Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I'm not so sure. People have certainly been speculating that Ministers might need to give evidence, and while we don't know the exact nature of the charges, I'm not particularly sure what they could add to the case for either prosecution or defence - perhaps importantly, I don't recall any news that ministers had been interviewed - it's possible it was kept quiet (or that Field will want to call them), but if a minister was to be called by the prosecution, then that minister would have been interviewed by police already.
If the prosecution doesn't call them, then I'm sure the defense will. From memory of that summary of the Ingram Report, there's involvement from other ministers that Field will be wanting to bring to public attention, for legal and political reasons.
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At my previous house, where I had a potbelly, I used to buy a dark greeny grey cylindrical log, which games in boxes of 6 or 8 from the warehouse. I used them to get things going with the fire before moving onto coal as they caught fire well and left good embers.
Are these a brand of the pellets that are discussed here? Or was that not accidentally good use of biofuels?
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__Statements by senior coppers on the current perils facing society seem to have about as much credibility as any conservative with an opinion.__
Anyway, yes I do think Russell has a point - but at the same time, I also have a fair amount of sympathy for frontline police officers who feel as if they're bagged for policy decisions made well over their heads, and no matter what happens it's always their fault.
That's two ships passing in the night. 'Senior coppers' and 'frontline police' are by and large non-intersecting sets.
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I suspect his martyrdom or lack thereof will come down to whether he tries to play the "it's my culture!" card, as he did early on, and how much traction that gets him with Polynesian voters.
I don't have any comment on the validity of that card, though I'd be curious to see how other people in similar positions (Polynesians in position of authority) comment on it. I would hope that some would view their positions as requiring more 'mana' than what increasingly sounds like "hey, do some work on my house, I'll help get you what you want".
However I can see now the "I should have been born Polynesian so I can get bribed as part of my culture" discussions and letters to the editor and whatnot. I do so tire of "one brown person said this so I will apply it to every brown person with a broad brush" comments.
Being a little bit sleazy is like being a little bit pregnant. Just doesn't fly, or at least it shouldn't.
It's the last trimester that you shouldn't fly. Oh, not what you meant? Nevermind.
Helpfully for Field, he was cleared of any wrong-doing as a minister (that would have seen him face a potential 14 year prison term on each charge), and indeed cleared of conflicts of interest as a minister as well (I'd note too that Field was never in cabinet).
If this court case goes through, I would have thought those clearings would look pretty shabby to the public once the details of his actions have all been through the court microscope.
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I'm normally one for lots of government intervention in society, but in some economic areas I get very tired with it. Particularly a bunch of right wingers who winge about the nanny state, but then want the government to dip its oar into the economy to tweak it every which way to fix the dollar and interest rates and manufacturers and whatnot.
It's a big economy in an even bigger global pond. I personally don't feel the need to blame Cullen for how it is or isn't going, than anyone else in the world. If we're going to accept this fairly capitalist model of how economics works, you lump the good with the bad.
And don't get me started on MPs and senior economists and whatnot you rave on about NZer's fascination with owning their own home. And who all go home to their houses worth at least half a million, and their investment properties.
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For anyone with kids, tax is negative up to a much higher level than this. Working for Families benefits more than outweigh tax.
There is, as far as I know, no problem with doing both these things. Personally I like the simplicity of a lower income tax cut, possibly matched by a similar increase at the top level to stop rich people benefiting.
WfF is good, but there's a bureauracy behind it which wouldn't be required if the tax %s just changed. I guess that trades off against WfF which is more targeted.
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Kyle: www.google.com/ncr
Cheers!
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Note that Universal Search hasn't been propagated to google.co.nz yet, so you'll need to choose google.com.
Does anyone know of any easy ways to stop google.com automatically redirecting to google.co.nz? It annoys the hell out of me - if I wanted to go to the nz site, I'd type that in, surely.
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Kids in Taranaki? Fuck 'em, it'd be good for them to get out while they can and this just provides another illustration for parents as to why trying to raise teenagers in rural or semi-rural areas is a bad idea in the first place. Maybe having to drive their kids to and from all their social functions would help outline why it'd be an idea to move into a decent-sized town.
It wouldn't hurt to point out here that at least one of our 'decent sized towns' has public transport that sucks incredibly for anything involving a social life. Bigger does not magically solve the problem of having to drive your kids around.
And I don't know if public transport substantially solves problems around boy racers. Most public transport is winding up or well gone to bed by the times these late teen/early post teens are out doing their boy racer type things.
Cars as status symbols is nothing new. It was a whole thing in Happy Days so it must be real. Back in the days however it was parking that you did with your car, now it's making them go really fast and loud.
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Brendhan L's only day job in all the time I've known him has been filling in on breakfast Radio - something he only does because they know who he is through his comedy. Cal Wilson is working fulltime in comedy television in Melbourne, so handed in her Akl Mafia Membership card quite some time ago. And, for the record, Billy T has passed on, John Clarke left for Oz and has done the odd bit of work over there (quite well received, apparently) , and neither Bic Runga or Carly Binding are comedians.
Jeremy Elwood on the other hand, does voices for half the adverts on TV.
The other half are done by Craig Parker as far as I can tell.