May 2010

Stephen Franks has come out in support of my stance in naming Commander Superintendent Pieri Munro.

I feel ashamed that I will not publicly disclose who this acquitted man is, to help make unworkable the continuation of this offense to our liberties. I’ll not put myself and my license to be a lawyer at risk .  Many heroes who secured our liberties did risk all to get free speech and open justice.

But there is something I can do. Whale Oil is standing up for the principle. Despite often finding his language and expression gratuitously unpleasant, I can help make the point by reducing his personal cost of standing up for the rest of us.  We who are too careful can salve our consciences with contributions. If we make it plain that fines and other penalties will just attract mass support, eventually our would-be masters will have to accept the loss of their current power to suppress.

I’ll find out the account we can contribute to and provide the link for others who want to contribute.

Thanks Stephen, your support is appreciated.

No Right Turn says the verdict stinks.

This stinks. Ordinary people accused of a crime have to face the glare of publicity, regardless of the effects on their career. That’s part and parcel of open justice. But in this case, the accused received special treatment. Name suppression was not necessary to protect the identity of the victim. It was not necessary to protect the interests of justice and avoid contaminating the jury pool for a future trial. It was done solely to protect a powerful man from the consequences of his actions.

I know who this man is and what he does. And while his behaviour was not proven to a criminal standard, the witness reports are sufficient to give rise to grave concerns about his ability to do his job fairly and impartially. This name suppression is an attempt to quash those concerns, to sweep it all under the rug. There are sometimes good reasons for name suppression, but this is not one of them. It is simply a case of the powerful protecting their own.

Infonews may also be in trouble now, because they too have named Munro on their site plus published a photo.

The Crown Prosecutor doesn’t think there will be any more charges and Munro’s lawyer is agitating for a contempt charge.

I have given interviews to Tv3 (today) and NewstalkZBG (last night). Let’s see where this goes.

sent in by  Fidelity Wife

Dirty Tricks Manual Fidelity Life Case Manager guidelines ( part one )

1. Make the liability customer feel at ease. Their claim has been accepted because due to the overwhelming medical evidence from their own doctors there is no way that we (Fidelity Life) can weasel out of it, the medical evidence supports their claim.

2. Arrange for the first monthly payment to be made and immediately go to phase one of the undermine and destroy your liability’s customers self esteem

Phase one: Send a private investigator to wait outside the liability’s customers house every morning. Do not concern yourself with blending in. You want the liability customer to know that they are under surveillance.

Phase two: Follow the liability customer whenever they leave their home. Have the PI follow them on foot into shops etc and stand there behind a newspaper looking like an actor from a bad 70′s T.V series. If the liability customer approaches and makes it clear that they know that they are being followed, instruct the PI to immediately scurry back to their car and then initiate phase three.

Phase three: At every meeting with the liability customer mention how poor insurance companies have to protect themselves from lying cheating liabilities customers but then assure the liability customer that you are sure that they are in fact ill as that is what their doctor reports state after all. However they must understand that the poor insurance company cannot let down their guard even for a second, and that if anything, no matter how small, changes for them they must immediately inform the company as otherwise the consequences will be dire as they will assume the worst.

Phase four: By now the liability customer is scared well aware of the consequences and will inform you when they leave the home and what they do during the day. Once you have established that they are leaving the home most days and have some kind of routine established total how many hours they are spending out of the home. Do not worry if this time is spent at the gym, hanging out with a friend or going for lunch, it all helps with Phase five.

Phase five: This part is fun important and will reward the hard work you have put in thus far. It tunes up makes it clear
to the liability customer that Fidelity Life is not a company to be trifled with. With no warning cut the payment in half. Say that they have established that they can work because they are spending x hours away from home. Explain that X hours subtracted from the monthly amount equals 50%.

Phase six: When the liability customer points out that they are not in fact working or earning for that period of time and that the policy does not reduce until they ACTUALLY have a job make sure that you say nothing and just wait. The goal here is to starve encourage the liability customer so that they will be more attentive to job seeking despite it being clear that they are fucked in the head suffering a mental illness. Once they get a job you can then say if you have a job you must be 100% well, if you are well then you no longer are covered by the policy.

Phase seven: If phase six fails after 3 months reinstate the policy and backdate the missed payments. Apologise and explain that as some liabilities customers are liars you have been forced to test them to see if they are being honest. Ignore any mention they make of Doctors regular reports that state that they are ill. Specifically call them in to the Fidelity Life Offices and explain to the liability customer that it would really be better if they went and got ECT. The short sharp shock will be better for them in the long run. If they react or tell anyone about this just deny it happened, they are loony tunes mentally ill anyway and no one will believe them.

Phase eight: Patience is your friend here. After the tune up education programme the liability customer will be suspicious watching our every move. Wait another year then repeat phases five through seven.

Phase nine: It is now clear that the liability customer isn’t getting the message getting well, we must move now to slashing minimising Fidelity Life’s exposure to the liability customer. implement Phases 5 through s7 except this time make it 100%, and dig in for the long haul. Constantly explain delays in response as “waiting for the re-insurer”. The liability customer will eventually give up suicide seek better cover elsewhere.

The “Civil Servant” who wants to remain hidden got off his charges today, and now I get an inkling as to why he wanted to remain anonymous.

A high-profile public servant acquitted of assaulting his teenage son has been given permanent suppression of his name and occupation.

A Wellington District Court jury this afternoon found the man not guilty of one charge of assaulting his son in August 2008.

The Crown alleged the man dragged his son down Manners Mall in the central city and pushed him into his car, where he repeatedly punched him in the head because he stole $700 from his mother.

The teenager told police he had been assaulted eight months after the incident, but retracted his allegations last week under oath, saying he had made up the assault.

Crown prosecutor Paul Dacre said the boy’s initial statement had been correct and he had only changed it because he was intimidated by his father.

But defence lawyer Mike Antunovic said the jury should totally reject what the boy had said in his initial statement, as there was at least reasonable doubt that he was telling the truth.

The teenager had caused his parents much distress by regularly running away from home and getting into trouble, and the man’s sole focus was to get his son into the car to take him home.

Witnesses had mistaken the man removing his son’s bag, which had been bought with the stolen money, for the man hitting his son, Mr Antunovic said.

Judge Christopher Harding said the jury had to decide whether the man had lost his temper and deliberately hit his son, or whether he had used justifiable force for the purpose of corrective discipline.

Parents were justified in using reasonable force with their children to minimise harm or to prevent a criminal offence, he said in directions to the jury.

The Crown produced witnesses that says that this man smashed his son in the face with a fist repeatedly and he successfully uses Section 59 as a defence!!! The Judge said it, there it is in black and white.

No wonder he wants name suppression. This trial should be an outrage not for the fact that a top civil servant wants anonymity but for the fact of his job and the defence he has used.

It is an outrage that Wellington District commander Superintendent Pieri Munro has hidden behind name suppression after he was reported on more than two years ago. It is contemptible that a Judge would create the appearance of justice hidden and it is contemptible that a top Police Officer thinks that it is justifiable to suggest that punching his son in the face is justifiable force for the purpose of corrective discipline.

I support parents smacking their kids but this was a case of a late teen son being allegedly assaulted by his father, a top police officer. How on earth can a Judge direct a jury in such a manner.

It is cases like this that bring outrage and suspicious on the court case, not some blogger naming someone who would really rather prefer to be hidden. This case makes our Justice system appear to be utterly corrupted in favour of the establishment, in favour of Police, in favour of celebrity and in favour of fame.

If I have to go to jail for three months to show up this outrage then so be it.

Six Taiwanese tourists were busted at Auckland Airport with 8.175kg of methamphetamine.

Customs revealed yesterday that the six Taiwanese tourists – and another man on the same flight who was found later – appeared in the Auckland District Court last week, each charged with importing a class-A controlled drug.

They face life imprisonment if found guilty.

Customs said the 8.175kg of pure methamphetamine found could have been sold for more than $6 million.

An outline of the police allegations seen by the Herald said the seven defendants – Huang Min-kuan, 24, Jian Che-yu, 25, Hsu Ching-yi, 25, Huang Chien-chuan, 28, Liao Chia-chia, 24, Hsu Nai-chun, 27, and Ma Fu-hsien, 39 – arrived early last Sunday afternoon.

There is a slight problem with the Customs math in this. 8.175kg of meth if uncut has a street value of $8,175,000 at the usual street value of $100 a point (.10g). The Customs price calculation assumes $80 a point, and that is uncut as well. I call bullshit on that number.

Meanwhile containers of the stuff continue to pour across the border.

I just got an email from my union.

Dear All

http://airnewzealandbestblogaward.blogspot.com/

As attached please see this link and post up early this week.   Please send the link everywhere to other bloggers you know.

I think it is all self explanatory.  Lets see if we can create an award that actually means something with a judging panel that is a wider representation of the blogging community, left/right and non-political.

We are just waiting the okay for the 5th judge but let it rip now.

Thanks

NZ Bloggers Union

Now we are talking, a real Blog Award, with real named new media judges. Someone has some bloody cheek though, I wonder if Air New Zealand will spew?

A reader drew my attention to this article.

With all of my dramas the past few years there are two people who have helped keep me on the level (apart from SB, that is). One is my best mate and the other is my other good mate Buck, my personal trainer.

His story of work with the “Big Boys” deserves more credit than an article in the Manukau Courier. Hopefully this will help.

Early in the morning at Genetics Gym the floor shakes as the “Big Boys” hit the cardio fitness sessions.

They sweat it out for 90 minutes with press-ups, circle boxing, running, sprints and more.

Gym owner and trainer Buck Stowers has developed the Big Boys programme and says each session is different. It’s aimed at helping big boys lose weight through the right exercise, menu plans based around nutrition and a supportive team environment.

“These guys motivate each other – not once in the last six months have I heard I can’t do it,” he says.

Mr Stowers has had leaders of the community come to him for help to lose weight. He gets doctors’ referrals and people who tell him they’re at risk of dying because of their weight.

He runs the sessions with trainer Darren Steele and at the end of each there’s a weigh-in and a debrief.

Dr Sam Fuimaono says it’s all about diet and exercise and it’s not “rocket science”.

“But a lot of us struggle to exercise on our own,” he says.

When he started with Big Boys he weighed 182kg and is now down to 135kg.

Other men going to the classes are losing significant amounts of weight like Bob Sila who has dropped from 220kg to 139kg.

Alan Va’a says working with others on the programme has had a tremendous impact on him.

“It’s still a fight for life for me,” he says.

Buck has kept me going, he has always stuck by me, thanks for the support Buck, now here is mine.