Posts by Idiot Savant
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Up Front: How About Now?, in reply to Russell Brown,
Do you remember that early in the CUB debate there was a group called Lesbians Who Don't Want a Bar of It?
And my response to such groups is the same as my response to bigots and others attempting to impose their particular values on everyone else: if you don't like same-sex marriage, then you can always not have one. If you want someone else not to have a same-sex marriage, well, sorry, that's not really your decision to make.
The proper people to decide on individual social relationships are the individuals concerned. And if we equalise the law, they'll be able to.
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Muse: OFF TOPIC: This Is What Your Brain…, in reply to Emma Hart,
Email me, I'll send it to you.
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Muse: OFF TOPIC: This Is What Your Brain…, in reply to Emma Hart,
Polling. I want some fucking polling on this.
ResearchNZ poll just out today: 60 - 34% in favour. Question was "should same sex couples also be allowed to marry?"
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OnPoint: It's real, in reply to DexterX,
How is owning shares or a stake in financial or stock markets promoting growth in the productive base of the economy - that bit that actually creates and does things?
Well, supposedly the stick market is about providing investment to help firms grow. In reality, of course, its about speculation, and finding greater fools to dump the losses on when the bubble bursts. Any push to get more people to put their money into that casino is going to be hard up against the memories of 1987.
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OnPoint: It's real, in reply to Keith Ng,
For more money in your pocket?
Ah, but whose pocket? Labour gives to some pockets, National to others, according to their ethical theories about just distribution and the desirability of substantive (rather than formal, equal right to starve under bridges) equality. You can deride it as a bribe, but at its core, this is what politics is all about: who gets what. If we just wanted managers, we'd hire them (and they'd pay themselves fat bonuses, and swan around in private jets, and screw us over - so, just like Ministers, then)
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OnPoint: It's real, in reply to Scott A,
I also am going 'why' a bit with the changes in income tax. Given, as you're pointing out, it doesn't actually seem to do much to the government's books all up, why is it there?
Because Labour is a left-wing party and wants to roll back some of National's upwards redistribution. You can't just live off sterile economic management; it needs to be for something.
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Hard News: Angry and thrilled about Arie, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
But I think you have to reach agreement over the summary of facts. When I got diversion that's what the lawyer put before me and I had to agree to as well as paying the donation/doing the community service. So Arie and the police would have to agree on the document that the police write about what happened.
Which would not include an assault by police. If he signs that, he signs away any chance of pressing charges.
And that's why the police are pushing this: they're driving a hard bargain, trying to protect their own, and their reputation. The problem is that under these circumstances, any denial of an assault simply looks coerced, and is therefore valueless.
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Hard News: Angry and thrilled about Arie, in reply to izogi,
What matters here is that due to Arie's condition, there's a very good case to argue that he wasn't reasoning the same way as a normal person could be expected to. He wasn't there for the same reasons as a typical looter, and really wasn't the kind of criminal everyone was so apprehensive about or associates with post-disaster fear at all. Pushing on with the case like this just seems kind'a dumb.
Or, to put it another way, there was no Mens rea, which is going to make conviction difficult in practice.
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Legal Beagle: Asking the next question, in reply to B Jones,
Back in the Orewa day, someone asked him that, and he said he was familiar with both versions, and also the Littlewood one. The latter is a draft or translation discovered in 1992 that nobody actually signed, but which nevertheless gets the Maori Weren't Here First crowd very excited because it fails to promise a few things that the real ones do, and is apparently being Suppressed.
I don't understand. Why is a draft that no-one actually signed important? I'd have thought it was irrelevant, except as evidence that the drafters refined their thinking somewhere along the way.
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Hard News: Angry and thrilled about Arie, in reply to izogi,
Maybe Police could just indicate how the injury occurred. Are they gagged by court processes?
They're refusing to answer OIA requests because of them (which is fair enough insofar as it affects fair trial rights - but the rial rights in question are those of the thugs, and there's no suggestion that the police will prosecute them. In other words, the usual coverup).