Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I'm sure spending money on the court system would speed up cases, but it's not a magic bullet.
It's not just judges and availability of courts and their staff that cause things to slow down. Prosecution and defence want time to collect evidence, witnesses need to be spoken to. The wheels of justice turn slowly for many reasons.
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think about THAT next time you line up some weetbix for brekkie.
That's why the All Blacks fell over at the world cup. After all, they apparently eat heaps.
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A school run by an anarchist collective would provide better education than one run by the state.
Umm, no. Unless you want to teach kids to reject any kind of responsibility or structure or society.
I wouldn't argue that anarchist collectives would run a great school system. But your response clearly shows that you don't understand anarchists. There's lots of different sorts, but at it's simplest level, the ones you're talking about here are opposed to government control of their lives. They don't reject responsibility or structure or society at all. Some of them I know have intricate structures and rules about the community that they live in, but they're rules that they've created themselves rather than using ones created for them.
Tomorrow's schools adopts ideas from anarchism, by appointing parents to have a role in the running of schools as boards of trustees. It's not always violent revolution.
Um, a certain party member, namely Helen Clark, directs the SIS.
I'm no expert, but the little I know, is that this is a mile off. It's not Minister for Sending SIS Agents to Harass People You Don't Like. The SIS aren't going to let Helen Clark do that to them, and you can bet if she tried, then she'd just be giving Nicky Hager his next book on a plate.
It would be nice to hear someone from the activists' side criticise Tame Iti's supportive relationship with the thugs running Fiji -- where the police beat a New Zealander nearly to death over the weekend.
Yeah that was dumb. Being indigenous doesn't give you to the right to be an arsehole and just take over the country using the military.
And personally, firing that gun at the flag? I didn't like either. Gave me bad vibes.
Feel better?
The millions of dead people make it kind of obviously a bad comparison to anyone who isn't a complete fucking idot.
Settle down. If you can't quote Winston Churchill...
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Hang on, if Tama Iti's really a cross between Osama Bin Laden and Martin McGuinness, is an electronic tag really going to stop him heading off on a terrorist rampage?
As I understand home detention, the bracelets set of a communicated alarm once you get a certain distance from the home. 100 metres or something.
So once he headed off to go on his terrorist rampage, it would go off, the police would probably pop around to check on him. Once they couldn't find him, they'd start looking for him, and if they learnt that he was off on a terrorist rampage, it'd ramp up real quick.
I think he'd only be halfway to Wellington or wherever he was off to rampage, before the AOS would be all over it.
If he did a David Gray, and went on rampage around his local community, then yes, home detention would be next to useless. I presume that's something that judge would take into account however.
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As a leader of an enormous army, pondering a huge mobilization into another country, there is a huge duty to consider debate, particularly when the threat posed by the other country to yourself is minimal. This duty of care was utterly neglected by the US system, and particularly by the administration.
Well put Ben.
I would add, that I think that the past... four or so years are an indication of the failure of the American political system.
The administration got it horrendously wrong in Iraq. Horrendously wrong. It's all a mess with arguments about whether this month's big pile of dead people is better than last months/years etc. No WMDs etc. A complete cock up.
I think it demonstrates a complete failure of a political system in which this hasn't had serious repercussions for the instigators. America has a system for removing a President from power. They have a couple actually - the first being elections.
I would have thought that in most countries where someone had led such a disaster, the repercussions would have been far more serious. The fact that this hasn't happened in the USA, indicates a failure, not of law, but the political system of electors, legislators media, judiciary etc.
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I was wondering what would happen if someone, say winston peters was to give the PM a slap in the face.
I think she could take him.
A lot better than her husband could anyway.
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For most of the 1990s, both Labour and Environment were held by National front benchers - Labour first by Birch until 1993, then later by Bradford under Shipley (can't remember who had it in between).
Well as Margaret points out, it wasn't broadcasting that made Maharey number 4, in much the same way it wasn't tertiary education that made Cullen number 2, or Arts and Culture that made Clark number 1.
Saying that a party is more 'into' a portfolio because the minister that happens to have it is highly ranked ignores the fact that ministers get more than one portfolio.
Upton held four other portfolios. Bradford had energy, industry, tertiary education and defence. Birch was... finance wasn't he?
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Make sure you kill the lamb before you set it on fire. Apparently there was some unpleasant footage of battery pigs on TV last night, so there might be some feeling out there.
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It's all over the papers there, but I thought this Telegraph story provided one of the better accounts of how the police lost the plot.
I really wanted that last paragraph expanded - there's a whole other half to the story as to why they fired I'm sure, which it skipped over in a sentence.
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I will be contributing hippy humus and pita bread.
You'll be contributing organic dead leaves and dirt?
I'm all for gardening, but I was hoping for some food...
Craig, I wasn't arguing that the portfolios are trivial, just that it is kind of weird for National people to be arguing that they are a promotion when they value them lowly themselves.
Personally I think that Mallard should have lost his warrant, so where his ranking is at the table doesn't particularly matter to me. He still has a seat and responsibility for half-a-dozen things, which doesn't feel like an appropriate 'demotion' for having a stoush.
But I think it'd be fair to say that in general Labour would rank broadcasting, labour, and environment higher than National.