NZ Idle – the new series

In the year 2014 our television screens are going to be dominated with much fuss and bother and spin leading up to our biggest ‘reality series’ of the year. This series differs somewhat from the plethora of programmes that fall under that description.

As an aside I find it interesting that the word ‘plethora’ was once used to describe an unhealthy excess and that these days it is often used to denote abundance. I feel that in this context the word should be taken to mean an unhealthy excess especially as i learn that it had a medical connection and was used to describe a condition caused by dilation of superficial blood vessels which was characterised by a reddish face.

However, I digress....

The ‘reality’ series of which I speak differs in that it is a recurring series which takes over our media every three years. Yes; you’ve guessed it. I am speaking of that rag tag bunch of idle self-serving gits who come seeking our approval to keep sucking at the nation’s tit for another three years.

Battle has already commenced with Little Bo Tox and Anne Offhertrolley trying to blow the Greens’ co-leaders house up into a mansion the size of their own dunnies and bitching about how much better she can look in expensive clothes than they both do.

Meanwhile Jianqi is rushing about turning over one stone after another trying to find enough slimy invertebrates to potentially form a coalition with. You’d have to wonder if there are any more possibles left now. Let’s consider those possibilities.  

·         The Acting Party have been pretty much squished out of contention following the demise of their only MP in this current Parliament and it is hard to see how their latest oddball will gain any traction over the next few months. The tea has been chucked out and I suspect that even a case of Red Bull won’t put any wings on that particular slug before November. He isn’t even the party leader so he will have to be operated by remote control from Acting Party headquarters. Mind you that would be less humiliating for him than being operated via Jianqi’s arm up his bum like his predecessor was. Should The Natsis choose to ‘gift’ the Epsom seat to these wallies again, it just might turn out to be the gift that doesn’t even give once never mind the one that keeps on giving.

·         Just what Peter Dung, the man with no real party has in mind this year, I have not heard. I seem to recall he was considering retiring a few months back. Mind you that was when he was still sitting on the naughty step and now that he is being welcomed back into the bosom (can I say that in this column?) of the Natsi Party he might reconsider that. However even if he does, and if the people of Johnsonville and Newlands are still in a coma and he wins; he will be there on his Todd Malone again. Neither of the other party members is likely to get elected and his voter will not be able to vote enough times to get them in on the party vote either.

·         What’s left of the Maori Parting is Te Ururoa Flavell and a couple of spaces where the other two sat. It is more of a comb-over than a parting now. In any case there is no guarantee they would wish to coalesce with the Natsis this time as they have suffered some pretty serious damage through their association with them over the last six years They could only manage to grab three seats after their first term supporting Jianqi and this time they will be starting all over again with a whole new set of candidates to try and support their only leftover from the previous hangi.

·         There has been a lot of talk about the Conservatively Dressed Party and I think that might well be all it turns out to be. These slightly manic types managed to pick up 2.65 percent of the party vote last time, which isn’t all that surprising really when you think about it. There must be at least that percentage of the population with undiagnosed stupidity. Ironically that meagre share of the party vote was still only 0.15 percent short of the combined party vote won by the current three coalition partners. However we must remember that it is still only slightly more than half of what they would need to get a seat unless they could manage to win an electorate seat. As we don’t have any electorates that are comprised of nothing but wacko people I would suggest the chances of that are not terrific. Leader Column Craig is certainly an odd individual and not really the sort who would inspire confidence in most sane people. He has a little of the aura that surrounds that new Acting Party twit. He seems the sort of bloke that might cause babies to cry as soon as they see him and the rest of us panic if we are left alone in a room with him.

·         This then (unless some amazing new party arises and sweeps the political right wingers off their feet) leaves the question of what will Winnie do? Winnie is always a dark horse or a dirty dog depending on how you see him. He plays his cards close to his chest at times like this until he can be absolutely sure which way the wind is going to blow. This way he keeps the door open for a ministerial warrant no matter who is behind that door. If he stays true to his party’s policies he would not be able to form a government with the Natsis without making some demand that would stick in their collective craw. However with the chains of office glinting in the sunlight Winnie could be swayed enough to jump into that big blue waka.

      
      So what of the opposition? It is abundantly clear the Laboured Party will not be able to do it alone. Although many think that is exactly what they have been doing for some time.

      But I digress again. Or is that regress when you do it for a second time?

     

      The point is that Laboured will need some friends in the house if they are to warm the treasury benches again as they have again chosen a useless leader who unfortunately will probably make an even more useless Prime Minotaur should they pull this feat off. He has shown an ability of late to launch himself out of the starting gates with a policy headline before his minders have had a chance to teach him his lines.  

      So who are the friends of the Laboured Party?

      

      I guess the most obvious one is the Greens who have been growing faster than my tomatoes in this climate. They would be the next largest polling party after the Nats and the Labs and a long way ahead of any of the others. Their participation in a Labour led Government goes without saying. The only unknown around them is how many players they would bring to the game.

      

      However this is where it gets interesting. Outside of the Greens; who would Labour be able to form a coalition with? 

      

      Unless Winnie goes with them they would probably not have enough seats to be able to do it. They might of course win the support of the Maori Party this time, but how much use that would be given the current state of that party is another matter. It could conceivably add only one seat to the mix.

      

      There is of course the matter of Hone and his little one-man band. He would never be courted by National and so the possibility exists for him to be asked to be part of a Labour led coalition. However I think he would be the last one picked for the game if he was and I think they would do well to consider what problems he could cause if he became disenchanted or had another of his famous brain explosions.    

     

      To sum up, I think the Laboured lot need to devise a decent strategy now. If I was in charge of that strategy I would be building a bloody great big bridge with the Maori Party and suggesting to them that a widely advertised intention to form a coalition with Labour would give them a better chance of getting more seats in the upcoming viewers’ vote and I would be offering Winnie some very cool robes of office and advising him to follow the same course of action that I had suggested to the Maori Party.

      

      It will be interesting (in an academic sort of way). But jeez it will be sickening for the most part. Stock up on bicarb I say.

The young and the gutless (nuts vs sledgehammers)

There are times when you just have to say wtf is going on in the world. It seems that some really atrocious things can occur without any sort of official reaction, while some other innocuous activities are reacted to as if someone was eating their babies.

One of the most obvious atrocities right now in my country is the case of the self-styled ‘Roastbusters’. Ha ha, very funny name little boys and hopefully some roasting of your nether parts is about to occur anytime soon.

For those not familiar with the news in New Z at the moment, these little lowlifes are a group of toxic teenagers who think it is (a) clever and (b) funny to get underage girls drunk and/or stoned and then gang-bang them. As if that wasn’t enough they like to increase the humiliation of the young and admittedly stupid/gullible girls by boasting about their exploits on Facebook.

This group have apparently been operating for a couple of years and FB would appear to condone the practice as their postings have kept appearing which begs the question about what sort of monitoring the social disease, I mean network actually does. But more of that later.......

Complaints were made to police when the media finally became aware of this group of limp dicks who must only be able to function with their mates encouraging them on. (Begs a few questions, doesn’t it?). However the response from police has been about as flaccid as I imagine these young scumbags are without their mates to encourage some kind of performance out of them, despite the fact these little needle dicks have made no effort to hide their identities. Police also reckon they have been monitoring this page for two years, but despite this they have managed to do absolutely zero about it.

Of course the lack of any meaningful police response would have nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that one of these tiny slugs is the son of a police officer and another is the son of Hollywood actor Anthony Ray Parker.

Thankfully not everyone in New Zealand is brain dead and I learn this morning that one of the pieces of excrement in this group has had his employment terminated now that his employer has become aware of it and a vigilante group has begun to form with the intent of delivering the justice the police seem incapable of setting in motion. I should imagine some suitably limp-wristed tut-tuts will be eventually delivered by an overpaid and out of touch judge after a few hundred thousand dollars of the taxpayers money has been spent on bringing these rock dwellers who will no doubt be supported by legal aid to trial.

Significantly Facebunk will of course not be dragged into any of this despite the fact they have allowed this page to continue for two years without interference.

And speaking of the gutless; the Jianqi Government has just bowed ever so gently to public pressure in regards to drink driving. For the last three years Labour(ed)’s Ian Lees-Galloway has been trying to push through a private members’ bill to lower the allowable blood alcohol levels for drivers to 50mls per litre of blood.

The Nats, most of whom sport ruddy cheeks and large bulbous noses with little veins all over their faces were dead against it. Of course their opposition to the idea had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact they are strongly supported by Federated Farmers whose complexions and hooters are even worse than those of the Cabinet.

As recently as only a few weeks ago Just Is Minister Little Bo Tox was ruling any change out for the very sound (in road safety terms) reason that it would clog up the courts. Funny how idiots can say things with a straight face that merely serve to illustrate how far off-beam their thinking is. Clearly we have a problem with the numbers of munters going out and slinging back the piss and then driving, for if we did not the courts would not potentially be clogged up, now would they?

Furthermore what sort of a message is the woman with the frozen face sending when she rates the spectre of an overworked court system ahead of road deaths and injuries? Once again Government was showing they don’t actually take drunk driving seriously at all. The many millions they have spent on (largely ineffective and pointless) adverts that are supposed to deter such practices are simply a box ticking exercise.

However a very good couple of Campbell Live programmes including one where several of his staff got pie-eyed under controlled circumstances showed the world how pissed you can actually be without reaching the 80 mils currently in force. Considerable public reaction to those programmes convinced the Government that with an election less than twelve months away it might be a good idea to go along with this one.

Having said that; their innate gutlessness and lack of commitment to the real issue has arisen once more. While the change in the levels will come through now its effect has been gelded by the fact that those found with between 50mls and 80mls will only get fined and a few points on their licence.

So despite the fact that we know t6he medical definition of intoxication kicks in at 50mls we will still continue to view those between 50mls and 80mls as slightly naughty school kids who will simply have to write a few lines. “I must not get caught drinking and driving.”

So while we live in a world that allows drunks to drive with little or no consequences and male sluts to spread their STDs among underage girls with no comeback from either police or Facebunk, I would like to share a local story that tends to fly in the face of all of that.

Finally some of you who read my blogs might have noticed that you did not get a personal message from me via Facebook to announce my last blog As above so below the link for which is here: http://philossifer.hubpages.com/hub/asabove . The reason for this is that Facebonk has decided in its infinite wisdom that I am a dangerous creature who should be blocked and thus everyone that I sent one to via a Faceberk email address was bounced back to me. Clearly expressing a (I think) soundly argued opinion about local or world affairs is much worse than boasting about one’s sleazy exploits at the bottom of the sewer. 

If you were one of those to whom I used to send these epistles via a Faceblock email and you still wish to receive these (apparently) dangerous communications, please email me at ken@writerman.co.nz with a suitable non-Faceblank email address and I will add that to my now somewhat damaged mailing list. Of course Facelessbook won’t reply to any emails I have sent them asking for an explanation for this situation. I expect their next move will be to ban me from publishing a link to this on my own timeline. Come the revolution, you bastards!!

Nothing like getting one’s priorities right, eh?

Here we go with Judith & John or the ABC of NZ politics part 2

Last week I brought you the first half of a leaked document that is being used to train our new MPs. Of course since then there have been denials from the Government that this document is genuine and even suggestions (heaven forbid) that I made the whole thing up.

Clearly this is another case of brain fade from the ruling party and to prove that I publish for you this week part two of the MP’s primer.

Last week we learned the letters from A for amnesia (or had you forgotten that already – John certainly has), to M for mess which is what Judith and John will have to clean up this week after Smaug lashed out over the weekend. Trying to turn Wellywood in Middle Earth wasn’t such a good idea after all, was it Johnny?

N is for noes which is what you pick when you want to vote against a particular bill (in accordance with the party line of course). Lately it has also come to mean Novopay; a pay system developed to ensure teachers don’t get too powerful (or paid). It was teed up by the last Labour Government and its failings are therefore not the fault of the present Government despite being signed off by them in the face of advice from almost every quarter not to do so.

O is for obfuscation, which is an art you will be trained in for important occasions such as answering direct and confrontational questions from the press. (Does anyone in the Press Gallery still do this?). Simply put, it is a technique that involves using at least five words where one would have done. Your speech is delivered in a circular pattern that leads one inevitably back to the start without divulging anything that even vaguely resembles a direct answer. It has been unkindly suggested that “O” also stands for old-boys’ network, a club where your membership entitles you to preferential career advancement and wealth beyond your wildest dreams, but this is merely an ugly rumour perpetuated by the opposition. There is no such thing as an old boys’ network anymore. The name was first changed to old persons’ network and subsequently to ‘senior citizens’ network’, which as everybody knows is another name for Grey Power and nothing sinister at all.  

P is for posturing and populist. These two are a package deal. Posturing is the art of appearing to take a stand on the issue du jour. But the stand you take when posturing is the one in which the most votes lie so this makes it populist. There is no point in taking a stand on an issue that is likely to cost you votes and by implication, your place on the party list. It is important to remember when playing the posturing card to do so via an obfuscating speech (see under “O” above) to ensure you don’t say anything you might later be held accountable for. 

Q is for quisling. A quisling is not a small goose although the parallels with a bird brain are obvious. It is somebody who displays treachery and fails to recite the party mantra and sides with anything that emanates from the opposition benches. It also applies to coalition parties that join up with the opposition to form a government instead of helping the true party rule as they are born to.

R is for redacted. This is the process whereby dangerous information is removed from official documents to protect the press, the public and others from harm From time to time opposition members and media sources will unreasonably demand official documents and sometimes these will contain information that could compromise National’s security. Usually these are in the form of errors where it is incorrectly stated that a Government Minister knew about a certain person or series of events which that Minister has already repeatedly told Parliament they have no recollection of. To avoid humiliation for the compilers of these documents owing to their lack of accuracy the Government removes these damning pieces of evidence before releasing the documents and this is called redacting.

S is for SkyCity.  SkyCity is a philanthropic organisation that has the best interests of the ordinary New Zealander at heart. They are here to help the Government out by building a world class convention centre that will drag our economy out of the red that the Labour Party took it into and into the black of prosperity. The generosity of this great benefactor is so huge that it has agreed to fork out $402M of its own hard earned money to boost our economy by over $90M per year until the end of time. Furthermore they agreed to do this with no strings attached other than asking the Government to (quite reasonably) extend their gambling licence for a mere 35 years and allow a trifling 230 extra pokie machines and 40 extra gambling tables.

T is for taxation. This is the way Government funds all those free lunches free air travel for you and your family and expenses claims that you will have during your term in Parliament. It is collected by a fair process in which everyone except big business, which is the lifeblood of the country, pays their fair share. It is important to remember that big business has big expenses so it must be given big tax breaks to enable it to employ big numbers of people who can in turn pay big slices of their income in taxation to support us all (in Parliament that is).  

U is for unions a.k.a. the Anti-Christ. Unions are devious cults hell-bent on destroying the country. They are doing this in cahoots with the Labour Party and various other Pinkos. They seem to think that everyone is entitled to have a say in their workplace, the right to a fair wage and various other namby pamby rights such as holidays and sick leave.

V is for vertical integration. This is not only a flash term you can wave about like a big willy and confuse the public, but it is also the secret to business efficiency. Big companies get the opportunity to grow even bigger and to move into more diverse business fields through the medium of vertical integration. To understand it better you could think of it as ‘keeping it all in the family’ which after all makes sense since the family that plays together stays together. For example if you were to start a business where you developed seeds for farmers to plant, then it makes sense that you would also develop chemicals to fight off the diseases and pests they might encounter. Then you would start developing drugs to fight off the diseases people will get when they eat the food grown from those seeds and using those chemicals. It’s only logical to have all those businesses under one banner so you can help everyone at the same time as helping yourself.

W is for whitewash. This is another name for an enquiry into scurrilous allegations from the other side of the house. It gained the name because it is a nice clean way of airing your washing and showing that it is all Persil white and not mucky as alleged by the stone throwing hypocrites on the opposition benches.

X is for Xmas. This is the time of the year when Parliament closes down and you get to mumble some meaningless platitudes before taking off for your holiday home in Hawaii while the voters fight over the last tin of baked beans at the City Mission’s Festive spread.  

Y is for Young Turks. This term does not refer to youths from the Dardanelles, although Turkey was at one time ruled by a party of that name. In this context it used to mean a young movement within the National Party that was named after a similar group in the American Republican Party during the 1960s. This term has now fallen out of use as the modern party is just that; i.e. modern. It doesn’t need stroppy little upstarts trying to change party policy which has been very carefully developed with maximum input from the voters – or at least the ones who make the biggest donations to the election fund.

Z is for Zilland as in New Zilland. This is the correct way to pronounce the name of our fine country as demonstrated by our fine leader who has been setting the bar extremely high in the development of New Zilland Inglush.

So there you have it; the unabridged version of the new MP’s training manual. No expense has been expended on this invaluable resource and as you will have noticed, it is bringing obvious returns with the standard of representation we now have.

But maybe with returns like that we should bolt the gates and not let the buggers back in.

Only the cronies (dum dum dum dum dee doo wah)

Want a great job, a sinecure, a safe un-sackable position for as long as you feel inclined to bother with it? Then try sucking up to Jianqi and his merry band of brigands.

There will always be a welcome in the hillside for those who toe the party line and suck the party whatsit.

The National Disgrace under Jianqi is hurtling out of control through their current term. The indecent haste with which they are making changes that are un-mandated by the wider electorate, despite the fact they were able to coalesce into a government (?) after the last election is truly mind-boggling.

But it is not just the damaging policy changes such as the asset sales and the ‘clarification’ of the laws governing the actions of our secret squirrels that are the worry. Although God knows they are wreaking enough damage to the economy and to our basic freedoms.

What is even more disturbing is the flurry of political appointments that are likely to continue long after this government has left office. These are people who are appointed to jobs that have traditionally been seen as being apolitical and although it has always been the way that successive governments have appointed people they like to these positions there has been a change in the way Jianqi’s lot have tackled it.

Ian Fletcher was appointed to the role of director of the Government Communications Security Bureau in January 2012. This happened after the State Services Commissioner Ian Rennie had told Jianqi he had a list of possible candidates but didn’t like any of them. Helpful Jianqi instantly had an answer for him and suggested an old friend of his for the position. But he went further; he actually contacted that old friend directly and told him to apply for the job (wink, wink).

Thus it was that Ian Fletcher was the only applicant seen by the SSC and was duly appointed to the position. It would seem that his lack of relevant experience did not count him out of being considered the most suitable candidate for the job. But then I suppose with nobody else on the short list then he must have at the very least been the best candidate on offer.

Of course Jianqi later denied knowing Jesus. er Ian (at least three times by my count) and then when he suddenly had a moment of recall he tried to say he knew of him, but didn’t really know him. Of course as we all now know that was also uncovered as an outright lie in due course and then came the real killer punch; Jianqi forgot he had actually contacted Fletcher directly and advised him to apply (wink, wink). This fact becomes even more disturbing when we learn that Jianqi had also forgotten to advise the SCC that he had done this, leaving Mr Rennie with a big eggy stain all over his dial when the story got out.

The timing of Fletcher’s appointment was also interesting; immediately after the GCSB had waded in illegally to Kim Dotcom’s home and trampled all over his civil rights so that Jianqi could cuddle up to the FBI.

This demonstrates that Jianqi, who claimed more brain-fades than an Alzheimer’s patient over this fiasco, knew very well that his bully-boys had overstepped the mark and that he was going to need ‘some friends in high places’ to ensure the whole sorry saga didn’t come back to bite him on the bum.

The next example of National Disgrace’s cronyism occurred when Judith ‘Little Bo-Tox’ Collins appointed Dame Susan Devoy as race relations conciliator. Another hopelessly under-qualified candidate for an important role.

But was she under-qualified if you look at it from the Natsi’s point of view? Well, no, not really. In fact she was ideal. She was a sporting icon, a dame of the realm, and a really good supporter of the Jianqi government and all the principles it stands for. She had the ideal background of having been involved with a campaign to raise awareness of mental illness, which would enable her to understand politicians better. Then she was involved with a campaign to raise awareness of muscular dystrophy (I’m still not hearing anything about race relations yet). She is a good role model for women – she even wrote a support letter for Tony Veitch after he kicked his partner in the guts and then of course she made some stunningly tactful pronouncements on how Waitangi Day should not be a public holiday and then had a swipe at women in burquas. 

No I’d say she was well qualified to sit on a fence as she did the minute that rude cow from Denmark slagged of the welcome she got when she visited here recently.

With a dame like that in the position, we need never worry about any ethnic minorities getting above themselves or (gasp) having the damned cheek to seek some human rights.

But with her latest appointment Little Bo Tox has really bested herself and steals the cronyism title well and truly away from Jianqi. Given her latest enraptured adoration of Margaret Thatcher, Jianqi should be very afraid. Yon Bo Tox has the lean and hungry look (or in her case, the over made up and greedy look).

This time the hard faced one has appointed someone from within the ranks of her own (sorry Jianqi’s own – getting ahead of myself there) government to a plum role. Ooh hoo Jackie Blue has been appointed as Equal Opportunities Commissioner. This is another role that is supposed to be apolitical which is appropriate because Little Bo Tox’s phone is ringing but she doesn’t want to talk to anyone now, be it John Wayne or Chairman Mao.

Admittedly Jackie Blue has been a spokesperson on women’s issues so there is some sort of qualification there, but for her to be actually taken out of parliament to take on the role is dodgy to say the least. Blue hoo has been in parliament for three terms and never made it to a cabinet spot. One can’t help but feel that the job is some kind of compensation for that with the pay-off that the Jianqi Government has another friendly face in another high place and they can be sure their policy objectives will not be undermined by some disruptive soul who wants people to enjoy human rights.

With all this cronyism going on, I can’t wait to hear who the next ‘ideal’ candidate will be and what plumb job they will take. What’s your best guess? Mine is John Banks for Human Rights commissioner.

Justice you thought it was safe to go back in the courtroom

Justice is an interesting concept. The first three definitions my dictionary offers are: just conduct; fairness; and the exercise of authority in the maintenance of right.

The first of these definitions requires further resort to the dictionary wherein we find the first definition of just to be acting or done in accordance of what is morally right or fair. So essentially what we have is an agreement among those first three definitions that justice is about what is morally right and fair. That doesn’t seem to match up terribly well with some of the examples of our so-called Justice system in New Zealand. Nor does it have much of an existence in any other aspects of our lives where you might expect to encounter ‘the exercise of authority in the maintenance of right’ or people ‘acting in accordance with what is morally right or fair’.

One reason might be the fact that if you base your concept of justice upon morality you are always going to have a problem when there are so many individualised definitions of that particular concept. Perhaps three better opening definitions for this hard to pin down concept might be:, the exercise of authority in the maintenance of the right (wing): the exercise of authority in the hands of the privileged few who can afford a high-priced lawyer; or acting in accordance with what matches most closely the policy objectives of the Government of the day.

I have been trying hard to understand where this Government stands in relation to the concept of justice. It talks the talk when it suits it or when it makes for a good photo op or PR headline, but when it comes to actually exercising that power or authority it would seem it works on its own set of secret rules that nobody else can fathom.

Individual MPs trample on the rights of their constituents on a regular basis as did Paula Bumfat when she deliberately leaked private details of a woman who had the temerity to complain about her treatment by WINZ.  Then we have that dufus Horon the Moron who seems to think he can stay in parliament as an independent MP when the only people who ‘elected’ him were his own party caucus who have now unelected him. We won’t even go there about what led to his expulsion other than to say if the stories are true it is another example of an MP not acting in accordance of what is morally right.

The Kim Dotcom case is another well publicised example of Government agencies acting in a way that defies the three definitions of justice I mentioned at the start of this. They should just own up. The matter is very simple. He is a New Zealand resident and as such cannot be spied on by the GCSB. He was and therefore they are in the wrong. He had a high profile and had been in the news not long beforehand so there was absolutely no reason why they would not have known he was a Kiwi albeit one with an accent. And it is inconceivable they wouldn’t have known the law in that regard (mind you they are just glorified dumb coppers with sunglasses and shiny suits – so who knows).

But the case that really has my bile mobile is the David Bain compensation issue. If this isn’t one of the greatest injustices ever perpetrated by an unholy coalition of the NZ Police and the NZ Government upon one of its citizens, then I don’t know what is. I realise this is hyperbole and I will now probably bombarded with a thousand other cases more worthy of this honour(?) but I am sure you get my point that this is one I feel very strongly about.

I wasn’t sure at the outset about David’s guilt or innocence as initially I didn’t take much of the case on board. I realised at the time of his conviction that some of the ‘evidence’ was questionable and I felt that he was convicted more on a ‘he must have done it because who else could have/” basis than any solid evidential grounds. At the very start I expressed concern that this might be another miscarriage of justice like the Arthur Allan Thomas case, but I could never have dreamed it would turn out to be such an ongoing Circus of Horrors where the injustices keep on occurring.

The Minister in charge of The Exercise of Authority in the Maintenance of Right (Little Bo-Tox) has trumped even herself this week with her eminently ‘fair and just’ decision to criticise the independent report by Justice Ian Binnie into whether or not David Bain should receive compensation from the Crown for his 13 years in prison.

What makes Bo’s criticism so vile is the fact that she will not release the document so we can all be the judges of whether her assessment is fair and just. But worst of all she won’t even let David Bain see it until she has had the chance to roll in a couple of her own tame lawyers to tear it to bits and discredit it so comprehensively that the question of compo for Davo will sink into a deep pit where she can bury it forever. (Tui ad tagline anyone?)

What makes this stupid woman so stupid is that she actually believes her own PR and hyperbole and she believes we will as well. She is right about a part of that; many of the sheeple of Godzone will believe her bollox. However many others will not; Justice Binnie won’t for one and Joe Karam certainly won’t. A guy who has devoted as much of his life to this case as Karam has is definitely not going to slip away into the shadows of the night. He will come out with guns blazing.

I will make a prediction now. David Bain will get compo despite Bo Tox’s manoeuvres. All this stupid bint is doing is adding to our costs as a nation both in terms of the amount of cash all of this is going to end up costing us and also in terms of our reputation as a place free from corruption and where justice actually exists in accordance with the three dictionary definitions I listed at the start of this blog.

So far this lot has cost us all the time keeping David in jail for 13 years; all the costs of Crown opposing his appeals along the way and the major expenses leading up to and including the appeal to the Privy Council all of which I gather has cost us well in excess of $3M and then we have just forked out the better part of half a million for the report from Ian Binnie and now Little Bo Tox wants to enrich even more of her lawyer mates at our expense before ultimately we will be enforced to pay David out at least a million bucks.

So what does justice really mean in New Zealand given this scenario? Well it means that justice is when the wrong guy gets sent to prison for 13 years, then spends several more years trying to appeal his unsafe conviction and several more years battling for compensation, while the nation foots a bill for what will probably be the thick end of $5-$6M and those responsible for all this expense – the incompetent/crooked cops, various gold-digging lawyers and the Munter of Just-Is walk away scot free.

I must contact the compilers of the Oxford Dictionary and get them to add that definition and put in brackets (NZ).

We’re shifting those bloody deck chairs again

While it is true you can prove anything you like with statistics; plain ordinary numbers are a little harder to argue with if they are presented in context.

One such number that caught my eye this week and nearly caused it to pop out was the number of people who committed criminal offences (additional to those they were already facing) while on bail. I knew it would be a lot because many of us have banged our heads against the wall when yet another limp wristed judge allows yet another crazed psychopath the freedom to commit even more heinous crimes against our society.

However I was not ready for the fact that over the period 2006-2010 inclusive, almost 70,000 such slimeballs committed new crimes while on bail and 44 of those involved either murder or manslaughter. That’s an average of 14,000 bail breaching criminals each year, nine of whom (on average) kill somebody while they are on bail.

A further flick through the figures which Granny Herald obtained under the Official Information Act reveals a total of more than 7000 offences that could generally fall under the banner of assault; over 1100 involving, such acts as kidnapping, harassment and threatening behaviour and a further 763 sexual offences. Just think how many people have had their lives ruined by these poor judicial decisions.

It is important to remember that in 2008 the bail laws were ‘tightened’, which goes to prove once more that it is the judges that need to be changed and not the laws. Having said that; the excuse that is often tendered by judges is that they are bound by such Acts as the Sentencing Act and the Bail Act. This is correct of course, but too often they are not fully using the powers available to them under either Act.

The Bail Act definitely needs some tweaking though, and don’t hold your breath for Judith Collin’s much heralded Bail Amendment Act to rectify that. A look through that proposed piece of legislations uncovers only one clause that could realistically be called an improvement in keeping the public safe. That sole beacon (or should I say single Beehive match power) of hope is what is proposed as the new section 9A in the Bail Act. “In deciding whether or not to grant bail to a defendant to whom this section applies or to allow the defendant to go at large, the need to protect the safety of the public and, where appropriate, the need to protect the safety of any particular person or persons are the primary considerations.

That sounds promising, but don’t get too excited because apart from that the remainder of the changes are so insignificant as to be almost invisible. The basic thrust of the Act still seems to be to avoid holding anyone in custody.

A casual reading of the Bail Act can be misleading because there are a number of sections headed Restrictions on bail if...... Each one of these begins by listing offences that qualify the defendant under this section to have their option of bail restricted, until you read down a few subsections and find the following “No defendant to whom this section applies may be granted bail or allowed to go at large except by order of a High Court Judge or a District Court Judge.” This is of course a no-brainer and we all figured out that neither I nor you nor the dustman could actually grant bail. We are further enlightened in each of these sections by the following subsection: “No defendant to whom this section applies may be granted bail or allowed to go at large unless the defendant satisfies the Judge that bail or remand at large should be granted.”

That is also no surprise to anyone, but the significance of it is that for every clause that appears to restrict the right to bail these two sub-sections are added which opens a door we are supposed to have been fooled into thinking had just closed. The bright shiny new ‘future’ Bill sponsored by Little Bo Tox removes none of these so it effectively will bring no change at all.

There is still a default situation for those under 20 to be granted bail unless a really good case can be made for not doing so. I can only assume that in either instance they would have to make a really, really good case considering how easily Judge David McNaughton found it to release Akshay Anand Chand on bail after he had kidnapped and threatened the life of Christie Marceau. McNaughton’s clumsy act led directly to the death of Christie Marceau at the hands of Chand.

Much of the PR associated with the new Bail Amendment Act centres on what is being pitched as a fundamental change surrounding the granting of bail to persons charged with serious violent or sexual offences. The amendment means that instead of the cops having to show why someone should be held in custody, the accused has to satisfy the judge why he should be allowed out. The track record of our judges so far doesn’t really fill me with hope based on this wimpy bit of legal verbiage and I am sure it will be business as usual.

So why do judges grant bail to dangerous bastards and put us al at risk? Because they can and there ain’t nothin’ we can do about it.

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.

I spy in my little Sky something beginning with ‘C’

Ain’t private enterprise wonderful? Actually, yes it is, in its purest form, when an enterprising citizen sets up a business to supply a useful good or service to a willing public.

However it begins to take on a far less sweet and pleasant odour when it gets too big for its boots and thinks it deserves consideration over the needs of the majority of us. While it is nothing new to learn that ‘big business’ is usually in a position to gain concessions from politicians that serve only them (and possibly the pollies as well); the current dirty deal being considered with SkyCity is something new.

What is new about it might only be the fact that we all know about it. Most of those opposed to Jianqi’s offer to change gambling laws to suit the casino in return for them building a convention centre are appalled we could be auctioning our laws for some mythical windfall for the City of Sailors. Personally, I would be extremely surprised if this was a first. However I would think it is the first time anyone has been so blatantly obvious about it. And I don’t see that as a matter of ‘transparency’ (the latest buzzword of the conversationally challenged).

Instead I see this as further evidence of the utter contempt in which Jianqi and his overpaid and under-skilled gang hold the voters of Aotearoa. Six months ago they won an election. Well when I say they won an election, I guess the word ‘won’ needs some clarification.

Under our electoral rules they gathered more seats (59) than any other single party. However as there are 121 seats in our Parliament they did not win the majority of them and they needed the electorate seats of coalition partners United Fiasco and the Actors to reach a one seat majority. Furthermore if we turn our attention to their percentage of the party votes cast we can see that 47.31 percent is not a majority either and even adding in the pathetic contributions from the aforementioned ‘collision’ partners that still only gets them to 48.98 percent. It is only by adding the Maori vote in that this unholy cabal makes it over the 50 percent line (by a whole 0.41 percent. Now that’s hardly the stuff of blank chequebooks and unlimited mandates for one’s entire policy.

But back to the issue at hand.

Paperwork has emerged showing that on the strength of this ‘win’ or ‘mandate’ or ‘travesty’ depending on your viewpoint, Jianqi saw fit to order officials to cease work on plans for a major convention centre in the City of Seals and advise himself (at least he was telling somebody!) to chase SkyCity to build one for us instead.

This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if it weren’t for the fact our laws seem to be up for auction in return. The National Disgrace is quite prepared to alter gambling laws which would allow SkyCity to put in bigger better faster and greedier gambling facilities. This is an interesting policy in the light of an oft mentioned mantra that our legislation is supposed to be some kind of sinking lid on gambling and a disincentive to the unlimited greedy growth plans of the casino barons.

There is another aspect to this barrel of rotten fish that should also be of concern to us. It is easy to imagine SkyCity had special treatment over this matter. Consider the following:

1.      Ministry officials began a feasibility study on the proposed convention centre in August 2009.

2.      In the same month Ministry officials heard of SkyCity proposals to expand their facilities and Jianqi ordered them to stop work until he had heard more about what SkyCity was planning.

3.      At their AGM in October 2009, SkyCity chairman Rod McGeoch told shareholders the company’s relationships with Government were as good as they had ever been and that he now had opportunities to meet high ranking officials and cabinet Ministers. He added that situations like that were changing how the company was seen by key influencers.

4.      At the same meeting Mr McGeoch said SkyCity wanted changes to the Gambling Act because it barred them from expanding their casino activities. He said the Act should take account of the contribution the casino industry makes to employment and tourism.

5.      A valuable piece of background information here is that SkyCity employ the services of Mark Unsworth who is a professional lobbyist and one of only about a dozen such people who can walk into Parliament whenever they like to see Cabinet Ministers and officials on behalf of their clients.

6.      On November 4, 2009 Jianqi had dinner with SkyCity bosses and where he discussed the convention centre and they talked about the possibility of relaxing the gaming laws for SkyCity. Key says he was relaxed about this because it was a way to get the convention centre without spending any Government money.

7.      In March 2010 Cabinet called for expressions of interest for the building of the convention centre and decided the feasibility study with Auckland Council for the centre and for which a budget of $250,000 had already been approved must stop.

8.      Over the next nine months or so the Ministry of Economic Destruction spends $277,698 on legal fees and various (no doubt useless) reports vaguely connected to the project.

9.      In June 2011 it was announced SkyCity would be building the $350M centre contingent upon gaming laws being changed to suit them along with a further ten year extension to their gaming licence.

It certainly seems like nobody else got a look in and it appears pretty certain the favourite was picked long before the race began and it appears the punters are the ones that are being asked to jump over the fences while the horse just ties on a really big feed bag.

An interesting aside to this that I discovered while researching this blog (yes, I do actually check stuff), was that when SkyCity applied for permission to new gaming tables and machines to ‘fund the building of its new convention facilities’ (that sounds like a familiar turn of phrase); the Chair of the Casino Control Authority who ruled in favour of them was Judith Collins, our current Minister for something or other quite major. She agreed with them that it would have a positive effect on tourism, employment and economic development. Now where have I heard that phrase before? Spooky, eh?

You see there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Or put another way; “Lot 23 the New Zealand Gaming Act, now who’ll give me an opening bid of $350 million?”