. We've turned an automatic night in the cells into the arbitrary arrest that you insist - in the face of evidence such as the student protests at the start of the month - doesn't exist in this country. Pray tell, what else is locking up 30-some people for several hours before releasing them with no charge if it's not arbitrary arrest?
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Keir Leslie,
This is one reason that giving the police more powers to lock people up is a fucking atrocious idea.
Because making them be honest about why they're arresting someone is such a terrible idea. We've just established that the police will arrest someone if they wish to, NZBORA or no. I would much, much rather that they have an appropriate lawful reason, which can be reported on and analysed, than use the Fish & Chip Act 1903 to get people off the street for a short period.
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Yamis,
I don’t know about the Dilworth example though
I thought of it because it's the one way that otherwise-isolated kids from Dio/Cuth's/Kings/etc are likely to encounter kids who aren't from their parents' financial class while in social settings during their teens. Those schools are a pretty rarefied atmosphere, by and large.
As for the Big 4 example, having been involved in recruitment while employed within one of the Big 4 I didn't notice overt bias towards high school, or university; we wanted smart, but I didn't pick any particular educational profile. We had a huge range, even amongst the interns, though we were also considered to be the least-pretentious member of the Big 4 which may have played some part.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Sacha,
how does locking up street protestors fit with that?
Bingo. All the rainbows-and-unicorns statements about NZBORA and civil liberties doesn't cut much mustard on the reality of effectively-arbitrary exercise of powers of arrest and detention. I'd be willing to bet that the protesters who were released without charge would've been held for significantly longer had it not been for the "Occupy Central Police Station" event.
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Kumara Republic,
So is the Thurston College controversy an isolated case, or the tip of the iceberg?
Very hard to tell. That part of Auckland has a reputation for being very racist, heavily populated with immigrants from societies and cultures that are very racially-intolerant (a colleague lives a few streets away from the proposed site, so it's a local's perspective). This is the area that threw their toys over suggestions of renaming the local board Te Irirangi instead of Howick, after all.