Posts by Tom Semmens
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Do we care about whether it is “advice” or “legal advice” or “procedural advice” or “interpretation advice” or “pink-with-purple patches advice”?
Next you'll be telling Graeme Edgeler it doesn't matter what order his pens are arranged on his desk.
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Hard News: Modelling Behaviour, in reply to Bart Janssen,
The public are adults, they can and want to, consider nuances and grey areas. Why not actually present a complex issue and then ask a complex question...
Because someone, somewhere, might change channels.
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You'd go a long way to find a more honest and straight up fellow IMHO than Grant Hall and I thought he did a good job with handling Duncan Garner's badgering. The saddest thing about that was some of my friends in the audience came away with the view our leading MSM is full of utter dickheads.
To my mind it was a pity the debate was limited to the self-styled "soft" drugs, because the whole sorry story of the rise and rise of methamphetamine in New Zealand is the same as the one of synthetic cannabis - substitution of a more harmful substance (P for MDMA, synthetic for "natural") when police action causes the shutting down of the preferred supply lines. Every police "victory" over MDMA importers or local cannabis growers is a defeat for the wider health of our society.
Mind you, I imagine any attempt to discuss class B drugs with Mike Sabin would be hopeless. Just BTW, isn't his daughter an TV3 news reporter?
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Andrew C,
and the officers there still, despite being repeatedly told by members of the public present that 3 stories was possible, tried really really hard to stick to the line it was only 2.
Read transportblog, with the best comment ever from Stu Donovan
on May 20, 2013 at 5:55 pm:"...does this imply that the people objecting to the 3 storey height limits, such as Auckland2040 are a bunch of uninformed snobs who don’t even know what currently exists in their own neighbourhoods..?"
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Must ask one of the party, why?
Just as long as you don’t ask Pita Sharples, he won’t have a clue why.
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It defies logic for a city to be bursting at the seams while the rest of the country seemingly empties out.
doing something about it either way requires a plan, and as their opposition to the UP and PT and any regional development plan indicates, this government is ideologically opposed to plans.
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The issue then becomes, of course, whether there are any judges in NZ with the necessary colonels…..
The way things are going, edited for truth...
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Rather like the clusterfuck that the Auckland Council’s Draft Unitary Plan is finally being recognised as being
What exactly is your beef with the DUP? It is the result of wide consultation and is being widely consulted on again. The manipulative dishonesty of it's opponents and the disingenuous outrage being generated is a poster child for why democratically elected governments increasingly seek autocratic and authoritarian governance solutions. If you genuinely consult, these days you just end up with your political opponents using the opportunity granted to them to run hysterical campaigns against you.
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Stop giving them ideas. BTW, I think we should be a republic with a written constitution. However, I think including such things as the treaty, socio-economic and community rights in a written constitution simply makes a wordy mess that locks everyone into the values and interests of a certain era. What is your worthy community right today becomes tomorrows pain in the neck right to bear arms. Just enshrine the key legislation that guards the liberty of the subject and the mechanics of peroguing the house and calling elections and leave the rest to legislation.
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What is the most practical path to challenge this? Is the most likely path to try and get the Supreme Court to rule the legislation illegal on the grounds it breaches the bill of rights (1990) and by breaching that it also breaches the Bill of Rights of 1689? That might be to long a bow, and I suppose it could trigger a constitutional showdown between the government and the supreme court. I am frightened to imagine how far this government of increasingly confident casual fascists would go if challenged on the constitution by the courts.