Posts by Russell Brown
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Oh, and some more African goodness. The first ep of Rita Ray’s BBC 4 doco Africa: A Journey into Music is up on YouTube:
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An important story by RNZ's Kate Newton on the miserable standard of evidence the Tenancy Tribunal has accepted in “meth contamination” cases. People were effectively “convicted” on a balance of probabilities.
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Hard News: All or Nothing: Accidentally Great, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
Was rung up Morning Report last week, to give an opinion on this. Will have to watch it now.
I'll be interested to know your thoughts. The main reason I loathe most reality TV is that it hinges on generating the worst, most petty aspects of human nature. And while this uses the same format, it doesn't do that. This may not have been entirely intentional.
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Hard News: The miserable archive, in reply to Paul Campbell,
so who appoints the ‘judges’ on these tribunals? who prosecutes? can tenants get legal aid?
Tenants can only turn up with legal representation in certain circumstances, and many of the adjudicators are lay people.
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One further note: the series completely ignores the All Blacks' 2017 northern hemisphere tour – presumably because they couldn't get footage rights – and skips straight to the World Rugby Awards.
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Hard News: The miserable archive, in reply to Idiot Savant,
That right there is an insta-fail on administrative law grounds.
Wait till you hear about how they determine essentially criminal allegations on the balance of probabilities.
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We were talking about the Tenancy Tribunal making stuff up. Here it is, literally, from a real estate website.
In certain cases, we have found one adjudicator of the opinion that any level of Methamphetamine contamination is too high, even if it is under the Ministry of Health guidelines. Adjudicator Hogan states in Tribunal order of Harris v Thomas Baseden Real Estate that "in my view, if the property is contaminated with methamphetamine, at any level, it is unclean and in breach of section 45(1)(a)." (provide the property in a reasonable state of cleanliness). In the same order, adjudicator Hogan states that a landlord should , as a matter of best practice, have a property tested at the commencement of a tenancy.
Adjudicator Hogan's opinion is shared by Head Adjudicator Melissa Poole. Ms Poole confirmed the Tribunal stance that any level of Meth was too high even if it was under MOH Guidelines whilst she was speaking at the REINZ Conference in early August.
So any level of meth, even below the MoH guidelines, represents unacceptable contamination? It's just bonkers. And it had real consequences.
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Bridget Burke's Checkpoint story: she got in touch with Jesse and discovered that he's still paying that testing fee back.
Turns out Jesse went to Waitemata DHB, which is the one that provides detox services. They insist they didn't tell Housing NZ.
So what the hell happened? Housing NZ refused to comment. And the Group Manager for Courts and Tribunals says the tribunal does not comment or decisions or the evidence offered in hearings. Not even, apparently, when there's apparently an egregious ethics and privacy breach. This is bullshit.
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Hard News: The miserable archive, in reply to Steve Withers,
In the absence of any legal standard for safety around meth contamination (other than the Ministry of Health report in 2010 which sideswipes the question), what was the Tenancy Tribunal supposed to do prior to revised numbers in late 2016? Serious question. I’ve seen the grenades tossed, but what was this Tribunal supposed to do in *legal* terms? They can’t just make stuff up.
Making stuff up is exactly what they did do. The tribunal repeatedly abused a guideline that wasn’t relevant and used it as the basis for huge awards of damages against people who will be paying them for many years to come, who will quite possibly die in debt to Housing NZ. (Its orders that homes which posed no possible health risk could only be entered by people in hazmat suits was really just the comedy bit.)
And even after various parties came to it to point out it was misusing the guidelines, that advice was rejected. Any any point the tribunal could have sought independent scientific advice, but I’m not aware it even tried.
And it has consistently refused to discuss its decisions, including the one above.
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Disappointingly, there was only a mild kick from the peppers.
Ha, yeah, Serrano peppers won't send you into orbit. You'd have been better off with maybe fresh Thai birdseye chillis – cheap at Avondale Markets, less cheap but available with various other varieties (although maybe not out of season) at Farro.
I've had a couple of mediocre results with jerk chicken – I think it's harder than it seems to get right, and under-doing the chilli and seasonings is generally a mistake. You've just got to go for it, I suspect. Also, the classic way of cooking is in a modified steel drum, so the marinade drips off and you're basically smoking the meat in the fume it makes when it hits the coals (or the gas burners). I've yet to make jerk chicken that tastes like what I bought when I went back to Brixton a couple of years ago, with a nuclear-grade fruit sauce on the side.
Not, I hasten to add, that I am suggesting that your result looks mediocre. I would totally have eaten that!