Legal Beagle: Questions, but no answers, with thanks to David Simon for opening my eyes
57 Responses
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Agree - this is a great little site;
Run by volunteers - expanding and improving it under a government initiative (but retaining it as the politically neutral/volunteer run operation) would be great.
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Really this a great chance for our wonderful new fresh lefty government (yay!) to call National's bluff, to overreach themselves and push for an OIA that is so open that National cringe and wont support it!
(of course the racing industry will still have to have some secrecy carved out so that they can get Winston's support)
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The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Farrar sewer is back pumping it’s shit, and Barry Soper has got his old man lips firmly stretched around the outfall pipe as he continues his misogynistic war on the young women of this government.
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The traditional response to what is apparently an attempt by National to expose lack of experience is to drown them in information. I call it the Saddam Hussein defence.
Then you can take delight in either watching them try and digest, or pointing out when they miss salient points. Either way you win.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
I can't fix what happened in past Parliaments, but I can try to make sure it doesn't happen again!
Your post did not read like that was your intent. Instead it read as if you were supporting tit-for-tat reprisal as a behaviour appropriate and acceptable for MPs.
Your suggestion of open diaries is deeply flawed as has been pointed out - essentially it's the meta data problem.
The only real solution is for MPs in all parties to behave like responsible adults who are there to do a serious important job.
When they don't, the media needs to call them out on it and notify the public of the poor behaviour and remind the public next election.
It is NOT the oppositions job to disrupt government and an adult would know that.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
I call it the Saddam Hussein defence.
Then you can take delight in either watching them try and digest, or pointing out when they miss salient points. Either way you win.
NO
That way you lose. Because that response is exactly the same childish retaliation as National's questions.
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Tom Semmens, in reply to
NO
That way you lose. Because that response is exactly the same childish retaliation as National’s questions.
Have you seen the manufactured smear on Golriz Ghahraman? Do you really think National, arseholes like Farrar and media enablers like Soper and all the rest are interested in playing along in your game of being the scrupulous high minded adult in the room? No fucking way they are interested. These bastards are out to smear, lie, and slander their way back to the power they think is theirs as of right. And if while they are at it they can ruin some upstart little girl refugee who thought she could boss around her betters like Soper and Farrar, then that’s all good.
Politics isn’t an exercise in high minded technocrats playing the glass bead game. Maybe that is how civil servants or possibly career managerialist politicians see themselves, but politics comes with a full measure of the visceral and the tribal.If you think any different then you are naive in the extreme.
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linger, in reply to
However, if only the visceral and tribal elements are emphasised, leading to polarisation, and disaffection and alienation of voters, democracy fails.
Tricky, innit. -
Tom Semmens, in reply to
However, if only the visceral and tribal elements are emphasised, leading to polarisation, and disaffection and alienation of voters, democracy fails.
Tricky, innit.Tell that to David Farrar, who seems to think smearing Golriz Ghahraman is all in a fair days work for a mainstream right wing jerk.
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linger, in reply to
Why should that be at all surprising? The right wants to reduce participation in politics: all the more power for the 1%. Which is all the more reason the left should NOT blindly copy their playbook.
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Tell that to David Farrar, who seems to think smearing Golriz Ghahraman is all in a fair days work for a mainstream right wing jerk.
It seems Human Rights doesn't include the right to a defence
It is the process of Justice being served not the criminals crimes.Wasn't it Paula Bennett who said (effectively') :
'Some people have less human rights than others' -
Tom Semmens, in reply to
It seems Human Rights doesn’t include the right to a defence
It is the process of Justice being served not the criminals crimes.You know what has really got me hopping mad about this story though? It isn’t that Farrar and Kiwiblog is back into it’s dirty politics smear mode. it is that Barry Soper lifted the story right from Kiwiblog and ran it as a smear in the Herald. He acted as an enabler to the alt-right, and yet I bet he bitches about “fake news” all the time.
Soper has got no excuse this time round for acting as an enabler of smears. He can’t claim he didn’t know about the conveyor belt of laundered stories fed to the media via Farrar, it was all there covered in Nicky Hager’s “Dirty Politics”. Yet he chooses to run National party attack lines tonally verbatim lifted from Kiwiblog.
I don’t think it was a coincidence it was Soper who was first out of the blocks in mainstreaming a Farrar smear and I don’t think it is a coincidence the first target is a young, successful woman. His sneering tone and belittling line of questioning to Jacinda Ardern when she was made PM got him effectively name checked by Linda Clark on NatRad.
I am hopping mad that nasty, envious and misogynistic old men – yesterdays people, yesterdays stale generation – are yet again doing their level best to tear down the bright hopes of tomorrow. I am hopping mad Soper doesn’t even give a shit about being part of that smear machine. Such a gutless wonder during nine years of kissing Key’s arse as a fanboi, now he suddenly discovers his spine when the opposition is 32 year old Green woman. What an arsehole, just what an arsehole.
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I'd be more willing to take Soper & co seriously if they had actually given a rat's arse about the genocide in Rwanda while it was actually happening. When it was, you know, news.
The 1990's are effectively beyond the reach of Google, but my memory still functions. I was a member of Amnesty International, quite active at the time, and we were always trying to get the NZ media to at least mention the horrific events in "a far away country of which we know little". The Herald did carry a few pieces, but Newstalk ZB? Zilch. Mr Soper was, of course, their political reporter at the time, but was busy telling us about Tuku's underpants, or something.
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Oh, and just to note ...
You know how assorted media old-timers have been complaining about the Twitter pile-ons? (Van Beymen, Garner, Soper, even the ODT).
Well, there's one going on right now. But she's not being attacked by the "intolerant PC lefties" crowd. It's the other lot. And so our stout defenders against online bullies are ... strangely silent. Why's that, I wonder?
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Ben Austin, in reply to
Would be interesting to do a proper search through newspaper/etc records from the era. I mean I do remember it being widely reported - but did newspapers back then have as much as opinion as they do now? I don't recall
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Another day and the white male bully boy pile on continues – the dispicible Soper says in the hysterical rag he writes for
Well a series of photos have been sent to me, one showing her posing alone with a former pop singer called Simon Bikindi
Sent to you by who? Farrar? Slater? Quinn? You appalling c**t Soper.
I guess for a lazy old man in the sunset of his career this story is mana from heaven. No need to do any research or digging, the National party smear machine does it all for him, drip drip drip and he gets all his casual prejudices confirmed. Man, I am so angry right now.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
it was Soper who was first out of the blocks in mainstreaming a Farrar smear and I don’t think it is a coincidence the first target is a young, successful woman.
His sneering tone and belittling line of questioning to Jacinda Ardern when she was made PM got him effectively name checked by Linda Clark on NatRad.Which is weird when ya think that Soper is 64 and his partner Heather du Plessis-Allan is 32 (younger than the PM even!) - and in this piece he sounds supportive of young women getting ahead...
She even says this :Barry is a genuinely lovely man and people don’t always expect that because he has been around politics a long time. He teaches me all the time that kindness is more important than honesty – it’s a debate I have all the time, but he has persuaded me it is kindness.
Who knew....
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Tom Semmens, in reply to
Which is weird when ya think that Soper is 64 and his partner Heather du Plessis-Allan is 32 (younger than the PM even!) –
If you ask me that sort of age gap is quite informative of his views on women.
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Moz, in reply to
(Ian quoting) He teaches me all the time that kindness is more important than honesty
Well he's got things "more important than honesty" down pat. If only kindness got a look in.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
scrupulous high minded adult in the room
you say that like it's a bad thing
sigh
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Tom Semmens, in reply to
you say that like it’s a bad thing
sigh
It isn't a bad thing, it just isn't the way you have to play the game if you want to win.
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Haven't got a legalism to stand on...
Here is a particularly spittle-flecked diatribe!
It's as if some bony little psychic finger has been jabbing at my chest.It's hopeless for Ghahraman and fellow lawyers to argue that "human rights lawyers" might defend as well as prosecute the bad guys. This is not what the average voter would have understood.
And people who preach openness shouldn't revert to legalisms to get out of a political hole.We obviously need to get a better educated 'Average Voter' then.
More chance of that happening with this government, than the last lot. -
linger, in reply to
the way you have to play the game if you want to win
No, because if you play their game — instead of changing the rules — you still lose, and so does everyone else.
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linger, in reply to
age gap is quite informative of his views on women
i.e. happy about “young women getting ahead” as long as it’s his?
(I apologise profusely for that mental image.) -
Brent Jackson, in reply to
(Ian quoting) He teaches me all the time that kindness is more important than honesty
Well he's got things "more important than honesty" down pat. If only kindness got a look in.
He's being kind to Farrar. Much more important than honest reporting.
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