Posts by Keir Leslie
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Or, to put it another way, there was no Mens rea, which is going to make conviction difficult in practice.
Arie entered a building he knew he wasn't allowed to, with the intent of taking light fittings he knew he wasn't allowed to. I don't think that's really in dispute. That also fits with the definition of burglary: to enter or remain in a building without authority with intent to commit a crime. Obvious I'm not his lawyer, so I don't know what will be argued in court & I have no real knowledge of the criminal law beyond what you can learn in half an hour's research with nifty databases, but I doubt that there's an issue over mens rea here. I very very much could be wrong.
I think the reason the cops are pushing this is that they are, to put it bluntly, wankers.
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I don't think there is a strict requirement to admit guilt: ``Note that a guilty plea (either entered or intimated) in court must not be a prerequisite nor a bar for diversion.'' (Hall's sentencing quoting police adult diversion scheme policy.) They also quote Justice Salmon as saying, in the context of how much weight to put on an acceptance of diversion, that ``[A]greement to be involved in a diversion scheme is not an admission of guilt''. (Burns v Police HC Auckland A 87/00, 28 July 2000.)
There very much is a requirement to take responsibility. There's a grey area between guilt and responsibility, and I think that there's no reason to insist on a strict admission of guilt if the offender meets the other criteria for diversion and accepts responsibility for their actions.
Diversion seems like a really really suspicious scheme to me, as it grants a huge amount of discretion to the police, & there is very little accountability. It also seems conceptually muddled: diversion is not really supposed to be used as an alternative to a contested hearing if there are facts at issue, but it does seem to be often.
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But the real civil servants don't start until quite far down. (You're at level IV of the payscale before that kicks in.) There are no mandarins in the US & the people filling the positions that would be earning the really large salaries are primarily interested in political power, not pay.
(And like I say, you just go through the revolving door to lobbying if you need money.)
It should be noted that the NZ civil service is well known for being a reasonably good one. The US one is not. In general, we shouldn't try emulating things that aren't that good.
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Because in fact in the US the top jobs aren't civil service as we understand them, but political. Further, in the US, after you leave your government employment you go into the private sector in lobbying etc and make huge amounts of very filth lucre. This is not really comparable to being the director-general of the ministry of education here.
(PS. The US civil service is really not very good.)
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(One could start by capping public service salaries at the amount paid to the Prime Minister. Why should anyone get more?)
Because in the private sector they would earn more? I mean, we have a market oriented state sector. If you want to fix that, making the government into a not very good corporate employer is not the way to go about it.
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(And as a side note, the British newspapers may not be the most money-making parts of Murdoch's holdings, but they are very very important strategically.)
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The Sun won't get the same circulation that the NOTW did. This is a catastrophe for Murdoch. Staff morale is through the floor, no one wants to be the next guy chucked overboard to save Murdoch/Brooks.
It might save BSkyB but then I don't know if that was ever in too much jeopardy, and then again it might make it less likely to go through, by legitimising public anger.
Basically, a really bad day for Murdoch, an awful day for the NOTW, and a pretty rubbish one for Cameron.
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Cameron's not committing to a judicial inquiry though, which is an important point.
Cameron is almost certainly freaking the fuck out, to put it mildly, because he employed Andy Coulson (one of the major Screws figures) as a PR man & is seen as close to Murdoch and especially Brooks. This is turning into a disaster for Murdoch, and Cameron must be v. worried that he'll get hit at the same time. The Telegraph carried an article ripping him to hell. Dave from PR is not a good thing to be at the moment.
(The Met's complicity is really worrying also, and that could get very messy. Boris Johnson is probably not happy about his oversight responsibilities at the Met right now.)
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A house that increases in value by 20% doesnt provide 20% more shelter… you cant suddenly fit more people in it…
Well, depends. If nothing changes and houses were all worth 20% more, then we'd call that a bubble or inflation, and it would be pointless, mere accounting jiggery-pokery. But suppose that everybody goes out and does their houses up a fair bit (puts in double-glazing, finally repaints the bathroom, rips up the tatty old carpet and puts down some nice new rugs etc), and suddenly people are willing to pay 20% more for those houses it is probably because they get more enjoyment out of that house.
And that's a good thing! You might say it isn't productive, but then we could all live in barracks and use iron money and so-on and be more `productive'. Housing is one of the most important ways to make people happier, and one of the great ironies of New Zealand is that we both over-invest in property and yet have consistently sub-par houses.
I reckon NZ's housing policy, and this is an area Labour really does fall down on, is pretty dismal. A capital gains tax is hopefully the first move away from a view of housing as a device for investing and speculating and toward a view of housing as machinery for living in.
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I don't disagree; I/S. I just think it's generally a bad idea to try and pick moral winners through tax policy, I mean, Jordan Carter referred to housing as unproductive, which is absurd (and I have to assume he meant to say the -bubble- was unproductive, which is again wrongish, it was miss-allocated productivity.) Housing is a perfectly productive sector of the economy. The reason that a CGT is a good idea is not that we should punish housing; it is that we shouldn't punish everything else by comparison.
On the other hand, I would support raising the top tax rate, and introducing another band above it at 43-50%, so yeah.
(PS. why does the government need to tax people? Because we've got to pay for things. When discussing details of the tax mix, it is important not to get sidetracked by discussions of spending, given that they are two separate issues.)