Posts by Kyle Matthews
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The Tuhoe (or the media on their behalf) are proudly pointing out that they didn't sign the treaty, so if the refuse to be bound by it where it suits them, then it seems hypocritical to to use the structures that the treaty has engendered to their benefit.
From a perception perspective... yes OK.
From a practical perspective? I dunno.
It's not the treaty that gives the crown sovereignty over Tuhoe people and their land. The treaty was the first step, and effort was made to get as many Maori chiefs to sign it, but sovereignty came by other means. It was an act of the NZ parliament passed shortly after the treaty, claiming all the territory for the crown. It always seemed strange to me that you could go to a set of islands, set up a parliament subject to the crown, and then pass an act claiming sovereignty over the islands, and that this would have force under international law, but apparently it works.
One thing that people often forget about the treaty, is that it conveys additional rights to Maori, in return for which Maori recognised the Queen as their sovereign etc. Those rights - I'll paraphrase - undisturbed ownership of land, forests, fisheries, and taonga - are on top of law that applies to everyone else. How much those additional rights have been enacted in New Zealand...
But, obviously Maori, as subjects of the crown, have as minimum, the same rights under law as everyone else. Generally every act of the NZ parliament applies to them as much as it does to every non-Maori. Some of the laws apply a lot more to them obviously.
The exception (I'm answering my own question here eventually) is that laws have been passed setting up things such as the Native Land Court, the Waitangi Tribunal etc. So where certain rights have applied to Maori, they've been dealt with differently. Often as a result Maori have got completely screwed. But my point is, these courts/tribunal etc, stem from the sovereignty of the NZ parliament, not from the Treaty of Waitangi, which has never been accepted as any sort of constitutional document.
So if a Tuhoe person went to make a claim about land taken off them illegally in a historical sense, they would either be sent to a native land court of the waitangi tribunal. How they'd deal with the latter I don't know. But I'm not sure if there would be another court that they could take historical land grievances etc to. I would presume the high court or the supreme court wouldn't hear the case, though it does get involved in tribunal hearings in other ways.
So I think it's simplistic to say that just because they didn't sign the Treaty, they shouldn't use the Tribunal. While the Tribunal uses the treaty, I presume it also uses international and local law. And it's not a court, it just makes recommendations.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, though I studied a little law in this area some time ago. I might be misremembering it, or taking it too far).
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People are killed in cars all the time, but the benefit of having them outweighs that.
I'm trying to find an argument which links gambling to cigarettes. In theory at least, I would like cigarettes to be made completely illegal, on the basis that they provide no benefits at all, either to the user or others, are addictive, and cause a great deal of harm, both to the user and people around them.
Yet I'll admit that people getting enjoyment from gambling provides individual enjoyment (I don't think there's any community benefit from pokie machines at all, the community funds could easily come from taxation would would be much more sensible, like Smokefree funding).
That probably makes it more like alcohol. Does individual harm, and harm to the community, but has benefits for the individual. And I wouldn't want alcohol banned.
I'm going to say at present that I haven't found my argument, and put to the side the possibility that I'm a hypocrite in favour of alcohol but not other 'vices'.
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As a practising clean-freak, I am fascinated. What are these mysterious "blue things", and how can I buy one?
Umm, nappy liners, those are the words I couldn't find yesterday. Look like blue and white chux cloths, but they fall apart and I think you can flush them as they biodegrade.
I'll ditto what Malcolm said about the sleep book. Compulsory reading, I wish I know now about getting babies to sleep by themselves when I went through child number 1.
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Moana Jackson, who is Ngati Kahungunu, has resigned his position as a Patron at the Royal New Zealand Police College in protest at the abuse of the human rights of innocent bystanders during the police operation in Tuhoe on October 15th and succeeding days.
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So designing a pokie machine to be psychologically addictive, knowing that some relatively set proportion of it's users will be directly harmed by that designed addictiveness is, therefore, wrong?
That's an interesting perspective Tim, I hadn't thought about it from the creation/provision of the machine before.
Presumably we could still say that the amount of harm that you are creating is counteracted by the the amount of pleasure/fun that you are creating. Or make a judgement as to whether that is the case.
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Umm, if that made no sense, pea pods here
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Ah, just wait until Wee Rodders is a petulant, dirty teenager then threaten to e-mail this post to all his friends.
That suggestion is 100 per cent pure genius, Craig. In fact, I'm printing out a hard copy for my future blackmailing needs as I type these words...
Neither of those will work. They'll just look at you and go "Email!? Man, that's so 2007. None of my friends will look at anything unless it's hologram/ingested 3d viewer/data projected onto the surface of Mars."
Oh, yes. We're experimenting with cloth nappies at the moment because they're cheaper (so far, so good). But we're certainly not philosophically wedded to them at the expense of turning Bob-the-baby the colour of a baboon. How alarming that must have been!
Can I take the time to heartily recommend 'pea pods'. My first child, we did cloth nappies for a couple of years. 2nd child is now 1, and we're just close to growing out of her second set of pea pods. Her next set, the large ones, will see her through toilet training.
Pea pods are shaped outers into which you insert the absorbent inner. The outers have a bunch of domes across, so they cover a fair range of sizes.
Once they're used, you throw them straight into the washing machine (no soaking, bleach) with all your other clothes, you just need to use one of those blue things to catch the brown stuff. They're a reasonable investment ($20 each, so $200 for a set of 10, and then same again for medium and large) but no folding, scraping, bleaching, and they can be reused by another baby, no part of them is disposable. As well as very easy, they're the best environmental solution I've found, as most bleaches aren't exactly 'green'.
They're very absorbent, but you can add more of the middle stuff for a night nappy etc.
You can pick them up on trademe second hand for about $8-$10. They're truly wonderful and I wouldn't go any other way now.
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The world shouldn't revolve around junkies. A caring world will help them out, within reason. But for god's sake let people who aren't junkies, the majority, get on with their shit.
I presume that's not your argument.
I can see a valid argument that things that are addictive shouldn't be banned as long as they're not too bad, or only affect a small proportion of the population in an adverse way.
But an argument that a substance/activity shouldn't be banned no matter how detrimental it is on society? No matter what?
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Yeah, but that booze probably cost them only $1-2. Why do they give away the free drinks? Because they want to keep you there gambling ...
Actually we paid for the alcohol. I'm not sure someone who bets one nickel at a time on the blackjack machine is enough of a high roller to earn the freebies.
Kyle: I meant that the revenues from pokies should be forced down to match those from a pool table, not the other way.
Yeah I got that. Just laying down some aggression so no one swings the other way.
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I'm pretty sure they'd take my bet, under similar circumstances. ;)
Last year I went to a casino in Niagara Falls, with the idea of seeing how much fun I could have for $20 Canadian. The cheapest table I could find had a $5 minimum bet, and I figured I wasn't going to have much fun if I lost my $20 on one hand.
So I went and looked at the pokies. I've never understood pokies in NZ, they're all grapes and cards and bananas and I have no idea how you win or lose. Actually, I have a good idea how to lose, just put money into it and push the button.
I found a blackjack machine and played that happily for an hour and left with some change and about $10 of alcohol inside me.