A wigwam for a goose’s bridle

It never fails to amaze me how gullible people can sometimes be. It is a shame I don’t have more cheek than I do, because it seems that the snake oil salesmen are having a great time these days.

For every wacko idea you can think of there seems to be somebody marketing it and selling it and for some reason they never seem to run out of suckers to buy it. Some of the schemes are downright evil and some very trusting albeit naive people get sucked in and spat out and they are often pretty knocked about by the experience. For the peddlers of such goods and services horsewhipping is too good.

However every once in a while somebody comes along with a really wacky idea that is taken up by people who should know better and I for one can’t help but chuckle at both the audacity of the vendor and the stupidity of the buyer.

One such scheme was dreamed up by a bloke called Gary Bolton. Now before I go any further I should make it clear that I think horsewhipping is also too good for Bolton because his little scheme had some catastrophic downstream effects. However he is far from the only culpable party here. Bolton’s outrageous plan could have been scuppered long before any harm was done if certain bodies including the U.K. Government and various police and military forces had done their jobs properly.

Bolton is the bloke who came up with the idea of selling bomb detectors and made over three million quid selling them to police and military clients in Mexico, Thailand, Pakistan, China, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Egypt and Tunisia. Good idea, you might think until you learn that these devices were completely bogus.

Based upon a golf ball finder the device consisted of a box with a handle and antennae attached and some pieces of plastic inside it. It was first launched in 1999 and tested by the Royal Engineers whose opinion was that was only accurate about 30 percent of the time, which of course means that the other 70 percent of the time you were likely to get blown up. In other words probably no better than guesswork at detecting bombs.

It would seem Mr Bolt-On took this assessment with a pinch of salt and a lot more twink and as a result his publicity material for his marvellous machine explained that the device worked by locking onto the atomic structure of the suspicious parcel or substance and then giving its exact location. He claimed it worked on static electricity, which would seem to me to be a rather dangerous thing to have around explosive devices (think cellphone and petrol station). Under the circumstances Bolt-On seems an appropriate name for this modern day mad inventor.

Our backyard amateur engineer also claimed his device had a range of 766 yards at ground level and 2.5 miles in the air and could penetrate lead lined and metal walls, water and earth, but not apparently the brains of certain armies, police and trade missions. Okay, I made those last couple up.

The British judiciary has just jailed Bolt-On for seven years for his fraud and it was claimed at his trial that people had lost their lives as a result of relying upon his machines, which if true is definitely not funny.

But what I can’t get over is why it took the law enforcement agencies over a decade to catch up with this bloke considering he was marketing these machines to law enforcement agencies and the military. I am also gobsmacked that the U.K. Government offered support to his enterprise and Whitehall’s sales and export division even introduced clients to him and allowed him to use their premises for demonstrations. One can only assume that he used a genuine bomb detector for these demos otherwise it is hard to see how anyone – even the police or military could be fooled. And they wonder why military intelligence is one of the best examples of an oxymoron you can find.

Let us not forget that this bloke’s clients were people who were ‘in the business’ so to speak. So how come they were so comprehensively hoodwinked and shouldn’t they all be appearing before the beak charged with criminal negligence for buying the bloody things and putting them into service? At the very least heads should roll (or be blown off) in every agency that bought them.

Mr Bolt-On was not working alone; he had a partner-in-crime called Jim McCormick who was obviously a better salesman than him and who was jailed in May this year for selling 50 million quid’s worth of the contraptions, mainly to Iraq. Expect a fatwa on that dude when he emerges from jail.

But the real punch line comes at the end as it does with every good story. Our enterprising duo was nothing if not cheeky; they were selling their devices for £15,000 each yet they only cost £1.82 each to make. 

Is this the ultimate in cynical disregard for human life or what? 

Elephant’s trunk calls

It’s okay to drink and drive. It must be because I just read it in the Herald today. And not only is it alright to drink and drive; it is also okay to do both at the same time.

It’s times like these when you think you’ve either had too much to drink yourself or you have simply crossed over into a parallel universe. I don’t drink alcohol anymore, so I know it’s not that. As for the parallel universe; well I’ll let you make the call on that one. But bear with me for a moment before you leap to the conclusion that this old codger has finally and irrevocably exceeded his sell-by date.

It is apparently okay to drink and drive because when a couple in Nelson recently reported seeing a dimwit driving his car while swigging from a bottle of beer they discovered from the plods that he was not committing an offence. Yes; that’s right. Apparently the geniuses that drafted our drink driving legislation only took account of people behind the wheel being a menace if they had over a certain level of alcohol in their blood which might seem fair enough to some. It seems that as long as you haven’t hit the magic figure you are perfectly entitled to drive and swig because it is not an offence on the statute books to do so unless you are under 20 years of age when your allowable level is zero.

The cops will stop you if they see you doing this, but due to a combination of the hopeless legislation and the brain dead plods, you will not be prosecuted unless you are over the aforementioned limit. I say brain dead plods, because (a) I like saying it; (b) it is an accurate assessment of most of the boys and girls in blue (sad, but true, but more of that later) and (c) because it just goes to show how little imagination they have. Honestly I doubt that a roomful of them would have enough sparks of intelligence to burn the toast.

If I had been that copper I would have charged the prick with driving without due care and attention. You can’t tell me that he could concentrate on the road ahead and behind him and to the side of him while his melon is tipped back so he can slug down a draft of Lion Piss. In fact I would go further and suggest that if these bozos who draft our laws ever wake up enough to do something about this, they might as well make it an offence to be swigging ANYTHING while driving, whether it is beer, coffee, alka seltzer, or drain cleaner. The mere fact that you are removing your attention from the road momentarily and tipping your head back and driving with one hand means you are not in full control of your vehicle. The fact that you might get away with it nine times out of ten doesn’t mean it is safe. If you shoot somebody with a gun, on many occasions they will live to kick your arse later, but that still doesn’t make it safe.

We have already banned the use of hand-held cellphones in cars because they are a distraction. Although with the number of plonkers still using them in cars you wouldn’t think we had. So why not extend that commonsense ban to include anything that takes your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road? Any answers? I’m buggered if I can think of any that would indicate the Government is actually serious about reducing the number of road crashes.

Of course this is another restriction upon our freedoms, but one that I think needs to be made, because most of the people on our roads are irresponsible idiots. Far too many of them are unable to safely drive their cars anyway.... or even walk and chew at the same time.

And while we are on the subject of drinking and driving I had a good laugh reading about the cousin-shagging moron from Masterton who came up with a cunning plan to avoid being done for drink driving. This seventeen year old retard had a couple of beers and then decided to drive his car. But because he realised he could get done for drink driving because the level for under 20s is zero (which already makes him smarter than the bozo at the Wairarapa Times who wrote the story and solemnly informed us it was 150mcgs), he decided that getting rid of the smell might throw the brain dead plods off the trail.

It might have worked if they had only wanted to get a whiff of his lovely fresh breath, but unfortunately our young Einstein decided the best thing to get rid of the smell would be his Lynx deodorant. After all it had kept him shagless for all of his natural life up to now so it probably should work fine in this case. Sadly for him it didn’t work, because the cops were proceeding down the road, as they do and following Police procedure when they stopped Mr Sweetbreath. As this neither involved wanting to shag him or reject his advances for that matter and instead meant breath testing him; the game was up. Furthermore as anyone with even a fraction of a brain knows, most deodorants contain alcohol, so our young Rhodes Scholar had just gulped down probably twice as much alcohol as his couple of cheap beers would ever have contained. Not that it mattered too much anyway as even the most minute reading would have meant that he was in the crap, given his age which was about the same as his IQ it would seem.

Oh, and further to the brain dead plods; some of you might have read the story in the Herald about the couple from earthquake city who had to go out and catch their own burglar because the cops were too stupid to do it for them.

They came home one day recently to discover their house had been burgled and it was apparent they had only just missed the burglars. It also appeared the burglars might be planning to return as their quad bike was sitting in the driveway. They rang the cops and told them what had happened and the fact that the crime scene was still red hot, but the plods responded by saying they wouldn’t be able to come out for 48 hours! 

So here was an extremely fresh crime scene and the strong possibility the offenders were still in the area, and yet the plods wanted the couple to carry on as normal and no doubt mess up the crime scene for two bloody days before even coming and checking it out.

Fortunately this young couple were made of sterner stuff and decided to lay in wait for the offenders to return. Sure enough, a short while later some young yob turned up and tried to get away with their quad bike. They pounced and the bloke knocked the little prick to the ground but then he got up and ran away. However the woman shot after him in her car and blocked the little shit in until her partner arrived and dropped him again. They rang the cops again and managed to hold onto him until they arrived. They have since had to do their own inquires with the offender and have basically done everything the plods should have done. Needless to say they are far from impressed. 

I suppose now they will be charged with assaulting the little twerp and driving without due care and attention, and some wimp in a wig will let the little scumbag go free.

It’s enough to drive a bloke to drink while it’s still legal to do so.

Accidents in the workplace

There seem to have been a few accidents in the workplace lately but few of the people who have had them seem to be any the worse for wear. I guess it must be the healthy environment created by that bright new future that’s causing us all to have to go to SpecSavers.

The latest series of workplace accidents have happened at, ACC, which probably means they weren’t accidents at all; they were in fact pre-existing conditions. Actually the more I think about that, the more it makes sense.

ACC’s accidents began to emerge with the wholesale release of private and confidential information about ordinary New Zealanders to a lot of unsuspecting recipients including rather unfortunately for the Corporation, a feisty individual called Bronwyn Pullar.

As we all now know, Bronwyn is not the sort of woman to simply roll over and ask the corporation to roger her all over again. Furthermore their choice of Bronwyn as the recipient for these files was also stupid on the grounds she was a long term ‘client’ with a long term grievance against them. People in this position have nothing to lose and can make a Government department’s life very difficult. Bronwyn taped the whole sorry saga and left the fibbers with no wriggle-room.

But the micro-brains that have been running ACC have been left to their own devices and allowed to develop their own culture of blame against their clients, which is an interesting twist for a ‘no fault insurance scheme’.

After battling with them for almost 10 years, Bronwyn, who appears to have a perfectly reasonable claim, tooled herself up with a powerful ally in the form of Michelle Boag and met with the corporation to try and get things sorted out.

Of course as we know, they decided to fabricate the details of the meeting, leak personal information about Bronwyn to the Press, and accused her of blackmail.

Following this outrageous attack Bronwyn decided to finally allow the media, with whom she had been in contact for the last 10 years, to go public with her side of the story. The revelations that came from that interview she gave to TV3 were game-changers.

Since the programme aired only three days ago, the Chairman of ACC, John Poorjudgeofcharacter has ‘stepped aside’. He has not been fired and ACC Minister Little Bo-Tox won’t say he was asked or pushed, although her body language on TV One News told a very different story. The official blurb is that this guy is only leaving because his new job as the head (case) at ANZ National Bank would have him far too busy to bother with the malingerers at ACC (not that he ever did anyway).

So once again an incompetent person who couldn’t run a major Government Corporation efficiently and who has been caught out in more than one public lie and defamed a client doesn’t get sacked; instead he is able to move smoothly into another overpaid sinecure and nobody so much as even tells him off. Good luck to any customers at ANZ National Bank. If I knew somebody like him was moving into the top spot at my bank I’d be worried. ANZ National Bank should be too, because the man fucked up his last post and although I know banking and dishonesty aren’t mutually exclusive of one another, to have such an example out front is not a good look.

However Poorjudgeofcharacter is not the only ACC head we should soon be seeing rolling into the little basket; the mysterious Dr Burgess who is able to diagnose from halfway across town without even seeing the patient needs to bite the bullet as well. His association with ACC needs to be cut and his own ethics body might like to investigate the probity of arriving at diagnoses without consultation. He might be better off practicing in Haiti if that is the way he works.

Burgess’ unauthorised contact with the allegedly independent specialist raises ethical issues as well, and possibly privacy ones too. But worst of all is his unauthorised accessing of Bronwyn Pullar’s files after he was told he was to have nothing further to do with her files. Burgess went on to access the files on at least seven further occasions after being forbidden to do so. Staff who have done this at IRD and WINZ have been sacked. He should be too and police should be called in to determine if criminal charges are appropriate. I used to like A Clockwork Orange, but since the main characters began living out their fantasies at ACC I’ve gone right off it.

As I write this I learn that Ralph Stewart has also been shown the door by an increasingly panic-stricken Little Bo-Tox who sees her Ministerial posts under threat.

Stewart was the other wanker who told us all he had not heard Bronwyn’s tape when it was well-known her legal representatives had played it to him.

She who has been called the Crusher is obviously feeling the crush herself as she has apparently also informed two other ACC directors; Rob Campbell and John McLiskie they can forget about being re-appointed either. Of course the cynic in me (where would that be then?) says Bo-To is more annoyed these bumbling fools allowed this to get into the public arena and get some of their doo-doos all over her rather than for the nasty shit they threw at Bronwyn Pullar.

The cull-out can’t have finished yet, though because there are at least two other ACC knob-heads who should also go. Managers Philip Murch and Hans Verberne are the pair who concocted the allegation they had been blackmailed by Ms Pullar and called the cops in to investigate. Given they knew their allegations were baseless these two idiots should be charged with making a false complaint to police and then sacked as well.

So accidents or otherwise? Well I can’t help finding it extremely ironic that a corporation that spends half its time trying to deny accident victims support by labelling their accident induced injuries as ‘pre-existing conditions’ should be so accident prone themselves. A much better case can be made for their recent ‘accidents’ to be viewed as pre-existing conditions.

Your claims are well and truly denied ACC – time to remember what you were set up for.

Freedom tastes of reality, but this just makes me sick

Freedom is a word that is bandied about a lot in this country and we are constantly told how free we are in New Zealand. And for the most part that is correct, although we need a little context here.

Obviously we have more freedom than, for instance the poor sods unlucky enough to have been born in Kazakhstan. As if it wasn’t enough having Sacha Baron Cohen making a mockery of them, they are not allowed to do any mocking themselves; at least not if it involves mocking their glorious President, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Not only has this man held elections recently in which he claims to have captured (good word under the circumstances) 95 percent of the vote, but he has also had critics dispatched very swiftly. One opposition leader recently allegedly shot himself in the back of the head....twice! Presumably his first shot didn’t do the job properly and he still had the presence of mind (even if his brains had just been blown out) to try again.

And just in case any other upstarts decide to make any less than flattering remarks about President ‘Nursie’, he has passed a ‘Father of the Nation’ law which makes it a criminal offence to publicly question the honour and dignity of the president. Although how this mad despot can possess any dignity or honour to impugn in the first place beats me.

So to return to my point; we don’t have to contend with that sort of crap. But that is still no reason for us to drop our guard because many of our freedoms are being eroded on an ongoing basis.

Take for example the suggestion from our own glorious pres, er Prime Minister JiangQi who wants to send the cops, navy and air force in to deal with the Greenpeace protesters who quite reasonably don’t want Brazilians carrying out seismic surveys with a view to sucking oil out of our coastline.

Hey Johnny, last time I looked it wasn’t against the law to protest, and anyway why is it always left up to members of the public to do this stuff because our no ‘nads pollies are too fixated on feathering their own already considerable financial nests?   

Another freedom that’s being eroded in New Zealand is our freedom of speech. Just last weekend singer Tiki Taane was arrested and chucked in the cells in Tauranga for singing an (admittedly stupid) song by NWA called Fuck The Cops during his set in the Illuminati Club, ironically. He was singing it when the cops came in to check the place out, and they obviously took it pretty personally. Not Tiki’s smartest move, but nonetheless it wasn’t hurting anybody and the actions of the cops will just encourage more youngsters to become alienated from the boys and girls in blue. The dimwits who carried out the arrest are bound to lose the case and will have negatively impacted upon police and youth relations.

But what the Tauranga plods did was just small potatoes to what Justice Hammond has just done to publisher Vincent Siemer. Siemer is the man who has been accused of and jailed for allegedly defaming Vector director and Korda Mentha boss Michael Stiassny. Now from my observations, Mr Siemer might be a little reckless, although if I was in his position and had lost a bundle through what he claims are the actions of Stiassny, I might be a bit touchy too.

However what really bothers me about this case is the fact that Hammond was allowed to sit in judgement upon it. It is clear that he had serious conflicts of interest as he knows Stiassny well and even Stiassny is alleged to have boasted about what a good friend of his Hammond is.  When challenged by Siemer about his suitability to sit in judgement in a case where Staissny was the plaintiff, Hammond claimed he had no previous involvement with him. But when it was able to be proven that he actually had been working with him for ­­seven months in an earlier case the Supreme Court via justices Blanchard, Tipping and McGrath issued a minute saying the judge had “not accurately recollected the Paragon litigation in which he had been involved as a High Court Judge when he said that it was before Mr Stiassny became involved.” They concluded it was fanciful to suggest the judge should be embarrassed by this or that he should not be allowed to sit on the case.

Now call me a cynic, (and no doubt many will), but that just sounds to me like weasel words issued from three members of the brotherhood to protect the arse of another member of the brotherhood.

But the rot doesn’t stop there. Hammond also refused to allow Siemer to conduct his own defence and he was refused leave to appeal the court’s decision finding him guilty of libel and fining him $920,000; a decision the court reached in a ‘closed’ hearing.

Siemer laid a complaint with the Judicial Conduct Commission over his allegation Hammond had a conflict of interest, but that has apparently gone nowhere for the last two years.

Justice? I don’t think so. And you’d have to say our freedoms are looking decidedly less than we’d like to think they are.