Posts by Matthew Poole
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Exactly, Kyle. TV was going to get a lenient sentence with or without the contested references. There are at least two suspects for the alteration, and nobody's admitted responsibility. As far as spectacular wastes of taxpayer money go, that one's pretty well up there. Like it or not, Sofie, the police have to balance the deterrent value of a successful prosecution with the likelihood of being able to bring one in the first place. Any sentence would be a gentle administration of a moistened public transport ticket, at worst, since the views presented in the letters aren't being disclaimed by the authors. The court was minorly mislead, and while I agree that that is not acceptable I just don't see anything being gained from the police trying to prosecute.
If references had been forged it would a different story, and I suspect the police would be taking a rather harder view of things. But demanding perfect justice every time is an unreasonable and irresponsible expectation of how public money will be spent. I'd rather that the 10s-of-000s of dollars that would be wasted on such a prosecution be used on prosecuting people who maliciously make false rape complaints. That'd be a far better return on investment.
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Looking at the (so far zero) mortality rate in the US vs Mexico City raises two possibilities. One is that the virus is undergoing quite significant "genetic drift" in the process of transmission, or that it was only marginally lethal to start with so even minor drift reduces its impact. The other is that it's particularly effective against people with reduced pulmonary effectiveness. Mexico City's pollution problem could well make residents very susceptible to nasty secondary effects such as bronchitis/pneumonia.
A close friend has a trip to South America booked for late June, five months travelling around before entering the US by way of a couple of weeks in Mexico. The friend she's travelling with is having a wee bit of a panic, ably assisted by neurotic relatives who're all insisting that "You can't go. We won't let you. You have to cancel the trip!" I've recommended that she get her travel insurance sorted in case some kind of travel ban is in place that will screw up the trip, and just generally take care of her health. The US hasn't yet given any advisories against travel to Mexico, so I figure it can't be that bad.
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Sofie, in many cases the police won't pursue an offence unless a complaint is made. It's how it goes. Dame Susan has said she doesn't see the point, much as she'd like to go out "all guns blazing", which certainly won't encourage the police to try and prosecute.
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Joe, even with those prejudices Wood would still have been closer to impartial than family members of murder victims. Imperfect, to be sure, but still much less invested emotionally than someone directly impacted by the crime(s) on trial before him.
As others have said, if you allow the Rita Croskerys of the world to have absolute say over the parole of those who have done them wrong we'll need to double the number of prison beds as well as totally overhaul all notions of post-release monitoring. The law allows for a year (I think it's a year. Graham?) of "parole" even if a prisoner is released at the terminal date of their sentence, but the system isn't designed for that to be the default position.
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I saw Tuariki
Kurariki. For crying out loud, if you people are going to discuss someone at least know vaguely what their name is!
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Well, with a title like "Mac Planet" of course it's going to be cheerleading. But it's still far too "fanboi" for him to have any kind of moral high ground from which to be criticising you. After all, you're merely there in all your magenta-tinged "Che Brown" glory, rather than babbling on about it. Giovanni (I think it was) and I mentioned the ads more than you had, prior to this latest column.
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Has Drinnan not seen Mac Planet? It's only barely short of being an Apple advertorial, right there in the hallowed pages of Granny Online. It's a bit rich for him to gripe that you've blurred the line between editor/advertiser when his own employer happily publishes a weekly Apple wankfest under the guise of a "blog".
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I think Junior was 14 nei?
It's Bailey Junior, and he was 12 when Choy was killed. Convicted aged 13. Of manslaughter, not murder, which is one of the reasons that he'll be a free man if he can actually keep his nose clean for a few months. Not that it's looking like he's really capable of such, but if he could he'd be outside Corrections' purview before his 20th birthday.
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No, Danielle, you're not the only one. But $100k < $222k by rather a lot. And after four years of tertiary study, and with the requisite experience to maintain a sole practice, it's also not an unreasonable income.
In reality, a lot of small-time lawyers are sitting around the median household income. It's the partners at the big firms that skew the profession's mean incomes so far away. Remember that the $222k figure was achieved by dividing an estimate of the total profession's income by the total number of lawyers, so it's a) a very wild guess, and b) prone to over-estimation of the majority through very, very high figures for a minority.
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Yes, my shocking, got a little over excited there, as by the looks of it, that's still over three times what most teachers earn.
How many teachers are paying the wages of three people (based on what Logan's said, and it certainly doesn't sound inflated), and paying for their office space, their telephone/internet, and all the sundry expenses that associate with working in a heavily paper-based field? Even if the lawyer has only a single secretary, and is paying that person only $40k, they're unlikely to be taking home much more than $100k themselves once they pay for all the other expenses that go with being a lawyer.
And unlike the teacher, the lawyer is paying for their own professional insurance, and carrying all the risk of fucking up in their job.