Posts by A S
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there were no weapons...except for the one belonging to the killer...
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. If the dead gang member did have a gun, would that have made it ok?
shoot first, ask questions later. sound really nice. jury liked it. end of story, sounds like.
The odds of a farmer knowing the ins and outs of law as it pertains to self-defence and reasonable force are pretty unlikely, so I would tend to give more weight to the info as reported being pretty much what happened, rather than a conspiracy where farmers are luring extortionists to their homes so they can go medieval on them...
Juries aren't stupid, and they tend to have reasonable BS meters, so if the farmer was making it up, it is pretty unlikely he would have got off the way he did.
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Allen was not being attacked by Collier.
The report says Collier (the person killed) had walked back to his car.
He was then shot through the chest from 10 feet away by Allen standing on the woolshed landing. how the fcuk is that self defence? Allen had been beaten up a few weeks earlier. apparently the jury thought that justified the killing, and that he was not guilty of any crime.except you left out the bit where the dead man showed up early in the morning (after leaving his home in the middle of the night to drive to a remote farm), demanded money, then threatened to kill the guy who lived there, went back to his car and leaned over to grab something (which the farmer thought was a gun). Those facts add a whole lot of complexity, and when added to the previous assault, obviously they amounted to a reasonable case for self-defence that was accepted by the jury.
There is bound to be more to it, but on those grounds a pretty reasonable case could be made for the farmer, in fearing that his life was in danger to take steps.
Not a lot like the tagging case at all actually.
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Everyone's allowed an opinion, but not all opinions are equally grounded in knowledge, and I don't think it's a great sin to point that out.
Indeed, Stephen, not all opinions are equally grounded in knowledge. The difficulty is often in figuring out who actually knows what they're talking about when opinions and belief can equally masquerade as knowledge. As PAS doesn't tend to have too many AOS members posting, we will probably remain in the dark for quite some time as to how the wrong person ended up dead.
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The shots hit close enough that he got shrapnel wounds. And since it sounds like the target had suddenly starting moving in a different direction, following Mr Neville's braking, getting that close isn't bad going.
I hadn't seen any info about where the 5 or so shots that Police fired went, nevermind where any shots fired by the nutjob went, the near miss is still something of a supposition.
Assuming it was the result of a police shot, shrapnel/richocheted projectiles could conceivably have hit the defendent from pretty much anywhere on the truck as (the length from cab to tailgate is fairly sizable). or the nutjob may have succeeded in shooting himself with a richochet when the truck braked. Projectile fragments from rifles firing a similar diameter projectile might make that quite hard to figure out, and I think the ESR guys will be kept busy trying to do just that for a while yet...
Pray tell, what're your qualifications to make these judgements? Or are you just another armchair "expert" who thinks that, because he thinks he can see something in hindsight, it should've been blatantly obvious to the IC who was in the thick of it?
Why the need for armchair expert insult? Ross asked some valid questions. If you don't like them fine, but given this is a forum where very few people have sufficient knowledge to claim any expert status, it might make for a pretty boring discussion if no-one is allowed to have an opinion.
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Max:
I am only asking as it seems that you are unaware that children in primary school are already assessed on literacy and numeracy very regularly and that this information is also passed on to their parents/caregivers.
I think what most people are arguing is that another test will not provide any more information than what we already have. However, it will tie up many resources (time, money, skill) finding out what we already know.
So what is to stop the information currently collected from being used at a national level to inform better provision of assistance to kids who need it?
If it is a nationally consistent tool what is the problem with the proposed change? If it isn't a consistently used tool, wouldn't it be useful to ensure the Ministry of Ed can get the info needed to sort its priorities out and ensure they have their resources pointing in the right direction early on? Wouldn't that also provide a useful tool for schools to extract the needed resources from the Ministry?
Also, who says there has to be additional testing that takes up resources? If the existing mechanisms are suitably robust they can surely be used/tweaked, or if needed, replaced to achieve both the current and new purposes? There will be no duplication or waste of resources, so where is the problem? Is it simply an issue of who is proposing the change?
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Rich:
You really don't have to try to convince me you're an asshat. Honest.
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Ian:
Suggest you read my initial posts. In case you can't be bothered, I'll summarise. The Bill as it was passed doesn't do most of the wild things claimed by posters. I also in my initial post that we have a literacy problem.
I haven't seen anything posted that convinces me that we don't have a long way to go to improve literacy outcomes for kids leaving schools. After several attempts to be clear that basic literacy/numeracy isn't actually a very high expectation to have for kids leaving high school, I re-emphasised the key points I had made.
I'll even say it again, I cannot see how trying to establish whether kids have literacy issues through testing is the awful thing an awful lot of posts make out.
The changes to the Act in terms of testing might be bad, but they might also be a valuable tool for channelling support to kids who could really benefit from it. I'm inclined to think that on balance literacy testing would be a damn good thing, because if there are national reports about a problem published, things might actually happen in terms of a coherent response to fixing it. So in relation to your "not offering a solution" criticism, I don't think that I need to.
Also, I don't think there should be "lots of testing" as you suggest, nor did I ever say that. That is precisely the misguided, and incorrect attribution that leads to a desire to use capital letters. I'm somewhat reluctant to try and justify things I've never said, so I'm at a disadvantage here.
I've read a lot of speculation, a lot of selective interpretation of what the legislation actually says, and a number of what sound remarkably like conspiracy theories. While there are some well thought out points amongst it, most posts seem to be talking about legislative changes that only happened in peoples imagination.
Sacha:
Occasionally the quiet ones get sick of being quiet. Sometimes, shouting even works to clarify a point. Just a thought. -
Rich
AS: Maybe you could discuss what prevented you achieving literacy yourself?
Block capitals should be used for abbreviations and acronyms. There is boldface and underlining for emphasis. You have to talk *about* something, "I'm talking having..." is not correct usage.
Glass houses, etc.
Are you genuinely trying to be a condscending asshat? If you are, you're doing a damn fine job of it.
OH, AND I'LL USE BLOCK CAPITALS IN ANY WAY I CHOOSE, THANKS VERY MUCH.
If you can't distinguish between the issues facing those who aren't functionally literate and my not meeting your grammatical expectations, I suggest you STFU on your snide personal attacks, and maybe pipe up when you actually have a useful contribution to make.
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Steven:
Like we should all have a problem with service station attendants not actually knowing what makes a car tick?
Jan:
One wonders, AS, whether you think any further than the school gate. Whether you actually think it is important for children to suceed - at something they can do.
oh, FFS! Let me be quite clear here. LITERACY and NUMERACY is what I'm talking about. Are you saying that after around TEN YEARS of compulsory education, it is fine to have kids coming out that CANNOT READ OR WRITE??
I'm NOT TALKING ABOUT BEING ABLE TO DO CALCULUS, OR WRITE A PLAY, OR BE BUDDING PHYSICISTS, OR BE THE NEXT JONAH LOMU. I'm talking having an expectation (and an exceedingly low expectation at that) that after TEN OR MORE YEARS OF COMPULSORY EDUCATION a majority of kids will BE ABLE TO READ and WRITE to a level sufficient to allow them to function in society.
Can any of you genuinely say you object to an expectation that on leaving school, most kids should be at least functionally literate?!
I give up, I really do.
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Ian
You could as easily say that it is dismal that there are not at least 80% of the adult population with Uni Degrees or higher.
Who is talking nonsense? We're talking about LITERACY and NUMERACY, you know being able to read or write or add numbers.
We're not talking calculus or physics. We're not even talking school C, we're talking about kids who struggle to read and write. We should all have a problem with that.