Posts by Emma Hart
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Emma, I'm not sure how CCTV helps
In the Mellory Manning case, it would have given them footage of her getting into the car of the man who killed her. They used the footage they did have, of what they'd worked out from interviewing other sex workers was probably that car, but it was taken from up the road and round the corner and was bugger-all use.
Also, if you've decided, coldly and pre-meditatedly, that you're going to kill a sex worker, would you not be a little concerned if she was standing under a security camera?
I know, "surveilance is bad" and all that, but it was the Prostitutes' Collective who asked for the cameras. They believed it would make them safer. Sue disagreed: she felt that, for the sake of the prostitutes, the law needed reviewing, and tighter regulation set up - basically, to get the workers off the streets. That attitude is hardly exlcusive to Chch councils, or to conservatives.
This was raised during the Ipswich killings in England. Because street prostitution is illegal, prostitutes avoided areas with security cameras, pushing them into isolated areas and making them more vulnerable. What we've learned (and NZ has an awful lot to show England about sex work, it's just that nobody will listen) is that you can't expect workers to move to the cameras, you have to put the cameras in the established red light districts.
The second was the almost complete lack of brown faces, of any kind - I don't mean this as a perpetuation of stereotyping, but just as an observation - even the roadworkers, rubbish men and dairy owners were white.
I've just moved from Upper Riccarton to Bromley, and expected to find it disconcertingly white over here. But even here, where I'm no longer living in an area that's about evenly pakeha-polynesian-Asian, that's not true.
the almost complete ignorance of even basic New Zealand geography outside of Canterbury (an inability to place Hamilton on a map for instance), and a fervent belief that Christchurch was the greatest city and best place to live in New Zealand, despite never having lived anywhere else.
This is not one I've run across before. Chch is, after all, a university town. Most of my friends weren't born here, and about half the people I went to uni with now live and work in Wellington. The same would be true of my partner's workmates - most of them aren't originally from Christchurch. Perhaps we live unusually rich and varied lives.
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Whereas if it'd been a Rangi Ruru girl murdered and not a prostitute, doubtless she'd have been all for them and aghast that the council hadn't installed them much earlier.
Oh Grant, they already have them on the Strip.
(Apologies to any Rangi girls I may have offended.)
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JT, it's the same Sue Wells who was horrified by the idea of putting CCTV cameras on Manchester St after the murder of Mellory Manning and considered it a waste of rate-payers' money. But again, I used to know her in Real Life (well, the theatre, that's practically the same, right?) and we got on very well.
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And as for the media, it's very much like the lagging Auckland coverage
To give them their due, The Press seem to be doing pretty well. Those stories aren't being picked up nationally, though. The one about Nick Smith's brother I linked to got a brief airing on TV3 last night, but without any mention of the contradictions (Smith says he didn't know about it until recently, yet the charges go back four years. Even I'm more in touch with my family than that) or the fabulous 'just let the man keep talking' quotes. For non-link-followers, let me reproduce the money quote here:
Tim Smith said he used more colourful language.
"I told them (ECan) their organisation was bloody hopeless and they were all useless bastards who should be sacked," he said.
"I also told them that with some luck my brother and Rodney Hide would do something about it. "
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I watched about 10 min of a show (ok I admit it, it was Master Chief)
Normally I like to leave obvious typos alone, but this is just SO COOL.
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Water, water, water is the major mayoral issue.
Water's been an issue here for a depressingly long time. Every time someone says something like "Why don't Christchurch people get upset about this, why don't they protest?" I wonder if Sam Mahon's off somewhere quietly topping himself.
Remember it was about 10 Mayors who wrote to that nice Smith man (as he had asked them to do) in order to sink the elected ECan.
That whole thing just keeps getting dodgier and dodgier. It appears there's been some of that time-travelling from the other thread going on, where stupid Linear Time is making events happen in the wrong order.
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Sir Kerry Burke?
There'd be some rich fecking irony in electing Kerry Burke that I could really get on board with...
I have this awful feeling though, that I might end up voting negatively for the first time - voting for the person I think has the best chance of beating Parker (possibly Anderton) rather than the person I think would do the job best (possibly Liz Gordon, but don't hold me to that).
Sue Wells
is from Timaru. Just sayin'.
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Dya want Banksy or Harvey?
Yeah, if you're giving away mayors we'll have Harvey. by now I'm pretty sure he's not a a giant invisible rabbit.
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was Vicki Buck really as great as everyone seems to make her?
*looks shifty* Vicki Buck was at FooCamp, and everyone seemed very impressed by her. Down to earth, no airs, ready to listen. Also she was integrally involved in setting up the special-character school my children attend.
My partner did have a run-in with her while she was mayor, however, which doesn't show her in the best light. He was working customer service in a video store, she used the phrase "Don't you know who I am?"
We're cool in Wellington? Cos for mayor we picked the person who managed to get her photo on the front page of the paper standing next to Peter Jackson?
As long as "cos" means "in spite of the fact that", then yes.
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therefore Emma has been corrupted by corporate overlords to try and deceive me that the sky is blue"
I would totally do this, but just for LOLs.