I am about to head off to Jury Service for the first time. While trying to sort out the household and childcare arrangements so I can do this, I have found my thoughts coming back to your story quite often. I am sorry for your experience, but grateful for your sharing. For me, the 'innocent until proven guilty' and 'judged by your peers' is a crucial element of our system (especially as our democracy and rights are bullied away) BUT I now realise I need to incorporate more than just empathy for victims and witnesses; I somehow need to keep front of mind that the process is trying to break the prosecution. I'm a very ordinary NZ Mary Sue, who has never participated in the court system, but I just wanted to let you know I will be thinking of you as I learn about it.

That tickles: the power of the postie

"Can only"... should have said thats if you're worried about copyright, or being audited, etc

Its not directly relevant to this case, but if you're publishing links to other websites in your own website, my understanding was that you can only link to the home page of other websites, as linking to specific pages/sections/items within the website does breach copyright unless you have obtained permission. Obviously, youtube, etc, has a different commercial imperative, but there are number of jurisdictions where I thought this applied (even NZ?).

The Baubles of Office weighs in at 600pgs, however, and by all accounts not as revealing as previous election campaign notes.

Just to revert to the topic (sort of) I enjoy the civility here, though as a blog comments virgin, its also a bit intimidating. I suspect it might be easier to begin as an anonymous ranter… I have been diverted by the fact that the (mostly) correct spelling and punctuation proves to be very useful to written communication, ie. I’m not sure intentions can be misread (based on what I’ve viewed here) if you punctuate correctly..

And in tomorrow’s NBR you might be interested in the discussion on the Baubles of Office, Victoria University Press’ anthology of election 2005 analysis which notes of bloggers:

'Peter Fitzjohn, Ruth Dyson’s boy-genius policy advisor, co-authors a chapter on blogging in the campaign. Although the predictions for blogging’s future as a media factor seem a little premature, this chapter is a useful analysis of how the cyber-wars played out at the time. (And includes the chilling observation that blog commentators actually represent an unusually well-informed segment of the voting population.)'