Posts by Eddie Clark
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Kong, the problem here is that you essentially don't know what you're talking about :). At least in respect of California.
The state constitution can, and has, been amended with 50%+1 votes. Through this method, various restrictions on what fiscal decisions the legislature can make have been enacted. Basically, they can't raise revenue and they can't get a budget signed. See here . Its more than a technical thing you wave your wand at to make it go away. Public servants are being laid off. Road construction is halting half finished. University funding is being slashed. So, to reiterate - don't breezily write stuff of when you know nothing about it.
Obviously this isn't what Twyford is proposing, but Rodney's proposals are along similar lines.
Kthxby.
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What exactly does Sky provide to people who really aren't that into sport, and find the movie channels aren't that big a selling point since the release window between cinemas and DVD collapsed? How many news channels screening wall to wall Michael Jackson necrophilly do you really need?
I was at my parents (who have Sky), and saw an absolutely fascinating documentary on the Arts channel about the New York Philharmonic's recent(ish) trip to Pyongyang. Best TV docco I've seen in a while.
So, that, at least.
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Heh, just what I was about to say, Graeme. Even if you compare it with only the most basic Sky package, you'd be saving 500 bucks a year. And also a digital terrestrial platform. Which doesn't suffer from rain fade like a satellite-based system.
Also, Jeremy, who on earth will sign up for Sky just to get prime in digital? Its more of a benefit for TVNZ to be on the Sky platform than it is for Sky to be on Freeview - I'd imagine the vastly increased audience for TVNZ 6 and 7 would allow higher priced advertising rates to be levied (is there advertising on 6 and 7? I don't know as I have neither sky nor freeview)?
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obviously people like Sacha to make quite, quite sure that it's entire contents are 'bout a bunch of "fundies confirming their warped world-view"
how sweetly smug can we possibly get now?
It published an article about how soy milk makes you gay. That, in itself, is enough to make me agree with Sacha.
Somehow I developed a taste for men while utterly loathing soy milk...
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It was really vile. Could you not just acknowledge that?
Given the response to the comment following yours, and the bypassing of your questions, Russell, I'd guess the answer from Craig is no :).
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So if I can't make lame-arse jokes at my own expense, who can I make them at?
Well that's quite right. Unfortunately, tongue in cheek does not translate well to internet text interaction (well I can't spot it, anyway).
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And I don't mean to sound like a classist jerk here, but that line of defence has always bugged me because it seems to disproportionately benefit nice middle-class (and dare I say it, white) law and commerce students. Funny that.
Yes, because they're all assholes who deserve it. Lol, this will cause your blood to boil, Craig, but that line is getting close to I/S's "national's bourgeois rich prick mates" territory. Astonishingly, I've managed 2 law degrees and 5 years of practice without a) being arrested and b) without running that defence.
I actually ususally see the line used most often with young people who're good at sport, because god forbid someone who's pleaded guilty to assault should be prevented from going to the Canada on rugby trips.
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Believe it or not, I have had women make sexual advances to me, and I've the sneaking suspicion that the "I'm so repulsed by twat, that despite going back to her bedroom I just had to kill her M'Lud" defence wouldn't fly. What's up with that?
Craig, the amusing feminist corrolary to the gay panic defence is that if it was allowed for women who'd been hit on by men, the streets would be littered with the bodies of straight men.
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On the issue of whether saying things inside/outside court makes a difference to one's obligation to a client. Well, in brief, it doesn't. If Comeskey had been instructed to make a statement to the media reiterating the defence used at trial, he is obliged to do it. If it was unlawful, he is allowed to say no - so if he thought the statement was defamatory, he could have refused. However, (unfortunately in my opinion) an estate cannot sue for defamation of a deceased person, so his icky, unsavoury line is not defamatory.
Look, I don't know the specifics of this situation, I don't know Chris Comeskey. I do know I think the defence run was sleazy, as were a lot of the statements made about Laniet Bain in the Bain trial. But the way our legal system works is that you are not entitled to refuse lawful instructions, if you have the ability to carry them out. As others have pointed out, lawyers find all sorts of ways to say "no thanks" (conflicts, 'too busy', not enough expertise, being asked to do something unlawful), but if those excuses aren't actually true, the act of refusing instructions is in itself arguably a breach of professional ethics.
At its core, the job of a lawyer is essentially to act as the legal agent of their client. My own personal ethics are subsumed by the professional ethics of my role.
People (including in this thread) make rather lame jokes about lawyers' ethics. But the question, particularly in criminal law, always has to be asked - what if the accusations are wrong? Someone gets fired for making a racist statement - what if they didn't actually say what they're accused of. Someone is charged with murder - what if the police made a mistake? A defence lawyer's role, in both criminal and civil cases, is to interrogate the accusations being made, to ask the complainant/crown to prove that their accusations are true, and that the judge is entitled to levy the really quite heavy sanction of legal punishment against the accused.
As I said above, I don't have the stomach for criminal defence law (or even civil trial work, really, I don't like bankrupting people). But if you don't have good lawyers doing it, our system really doesn't work very well.
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Cases like this: Reason number 7,347,213 I won't touch criminal law with a barge pole.