Posts by Nick D'Angelo
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
__Quote, "I tell you what, we are martial arts people, we know how to defend ourselves - a chair, a dustbin -anything can be a weapon"__
hilarious, and tragic.
But can you blame them? The Asian community are seen as easy pickings in South Auckland so I can understand why someone is keen to re-establish the idea that all Asians are Ninja Masters who can kill with their bare hands.
-
In fact the more I think about it what a fucking sick thing to say. No wonder the girl doesn't to come forward with a formal complaint can you imagine the shit she'd have to put up with in court?
Yes, but that's quite possibly the plan. It's the Mugabe Method: keep laying on the intimidation until finally the other party decides it's just not worth it.
How long before someone says 'I wish these allegations had bee brought before the court, because as things stand there's still a cloud hanging over some of our lads and that's not fair'.
-
I've just come back from the future I can tell you it's great*. Everyone downloads music digitally and if you want the packaging you print it out and construct it yourself (but that's really just the old farts, the kids just download). All downloads are DRM but they're as cheap as chips. And because you can't copy the files you can try-before-you-buy. The download is free for 10 days, by which time you either love it or hate it. If you love it and want to keep it you pay, but it's less than the cost of a text on your mobile phone (not that anyone actually texts anymore).
The upshot is that kids have like a gazillion songs downloaded. There's also like half a gazillion Web Channels meaning you can watch your favourite bands performing live on your iMagewall anytime you want. Even buskers have a weblink, and take online donations.
*Once you get used to the idea that NewsCorp owns Microsoft and Google. And that the music player is a nanobot device wired to your brain. It's one of many implants we've come to accept as necessary.
-
(Yikes, a whole page of comments added while constructing mine above.)
I wanted to add another angle: if the hoi polloi are so keen to blame this woman (18?) because she should have known better then ...
Should we also tell our daughters to STFU when they come home from the School Disco crying because instead of getting their 'First Kiss' they got felt up roughly and forced to provide hand relief? Should we tell them that if you want/agree to kiss a boy then don't be surprised if he wants and demands more?
I'd love to see Michael Laws (who has daughters) respond to that scenario.
-
My impression, from conversations during the weekend, is that most people, understandably, feel they don't know exactly what happened, but that whatever took place was not good.
And despite nothing you've said changing (ie no new facts have emerged), the buzz this morning on talkback seems to be: that she jolly well should have known what she was in for going back to his room and she shouldn't be crying now. Michael Laws even wondered aloud if this case had 'a touch of the Louise Nichols about it'.
And yet the first 3 pages of discussion here on PAS are no more enlightened (thank you Deborah and Lucy for resetting the course). Everyone chiming in with an opinion based on half baked 'knowledge'. The only fact we know is that we don't know any facts. And getting 'fact's via the UK press/tabloids should be avoided at all costs.
If I meet a female air steward in a bar and go back to her hotel room I am more than likely expecting to have sex with her. I'm not expecting to have the rest of the flight crew watching while we do it, join in, and then abused when I protest I'm not up for all this. I don't expect to have my drink spiked or be given drugs in order to induce me to blow/fck the flight crew. All I wanted was to have sex with an Air Hostess, so what did I do wrong? Why am I being villified?
(My apologies to any Air Crew offended for using them as an illustration)
-
Talkback callers would be starved and frozen in antarctic concentration camps. Provided with no food or adequate shelter, but a computer and telephone so that they broadcast and blog the story of their slow and painful death. Pour encourager les autres
Sorry, I don't speak French so I missed that bit.
What is PAS but online talkback? There are a host of blog forums just as fascist as talkback radio, so why not deal to them too?
I don't get why people hate talkback radio so much. If you don't like the calls either switch off or start your own station (as Air America did). At least on Talkback they limit the callers to one call per day, unlike PAS where we get [insert name of commenter who always disagrees with you the most] all the blardy time.
We had a couple of local businessmen bitching in the paper the other day about the council's plan to remove two parking spaces (count 'em, two) to put in a bus stop. They seemed to think that their business was contingent on people being able to park right outside their shop.
Ditto for Auckland's High Street retaillers. Hence no widened footpaths, but plenty of 10 minutes parks. Makes no sense ...
there are certainly some types of retailer who absolutely require that their customers be able to get moderately convenient access by motorcar.
so they should rent premises with that access, not expect ratepayers to provide it for them out front. One has no rights to the roadway out front, that's why we build garages, or park down the road cos those bastard renters next door got home before us ...
-
In the end, what can be a half-hour journey took 70 minutes and cost $90
It'll take slightly longer but for that price I can fly from Venice to Paris. (Yes, it's a super cheapie but it's mad innit?)
Maxx have recently announced new bus schedules that can get you to the Auckland Airport but like yourself I really do prefer a taxi to take me straight there, instead of fiddling around catching airport buses/transfers. But you never quite get to go straight there do you?
And the problem won't be solved by a train link, as some are pushing for. Whilst for me a taxi into Britomart will be much cheaper, it's not really going to help those on the North Shore, or outer suburbs.
</sigh> If only we had Wellington's foresight in establishing a proper train network all those years ago ...
-
People are assuming that if the police charged in unarmed at first opportunity, he'd have lived -- but that's really not clear.
True (that it's not a given). If I seem stridently Anti-Cop on this issue I'm not. But I think there are valid questions raised, and I look forward to both the Coroners report and any inquiry/review of Police SOP.
And a conviction of the killer(s). -
Unsaid: that that might have been what encouraged DC Taylor to think he could go around protocol and approach the kid directly. Taylor's colleagues, the poor bastards, had to look at his dead body lying outside the house for hours afterwards until the subsequent standoff ended.
Since there have been a few mentions of DC Taylor in this thread as an example of why the police shouldn't rush in when a gunman is involved, lets take a minute to review that case (courtesy of Crime.co.nz - hence the flowery prose). The bold highlights are mine.
__5 July 2002 began like most other day for Detective Constable Duncan Taylor. Saying a quick good-bye to his wife and their 11-month-old son, Campbell, he dashed out the door and was gone. Later that day while enforcing a protection order at a Rongotea farmhouse, he was shot in the head and chest and died instantly.__
Detective Constable’s Duncan Taylor and Jeanette Park were following a young local resident by the name of Daniel Luff, to the Taipo Rd farmhouse. When Luff lept out of his vehicle with a stolen, high-powered rifle, Detective Taylor tried to stop the young man.
Meanwhile, the owners of the farmhouse, Robert & Christine Cocker were at home with one of their daughters, Stephanie. Stephanie and Daniel Luff had dated for several months previously and the young man had not taken it well when Stephanie had tried to finish the relationship. The protection order had been taken out only two weeks before, when again Luff had arrived at the farm with a firearm and had threatened to kill himself.
When Stephanie saw her ex boyfriend arrive she hid, then escaped out the window and took refuge at a neighbour’s house. Her parents then barricaded themselves into a part of the house where the young gunman couldn’t reach them.
Detective Taylor got out of the police car and confronted the youth. Daniel Luff then shot the Detective in the head and the chest at point blank range. As he lifted the firearm to shoot at Taylor’s partner, Jeanette Park he smirked and fired 3 times. While trying to flee the scene Detective Park received a shot to the thigh, and felt one narrowly miss her head, leaving her to drag herself 700m to call for help. Meantime Luff broke into the house and refused to come out.
When the call came in to the armed offenders, Detective Sam Hansen was one of the first on the scene. As he and the dog handler pulled up along side the ambulance he had no idea that the officer being treated was his wife, Jeanette. They carried on towards the Taipo Rd farmhouse where Duncan’s body still lay. A few moments later Hansen was called back to accompany Jeanette to the hospital.
The siege carried on for the next 4 hours, with Daniel Luff refusing to come out or to let anyone check the condition of the Duncan Taylor. There were more shots fired but eventually the youth was gassed out of the house and police arrested him with the help of a police dog.
Although the siege was over, the man known as a gentle giant lay dead at the scene for almost 24 hours before his body was returned to his wife and son.
Lets pause to acknowledge the heinous nature of this crime and DC Taylor's efforts to intervene ...
++++
To continue: how does this compare with the Manurewa liquor store robbery? With all due respect to DC Taylor and his family; he made an error in confronting a person with a gun, mental issues, and a Protection Order against him. Taylor was obviously trying to do the right thing (Taylor knew Luft and thought he could talk him down) but clearly it was not the right course of action. So I'm glad the Police have now established protocols to prevent similar instances occurring. But a gunman fleeing a liquor store is not the same as a known offender entering premises with a weapon and prior bad acts.
I'm also sure Taylor knew the risk he was facing in confronting Luft, but did it anyway because he knew there were others in the house about to suffer. His actions were clearly heroic.
-
Like others, you seem to be looking at this with the misapprehension that the reason the police waited was to avoid having to face the gunman.
Not me. I just thought it could have taken less time for the Police to ascertain the gunman had fled. Given your scenario (gunman could still have been inside the shop) shouldn't the Police have waited until a remote controlled robotic unit arrived? Because I don't think bursting in with a bullet proof vest would have offered much protection in such close quarters, especially since the psychotic killer inside was probably holed up behind some big steel fridges with the lights out, waiting to cap some m'f'ing pigs as payback for having his Youth Gang Bandana confiscated in an earlier shakedown by a Team Policing Unit.
That completely exonerates caution on the part of the police, and justifies any decision to want to be armed before going inside.
Shouldn't there be an 'IMO' in there??