F*** da Police

Maintenance of public safety should be the highest policing priority, and speed on our roads is one of the greatest threats to public safety. The Police have done a great job in recent years getting our road toll down. Now it seems their capacity to continue to improve road safety is threatened.

The Southland Times reports:

New Zealand Police have begun removing speed detection radars from vehicles throughout the country in what frontline officers say is a cost-cutting measure that could also cost lives.

A police national headquarters spokeswoman confirmed yesterday that some radars had been removed from vehicles, as part of a “replacement programme”…

Frontline officers told The Southland Times they had been told up to 400 Stalker detection units, which are leased, were to be removed from police vehicles as part of efforts to cut $21 million from the police operating budget.

They said officers using vehicles from which the radar sets had been removed were trying to do their jobs without them and they feared many speeding motorists would now escape without penalty.

And in a follow up article:

Like hardened speedsters avoiding radar traps, police dodged and evaded yesterday when questioned about the number of speed detection radar sets they are removing from patrol cars throughout the country, and why it is being done.

Frontline officers said they believed the sets were leased from a United States manufacturer and were being removed and sent back as a cost-cutting measure, part of a programme to shed $21 million from the Police budget.

However, national police headquarters would not even confirm yesterday that the sets were leased.

Police have acknowledged that Stalker radars are being removed from some cars as part of a “replacement and maintenance programme” but refused again yesterday to provide details on the numbers being removed, or whether all were to be replaced.

Why the evasiveness? Successive Police Ministers have often used the “operational independence” of the Police to avoid answering questions about Police operational matters. Now we see the Police themselves avoiding answering questions about operational matters that should be very easy for them to answer.

This comes on top of the NZ Herald revealing that over 300 fewer Police patrol cars may be on the roads as a result of cost-cutting measures. Police Commissioner Howard Broad refused to comment on that one too.

There is a distinct whiff of political interference in the Police refusal to give straight answers. Not a good look.

Someone has to be accountable, be it Commissioner Broad or Minister Judith Collins.

 

Back to the future

Well, our forward-thinking National-led Government has done away with pay equity initiatives, apparently because women just have to accept that in a recession they should get paid less than men.

So what other enlightened initiatives does the Government have for the female workforce? Maybe these, from the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine:

Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Female Employees.
There’s no longer any question whether transit companies should hire women to fill jobs formerly held by men. The draft and manpower shortage has settled that point. The important things now are to select the most efficient women available and how to use them to the best advantage.

1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they’re less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn’t be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and deal with the public efficiently.

2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some point in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves, and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It’s always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.

3. General experience indicates that “husky” girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.

4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special examination – one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibility of a lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.

5. Stress at the outset the importance of time, that a minute or two lost here or there make serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.

6. Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they’ll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack the initiative in finding work themselves.

7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.

8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can’t shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman – it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.

10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl’s husband or father may swear vociferously, she’ll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.

11. Get enough size variety in operator’s uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can’t be stressed too much in keeping women happy.

 

Whale Oil Beamer Lingerer

This one’s for Whale Oil, who hit the MSM headlines over the weekend:

Whale Oil (aka Cameron Slater) reveals in the Sunday Star-Times:

Slater found his after the collapse of the security systems company, of which he owned 49%, in 2004 amid rancour with his business partner. The failure ruined Slater financially he had to sell his second home to pay the IRD socially, and eventually, psychologically. The depression he had battled for years became disabling.

As a result, he is unable to work. Because he had income protection insurance, he now receives 75% of his former salary.

Okay, so Whale, you’ve been 5 years out of work. So why do you, and the lowlifes who comment on your comments thread, denigrate people who are unemployed?

Just because you had the good fortune to have income protection insurance doesn’t put you in any greater moral position than those who could not afford it and ended up on the dole or sickness benefit.

And maybe it is time, Whale, for you to be subjected to an independent audit of your entitlement, as the National Party proposes for all sickness beneficiaries. I’m sure your insurance company would welcome that, just as Work and Income does for beneficiaries.

You could even allow me – as someone who worked as an advocate for ACC claimants and beneficiaries for many years – to nominate an independent doctor. I know all the right ones to move you on quickly.

One of the Devonport Doctors (ex-Navy), perhaps?

 

I got it wrong

Hey, sorry everyone. I’ve often been criticised for attacking National, rather than promoting the Greens, so last week I saw a report of a media statement from National’s Minister of Food Safety Kate Wilkinson that looked good.

So I decided to give the Minister some praise.

Alas, I made a mistake. Kate Wilkinson appears to disagree with the decision, but will wait for at least three months after we’re all mass medicated with folic acid before a decision is made to reverse it.

Just not good enough Kate! You are a Minister in a government that purports to act in the interests of those who you represent.

So act in the interests of the people you represent. Even if you need to legislate to get mass medication out of our food, just do it.

Give the non-urgent crap that National has passed under the guise of urgency since they became Government (including the tax cuts that they suddenly decided they couldn’t afford, and then reversed under urgency), this is one issue that genuinely deserves urgency.

Stuff the protocols, just do it Kate!

 

Happy birthday g.blog

g.blog turns 1 today.

In the year we have been around, we have had 466 posts, 1465 comments, generated 631 tags, and had 45,115 visits to the site.

Well done to all those who have contributed. But we’re still far from a top rating political blog, and recently it’s been largely me, stevedore, anarkaytie and Ari who’ve been left to do most of the posting. And we’re all people busily engaged elsewhere, so it’s not surprising g.blog has averaged only 1.28 posts a day over its first year.

What we really need is a few more Green members who are prepared to be active post authors. Even if you can only commit to one post a week, that would be great. Just email stephenday19[at]gmail[dot]com to sign up as an author.

And our very first post that we’re celebrating today – well it was a rather boring one about blog design I’m afraid.

 

Well done Kate Wilkinson

It’s not often I’ll praise a National Party Cabinet Minister. And I was about as far as you get from praising Kate Wilkinson when she was ramming the anti-worker Fire at Will Bill through Parliament under urgency as Minister of Labour last year.

But yesterday as Minister of Food Safety she got something right:

The Minister of Food Safety has spoken out strongly against the imminent compulsory addition of folic acid to most bread.

“I’m not a fan,” Kate Wilkinson said yesterday of the transtasman food standard that requires the synthetic vitamin be added to virtually all bread from September. “I sympathise with the bakers’ frustration.”

While Cabinet hasn’t yet decided exactly how it will overturn the Food Standards Australia New Zealand ruling that would require the mass medication of New Zealanders’ bread with folic acid, it is pretty clear that the ruling is on the way out.

I acknowledge that increased dosage of folic acid for pregnant women can help reduce the incidence of conditions such as spina bifida. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to get it too. It does have health risks as well as health benefits.

 

Build your own referendumb

In the tradition of Build your own billboard (linked site from that post no longer active), you can now build your own referendum.

Here’s my effort:

[EDIT: Original Image © Crown copyright http://bit.ly/electcopy] – this edit added due to stupid and draconian copyright law.

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have got them going into the gallery yet, as it is still reporting as “Nothing here at the moment.”

Hopefully that will be fixed shortly. [EDIT: It now is fixed.]

BTW, don’t forget to Vote Yes, despite the stupidity of the question. A yes vote is a vote against child abuse.

 

The creaking wheels of justice

The Dominion Post reports:

Forty-one former student protesters feel justified with a $200,000 out-of-court settlement for police abuses at a Parliament protest in 1997, with two apologies the icing on the cake.

They will receive written apologies from the police commissioner and the Speaker’s office because the Speaker of the House at the time, Doug Kidd, trespassed the students who were protesting about the education policies of the National government.

The students had sued the Speaker and police for Bill of Rights breaches, including the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, before settling this week.

More than 300 students were part of the protests, with 75 arrested. All of those who defended the charges had them thrown out.

Twelve years! Yes, it has taken twelve years for the creaking wheels of justice to turn sufficiently far settle this case. That’s an absolute disgrace.

It should have been readily apparent to the Office of the Speaker and to the Police when all the criminal charges against the protesters were thrown out by the District Court that their rights had been breached.

So what conceivable reason could there have been for dragging this case out for twelve years before settling? And how did our justice system allow a case like this to drag on that long without setting the claim down for trial to put an end to it one way or another?

 

Human Rights Commission backs child discipline law

So much for the scaremongering about “uncertainty” in the current section 59 of the Crimes Act coming from those advocating corporally punishing children. The Human Rights Commission has released a legal opinion condemning the previous law for its uncertainty and backing the current law.

Most significantly, the Commission’s legal opinion states:

Critics of the legislation consider that the law is now so uncertain that many parents don’t know what they can or can’t do and risk prosecution for every slap, no matter how trivial, administered to a child in their care.

Before it was amended, under s.59 parents, or those acting in loco parentis, were justified in using force “by way of correction” towards a child if the force was “reasonable in the circumstances”. The reasonableness of the force was a question of fact. Section 59 now allows parents (or someone acting in that role) to use reasonable force for a variety of purposes including (inter alia) the prevention of harm to the child or others or to perform the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting[7]. It does not, however, permit the use of force for the purpose of correction. There is also an avoidance of doubt provision, which confers discretion on the Police whether or not to prosecute if the offence is considered so inconsequential that there is no public interest in proceeding with a prosecution.

Legal certainty is particularly important in human rights law. Any legal constraints on a right must be sufficiently “accessible, precise and foreseeable” so that individuals are aware of the consequences of their actions. The guiding principle is that individuals must be able to regulate their conduct with a reasonable degree of certainty as to the legal consequences of acting one way rather than another. The earlier original version of s.59 which stipulated that force must be “reasonable under the circumstances” provided any better guidance than the present legislation. The subjectivity that inevitably dictated what parents considered permissible and the different interpretations of what is “reasonable” meant that parents were acquitted of disciplining their children even when they had used belts, hose pipes and pieces of wood to do so.

While the only way to import greater certainty would be to abolish s.59 entirely, even this may not be the complete answer since it will always be open to the police to decide whether or not to prosecute at common law. The Commission prefers a provision such as the amended s.59 which favours the child as the more vulnerable party.
…

Children are completely dependent on adults to give effect to their rights. Society has a duty to ensure those rights are respected.

Children have the same right to respect for their human dignity and physical integrity as everybody else including the right not to be subject to violence in the guise of corporal punishment.

While parents have responsibilities and duties, as well as the right, to provide appropriate direction and guidance, the wording of s.59 does not remove those rights, responsibilities or duties, but rather shapes how they should be exercised.

Another good reason to Vote Yes.

 

Silly headline of the week

Man found dead in own vomit at backpackers

Ever heard of someone being found dead in someone else’s vomit?

Well, I suppose you could slip over in it and hit your head. But really?