Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Refute: The Encarta World Dictionary gives as it's second option: To deny an allegation or contradict a statement without disproving it.
If you can't rely on the people who write dictionaries to be pendants... the world really is ending.
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Yes, but WINZ and IRD fraud leads directly to money in the pocket, so signing those documents is a direct link to a crime. Removing the paragraph from that letter much less significant in terms of outcome, and no direct link to money or any benefit.
But I'm with you on the election law. I'd like to see that actually end up in the courts sometimes.
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I'm no expert on the legal definition of perverting the course of justice, so I don't know if it comes under the definition.
Things I'd want the police to pursue under that though:
Tampering with evidence.
Interfering with the jury or judge or witnesses.Those are things that definitely affect the outcome of 'justice'.
Deleting a paragraph which I'd imagine said something along the lines of "On this basis I believe he is worthy to hold a passport again for the good of his career." and then presenting the rest of the letter intact as what's essentially padding to help get the judge agree that the plea bargain that the police have already agreed to is OK? By all means, call in the Law Society, sounds like a serious professional issue, but the police?
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Any proper draft and trading system you'd never draft an older player. Gilchrist's career is running down, he's moving from one year contract to one year contract. He's experience that you can buy for a season and know what you're getting.
A draft pick means that if you want, and you don't treat the player like crap, you can have them for 5 - 10 years. Gilchrist doesn't have 5 years of top cricket left in him. It'd be a waste of a draft pick.
Same reason you wouldn't draft McCaw. You'd draft Carter so that you had control over whether he fucked off to France and got injured ruling himself out of serious test matches that are coming up. And you know he'll still be playing top rugby in 5 years, McCaw probably won't.
The most interesting drafts are expansion drafts. When the NHL expanded to 30 teams, the existing 28 teams got to protect 1 goalie, 4 defenders, and 9 forwards (I think those numbers are right). That's not even a full team. The equivalent in rugby would be saying you can only protect 10 players.
The two expansion teams then got to pick from the remaining couple of hundred (previously contacted) players and negotiate for them. Some teams offered the expansion teams future draft picks in order to get agreement that they wouldn't grab their backup goalie, their 5th defender, their 4th line center etc. Talk about a scramble.
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No it means that a lot of the things that are technically crimes never come to the attention of police, and no one cares. Someone throws a punch in a sports game and the referee deals with it. That's assault, but it's never going to be brought to the police and largely we're happy with that. Someone jumps over a fence and steals some apples off a tree is theft, also not likely to make it to the police, let alone court.
Someone takes a letter written to support a guy, removes a paragraph, and uses it for a different purpose, but still in support of the guy. The police will look at it for five minutes and decide it's not worth their time and nothing beneficial would be gained.
The reason the line "police will not investigate unless a member of the public lays a complaint" comes out so often is that police will always investigate at least if a complaint is laid. If a member of the public feels aggrieved enough to complain to the police the police will look at it as part of their service to the community.
If no one is aggrieved enough to phone up the police and say "hey, this happened..." then there is a reasonable chance (not always, domestic abuse doesn't follow this rule in the police, they'll always investigate and arrest if they can) that it has been a victimless crime.
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Women are going to feel safe because the cops pursue an altered letter used in a plea bargain which probably has made no material difference to the world, given that the police and victim already agreed with the plea?
I think police have better things to do. There are lots of laws that police don't enforce at times. It's called police discretion and it means that probably about 90% of the "crimes" that occur in New Zealand aren't prosecuted.
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Completely off topic, but Dunedin Public Address people got together again on Friday night for drinking and food. Our... 4th gathering? Good fun and Chinese food.
Paul set up an email list for Dunedinistas which anyone else in the area is welcome to subscribe to. I'm sure it'll be very low traffic, possibly notices of local events of interest, and organising more get-togethers.
Further off topic, is there a reason I haven't been able to find a PA facebook group? Beyond "there isn't one". Seemed to me like it would be a good addition parallel to the site.
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Could somebody kindly point me to panic in the media?
I don't know if it's panic. TV3 ran special 5 minute news reports at 8pm, and again at 8.30 last night. So it's not ordinary news coverage, but maybe that's fair enough.
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Meanwhile, so long as we're talking about history, the top roading police offers describes New Zealand roads as the Killing Fields since having a sense of proportions is obviously not part of the job description.
And also, surely it's the "killing tarseal". How many of the 13 people that died 'on the roads' over the weekend actually died in a field?
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I'll say it: no good has ever come from that school.
18 years and still bitter ;)