Posts by Kyle Matthews
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A deeply unworthy thought -- and at an intellectual level I know that it's indefensible -- but that was, I'm afraid, my very first reaction.
I knew someone whose parents came from 'British stock', and didn't like Kiwi English. They'd talk normally until they got into some semi-formal situation - talking to someone they didn't know on the phone, dealing with someone at a counter.
Then proper English would come to the fore and they sounded like one of the royals. It was terribly embarrassing snobbery.
And I knew another guy who was a radical lefty. He was rather white, and talked like it, until he was hitting up some Maori to come on a protest or to express solidarity with them. Then all of a sudden he was all bro and cuzzie, choice and Kia ora!
I don't mind language changing, in fact I get annoyed at people getting annoyed at how language changes. But I find just as annoying people who pretend to be something they're not through the way they talk.
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I once heard from a police officer who'd been involved in some research about juries.
They went back in after verdicts were given and interviewed jurors individually and asked them to construct a story of what happened in relation to the crime.
They found that often not only had the juror mangled/misunderstood the stories of both the prosecution and the defense, but often came out with a story which was impossible based on the evidence presented. It was an argument for judge trials if ever I'd heard one.
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Quote of the week from that graffiti artist's response:
so concerned with fences, i think we forget whats behind them
Buy that young man a spray can, hope he spreads that message around.
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that should be "hopefully involves people who to some extent..."
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Quite possibly. I guess I was mostly dismissive of that idea based on the particular clean slate system we have in New Zealand. A system whereby people could apply to a court to have their record expunged after a period of blameless excellence has something going for it.
Yes. I guess for a pardon you're applying to a political branch, and all the dangers that opens up. For a clean slate, you're applying to a legislative branch, and therefore hopefully avoid all the backslapping, campaign contributions, buddies, and hopefully people who to some extent get over biases for and against.
I quite like NZ's clean slate system, though I have no idea if anywhere else has a better one. Wipes out my convictions for political protesting in 1995. It wouldn't hurt to have more serious convictions capable of being wiped, but there would presumably have to be a process, and therefore a cost. Either the state meets that, or we're looking at clean slates more for rich people.
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Kyle - I accept the technicality of your point but $6000 a year less of loans in no way compensates for between 4 and 8 years of adult earnings. Mature students really struggle to make ends meet. Believe me I know to my cost.
Oh yes, it's a difficult path. Often leaving a secure job to jump into nothing. Mortgage, kids, retirement to think about.
But you said they ended up with the same sized loan. They don't tend to. Their road is harder in different ways.
Please don't get into "American Studies what good is that?" It's not the subject that matters as much as the process of learning.
That will be reassuring for everyone, because American Studies is being cut at Canterbury, so everyone is going to have to find a different subject to process their learning though.
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That was my impression as well Deborah - from the little I heard I think he got off because (among other things) they couldn't be sure that the complainant hadn't given consent, but forgotten it.
OK, the old man's case was not as filthy as this one, but the principle remains. If one drinks oneself into a stupor with strangers, it's on your own head.
One would hope that if I saw someone completely smashed and took advantage of that without them giving consent, it would be on my head actually.
Barely unconscious and not capable of understanding what's going on doesn't equal "yes".
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Seems like a really good case for some sort of clean slate legislation to be honest Graeme.
He might get a pardon, but there's probably thousands of people in America who have got similarly caught by something silly they did when they were young. Do they all have to go off and fight a war and come back a hero and get lots of publicity to get a fair second shot? That's where pardons seems to lead to.
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Drunk? You were lucky. All I got was a job. And in Yorkshire, too...
You got a job and didn't get drunk after they paid you? In Yorkshire? Fer shame.
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President Bartlett commuted the sentences of 35 people
I was thinking about that episode as I started reading your piece. Ironically, the 36th person in that episode, who wasn't pardoned (and subsequently committed suicide) had (a step) parent who was major Democratic contributors. Their pardon was turned down on that basis.
The difference between TV-land and reality of course is that in reality the queue seems to be often filled with political friends and whatnot - Libby being the obvious recent candidate.
My first reaction is that I don't like the idea of pardons. It's an admission that a legal system has failed in some way. Either an (in the eyes of the pardoner) innocent person found guilty, or a guilty person over-punished. I want 'my' legal system to work so that both those things don't happen. Surely if we put in place structures which 'catch' errors at the end of the legal chain, then we're less likely to fix the legal chain so that it works properly. Pardons aren't going to necessarily be about the legal strength of your case, they're probably going to have a fair bit to do with other things - your gender, the colour of your skin, whether you have kids or other family, your background, what you end up doing in jail etc etc.
If they're about releasing guilty people... then we start to lose consistency, and what the hell are we locking up the other 99.9% of criminals for?
There's another West Wing episode where Bartlett has to consider whether to pardon a man who is being executed by the federal authorities for a drug related killing. He clearly wants to do it and tries to find a way to do so that is publicly justifiable (he ends up not pardoning him and the guy is executed). He discusses how there needs to be consistency between presidents:
We cannot execute some people and not execute others depending on the mood of the Oval Office. It's cruel and unusual.
A fair comment. I'd be much more in favour of an independent body to deal with these questions as you've suggested, innocent people get released, guilty people get the same as other guilty people who commit a crime.