it has the feel of very good Listener subbing.

and then there is this headline

Charges dropped against autistic looter

on stuff.co.nz this evening. From The Press apparently.

which has all the hall marks of very bad subbing,because by the use of the word "looter" it manages to completely miss the point legally, morally and factually.

An astounding effort really when you read the article which
does manage to touch on most of the issues and facts seemingly accurately.

Face had to be saved and it was, by a second "psych" report -marvellous
things aren't they

see http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/5484663/Charges-dropped-against-autistic-looter

Ian thats to to tricky
you just a spokesman

The Police attitude here and the position Mr Smith-Voorkamp finds himself in, are in part the result of the drive for transparency in all public decision making.

The problem with transparency is that it has the side effect of reluctance by public officials to exercise any discretion ..

It may be a surprise but the police still have a discretion whether or not to charge anyone with any offence regardless of the evidence against that person, the advent of diversion has been marked by a coincidental reluctance to exercise any discretion not to charge people with extremely minor offences.

That is entirely understandable, diversion means that the police don't have to make line calls about the person they are dealing with in circumstances where they don't know the individual concerned --- that is, much of the discretion exercised in the past was based on a police officer's personal knowledge of the individual, his family or some person who could vouch for that individual.(With the demise of "local policing"- in the old fashioned sense - and an increasingly mobile population, that local knowledge has gone).

But the police now have a discretion whether or not to offer diversion, even if the offence and the individual otherwise apparently qualify.

This exercise of that discretion tends to be made by good solid local cops after consultation with their local prosecution sergeant and - if it's in the 'too hard basket' - the local head of police.
But the rule of thumb was, and clearly still is, that the further up the line the possibility of the exercise of any police discretion is passed, the less likely it is that any discretion will be exercised in favour of the individual charged.

That is particularly the case where there has been any sort of publicity. The officers further up the line will nearly always back the decision of lower ranked officers unless that decision is fundamentally legally flawed.

There is nothing new here except that i should comment that the media interest may have worked against the interests of Mr Smith-Voorkamp

I am not criticising the media, i simply make an observation about a possible consequence and i should also carefully point out that i am not at this point passing judgement on the police decision.

I have seen enough media reports of court cases to be never tempted to pass judgement solely on the basis of what the media have chosen to present to the public as the facts of the case.

There appears to be a sub text here that i have missed . The case has become a hot potato with the Judiciary saying to the police "here you deal with this " and the police saying to the Judiciary "no no you deal with this"

As Dexter x has already pointed out the judges have a fairly extensive range of discretionary sentencing options (and they are paid to exercise discretion)
maybe the media spotlight makes them a tad bashful as well . I suspect that Judge Strettel may have been offering the police a dignified way out of their publicity hole,and that all that remains now is for Mr Smith-Voorkamp's advisors to give the judges the opportunity to tidy this mess up sensibly , I am not sure that a plea of not guilty will give any judge much scope but then again i haven't seen all the evidence.

I am a bit late to this (derailed by a derailleur ?) so apologies if the wheel has turned way past this.... i need to raleigh enthusiasm much earlier

It doesnt have to be all tarseal and heARTless commuter driven
we got to get the gardeners and artists involved

So for bike parking see David Byrnes New York bike racks
here http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/bike_racks/index.php

and his Bicycle Diaries is worth a brief listen for the cyclist as social
commentator /architecture tourist approach

Making the town more cycle friendly is not going to be that difficult
the existing framework is not to bad if you start looking for routes that take you off the main thoroughfares
A start would be opening up walkway/cycleway links from the main roads onto the adjacent parallel roads and then looking at how to use those to get people on bikes around town ...and the gardens tend to be nicer over there

Been trying to get my head around the numbers
(and there are no prizes for guessing residence but

to quote Southerly

_"The Cost of Wholesale Demolition

According to my (rough) analysis using the council’s ‘Rating’ database, it would cost the EQC about $175,000 on average to reimburse each riverside homeowner for their land in the event that they’re prohibited from rebuilding. For the estimated 3,000 affected homes this comes to a total of $525,000,000.

In contrast, the total proposed land remediation cost in Christchurch from the September earthquake was $140,000,000. Pretty much all the riverbank would have been remediated under this original scheme, which – even at first glance – suggests that the cost of land repair for the riverside would be much less than wholesale abandonment_"

Unfortunately i have been peripherally involved with projects where international accounting firms ( or their ilk ) have been engaged as" IT consultants" and if this is the first public admission that the numbers are wrong then we can probably confidently predict at least another 50% increase before the job is finished

and it is worth noting that Auckland inc really isnt all that big on a global scale and the software to run this kind of enterprise or something very similar exists already
The wheel has already been......

And what would the Bay of Plenty Times make of this ? from http://flavorwire.com/164538/take-a-fear-and-loathing-inspired-road-trip-to-vegas#more-164538
An excerpt

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Greyhound
Take a ‘Fear and Loathing’ Inspired Road Trip to Vegas
4:30 pm Tuesday May 17, 2011 by Lorenzo Ragionieri

Of all the literary road trips we admire and revisit, none are as zany and dare we say, enviable, as Raoul Duke and his lawyer, Dr. Gonzo’s drive from LA to Vegas in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And because we’re not nearly reckless enough to do the trip justice, we’re enlisting you to relive it for us. That’s right. We’ve teamed up with Greyhound to encourage you to live out some of the standout road trips in American literary history, and this one tops our list. Romp around Vegas and pop into some of the spots mentioned in the narrative. Reports from the field are not only welcome; they’re expected.

Can I suggest that Public Address team up with NZ Railways Road Services (do they still exist?) For an" Ultimate Nostalgic Great NZ Sex Drugs and Alcohol Road trip "

"My generation" indeed --reruns of "goodbye pork pie" gonna create havoc