December 2011

Seriously they need to move on:

The Police must have very good evidence as the arrested 16 year old in the Turangi attack case has not sought bail and is currently in custody where he will remian at least until January 12.

Usually the Judges get all soft and crim hugging over Christmas/New Year and let scum walk the streets, not so in this case:

The 16-year-old charged with a sexually charged attack on a 5-year-old at a Turangi campground on December 21 has not sought bail.

He appeared briefly in Taupo Youth Court today, watched on by a gallery filled with family members and media.

He is next due to appear on January 12.

Earlier, the detective heading the investigation into the attack said New Zealand society needed to take a good look at itself.

Detective Inspector Mark Loper spoke at a press conference this afternoon before the 16-year-old appeared in court.

He said it was concerning that a 16-year-old could commit such a serious offence.

UPDATE: The Herald has this photo…the accused has name suppression.

The Auckland Council wants to lock up the Occupy Protestors who won’t leave Aotea Square:

The Auckland Council wants to jail Occupy Auckland protesters for 21 days.

Last week, a judge ordered members of the Occupy Auckland movement to leave Aotea Square, where many had been living for 10 weeks.

Most moved onto other parks but a few have stayed in the square.

Today the Auckland Council is asking the District Court to imprison the remaining protestors for breaching last week’s order.

The anti-capitalist protesters have vowed to fight the application.

Occupy Auckland member Chris Glen says the threat hasn’t fazed some of the protesters, who vowed last night to remain in the square.

He says they’re simply standing up for their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

Council lawyer Ross Burns told Newstalk ZB a 21-day jail stint would be severe, so he said the anti-capitalist protesters could be given until New Year’s Eve to pack up and leave.

I don’t know why the Council just doesn’t get some big sprinklers and soak them for days on end.

I’m not going to shed a tear for pirate organisation Sea Shepherd as their ship looks like it is going down.

Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd’s scout vessel Brigitte Bardot has a widening crack in its hull and is being pounded by heavy seas about 2400km southwest of Fremantle.

Its South African captain Jonathan Miles Renecle was confident the ship, which has a 10-member crew, would stay afloat until it was reached by Sea Shepherd flagship Steve Irwin.

Captain Paul Watson, on board the Steve Irwin, said his ship was fighting heavy seas and was expected to take 20 hours to reach the distressed vessel, about 390km to the southeast.

The 35-metre Brigitte Bardot, an advanced design monohull vessel with twin outer pontoons, had been pursuing Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru in six-metre swells. A rogue wave slammed into the Brigitte Bardot’s port side, cracking the hull and severely damaging one of its pontoons.

“The crack has been getting wider as the seas continue to pound the vessel,” Sea Shepherd said.

A perplexing conundrum for a Scottish viewer:

People scoff and mock but it turns out there is a god.

Clare Curran has decided in her infinite wisdom to keep Red Alert going:

Red Alert will be a vehicle for demonstrating how a Labour Government would promote Open Government.

Red Alert is no longer an experiment. It’s now part of the fabric of political discourse in this country. It may have also changed things a bit. I’d like to see Red Alert and Labour’s strong presence generally in social media become more focussed. As I see it our purpose is two-fold.

First, to continue to engage in direct conversation with New Zealanders about our thoughts and ideas. Second, for the medium to be a tool to build campaigns.

In the interests of being open they might like to modify their draconian moderation policy. Editing and removing comments and adding their own over the top without leaving the context leads to charges, proven, of revisionism and censorship.

Red Alert is a vehicle for Labour’s caucus to communicate directly with New Zealanders. We know and welcome the scrutiny and sometimes criticism from the mainstream media. We also welcome the engagement with bloggers and commentators in the new media environment provided by the internet.

I believe that there should be consistency with new media  in the rules and protocols applied to mainstream media. Red Alert is just one of those new mediums. We are not journalists. Nor should we ever presume to be. But we have responsibilities in how we communicate. And we can show an example.

The voices on Red Alert are of elected politicians. People who believe that the only way to make change happen is to make it happen. I believe that that if politicians are seen to do things differently, then New Zealanders can begin to have more faith in us.

There won’t be any faith shown in Labour or their blog while they let Trevor Mallard mount unsubstantiated attacks on the personal integrity of ordinary citizens via the blog. They most certainly will get engagement and their posts will be used to hold them to account.

Proverbs 29

¹Â Whoever stubbornly refuses to accept criticism
will suddenly be destroyed beyond recovery.

We all know that generally List MPs are scum. Some are more so than others.

Here is your chance to vent about the invisibile, the useless, the hopeless, the inept and the scum list MPs.

Ashraf Choudhary would have to rate as one of the worst List MPs, not only was he useless he was also invisible. Rajen Prasad would also qualify for this and labour rated him at number 20 above capable MPs like Stuart Nash and Kelvin Davis. While Prasad warms a seat in parliament the other two are looking for jobs.

Then of course you have the nasties: Darien Fenton, Steve Chadwick, Carol Beaumont and of course Sue Moroney. All distinctly unelectable and unlikeable.

Katrina Shanks would be up there for her completely inept speech on the “Skynet Bill”, speaking about that which she knows now’t.

The entire Green party would qualify except perhaps for Kevin Hague and Russel Norman.

Labour is alrady experiencing the problem of long serving by inept MPs blocking new blood by staying on long past their useful political life. By failing to refresh it meant that they went into the first post-Clark election with a whole bunch of ex-Clark ministers as their main faces. The electorate decided that those faces still don’t fit. National runs the risk of repeating Labour’s mistakes in 2014 if they don’t start looking at refreshing some of the caucus.

Political parties should look at proper human resources management of MPs. There are many in National and Labour that are well past their use by date but stick around damaging the party because no one has the courage to to tell them to move on so that party renewal can take place.

Instead they sit in nice safe seat choking the life out of membership and potential replacements with their intransigence. The Board and Senior political management need to really be sitting down some senior MPs and explaining to them their extremely limited career prospects, the fact that if they stay they will be put on a black list so that they never get a government appointment and how it would be best for all if they signalled their retirement.

National’s constitution and rules have some handy clauses that would make the exiting of problem MPs relatively easy. Plus the time honoured tradition of a good challenge in a few seats should be encouraged by a board that finds its balls. John Key after all won selection in a challenge.

Some National MPs aren’t getting the message, it is time the message firmed up for them.