Posts by Russell Brown
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The charge in question is already actively not enforced in a number of areas. Assaults that take place on rugby fields every weekend are almost never even looked at by the police - there would have to be serious permanent injury for someone to be charged. Lots of drunken push and shoves and a couple of punches on Saturday night never see more than a 'sober up and stop being dickheads' from the police.
Yes. This is what occurred to me after my response to Graeme. The police exercise prosecutorial discretion all the time in potential assault cases. For example, when the strange woman in Dunedin laid a complaint because Pete Hodgson touched her arm during an election meeting, the police didn't prosecute.
So it's twisting words to claim that the bill "criminalises light smacking". It what did does is remove the specific defence that made assaulting a child different from assaulting anyone else.
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I thought your point about the way that the present model for consulation and feedback keeps people separate was a good one. Everywhere else on the internets we're embracing the idea of taking cues from each other - it's why discussion forums like this work, for one - but in the real world, we submit alone.
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I acknowledge all that, Graeme, but like I said, I felt obliged to also consider the moral argument posed by Sue Bradford. I think this is actually a situation where the social sanction embodied in the law is relevant.
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My point is that if a judge can currently rule in a case that force used was not reasonable, then why the need for new legislation?
It's a jury that gets to make the call in a defended hearing, and some juries have made strange decisions. I found the much-discussed Timaru case alarming, because the mother used the riding crop on a clearly disturbed child, who was subsequently prescribed an anti-psychotic medication. (The conduct that provoked her assault read to me quite like an autistic meltdown, something I know about, but I freely grant that that is mere supposition.)
I found her vociferous defence of her actions, and similar vociferous defences in online forums - that it was in fact reasonable force - more disturbing than the assault in some ways.
But as I said, I'm not 100% comfortable with my own view. I'm more used to railing against the idea that the law should be a "signal" rather than an enforced offence. But this is where I ended up.
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Hmm.... wasn't trying hard enough last night. Let's see...
Blubber Bubba Buries Bush Breakfast Banger!
Yes, yes! There are legs in that there headline!
You're gay! Fight me!
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It's Taupo where I'd never buy a house.
Quite. Auckland would get a new mountain. Taupo gets a very large hole in the earth.
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Surely, the reasonable force defence entails that unreasonable force is indefensible. So, other than clarifying what constitues unreasonable force, how is the bill different from existing law?
The amendment to the wording before its first reading was the part about reasonable force being permitted to ensure the safety of the child or others. The defence is still removed in other circumstances, such as moral instruction.
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The interreactions of these chemicals with each other is completely unpredictable. In the past NZ ecstasy has largely been moderate dose MDMA.
What we should have got was a warning of a "Bad E" trend, like the bad acid warning in the woodstock movie, but we got this interference when it filtered through the police spin machine and ended up with a party pill beat up.
And the interesting thing is that the most useful reporting on this is from users via Pill Reports, which the authorities would presumably shut down if they could.
If we were a bit more grown-up, there would be, as an earlier commenter said, specific ESR-sourced warnings about specific adulterated pills. That would be the public safety thing to do.
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Call in Online Input or "Oi!" for short.
Now there's a recipe for misunderstanding.
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Jeez, is Sean Plunket going to spend all morning sneering about softy Aucklanders freaking out about earthquakes?
Mate, some of us didn't even notice.
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