Posts by Tom Semmens
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Yet, as Slarty pointed out, it will result in a net loss to the public coffers. So it's not terribly worthwhile for the taxpayer.
True. But since when were the plod ever interested in anything beyond their own narrow operational imperatives?
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After 12 noon, until say 4am. Once it's 5am, early risers are starting to get up and it's actually morning (as compared to 3am, which is still 'last night'), no more of that thanks.
The previous night doesn't finish until you go home. This is a well established phenomena.
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Interestingly, the crowd outside Spy Bar is different.
Bless.
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Under the Proceeds of Crime Act, the police stand to reap quite a sum of money from the nationwide franchise. Beyond reasonable doubt might not work for the criminal charges, but a balance of probabilities threshold will allow the police to pillage land, plant, equipment, homes and bank accounts. Welcome to a new form of revenue plundering that makes speed cameras look good.
The deputy police commissioner was quite explicit about this on checkpoint last night. To paraphrase, he said that this legislation (passed around two years ago) together with it's lowered evidence thresholds now made this sort of operation worthwhile for the police.
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At the height of all this silliness, we sometimes wouldn't even go out until 4am. Our favourite bar didn't really get cranking until 6.
You know what is going to happen? The club will "close" at 4am. The staff and bouncers will clear out anyone who isn't vouched for by the boss, staff or a regular. Once all the outsiders have been evicted and the front door safely secured, the party will start up again.
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It then offers several scenarios where the line is not so clear:
There is nothing new here. To my mind these are social issues that should be of no interest to law makers, not technology or legal ones.
It is up to you to protect your privacy as much as possible. Viz, I never discuss my personal or immediate family life online and I have a strict no photos policy when I am out on the rantan and the people with the cameras show up. I also carefully manage my facebook profile, privacy settings & friends. My yardstick is to ensure nothing appears there that I wouldn't want my mother reading. To me these measures are simple prudence, like not wandering around naked with the curtains open.
You have to be a bit tougher online though. If you have friends who are serially indiscrete idiots and/or say stupid shit then de-friend them immediately, and tell them why. Most people actually understand.
Problem solved.
Why the law commission has to get involved beats me.
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And the decline of NZ rugby continues at an alarming rate... Our Super teams teams are so poorly coached compared to the top Aussie and South African teams one scarcely knows where to begin in recounting our failures... No wonder the All Blacks start so slowly these days, they are coming from shambolic coaching environments.
Where is the accountability at the mangement level of the game for this coaching disaster??
What have Mitchell, Gatland and Deans got in common? Answer: They are all better coaches than the boozos running the Hurricanes, Highlanders (a bloody Australian, for God's sake!), Blues and Chiefs. We produce plenty of players, but none seem to be kicking on. Why not? What role in this non-performance does Neil Sorenson (head of professional development at the NZRFU) and the Super Coaches play? How is Sorenson's performance measured? We all know that Colin Cooper hasn't produced a decent result (dispite having arguably the most talented pool of players in New Zealand to pick from) for years, why is it he has been allowed to linger on until a time of his choosing to depart? Who is to blame for the failure of N.Z. rugby to produce a single new genuine star in the two-three seasons?
What would Alex Furguson make of it all?
Who should be held responsible for New Zealand now having precisely one good, international quality coach left in the country?
Who shall replace Graheme Henry post 2011? Everyone knows Steve Hansen is a poor international coach, yet it seems that the medicocre "muggins turn" culture pervading the NZRFU will probably see him get the nod as AB coach in 2011.Where is the NZRFU's coaching development?
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Anyone else blanch at radio news reports this morning of (for the first time, we were informed by RNZ) "uniformed school children marching with veterans?"
If you peer into the pre-dawn shadows of that sickening sight it wouldn't have been hard to see the grim reaper chuckling happily away to himself as he sharpened his scythe.
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You know, we live in a society starved of spirituality and ignorant of religion. So what do people do? They create pagan substitutes to fill the void.
This Sunday we'll all be able to behold the extraordinary spectacle of a self-avowed secular society shuffling off en masse at dawn to chosen sacred places (some of which will have temples built thereon), where priests will lead them in religious chants and arcane ritual as modern New Zealand engages in it's own peculiar form of ancestor worship.
And that illustrates the real problem with religion - the intolerance of heretical dissent by the true believers.
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There seems to me to be a very good chance the club itself will fold. And I see their lead conspirator in the fraudulent behaviour is now head of the Melbourne Rebels Super 15 expansion team, surely he cannot carry on in that role.