Politics šŸ—³ļø NZ Politics

While Iā€™m sure by far the majority of Treaty marchers, like the majority of New Zealanders of every race and ethnic group, would oppose child abuse, I know at least one of them personally who doesnā€™t. A guy who had joined one of the marches in Auckland is an ex relative of mine and he learned about the Treaty as part of his time inside for sexually abusing girls. Since he marched, heā€™s been arrested again for abusing another school girl less than three weeks ago. If heā€™s convicted, this will be his fourth conviction.

TBH, I hope heā€™s not confined separately again but put into general and becomes someoneā€™s bitch for the duration. Actually, thatā€™s not fully trueā€¦ā€¦ I hope he crosses the wrong person and never comes out again except in a box.
People like that should not be protected by separate confinement as you said.
 
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In some utopia where governments are never corrupt I'd be all for this, a bullet for any sex offender, killer or fraudster proved beyond reasonable doubt. But it's opening the door for corrupt regimes to knock off political enemies and undesirables, so I dunno if I'm really comfortable with this sanctioned state killing idea. Life sentences served literally 40-50 years Ƭs my preference.
Whats your stated goal?

Protection of citizens?
Least Cost?
Rehabilitation of criminals?
Reduction in crime?
Zero crime?
 
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Unfortunately in this new wave woke society we are expected to live in, there are a number of people who are what we might refer to as True Evil. No if's, no buts, no other bullshit about culture, upbringing nor colonialism. True Evil, no moral compass and no joining of regular society.

These people, and they appear to be a growing number are beyond redemption and therefore should be either incarcerated for life or be topped. I'm good either way but have to say 7-10 just doesn't cut it.

#rememberbabyru
No just shit grandparents and shitter parents.
 
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I would be all in for serious crime. Singapore style!

But the public of NZ wouldnā€™t buy it.

I would actually do away with prisons and have a lawless island that we drop convicted criminals off to live in their preferred ā€˜survival of the fittestā€™ society. Everyoneā€™s a winner!

Somewhere likeā€¦ Australia!
No see this is where the abuse happens. All that happens is the defiintion of criminality is extended and you start grouping drug users with serial killers.
 
Last few days Iā€™ve read a couple of stories that absolutely made me wild.

One was a bloke in Manawatu who raped his daughter and niece and another was a guy who stabbed and killed one and almost killed another.

What really got me angry was the sob story of their bringing up in the articles.
Then seeing they both got discounts because of their trauma growing up. I believe one of them got a 20% reduction in their sentence.

Murderers and filthy pedos get discounts just blew my mind.
Sex offenders have been getting discounts for centuries
 
There in lies the problem, the deprivation/social/behavioural crap. The excuses for this type of behaviour are woke. That's all.

I call it crap because the majority of the people who carry out these crimes against the vulnerable in our country have no issue getting the latest I phone or Designer wear, nor are they deprived enough to be living under Grafton bridge. These people are doing ok and not destitute from what my reading tells me.

So for the life of me, the only thing I can figure to make you want to do those things to a child is behavioural. Now if that's the case then that behaviour should be unacceptable, but it appears we accept it as a casualty of our society because it's not really their fault.

#whokilledbabyru
no its cultural. Child abuse and domestic violence is endemic in NZ society. The lowest socio-economic groups simply reflect the treatment received from the last few generations.
So promote employment and make benefits a last resort rather than 13 year entitlement?

Benefits only promote poverty and depravation. Even if you paid them the average wage, the isolation from work and social/ behavioural and mental health toll leads to poor outcomes.
employment by itself isnt a marker of low crime. Simply look at the United States.
 
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What would you do, march to their house and try 'force' them to admit to it? Or march against general child violence? Who is the 'greater' power you are marching against? Everyone?

I am sure everyone marching against the Treaty stuff is vehemently against child abuse and I understand your point, but it's not as simple as you make it sound.
Completely agree with you. It's not as simple as it sounds.

The point I think the letter writer was making was for example there were marches and coverage of a march or protest against the government for introducing policy that was going to be 'tough' on gangs and here we have another baby killed by abuse and nothing. People protesting what is happening in Gaza (and it's a tragic, horrific thing that's happening there) but what individual change do they have to make themselves? There isn't any other than being morally outraged. The letter writer is asking where is the moral outrage for baby Ru?

As, I think Marv said, we are all guilty of talking about things that are probably out of our reach rather than looking after our own back yard

It's not about marching or protesting imo That's great if that's what you want to do, and that singular action does raise awareness for a period, but it can't just be the only thing. It starts in our back yard. No point marching against child abuse yet not getting involved when you hear or see something from your neighbours for example. A collective of individual contributions is going to have far more impact than an individual contribution of the collective. Model behaviour for your children and family, check on your neighbours and not just when you hear something, get involved in your community through clubs, schools, whatever.
 
Completely agree with you. It's not as simple as it sounds.

The point I think the letter writer was making was for example there were marches and coverage of a march or protest against the government for introducing policy that was going to be 'tough' on gangs and here we have another baby killed by abuse and nothing. People protesting what is happening in Gaza (and it's a tragic, horrific thing that's happening there) but what individual change do they have to make themselves? There isn't any other than being morally outraged. The letter writer is asking where is the moral outrage for baby Ru?

As, I think Marv said, we are all guilty of talking about things that are probably out of our reach rather than looking after our own back yard

It's not about marching or protesting imo That's great if that's what you want to do, and that singular action does raise awareness for a period, but it can't just be the only thing. It starts in our back yard. No point marching against child abuse yet not getting involved when you hear or see something from your neighbours for example. A collective of individual contributions is going to have far more impact than an individual contribution of the collective. Model behaviour for your children and family, check on your neighbours and not just when you hear something, get involved in your community through clubs, schools, whatever.
Totally agree with you, I must say that it did irk me that there was no acknowledgement by Te Pati Māori about the Baby Ru case in particular and the closing in that occurred within the whanau to protect whoever was guilty. At least back when Pita Sharples was in charge he was quite obvious and clear about the parties feelings in regards to the Kahui twins, I think Te Pati Maori would be a lot better if he was still involved.
 
Opinion piece is from middle of last year but an interesting read.


I love electric vehicles ā€“ and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped

Sadly, keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV. There are sound environmental reasons not to jump just yet

Electric motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent masterā€™s in control systems. Combine this, perhaps surprising, academic pathway with a lifelong passion for the motorcar, and you can see why I was drawn into an early adoption of electric vehicles. I bought my first electric hybrid 18 years ago and my first pure electric car nine years ago and (notwithstanding our poor electric charging infrastructure) have enjoyed my time with both very much. Electric vehicles may be a bit soulless, but theyā€™re wonderful mechanisms: fast, quiet and, until recently, very cheap to run. But increasingly, I feel a little duped. When you start to drill into the facts, electric motoring doesnā€™t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be.

As you may know, the government has proposed a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. The problem with the initiative is that it seems to be largely based on conclusions drawn from only one part of a carā€™s operating life: what comes out of the exhaust pipe. Electric cars, of course, have zero exhaust emissions, which is a welcome development, particularly in respect of the air quality in city centres. But if you zoom out a bit and look at a bigger picture that includes the carā€™s manufacture, the situation is very different. In advance of the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, Volvo released figures claiming that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are nearly 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one. How so? The problem lies with the lithium-ion batteries fitted currently to nearly all electric vehicles: theyā€™re absurdly heavy, huge amounts of energy are required to make them, and they are estimated to last only upwards of 10 years. It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobileā€™s fight against the climate crisis.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of effort is going into finding something better. New, so-called solid-state batteries are being developed that should charge more quickly and could be about a third of the weight of the current ones ā€“ but they are years away from being on sale, by which time, of course, we will have made millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries. Hydrogen is emerging as an interesting alternative fuel, even though we are slow in developing a truly ā€œgreenā€ way of manufacturing it. It can be used in one of two ways. It can power a hydrogen fuel cell (essentially, a kind of battery); the car manufacturer Toyota has poured a lot of money into the development of these. Such a system weighs half of an equivalent lithium-ion battery and a car can be refuelled with hydrogen at a filling station as fast as with petrol.

If the lithium-ion battery is an imperfect device for electric cars, concerns have been raised over their use in heavy trucks for long distance haulage because of the weight; an alternative is to inject hydrogen into a new kind of piston engine. JCB, the company that makes yellow diggers, has made huge strides with hydrogen engines and hopes to put them into production in the next couple of years. If hydrogen wins the race to power trucks ā€“ and as a result every filling station stocks it ā€“ it could be a popular and accessible choice for cars.

But letā€™s zoom out even further and consider the whole life cycle of an automobile. The biggest problem we need to address in societyā€™s relationship with the car is the ā€œfast fashionā€ sales culture that has been the commercial template of the car industry for decades. Currently, on average we keep our new cars for only three years before selling them on, driven mainly by the ubiquitous three-year leasing model. This seems an outrageously profligate use of the worldā€™s natural resources when you consider what great condition a three-year-old car is in. When I was a child, any car that was five years old was a bucket of rust and halfway through the gate of the scrapyard. Not any longer. You can now make a car for Ā£15,000 that, with tender loving care, will last for 30 years. Itā€™s sobering to think that if the first owners of new cars just kept them for five years, on average, instead of the current three, then car production and the CO2 emissions associated with it, would be vastly reduced. Yet weā€™d be enjoying the same mobility, just driving slightly older cars.

We need also to acknowledge what a great asset we have in the cars that currently exist (there are nearly 1.5bn of them worldwide). In terms of manufacture, these cars have paid their environmental dues and, although it is sensible to reduce our reliance on them, it would seem right to look carefully at ways of retaining them while lowering their polluting effect. Fairly obviously, we could use them less. As an environmentalist once said to me, if you really need a car, buy an old one and use it as little as possible. A sensible thing to do would be to speed up the development of synthetic fuel, which is already being used in motor racing; itā€™s a product based on two simple notions: one, the environmental problem with a petrol engine is the petrol, not the engine and, two, thereā€™s nothing in a barrel of oil that canā€™t be replicated by other means. Formula One is going to use synthetic fuel from 2026. There are many interpretations of the idea but the German car company Porsche is developing a fuel in Chile using wind to power a process whose main ingredients are water and carbon dioxide. With more development, it should be usable in all petrol-engine cars, rendering their use virtually CO2-neutral.

Increasingly, Iā€™m feeling that our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end, and thatā€™s no bad thing: weā€™re realising that a wider range of options need to be explored if weā€™re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created. We should keep developing hydrogen, as well as synthetic fuels to save the scrapping of older cars which still have so much to give, while simultaneously promoting a quite different business model for the car industry, in which we keep our new vehicles for longer, acknowledging their amazing but overlooked longevity.

Friends with an environmental conscience often ask me, as a car person, whether they should buy an electric car. I tend to say that if their car is an old diesel and they do a lot of city centre motoring, they should consider a change. But otherwise, hold fire for now. Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn.

Rowan Atkinson is an actor, comedian and writer

 
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Whats your stated goal?

Protection of citizens?
Least Cost?
Rehabilitation of criminals?
Reduction in crime?
Zero crime?
Hmm. In this order of priority:

1. Protection of citizens




2. Reduction in crime
3. Rehabilitation for lower grade offences
4. Least cost
(Zero crime is an impossibity)
 
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