Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Legal Beagle: $420,259.33, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Political parties in NZ tend to run on the smell of an oily rag and don’t have money to retain legal departments for interpretations.
First, Labour's Party Secretary is certainly a full-time paid position.
Second, I am entirely confident there is someone like me somewhere in the Labour Party whom the party secretary could call up for a two minute chat to sound out on an issue like this.
Third, you don't need a legal team to just call up the Electoral Commission to ask when something new happens and you don't know how to deal with it.The Electoral Commission has accepted there was no intention to deceive, and as a bequest it hardly falls into the category of corporate donations that National launders through it’s so-called “blind” trusts, which is a real, actual ongoing political corruption scandal.
Intention to deceive is not an element of the offence. Absence of intention to deceive does not provide a reasonable excuse. The offence is a strict liability offence.
And if you have any evidence at all that National is using blind trusts to hide the real source of donations, please take it to the Electoral Commission, or the police, or David Fisher. This is now illegal. In some circumstances at least, prison sentences are possible.
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Legal Beagle: $420,259.33, in reply to Tom Semmens,
This number of people being exclusively made up of online National Party activists.
I'll make sure Idiot/Savant of No Right Turn is aware of his new designation:
Update: According to NewstalkZB's Felix Marwick, the Electoral Commission has accepted Labour's excuse of "confusion as to whether a bequest counts as a donation" and there will be no referral to police. So the law means nothing again. What is the point of electoral law if it is never enforced?
ref: http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/unacceptable.html
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Legal Beagle: $420,259.33, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Even putting the legal issues aside, what the fuck was Barnett thinking in not (as Graeme pointed out) showing some basic political judgement in disclosing on the side of caution?
I think you may (mostly) mean Flatt, not Barnett.
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Hard News: Satire's shooting star, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
I watched a most enthralling long-length doco ‘Kind-hearted Woman’ on PBS (6 hours over two nights) a couple of weeks ago. A complex story, filmed over several years, about a Native American single mother seeking legal redress, the custody of her children, and a new life. I have suggested that MTS acquire it
We should pretty much just get ever PBS Frontline and PBS American Experience documentary ever produced.
Kind-hearted Woman is available for viewing (not geo-blocked) here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kind-hearted-woman/#a
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Hard News: Satire's shooting star, in reply to Russell Brown,
I see Wayne Mapp is discussing He Toki Huna on The Standard -- in the process clarifying that he is registered commenter "Wayne".
Get him along too!
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Hard News: The War Stories, in reply to Richard Aston,
The conscientious objectors , like James K’s father Archibald Baxter who were seen as cowards .
This article from the VUW Student Magazine Salient had a pretty big effect on me when I first read it.
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Hard News: The War Stories, in reply to BenWilson,
They are. Somewhere around 20%.
At the 2006 census, the proportion of people aged 20-29 who gave a clear answer to the Maori descent question and who indicated they were of Maori descent was over 20%.
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to Brent Jackson,
This can be done in any of our 3 official languages, can't it ?
No. Not Maori. English and NZSL, however, yes. Explicitly so. Multiple times.
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to Russell Brown,
Fairness would dictate an acknowledgement that Thatcher did support decriminalisation of homosexuality long before that was a mainstream position in the Conservative Party, as far back as the 60s.
I think I have expressed here before my surprise at finding out what Enoch Powell was all about, instead of just the River of Blood headline: co-sponsiring bills on the decriminalisation of homosexuality as far back as the 60s, opposition to the death penalty, and corporal punishment in schools, support for unilateral nuclear disarmament, no fault divorce and relaxation of abortion law etc.
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to Russell Brown,
The ANC’s militant wing, MK, certainly committed multiple acts of terrorism, but whether the ANC was a “typical” terrorist organisation is debatable
I was talking about MK, of which (Wikipedia at least claims =) Mandela was a founding member.