July 2010

Steven Joyce and Simon Power are probably looking at a new ban to have in place after this weekend.

An elderly man who drove the wrong way down an Auckland motorway on Saturday, causing a fatal six-vehicle crash, had no valid driver’s licence.

Police confirmed today that 86-year-old Ewen Donaldson’s licence had expired in 2007.

They said Mr Donaldson, who died in hospital overnight, had a medical condition that may have affected his judgment before the collision on the Northwestern Motorway about 8.30pm.

His passenger, a woman in her 60s, believed to be his wife, died when she was thrown through the windscreen. Three other people were taken to hospital with moderate injuries.

The car crashed into an oncoming car on its passenger side, causing it to flip several times before landing on its roof.

Three other cars crashed as they swerved to avoid hitting the oncoming car.

This is appalling, there should be special laws to stop old people driving down off-ramps and the wrong way down the motorway. This makes more sense than the cellphone ban because in this case there is real evidence that driving on the wrong side of the motorway kills you, with cellphone use the evidence was only ever anecdotal.

These sorts of tragedies could be avoided with much more stringent laws. Why nothing was done to prevent the elderly driver and his vehicle from accidentally entering the off-ramp and careening down the wrong side killing innocent motorists is beyond belief. Unless a new law is passed preventing such occurrences then people will be in constant danger on our motorways.

Kermadec Crunchy-Wasp is before the courts again, this time for his trial.

A former Olympian punched and strangled a woman, dragged her through a house and repeatedly raped her, a High Court jury has heard.

The Crown accuses the former Olympian, who has name suppression, of five counts of sexual violation, two counts of injuring with intent to injure, three counts of male assaults female, assault with intent to injure, and abduction.

The offences allegedly occurred in Auckland between March and August 2008. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Real nice guy, still no excuse for continued name suppression. Even less when you hear the description of this tough guy.

In her opening address to the jury at the High Court at Auckland today, Prosecutor Rachael Reed said the accused tried to control the woman with violence and sexual abuse.

On one occasion the pair were in a car together and the woman, who also cannot be named, was suffering from painful stomach cramps.

Ms Reed said [name suppressed] found the woman’s discomfort “amusing’ and poked her in the stomach. “She went to slap his hand away and accidentally slapped him in the face with the back of her hand.”

In response the man “punched her in the nose and mouth”.

The court heard when the car stopped the former Olympian pulled her out and pushed her inside the house. He dragged her into the hallway and began strangling her so tightly she couldn’t breathe.

The woman went limp in the hope he would let go of her. He eventually did let go and told her she had to clean herself up. When she refused to do so, he put her bloody clothing in the washing machine.

Ms Reed said later that night he asked her for sex and started “sweet talking” her. The woman refused to have sex and it is alleged he then raped her.

Kermadec Crunchy-Wasp

I watched Police Minister Judith Collins on Q+A yesterday and she demonstrated that she actually gets firearms issues. I suspect she may well have or has firearms herself. The interview also showed up the lack of understanding of our media when it comes to gun control.

GUYON Thanks Minister for joining us we appreciate your time.  Can we start with the issue of guns?  Last month a man was found guilty of murder having killed an undercover policeman with an airgun back in 2008.  That has led for calls to bring airguns under the licensing regime especially the powerful airguns.  Are you proposing to do that?

JUDITH COLLINS – Police & Corrections Minister

Oh yes, only in relation to the high powered airguns.  So we’re not talking about the BB guns that I was brought up with on the farm, and that many people have in their homes.  We’re talking about the very high-powered pre-charged airguns, like the one that was used to kill Don Wilkinson.

GUYON And so what will happen to those guns?  If you we’re buying one of those now you need a firearms license under the changes that you’re proposing?

JUDITH Yes it’s actually to bring them in line with the power that they actually have the damage they can do, so that someone who wanted to buy them would need to have a firearms license, and I think that’s a very sensible move.

GUYON How many guns are we talking about here, I mean is this a significant change for the people who use these guns for recreational purposes?

JUDITH Well what we’ve been told is that these sorts of guns have become the criminal’s gun choice, because they’re so easily obtainable, and they’re very very powerful.  But it will mean that some people for instance like people who do Olympic target shooting, that they will need to get a gun license, or they’ll need to do their shooting at a gun club which most of them would do anyway.  Those aren’t the people, what we’re very keen to make sure is that our hunters and our farmers and the people who do target practise that they’re not criminalised, and they’re not the criminals.  This is very much focused on making sure that the right people can get access to these guns.

This is an important point the minister makes here. Any changes must not criminalise law-abiding shooters.

GUYON How will this happen, and when will it happen?

JUDITH Well what we’ve looked at is actually bringing in an amendment to the Arms Order from 1984, and we can do that relatively quickly, we can do it before the end of this year.  That would actually mean that we could basically classify these guns as being treated like other guns.  So as I say it’s only these very high powered airguns, not the CO2 fuelled ones, not the brake action ones that we grew up with, but it’s very much these ones.

GUYON Do you have a rough idea of how many guns that might mean, how many sales?

JUDITH Yes, the Police tell me it’s really about 30 to 50. something round that. There’s not that many of them, they’re very expensive now, about two and a half thousand dollars, and they’re not the sort of gun that people would go and buy because they want to go and do some rabbit shooting.

So we aren’t talking about a lot of air-rifles here. Bear in mind these are pretty expensive, but then drug dealers do have access to a lot of money. By requiring the presentation of a licence it will mean at least there is a record of who bought what, and when.

GUYON More broadly are you looking at restricting the access or the use of guns more broadly in the civilian population?  Will you have a crackdown as such on gun laws?

JUDITH I think our gun laws are actually pretty sensible, and we can see it from the homicide rates from guns, is that we have already a very good licensing system for users of firearms.  So I don’t think there needs to be a crackdown as such, but I think what we do need to be doing is making sure, and the Police are starting this and continuing with it, is making sure that when people don’t renew their firearms licenses, that they make sure that the guns are disposed of, that people don’t have guns lying round their homes that they don’t need.  Because unfortunately criminals burgle places and they get those guns and they use them.

GUYON So there aren’t other major legislative changes that you are looking at to restrict gun use?

JUDITH Well there certainly is.  We’re looking at the internet sales of guns. Because you know a few years ago we didn’t have guns sold on the internet, but nowadays it’s very easy to buy guns on the internet, and it’s very difficult for the people who are selling them to check that someone’s actually got a real license.  So there’s some work that’s being done around that and the Police will be coming back with some discussions on it.

GUYON Yeah I think we’ve got some pictures of the sorts of guns that you can actually buy on the internet nowadays.  You can look over at the monitor there you can probably see some of those guns.  I mean you can buy some pretty serious weaponry on the internet.  Are you saying that we shouldn’t be able to buy guns at all on the internet now?

JUDITH No, but I am saying that in seven of the eight Australia jurisdictions they’ve got a method of actually having a licensed dealer having to sight the firearms license, for instance, or an Arms Officer from the Police.  That’s the sort of thing that we’re looking at, to make sure that these weapons are being properly sold to people who have licenses.

GUYON Alright, so let’s look at the practical effect of that.  Say I bought a gun similar to what we just saw there, I would have to front up in person with the license, with an authority?  Is that what you’re saying?

JUDITH Well that sort of thing, and I think that makes sense.  I mean we don’t want to criminalise or make it more difficult for people who are hunters and shooters and law abiding people.  But it is important to note that when criminals get hold of these guns they do it for a purpose, which is often to kill, or to protect their methamphetamine hoard.  So those are the sorts of things that we’re looking at.

I am pleased to see the Minister using existing provisions to enforce the law. Internet Sales are easy to deal with, they could be handled in a way similar to all B (Pistol) endorsement purchases. The buyer must obtain a permit to procure from the Police and then present that document to the seller together with their licence. Existing laws cater for this easily, it just requires extending the permit to procure processes internet sales. Again the minister re-iterates that she doesn’t want to criminalise existing gun owners.

GUYON Why not register all firearms?  I mean we register the owners but not the firearms which means that Police have no idea how many guns a person has, and someone like Jan Molenaar had 18 guns on him.  When the Police are walking into a home they have no idea how many guns the person in that place has.

JUDITH Well I don’t think that the Police would have known even if guns were registered; that man didn’t have a firearms license for a start.  The fact is, is that criminals don’t license things.  They are the ones we’re worried about.

This is a classic example of mis-information on the part of Guyon Espiner. It is well established that Jan Molenaar was a criminal, that he wasn’t licenced and that he had managed to obtain large numbers of firearms. He was a criminal, he doesn’t follow laws, and it meant nothing to him that in order to own some of those firearms he needed an E endorsement. No matter how tough gun laws are people like Jan Molenaar will still have access to guns. Registering firearms also doesn’t work. The logisitcal nightmare of doing so hasn’t worked anywhere in the world. Our gun laws are actually very good, and the incident of gun related crime are small, and almost certainly do not involve licenced firearms users.

It is refreshing to have a Minister who understands the rights and responsibilities of being a gun owner and who doesn’t seem to want to trample those rights in some knee-jerk public response to a single incident. Imagine if our other Minister acted with such integrity rather than just grandstanding for headlines.

Speaking of grandstanding I see, predictably Keith Locke is looking for tougher laws, clearly missing the point that criminals don’t care how tough laws are, they simply ignore them. Plughead Cosgrove has also jumped on the band-wagon, but he may as well because he usually cops a right kicking when he tries to oppose anything Judith Collins says.

Sensible gun laws that don’t curtail the rights of New Zealanders to enjoy shooting as a sport are what we have, they just need to be enforced. but put it in perspective. Hundreds die on our roads every year and we don’t have calls for vehicles to be banned. Banning guns isn’t the answer and the Judith Collins knows this, banning criminals is the answer, and Judith Collins for sure knows that. Gun owning New Zealanders should be thankful we have a Police and Corrections Minister with a spine.

One day the Warmists are going to be lined up and forced to apologise for the fear, lies, and taxes they foisted upon the world, I just hope that day comes soon. Meanwhile they continue to claim all manner of anomolies are caused by Global Warming. Christopher Booker tears into the warmists and exposes their techniques.

Carolyne Meng-Yee, aka The Minger, has a truly cringe worthy article about the Mad Mayor of North Shore and his, apparently, even madder wife.

The wife of “leaky” North Shore mayor Andrew Williams intends to play a central role in his late charge for the Supercity mayoralty.

In a wide-ranging interview, Jane Williams, 52, spoke of her influence on her husband’s political career, and says she is fed up with criticism of her husband’s eccentric behaviour.

The couple, who were high school sweethearts, say they have put up with increasingly personal attacks since Williams was seen urinating against a tree after being caught short on a night out in Takapuna.

Jane said the criticism “wasn’t fair, it wasn’t justified”.

Finally we get to know who is the idiot behind the Clown of Campbell’s Bay. It’s his missus. Enabling behaviour anyone?

Williams, who once played the Artful Dodger in the musical Oliver, compared his eccentric leadership style to that of Tim Shadbolt and London mayor Boris Johnson.

“I hope in Auckland we want a colourful mayor who is out there leading the field, not a fence sitter.”

Looks like the piss-fairy has been visiting the Williams household again. If it wasn’t bad enough that Andrew Williams compared himself to Jesus he now has the audacity to continue the line that he is Auckland’s answer to Boris Johnson.

Worse though is the Mad Mayor’s Missus, who it appears has her trotters hands all ready to start scooping in the trough.

And she said a makeover could be “quite helpful” if Williams got elected to what would be the second most powerful job in the country.

She said: “At this time in life you need to make the most of your years. I am pretty casual about that sort of thing to be quite honest.”

Lord protect us from her and her mad, pissed husband.

I wish we had politicians with the balls to say this in New Zealand. Let’s see if Francis Maude delivers on the rhetoric.

In the House of Commons recently, Francis Maude was asked to list which of the hundreds of Whitehall quangos, agencies and non-departmental bodies he was “assessing on their suitability of purpose and cost-effectiveness”, or in other words, sizing up for the butcher’s block. Instead of providing a list, Mr Maude replied simply: “All of them.”

Len Brown promised to resign if his ratepayers ever asked him to reveal who he had dinner with at Volare. This ratepayer did, and did it under the LGOIMA.

On Thursday I receieved my response from his lickspittle CEO, Leigh Auton. So too did the Sunday Star Times, and they are not happy, having laid a complaint with the Chief Ombudsmen about Len Brown’s secrecy.

HE CHIEF ombudsman is investigating Manukau City Council’s refusal to name those whom mayor Len Brown wined and dined at an $810 dinner paid for by ratepayers.

Brown has said he will never name those at the September 27, 2009, dinner – held at Italian restaurant Volare just days before his birthday and paid for on his mayoral credit card.

“Will I give you the names? Never,” Brown told a council committee meeting when asked to justify the dinner, insisting it was business-related.

Unfortunately under Council guidelines for use of the Purchasing Card he cannot do this. This is what the SST and I am trying to enforce. What I can’t fathom though is why Len Brown is prepared to die in the ditch over $810.00. He has made this relatively small dinner a do or die principle to keep quiet, and for why? If he simply had complied with council policy and provided the details people wouldn’t be wanting to know why the secrecy. It would have died as an issue from day one.

Now it is extremely interesting to for us to see who he is wanting to die in the ditch for. Why the secrecy?

As you could see from my LGOIMA request, I was very, very specific as to the questions I asked. they could be answered with a simple yes or no answer and thereby wouldn’t breach anyone’s privacy. Very simple isn’t what the Mayor and his Chief Executive want though, they want complicated and therefore they want this story to be big.

I responded to Leigh Auton’s letter:

With all due respect Mr Auton this response fails to meet the requirements of the council’s own policy and the requirements of the LGOIMA

Your reliance upon the Privacy Act to answer yes or no questions as outlined again for your benefit is stretching the intent of the council’s policy and the LGOIMA Act.

I ask again

6. Was Conor Roberts in attendance at the “fundraiser? YES or NO
7. Were any members of the Mayor’s family in attendance? YES or NO
8. Was David Lewis in attendance at the “fundraiser”? YES or NO
9. Was Noel Robinson in attendance at the “fundraiser”? YES or NO
10. Was Richard Jeffrey in attendance at the “fundraiser”? YES or NO
11. Was Mike Hutcheson in attendance at the “fundraiser”? YES or NO

If these people weren’t in attendance then there can be no breach of policy by answering NO. If they were in attendance then again there is no breach of privacy. In fact it could be argued that the there was no privacy as this “meeting” or “fundraiser” as you and the Mayor euphemistically call this ostensibly private function because we as ratepayers paid for it.

The Mayor’s diary also points to the fact that this wasn’t a fundraiser at all, simply an Opera Night at Volare, a night of entertainment rather than business.

Please reconsider your response. I will also be asking the Ombudsmen to consider your response as well.

In a separate request I had asked for the Mayor’s diary for that night, I also asked for Leigh Auton’s and the Deputy Mayor’s but he hasn’t sent those through. As you can see from the diary there is no fundraiser, it is simply a Opera Night, exactly as advertised by Volare. the only people to claim that this night was a fundraiser were Len Brown and his spin doctors, and even then their story didn’t hold water. Just to remind readers of the spin, lies and obfuscations surround this dinner, it was explained that the night was a fundraiser for a local, up and coming Opera singer, this blog proved that it wasn’t a fundraiser, and the dinner to ‘support a local emerging artist’ turned out to be for a Gold Coast based professional singer whose manager and fundraiser also happens to be one of the guys in charge of the Telstra Clear events centre, the very same organisation that is supposedly paying for one of Borwn’s spin doctors and campaign managers, Conor Roberts.

There is a reason why Len brown is dying in the ditch for this, and since they refuse to say who we must then take it as read that the refusal to even say who wasn’t there as tantamount to an admission that they were. Until Len Brown is forced to keep the council’s own policy we can only but speculate as to who was there, one thing is for sure, it certainly wasn’t a fundraiser, and it sure as hell wasn’t council business.

My letter to the Ombudsmen was sent Friday.

Michael Laws talks about the collective insanity of new Zealand and John Key’s cabinet over mining.

SO LET me get this right. We have an estimated $60 billion worth of gold and silver sitting under the Coromandel and Great Barrier Island, and we’re going to leave it there?

And if we find tens of billions of dollars’ worth of precious metals elsewhere in conservation areas or in national parks, we’re going to flag that too?

Dear Lord, has New Zealand got rocks in its collective head? This can be the only sane conclusion after the government’s gratuitous backdown last week on granting prospecting licences on what is known as “Schedule 4″ land.

Apparently Schedule 4 land is really pretty. Mostly inaccessible, but really pretty. Lots of ferns and fantails and stuff. Even snails. But it’s more than pretty, it’s magic.

Must be native unicorn breeding grounds or something. Real magic.

It must be, for it has the unique ability to turn normally rational commentators and politicians into gibbering fools. So much so that, last week, one increasingly tabloid paper stamped the words “Saved!” across photos of the various sites.

Saved – from what? All the prospecting licences gave mining companies the ability to do was quantify, as best they could, the exact amount of money that the greenies and the metro-liberals want denied to the rest of us.

It did not give mining companies the right to extract any of these minerals. Just to research. And, presumably, the opportunity for a future government to devise policies that properly balanced both the hidden resource and environmental imperatives.

It was emotive clap-trap by lying greenie wankers.

Sure, people were upset at the potential for mining. But not that many. Thirty thousand marching down Auckland’s Queen St is not a democracy. Submissions to a discussion paper do not represent public opinion.

Instead it is pinhead politics. Listening to loud, misinformed voices shouting hysteria and stampeding some sections of a gullible media into believing that the sky is falling in. Or at least the ground. That this National cabinet fell for the ruse is bad enough. That it described such tactics as illustrative and/or representative of the public will is garbage.

Because, if this government was listening to properly expressed will – oh, say, a national referendum with a clear Yes/No answer – then we might excuse last week’s charade.

But no, that is not its principle. It continues to uphold the parental smacking ban that remains imposed upon responsible families everywhere.

This is the nub of the issue for the greenies, the inconvenient fact for the liars. That if a march down Queen Street swayed the government then how come hey haven’t been swayed on smacking or the ETS.

One suspects then the rationale was about a different political strategy. The desire of Prime Minister John Key, cabinet strategist Murray McCully and senior party wallahs to win back and keep the metro-liberal vote. The vote that most naturally sides with Labour.Metro-liberals are, by definition, cause-oriented for one simple reason. They can afford to be. They are generally better educated, earn more money, and are thus able to insulate themselves against the harsher components of Kiwi life. They live in comfortable suburbs and their children attend higher decile schools.

They are a section of the population which has been lost to National for more than 30 years. Rob Muldoon drove them away deliberately, the Springbok tour effectively corralled them in Labour’s camp, and the anti-nuclear policies of David Lange and Helen Clark kept them there.

It now seems a deliberate strategy of National to woo and win them back. Key made giant inroads by accommodating the Maori Party in his coalition administration and by sticking with the absurd Emissions Trading Scheme. Or at least, its substance. Party strategists clearly divined the mining issue as becoming the latest liberal cause.

This is exactly what I have been saying and why I have also added that National’s support, though high, is soft. Thankfully Labour, or more precisely the muppet that leads them couldn’t organise a root in a brothel right now.

Even though it is daft. This country has the capacity to enter the mining industry, either through state-owned enterprises or public-private ventures, and do a lot better than just clipping the ticket. It has the ability to tap into such significant financial wealth that it could sustain the welfare state for another generation and actually provide first-world health services.

But no. We’re going to leave the good stuff in the ground. Forever. As this country plots its inexorable descent down the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED) ladder, and heads for the purgatory that rests between the advanced nations and the third world.

Ah, but at least we’ll have lots of nice native trees and shrubs to look at. Millions of them. Probably billions.

Yes, it is convenient that the Australians have their vast mineral wealth placed in places where nobody wants to go. We don’t have that luxury. Our wealth is in areas that we love. Even if we love them by default – most of us never having been anywhere near the prospecting land in question.

Exactly. Most Aucklanders, the ones who marched down Queen Street, conveniently on May Day, have never been to those places, or the South Island. If they have been to the South Island it is straight into Wanaka and Queenstown fro their annual week long ski trip. This is why I advocate selling the South Island and giving each Kiwi $10 million.

Certainly, modern mining techniques are not the invasive scouring that is the Martha’s monstrosity near Thames. Although, even if it was, the impact would be extraordinarily minor in the overall landscape that is encompassed by Schedule 4. The point is that the mining industry has grown up and gone green too.

Green, but not stupid. No, that is the peculiarity of the metro-liberals and last week’s National cabinet. So when they next wail about our need to live within our means, do point them to the Coromandel. And point out that our means could be so much greater, but for this past week’s appalling backsliding.

I’m not sure Michael could bring the old fogies of NZ First (if rumours are to be believed) with him on this opinion, they too would have walked down Queen Street with their zimmer frames if they thought Chinese miners would have been digging up “our” country. Nevertheless the wets in National’s cabinet put their balls away on this decision, they don’t deserve their jobs, being in cabinet is about making tough decisions for the benefit of all not a few squealy actresses and their Australian puppet master.

John Banks has come out and said that the Bus Lane Nazi’s aren’t revenue collecting.

Auckland City Mayor John Banks says pinging motorists for driving in bus lanes is not a money grab, but he is prepared to look at signposting areas where bus lane cameras may be operating.

“We have got to maintain the integrity of the bus lanes. Many people being caught in the bus lanes are using them to circumvent big lanes of traffic on the inside lane and then coming out at the intersection to force their way back into traffic,” he said yesterday.

I’m sorry Banksie, but you are wrong on this one. I am not in the habit of driving in bus lanes, yet just the other day one of these “tax notices” arrived in the mail. the worst thing about this is that I genuinely can’t remember even driving up the bus lane. I just don’t do it and yet here is “the tax notice”, with no ability to challenge it I might add.

As I said, I don’t fly up the bus lanes, but I must say I have often thought about it as the traffic is at a standstill and the lanes are emptier than an alchie’s bottle. the place I got pinged is on was Symonds Street at the top end near the intersection with Mt Eden Road. Anyone who drives up there knows that the bus lanes appear and disappear with regular abandon, it is actually hard to know if you are in a bus lane or not. There are green parts and non-green parts and at 50km/h it isn’t at all clear.

What is clear though is that this street is very busy so a perfect street for bus lane nazis to snap unsuspecting motorists just trying to get somewhere and stray a few metres into the wrong lane. I actually don’t think that the lanes need policing, from my observations during peak hour and other times is that motorists actually obey them. The bus lane nazis are being over vigorous with their tax collecting.

A topic he has considerable experience in – Len Brown argues you have to be crazy to be in politics. He had good support from Cathy Casey one of the more madder local body candidates this election.

Clearly he has recovered from his week off for stress leave.

On Friday night, the Northcote LEC held a well attended celebrity debate, with the moot that “you don’t have to be crazy to be in politics, but it helps“.

There were hilarious contributions from David Shearer, Charles Chauvel, Penny Hulse for the affirmative and Len Brown, Cathy Casey and Julia Parfit for the negative. Bomber was a most able adjudicator.

I wondered what others think.

Do you have to be crazy to be in politics?

Nice to see Charles Chauvel using his parliamentary travel to visit Auckland for Labour Party functions.