Posts by Matthew Poole
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Maybe, but they don't have anything like the number of cases where name suppression is granted because the defendant is an All Black / National MP / TV presenter
How do you know? If even reporting the existence of the injunction can be forbidden... More seriously, do you actually follow UK reporting? In all the local papers? It's visible here because we've got roughly two papers that cover the entire country - Granny and DomPost. That means that anything that gets reported in one of those has a national profile. The UK actually has functional regional papers.
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amount to comtempt of parliament
It would be most excellent if the Speaker were to call C-R's bluff and initiate contempt proceedings. That shit needs to result in a thorough beating, if only to remind lawyers that there is much precedence for Parliamentary sovereignty and that no lesser legal mind than Denning has affirmed it.
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The UK's suppression laws are really getting beyond the point of farce. When the very existence of an injunction can be ordered to be secret, something is spectacularly wrong with the system itself.
I can understand it in national security cases - disagree even then, but at least understand the rationale - but the impression I took from the Guardian is that these "super-injunctions" are granted for run-of-the-mill bullshit that should be kept in the public's eye because it shows that the UK court system apparently cares little for open justice. -
Meanwhile, the Asian woman who is yet isn't a product of subconscious racism in our society has apparently been identified
Quite so, Gio. What were people saying about subconscious memes?
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you don't know who saw the so-called Asian woman, or when, or where
I believe it was a nine-year old who mentioned the Asian woman to the Police. A lack of ability to be more specific is zero evidence of anything when dealing with children. Keep that in mind, Lucy, before seeing bad faith and ill-will around every corner.
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And on an unrelated (but not entirely irrelevant) note, Clayton Weatherston will be appealing his conviction.
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Just checking, is this disbelief about "the Asian lady 'story'" about her entire existence, or about the abduction angle?
Remember that the Police were wanting to speak to the unknown Asian woman very early on, when it was still being treated as a "lost child" rather than an "abducted child" situation. To jump immediately to a dismissal of any possibility of her existing on the basis of what turns out to have been a mistaken assumption about the events would seem, to me, to be an expression of belief in significant bad faith on the part of the Police. -
Let the in-fighting, back-stabbing and general political fuckery begin. This shambles could turn out to be more interesting than the discussions about the All Blacks' chances of progressing beyond the quarter-finals.
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I suspect as much as pressure from patients, it's just something doctors do as part of their business. People come to you for treatment, they should walk out the door with some medicine.
I've never encountered that, thankfully. I've had one case of a particularly nasty throat infection (to the point that my throat was bleeding because it was so raw) where the doctor said "I'm pretty sure it's viral, but here's a back-pocket prescription for augmentin in case it hasn't started to improve in a couple of days." She was right, it was viral, it did improve of its own accord, and the prescription was never filled.
Other than that, I've never been prescribed antibiotics for something that wasn't clearly bacterial. Maybe I'm too good at knowing when my body's not going to fix itself without help, or maybe I just pick good doctors. Either way, my experience of being pushed antibiotics for non-bacterial infections is zero. If there are doctors out there who're doing otherwise they need to be reported to the HDC, since they're not actually performing in the best interests of the patient. Or wider society, as they're both encouraging spread of resistant bacterial strains and also wasting Pharmac funding on unnecessary medications. -
Parent - "my child has a [cough], I think he needs antibiotics"
Doctor's reply options
a) No he/she needs a more sleep.
(gets seen as insensitive arrogant and incompetent)
or.
b) Okay.
(is blamed for the ineffectiveness antiobiotics worldwide - merely seen as incompetent)
Or, c) Antibiotics won't work on this cough, and come with other side-effects. It wouldn't be responsible medicine for me to prescribe them, and the cough will very likely clear up in a couple of days if your child gets plenty of rest and fluids.
Doctors are entirely responsible for the over-prescription of antibiotics. How can anyone else take the blame, given that only doctors can prescribe? If the medical profession won't stand up to patients who think that antibiotics are some kind of magical cure (and there are plenty of otherwise intelligent people out there who think that antibiotics should be prescribed for everything), who will? Big Pharma sure as hell won't.