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Yet another Simon Power screw up has been revealed, and once again it will have to be Judith Collins who has to repair the damage that FIGJAM rushed through in his final months.

The courts will continue to operate with the current legal aid system for the timebeing despite the Court of Appeal ruling it unlawful.

The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) launched court proceedings after the Government’s cost-saving shake-up of the legal aid system, which resulted in legal aid lawyers getting a 10 per cent pay cut.

The CBA lost a High Court case but took it to the Court of Appeal, which today held that the Legal Services Commissioner, who is responsible for granting legal aid, was unable to function independently of the Government.  Read more »

Welcome to another Saturday.  But of a quiet week, all told.  Nice in a way, we can’t always be plotting to overthrow unions, getting revengeful people to resign or shining sunlight on those shady spots.

So it is your turn today.

Oh, and “Paris”.

Winston Peters is a shameful politician. He uses race to bait and especially against China.

NZ First leader Winston Peters has launched an attack on immigration policy and questioned whether Auckland is becoming “the supercity of sin”, linking crime and other problems to immigration from China.

In the speech to a North Shore Grey Power meeting he denied his party was anti-immigrant, saying it was not against bringing in people with skills lacking in New Zealand.

And he pointed to comments by the new premier of China that the biggest challenge facing China was the level of corruption.

“It stands to reason that corruption can be exported and imported,” Peters said.

He said the Government was talking of a million more people in Auckland soon “and there is no prize for guessing where most will come from”.  Read more »

Planning Parrot says:

On Thursday WhaleOil exposed yet another lie from Len Brown where it concerns the cost of greenfields versus the costs of intensification. The Mayor and deputy Mayor have for some time insisted that the justification for a compact Auckland is that the cost of expansion on infrastructure is not sustainable.

However this week the Council issued a Request for Expressions of Interest to the market place seeking to specifically assess the true cost of infrastructure to Auckland in terms of greenfields and intensified typologies. To the lay person this means they want to know if it is more expensive to expand infrastructure like sewerage, stormwater, potable water and roads out into Greenfield areas or if it is more expensive to retro-fit existing suburbs for intensification.

The utterly shocking revelation in that REOI was the statement that ‘no specific work has been done for Auckland’.

So how can they justify the plan or the rhetoric when they simply don’t know?  Read more »

Yesterday I blogged about my battle with depression with depression medications and the destruction those drugs, forced on me for a number of reasons, which will be explained fully in a book I am planning about the ongoing battle with depression, drugs, the medical and insurance system.

I mentioned that not a single drug was effective in treating my depression, nor chemical cocktails prescribed or forced on me through circumstance. Instead they exacerbated the problem, helped destroy a large portion of my life, the legacy of which continues to this day.

Now researchers at Johnson and Johnson reckon they have possibly found a new and different drug treatment for depression…one based on ketamine or Special K.

Johnson & Johnson said it plans to seek approvals for 11 new drugs by 2017, including a treatment for patients with depression who have failed to benefit from standard medications.

The intranasal drug, called esketamine, is closely related to a pediatric anesthetic called ketamine that has been shown in academic studies to ease symptoms rapidly in such patients, including a reduction in suicidal thoughts.

Ketamine is also the active ingredient of the mood-altering party drug known as “Special K”.  Read more »

Perhaps this is why Farrar’s outfit are so smart:

During a speech on Tuesday in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told his audience that the Jews “have contributed greatly to America. No group has had such an outsized influence per capita,” inspiring the New York magazine headline, “Biden Praises Jews, Goes Too Far, Accidentally Thrills Anti-Semites.”

But cringe-inducing philo-Semitism is not just a U.S. phenomenon. In a recently published memoir, titled A Collection of Works Written During Leisure Time, Wu Guanzheng, who from 2002 to 2007 was China’s top anti-corruption official, reminisces about his time in Israel. “I bought some books on the Jewish people,” he writes. One, which he cites later, is written by someone with the name “Abraham” and called — you guessed it! – Why Are Jews Intelligent.  Read more »

Proverbs 25

¹⁴A person who promises a gift but doesn’t give it is like clouds and wind that bring no rain.

Jump to 11m 30s if you would like to get to the business end. The first 11:30 are missable.  When it repeats a segment, jump to 36m 45s.