Posts by Steve Barnes
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For some light relief on the matter...
Man accused of driving stoned takes selfie with arresting officer -
So, convicted of cannabis possession you have 1 in 14 chance of jail
Pipe, 1 in 10
Meth, 1 in 4
Meth pipe, 1 in 5
So the pipe is worse than the weed?.
What the whatever?. -
Excellent work David, it looks like migratory bird routes in an encyclopaedia from my youth. ;-)
But...
Its not just houses you know....
NZ a 'virtual economic trade prisoner of China'
I better get the popcorn in. -
Speaker: Why we need to stop talking…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
.I wonder how long the new boys will last?
I wonder how long before they start laying off workers and telling us that the recycling program is losing money and we have to expand the Ahipara landfill thus negating any savings and causing grief to the community.
They will, of course, get their way and be "compensated" for any losses. After all, private profit is good eh?. -
Well, up here in the Far North we have inequality in spades and when some community minded people come up with a great scheme... this happens.
Last month the council awarded a five-year, $4.6 million contract for waste and recycling services for the northern half of the district to Whangarei's Northland Waste The contract had been held for 24 years by Kaitaia social enterprise CBEC (Community, Business and Environment Centre) and later by Cleanstream, a partnership between CBEC and Te Rarawa.
CBEC boss Cliff Colquhoun said the partnership between council, iwi and community was the envy of many councils around New Zealand.
"We were the last locally owned enterprise in the Far North to hold a major contract with the Far North District Council, and this appears to be the end of an era for local contractors."
Kaitaia's pioneering recycling programme had been a model for other schemes around the country. Cleanstream had more doubled recycling in the Far North, saving ratepayers $600,000 a year by extending the life of the Ahipara landfill
But somebody wants to make a profit instead.
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So, let us see.
My neighbour has a nice car. I would like to take his car for my own use and it would also increase my status.
However, stealing is illegal. Should I demand compensation from the Gummint? say $4m. Seems fine to me. -
Hard News: Judicial caprice is no way to…, in reply to Katharine Moody,
But not about the dozen beers.
Oh my God....
They had BEER?
Won't somebody think of the dear sweet vulnerable children?.
/s -
Hard News: Judicial caprice is no way to…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Three Kaikohe men have since been jailed for their part in the attack.
Thanks for that Rosemary. I thought I'd done a fairly comprehensive search but....
I found it disturbing that their Lawyer, Doug Blaikie and my sympathies go out to him and his family for his current health issue, felt confident enough to say "I don't have a problem with it. And when the jury hears the evidence, they won't have a problem with it either," assumptions are well known to make asses of the best of us.
It reminds me of a case I, unfortunately, found myself the subject of, criminal damage.
As a builder I quite often came across client who knew just how hard it can be to get paid for your work. In this instance I had completed a section of the job which required an interim payment. The client decided that she wasn't going to pay because she knew she could get away with it so I "undid" the work. I was arrested and had to go to court. This was back in '95, the time of the Auckland power cuts, my lawyer informed me that the court was not sitting on that friday due to power outages and that the case had been set back until Monday.
Monday I turn up at court and was immediately arrested and locked up for not appearing on the Friday. When my Lawyers Lackey eventually turned up he said, "Oh, it's just a simple drug case, nothing to worry about. The clown hadn't even read the brief.
Shit happens eh?. -
I really can't see what surprises people about this sentence.
Maori woman in Kaikohe gets busted for more than the "allowable" amount of cannabis after police are called following a "Home Invasion".
She pleads not guilty and admits supply.
Two years jail.
The woman in question has a public profile of being a member of the "Kaikohe Community Arts Council" (look it up) so the judge can see that the sentence will send a "meaningful" message to that community, ie, the higher you are the greater the fall, drugs are bad MK? one law for all blah blah blah.Perhaps the judge is sick and tired of a law that does more harm than good and deliberately errs on the side of harshness in his sentencing to create debate (not his job but hey, it worked out that way).
Kaikohe is not Grey Lynn, poor people, high unemployment, gang culture and, dare I say it?, endemic racism in the system.
The interesting points as far as I am concerned are...
The confusion over the word "supply".
Supply in no way implies sale, it can in that if you sell something you are supplying the buyer but by supplying you are not necessarily selling.Picketing the Law Firm.
Good grief, so many kinds of wtf there, picket Parliament yes, law firms do not make the law, parliament does.
Email your MP or the MP for that constituency. You have a choice of two, Kelvin Davis or Winston Peters.
The Home Invasion, a far more serious offence.
Did the police even follow this up? we don't know. There is no record of this in the local papers, even though we know the date of the offence, there is nothing about the crime or the prosecution of the culprits.Which begs the question, can a person find out about the actions and results of those actions, of the police in this matter?.
Can this be done through an OIA request?. -
Speaker: A minor change to existing provisions!, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Of course, if it's taken three weeks to clean after we spent 18 hours on it, I'm surprised that she let us stay there for five years!
But in those five years fashions have changed, new colours for the season, new kitchen appliances, new carpets, everything up to and sometimes including the kitchen sink.
Repairs and renovations, yeah, sure, they get tax relief on those things but why should that stop them trying to get you to pay. All too common.It really doesn't surprise me that this Government would introduce measures to "up the game" for landlords, after all, the "market" will sort it out by getting rid of "unprofitable" landlords, like charities and housing associations and letting their mates have their cake.