Posts by tussock
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which featured a story where a girl was digging her garden in bare feet, and put a fork through her foot.
Ha. I managed to put a garden fork right through my boot and pin it to the ground as a young lad. Luckily it went between my big toe and next one in, just nicking the webbing a little and rubbing a bit of skin off both, nothing serious. The boots don't help. Similar experience once with a rusty nail coming right through the sole of my shoe, and fitting in the same gap on the other foot with the same result.
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Ah, school. The eternal wonder that so many perfectly nice people emerge, amoungst those it ruins.
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Terrorism is the greatest threat facing the democratic world.
We've been invited to their country, and it's tor their own good.
Gangs are a growing threat to society.
P is the most dangerous thing you could get into.
The gays will ruin marriage, with all their butt-secs.
Kids these days, ....
The police need more powers, and those rights you're loosing are only protecting the guilty anyway.
I could do this all day.
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[...] or there's something we don't know.
One could imagine Labour has something on Key that they're waiting to dish late in the campaign, with, say, three or four weeks to go; just enough time to let him deny it, show he's lied, and so on.
They've based the campaign thus far around his honesty, while completely setting him up to go on about other people's honesty (people who aren't in the Labour party for a change), and keep pointing the media his way at every opportunity (despite the cluster of roger gnomes he surrounds himself with) for one more look at that special grin of his (I keep thinking, would you buy a used car from this man?).
Oh. Sorry (about too many parentheticals (I do that (sometimes))). Also, the bullshit conspiracy theory, as if Labour have a plan or anything. 8]
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16? Shit, all I did was school, books, and writing. Though plenty of the locals there did rather too much drunk driving, amoungst all the other drugs; they were all pretty lucky to only loose a few cars to it.
Older generations, yea. One great grandfather of mine ran away from his alcoholic father in England all the way to NZ at 16, working on tourist boats, and never contacted his family again. A grandfather at 14 disappeared to work at sea for six years after his father confiscated the money he'd made skinning rabbits ("You live under my roof, it's my money", and the logical consequence). There's no record of what they experienced around that age though, other than that they both learned to fight properly, with the throws and locks and so on.
Kids? No. Definitely not. Oh, and this idea of forcing people to stay in school until they're 18 is nuts, just as an aside. Make far more sense to me to give them equal workers rights, wages, benefits, the vote, and so on. Let them participate in society already.
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@RB.
Congrats on the whole autism conference thing. Sorry for ranting on your blog some more.I'm not sure we can discuss this much further without really risking the ire of David Collins (and your mind's made up anyway)
I'm just concerned about a whole different side of this to you (and equally amazed you can't see it, no doubt). Where you see a danger of potential terrorists, I see a danger of potential police abuse of power using dodgy laws.
but my view remains as ever: that a few people -- however righteous they seemed to themselves -- were doing things that absolutely warranted the attention of the police.
A quick chat seems to have been in order after a couple of hunters came out of the bush with scary stories, but local police weren't even informed there was an investigation, for over a year. Have they never heard of an interview?
I think you'll find that the police didn't "slander" anyone as a terrorist, and in fact carefully avoided using the term. They were obliged to advise people that warrants had been issued in relation to potential offences under the Terrorism Suppression Act and the Arms Act.
I'm pretty sure they told whatever judge issued the warrant that they were dealing with scary terrorists, despite the complete lack of any actual terrorism. The masked thugs they sent 'round as a result kinda made it all public. I'm sure they didn't break any laws, but I'm also sure their investigations had found absolutely no evidence of terrorism of any sort, despite the judge issuing a fishing warrant in hope of finding some.
In my view it was reasonable to suppose that there were potential offences under both.
It was worth an investigation, because there was a complaint, starting with talking to the people that a couple of hunters thought were scary. If Mr Locket broke a law by his purchase of arms on the internet, go arrest him. Otherwise, remind them of applicable laws and leave them be.
As it happened, Collins denied police permission to proceed under the TSA (which means some of the evidence gathered in support of the original warrants will not be admissable), largely because the law was too difficult to apply, but noted that the investigation had halted "very disturbing activities".
Bah. There are things that are legal which everyone may do, and things that are illegal that no one may do, and licenses for everything between. "Very disturbing activities" has no legal meaning whatsoever, and isn't any sort of reason to go pointing guns at people or putting them in prison.
See, I'm very disturbed by family first and the sensible sentencing trust, but I would hope the police don't go 'round, strip search their families, seize their computers and check all their personal contacts, imprison them, or anything of the sort. We live in a free country, and people are allowed to be disturbing to the eyes of others, as long as they don't hurt anyone in any sort of direct fashion while they're about it.
Despite what the Terrorism Suppression Act says.
It may be that what was going on was largely bullshit, and/or that the police mishandled their inquiry. But if someone takes your bullshit insurgency playacting seriously on account of there being real weapons involved, I believe your scope for complaint is somewhat limited.
Please don't pretend you're surprised that Tama Iti is a political activist who owns a gun, and that he knows some people who are activists, and knows others who own guns, and a few who fit in both camps. It's ludicrous.
Oh well, may a judge never be "disturbed" by a select reading of your associates' ramblings, Russel, lest they come for the bloggers. -
When self-styled radicals start acquiring silencers for their rifles, I start to get more relaxed about them being under surveillance. I mean, seriously, are you okay with that?
I'm OK with all sorts. Marijuana, guns, fast cars, bikes without helmets, boys spending a few days in the bush talking shit. Are silencers legal? If they are, as they should be, then leave them be. If you want to require a special licence to have a silencer, well, perhaps; not that it would ever do a damn thing but make you city folk slightly more comfy for a day or two until you found the next thing that needed a special licence to make you feel safe.
They're easy enough to make at home, BTW, or to improvise on the spot, and are worse than useless on any sort of rifle you'd want to assassinate someone with, if that's your concern.
OTOH, what I'm definitely not OK with is a police force that rounds up all the local dissidents and slanders them all as terrorists when it's just done an extensive investigation proving they're nothing of the sort; what with us not having any actual terrorism at all, other than perhaps that anti-apartheid crowd back in the day and their flour bombs that stopped a rugby match.
Economy? Ha. Hope you're all working on getting those veggie gardens in. Beans go alright this time of year, as do some varieties of carrot and a few other bits and bobs. -
I couldn't get a ride to vote in what should have been my first election, because voting was "a bloody waste of time" in a safe seat. They can take my MMP vote from my cold, dead hands.
Though they should feel free to improve it. That threshold does keep out the odd child molester, but if thirty thousand people want a child molester in parliament, who am I to argue? Plus, it would be genuinely good to brag about having the ALCP in parliament on international forums, even if they can't actually get more sensible laws on the books.
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What's the problem exactly? The local Cup's just a place to hide the lesser professionals once the Super's over and the ABs are on tour.
People don't like it? Duh. It's a meaningless "don't go to Europe yet, please" scheme that likes to pretend it's still the same premier rugby division of old, when it's not, and they simply can't afford to make it any more than that now it's all vaguely professional.
I'd argue they could take the Cup off Murdock (that lot can always show more foreign tests or some crap) and fit it to what it really is; a bunch of no-hopers and nearly-there's kicking a ball around on the afternoons before the real matches. Fit for local TV, taking the kids along, and national coverage of the finals.Make it a small two-round (home and away) comp with separate semis and final, Saturday arvo only, no booze, overlapping late super and early tests. Finish early and let the lesser lights go winter in Europe when it's over like they did when we where pretending to be amateur. Auto relegation for a couple of the semi=pro teams down to regional comps below it to keep everyone interested. Tada.
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So no-one read to the end of my piece? :-(
I did in hope to find something new, but alas there was only the note that they're going to end up with a mass plurality system for their President, which will leave them even further away from any chance of a Condorcet election for the most powerful idiot in the world.