Posts by Gabor Toth
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I have never been to Iceland, but a friend once called from Reykjavík to say that she'd spent €90 on a pizza.
Hot tip - make sure all the adult members of your group take in their maximum duty-free limit of booze. If you don't drink it yourself, you can always trade it for pizzas (alcohol is insanely expensive, but Icelanders still go crazy over the stuff). Beer is probably better than wine in this regard as you'll have more trading "units" (the duty-free limit is 1 litre of spirits + 6 litres of beer OR 1 litre of spirits + 1 litre of wine).
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I remember when Brown was deputy to John Smith in the shadow chancellor role. Smith was away, I was working from home and watching a parliamentary debate (sad bastard I know, but it meant I also got to see Geoffrey Howe give Margaret T. a totally unexpected mauling).
Ooh yes - that brings back memories! I was working for The Independent at the time and we had all gathered around the telly to watch it. Some of the more knowledgeable hacks had suspicions that something was up, but even their jaws dropped to the floor. No one had seen Thatcher on the back foot like that before - especially as Howe had been the last survivor from the 1979 government (the running joke used to be how Thatcher would express her "absolute confidence" in a minister who was in a spot of bother - and within a week he would have "resigned").
With uncanny timing, The House of Cards (starring the late Ian Richardson) was having its first screening on the BBC around this time (on Sunday evenings I think).
I came back to NZ a couple of years afterwards and I remember how dull I found NZ politics to be after becoming used to the cut-and-thrust of British politics. -
Brussels is less that 175 miles from London. New Zealand is on the other side of the world.
Distance is not relevant. Being a NZ'er who has lived in the UK and also spent a reasonable amount of time in Brussels, I can honestly say that our legal system (along with many other things) has a hell of a lot more in common with that of the UK than that of Belgium (or Strasbourg or Luxembourg - pointing out that neither the European Court of Justice or the Court of Human Rights are actually in Belgium...).
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What has outraged me though has been the very fact a bunch of British judges, who may not have even ever stepped foot in New Zealand, presume to pass judgment on our legal system.
In the same way that judges sitting on the European Court of Justice (based in Luxembourg) and the European Court of Human Rights (based in Strasbourg) who may never have set foot in Britain, pass judgement on the British legal system. The McLibel case and the "right" to beat and (essentially) torture IRA suspects being held without trial in British prisons in the 1970s are two examples of this.
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Though I don't have a legal background, I have always followed the law and legal processes with keen interest. I was really uncomfortable in the way this government made a major change to our legal system by abandoning the right of appeal to the Privy Council with the stroke of pen. Getting rid of it seems to have been tied up with a kind of nationalistic fervour and the belief that a bunch of Poms in London are not capable of fully comprehending NZ legal cases. While I would not belittle the upper echelons of the NZ justice system, not only are the Law Lords extraordinarily smart people, their isolation from NZ makes them far more "blind" to external influences and more independent than any NZ court could ever be.
The NZ courts also seem to find it incredibly difficult to admit that they can make mistakes and I'll be interested to see how they react following the Privy Council's decision. One question is - would a Supreme Court of New Zealand have made the same judgement on the Bain appeal as the Privy Council? Somehow I think not.
On similar lines, the Solicitor General is defying a select committee call for the Peter Ellis case to be fast-tracked to the Privy Council and I wonder if that case will ever get there. The conclusion is again - the Solicitor General is trying to protect the NZ legal system from having to admit that mistakes were made.
I also note that National, Act and NZ First called for a two-thirds required referendum back in 2003 regarding the question of whether the right of appeal to the Privy Council should be abandoned. In light of the present situation, it will be interesting to see if the Nats pick this policy up again. -
killer writes violent plays
Cough... who's up for broaching the subject with Peter Jackson?
Who interestingly also has one of the largest private collection of firearms in New Zealand.
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During the early days of my O.E in the late 1980s, I found myself working in a pub on the outskirts of Oxford at the start of a gloomy British winter. I was 20 years old and homesick as hell with no friends or family in the UK. My great travelling adventure was off to a rocky start. Once I had got over the stunning architecture, I quickly became aware of the centuries-old schism that exists between the local population and the university (“town and gown”). To me this was best illustrated by the dozens of bills that would be posted on boards throughout the central city promoting the various plays, reviews and classical concerts which were constantly being performed by students at the various colleges. At the bottom of each (often stunningly designed) poster would be the stern warning: “University members and invited guests only” - if you weren’t a student or a staff member of Oxford University you were excluded from attending any of these events. One evening I was walking through town when I experienced that uncanny sense that many Kiwis seem to develop when travelling overseas – the ability to spot an “N” close to a “Z” at 50 paces. My eye was suddenly caught by a (non-university) poster different from the others: “The Chills (New Zealand) – Jericho Tavern” – they were playing the following night! So with a small audience (a handful of whom were Kiwis – never before had I found Kiwi accents to be so heart-warming) I saw The Chills front-up at this legendary Oxford venue. The band members had apparently had a heated argument that day and were thoroughly pissed-off with each other. However rather than being all glum, everything seemed to get cranked up to “11” as the tension between the band members seemed to be released through their music. The audience were totally blown away and it was for me the finest gig I ever saw The Chills play. I walked home through the ancient streets of Oxford with my ears ringing, grinning like an idiot and feeling deeply proud that such a band came from New Zealand.