Posts by Heather Gaye
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The first episode of Rude Awakenings was pretty bad. I think just awkward character introductions, but it's warmed up
I quite enjoyed the first episode, but I suspected the show could swing either way. Agreed, awkward character introductions. & now I like it.
The Hothouse: opening scene = police girl walks into her flat & accosts stranger, he explains that he's a friend of her brother, so she has a puff of his joint, and then has sex with him. After that it got worse.
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I'd just like to take this opportunity to weigh in with the remotely related comment that Rude Awakenings is great, and The Hothouse is drivel.
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As well as being a West Ham fan (which automatically makes him a good bloke)
You do know our club song includes "..fortune's always hiding, I've looked everywhere..."?
It's vaguely heartening to discover I'm not the only one in this hemisphere grieving into my coffee. Group hug?
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That's a terrible slur on juries, Simon.
I did a week on a district court jury, we all took it very seriously, but it was still a really disconcerting, confusing experience. I know that the point is that we're not supposed to be swayed by any outside influences, but during the breaks and for deliberation we were just shuttled into a little room and left to our own devices. Basically the two loudest people steered the deliberation, by default. We were all very confused about what "deliberating" really called for and sometimes the discussion got a bit farfetched.
One thing I noticed was that many jurors' judgements were coloured - quite heavily in a couple of cases - by expectations based on media sensations and american legal dramas. One woman spent a lot of time carping on about why didn't the police do this, or that, or why don't we have x evidence, rather than focussing on the (really really stupidly obvious) evidence that was supplied. I have no idea what it's like at high court level, but I think probably juries would benefit from a bit of extra guidance, rather than just what room they're supposed to walk into next. Nothing to do with the specifics of the trial - just someone to answer questions about legal protocol, or give them an indication that their debate is straying outside the scope of what's expected from them.
AND after arguing for five hours about a stupid sports club break-in, the aforementioned woman eventually just threw up her hands and said "fine, he's probably guilty", so there's definitely an element of pack rule, particularly when fatigue sets in.
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At which point the defence is going to argue, not unreasonably, that a proper defence will require the ability to scrutinise the character of the complainant. Which gets us into the less-than-pleasant situation of would-be rape complainants knowing that anyone with a competant defence lawyer will spend the trial digging up as much mud as possible and see what sticks.
The defence already can, and does. The Nicholas case is a perfect example - the defence launched a hefty character assassination on Louise Nicholas, but the prosecution couldn't respond.
That's a big problem with rape cases - and I remember this being addressed years ago - the prosecution is not allowed to provide character evidence to support the complainant. This makes sense for most trials; for example, the victim of a murder or a burglary doesn't generally have to prove that they were murdered, or burgled. But rape cases are different, most of them are *entirely* about character - the onus is regularly on the prosecution to prove that any crime was committed at all.
I remember reading a long time ago an example - where the defence is insisting that the sex was consensual, the prosecution isn't allowed to call workmates, family members or even a psychologist to testify that after a particular time the complainant started behaving differently, displaying symptoms that they'd been through a traumatic encounter.
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Wow, how uncultivated am I! If I take any more holidays to exotic countries, I'll be sure to look up all the local delicacies before I go, so I know what I'm ordering. Things like "baked beans" and "omelette".
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there are probably people who think that sounds like a good thing ...
It wasn't bad, just...odd. Better than the bacon and eggs.
Also, I went to a macanese restaurant and got this great spicy beef with rice, but it had spam and eggs slapped on top. I'm still not 100% sure they weren't just taking the piss outta the pastyface.
Eventually I just ended up living on assorted stuffed bread rolls for the rest of my trip. The bakeries! OH! The bakeries!
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I guess that's happened to various cuisines as they've migrated anywhere
One time, I ordered french toast from a hotel cafe in Hong Kong, and got what appeared to be a deep-fried peanut-butter sandwich with golden syrup drizzled over top.
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Personally I'm all for higher density, same as Deep Red & Rich. The only problem that I can see is that the local infrastructure always seems to lag behind the actual population by about fifteen years, so we get horribly less efficient before we get any more so.
I'd like to address another issue though, with regards to our hypothetical unchecked migration: I work for a company that hires a very high proportion of immigrants; most from Hong Kong & China. The deciding factor for most of them being employed was that they expected far lower salaries than the kiwis that applied. This is really fantastic for a small company such as the one I work for (and to be honest, a couple of applicants' expectations about an entry-level call centre job were laughable), but on a national scale I think it has serious ramifications for our already-quite-low-wage environment.
And this particular issue isn't completely hypothetical. In October, China tabled a bid to allow skilled temporary workers into NZ as part of a future FTA. I was surprised that I didn't hear anything about it in the news: a friend that's currently in China pointed me at an online Herald article that was available for about five minutes (this is even after Winston Peters kicked up a stink over it - has he really lost his mediability to such an extent?). Actually, I'd be very keen to know what the outcome of that particular discussion was...
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Well, I'd originally scorned the bill, "I was smacked, and it never hurt me any" and then changed my mind. I didn't think there were many more perspectives for me to cover, but the stuff about rugby really got me thinking about this whole thing.
I reckon we should keep section 59.
As a sportfighter I'm breaking the law at least twice a week, in the ring. As far as consistency goes, it makes sense to me to excuse consenting brutality - I don't want to worry about being a criminal, and I'd like to think I'm covered if one of my opponents gets annoyed about losing and takes her strains and bruised arms to the police. So - I reckon we should add a new section as well, excluding the course of a contact sport. Include the "reasonable force" bit as well if you want, although I think it's important that "reasonable force" will cover a few broken ribs.
While we're at it I think we should exclude anyone that uses "reasonable force" for the purposes of conveying displeasure with the activities of another individual: for example, I don't think anyone should be criminalised just because they slapped someone in the face for calling them a rude name. I confess I've done that maybe twice, and I firmly believe I was within my rights as an offended party. I can really live without the stress of thinking the guy I slapped might dob me in.
ALSO... personally I think it's a touch hysterical to brand someone as a criminal for administering a playful smack on the bottom in the workplace, so I reckon we should add an extra clause to sexual harassment laws that specifically overlooks "reasonable petting". That'd definitely calm down the crazy feminists that treat every ordinary redblooded man as if they were the great beast.
I'm sure there's a whole lot more.
Actually, I'm mainly curious to know when section 59 was introduced (same write-up as the rest of the law? later on?), and for what reason. I kinda wonder what the country would be like if it had never existed? Do you reckon anyone would notice?