Kiwiblog

TVNZ has confirmed it spends $30,000 a year on clothes for its One News presenters, but Wendy Petrie gets $20,000 of that and poor old Simon Dallow gets only $10,000.

Now its disgraceful sexism that the woman gets twice as much as the man. So I hope the Human Rights Commission will investigate this flagrant breach of our equality laws

The Thai tiler at the centre of the Field inquiry has reversed his evidence to the Ingram Inquiry, alleging he said what Field told him to say.

The problem we have is that Helen Clark deliberately set up the Ingram Inquiry as an investigation with no powers. It wasn’t able to compel evidence under oath, so there were no repercussions if one lied to QC Ingram. Ingram himself noted much evidence was unsatisfactory (polite term for false) including Field’s.

Siriwan has now done sworn affadavits alleging Field instructed him to tell the police he had not done any tiling on the MP’s property in Samoa and also that Field last year invited Siriwan to his house in Mangere and told him that if he went to Samoa to do tiling on Mr Field’s house, “he will get me back to New Zealand with a work permit”.

As Parliament considers raising the alcohol purchase age to 20, it is always useful to look at the situation overseas. Using OECD countries (including members in waiting) my findings are:

Switzerland 14
Austria 16
Belgium 16
Denmark 16
France 16
Germany 16
Greece 16
Italy 16
Netherlands 16
Norway 16
Poland 16
Portugal 16
Spain 16
Turkey 16
Cyprus 17
Luxembourg 17
Australia 18
Canada 18
Chile 18
Czech Republic 18
Estonia 18
Finland 18
Hungary 18
Ireland 18
Israel 18
Latvia 18
Lithuania 18
Mexico 18
New Zealand 18
Slovakia 18
Slovenia 18
Sweden 18
UK 18
South Korea 19
Iceland 20
Japan 20
USA 21

Some countries have a split age such as Germany which is 15 but 18 for hard liquor.

It is very clear that 18 is the standard age, and that more countries have an age below 18 than do above 18. The only ones above 18 are the US, Iceland and Japan.

The average (mean) age is 17.4

There are serious issues in NZ with alcohol abuse amongst some youth. However overseas experiences suggests that most countries do not see a ‘drinking’ age over 18 as being a solution.

TV3 are reporting that the father of the Kahui Twins has been arrested. Details of the charges are unknown.

It has been obvious for some time he has been a primary suspect.

UPDATE: Not arrested in fact, just questioned

UPDATE2: Now he has been arrested and charged with murder.

Labour have Queensland Premier Peter Beattie over to speak to their annual conference. Beattie has just won a fourth term, and no doubt Labour want the same.

However one can not really compare the two situations. Beattie in his third term had a 63-20 majority in the Queensland Parliament over their main opposition.

Also the opposition in Queensland in in a state of chaos, with possible mergers to occur etc and never comes close to Labor in the polls, let alone lead them with a significant margin.

A reader has kindly pointed out to me that not only am I on the local NZ Redwatch hate lists, but I have also made an Australian list also. They have photos of me down the bottom. I can only me amused of the one wearing my Blumsky/National t-sweatshirt with me labelled as a “RED”. Yes I am a well known communist. God they really are morons.

They also have a doctored one of me with “Juden” written on my forehead. That’s German for Jew. Classy.

In terms of Halakha (Jewish law) I am of course not Jewish as you have to be born to a Jewish mother and it is on my paternal side I have Jewish ancstry. And I have never followed the Jewish religion. In fact I did not even know I had Jewish ancestry until I was a teenager.

What I find interesting though is the Nazis had a much wider defintiion. Their 1935 Nuremberg laws defined anyone with even one Jewish grandparent as Jewish enough to be killed. So under the Nuremberg laws I would have been considered a mixed blood Jew and killed.

What I didn’t realise until I looked it up yesterday is the the State of Israel uses the Nuremberg definition in terms of qualifying for a right to return, not the strict religious definition. Hence I could in fact move to Israel should I so wish. Nice to know!

Sheik Taj Din al-Hilal, a 20 year resident of Australia has this advice on who is to blame for rape:

In the religious address on adultery to about 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, Sheik Hilali said: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

The sheik then said: “If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”

Could one imagine the outcry if a christian church leader said something similiar – that women are to blame for being raped because they don’t stay at home.

Hat Tip: Tim Blair

Oh my God. Listen to Sir Bob Jones talking about Annette Preseley on Radio Live.

Some quotes:

“Always embarrassing being out with Annette Presley who is incapable of saying anything without loud shrieks”

“Presley is untameable. She would be one of the crassest human beings I have ever met.”

” …described her constanly and accurately as trailer park trash which is what she is”

“The most appalling woman I have ever met”

“She would have single handedly driven more men to homosexuality than any other women in history”

I wonder if both Jones and Presley will be on a second series of Dragon’s Den?

One of the reasons I love Wikipedia is you find out stuff, you would never normally encounter. Where else but Wikipedia would you find out that 0.999… is a recurring decimal exactly equal to 1. It was yesterday’s front page article.

Being a former Maths major, I enjoyed reading both the fraction proof and algebraic proof for the identity.

Michael Bassett has a compelling column on the need to have a 60,000 seat stadium in Auckland for the Rugby World Cup.

With Wellington dithering, even upgrading Eden Park is starting to become a challenge. Experts estimate that a waterfront stadium on Bledisloe Wharf will cost at least $500 million. It would be necessary for workers to build $1 million’s worth of construction for each available working day between the go-ahead and the completion date. But a Cabinet decision keeps being pushed back. And meanwhile the Eden Park Trust Board twiddles its fingers, wondering whether they are on or off. The impact of a rushed waterfront stadium on every other piece of building in Auckland will be so vast that some of the country’s most experienced construction companies are reliably said to have decided not to tender.

When Caligula spoke, minions jumped to attention. In what must rate as one of the silliest TV appearances of recent times, Auckland’s deputy mayor goofily announced his council’s backing for the new stadium, then added that his Labour-dominated council had no idea of the ultimate cost, the extent that ratepayers would be expected to contribute, the parking problems, or the immediate or long-term effects on the port or the region.

It doesn’t look promising.

Whale Oil is reporting that Sylvia Taylor, a former National Party Candidate has just won the byelection in the Mangere Ward on the Manukau City Council with 3110 votes. The Labour candidate Maria David came 2nd losing by over 400 votes.

Labour losing an election in Mangere!!! Maybe the antics of the local MP are not so appreciated after all, and are having a corrosive effect locally.

A sensible editorial from the Dom Post on the drinking age:

Responsible New Zealanders – and most are, most of the time – should not be penalised for the over-indulgence of a few.

But MPs like to be seen to be doing at least something, even if it does not work. They might thus be able to persuade themselves that if they vote to lift the legal drinking age to 20 again they will have helped lessen the carnage that police, in particular, encounter on the streets of every town and city at weekends in particular.

Our binge-drinking culture is truly the issue that needs tackling.

It’s sobering to read that 2,000 police officers were assaulted in the last year. The Police come under a lot of scrutiny in their jobs – their use of pepper spray, tasers, rape allegations etc. I’ve myself been a critic in several areas.

At the end of the day though one has to have an appreciation for the average officer. There are few others jobs where it is almost guaranteed that you will get assaulted on a regular basis. They deserve our thanks for the role they play.

Few people probably bring as much joy as cartoonists, and Scott Adams who does Dilbert is one of the all time greats.

Scott blogs today about how he had permanently lost his voice around 18 months ago due to a condition no-one had ever recovered from.

Yesterday his voice returned. A day doesn’t get much better than that.

National has just announced its new General Manager is Chris Simpson. Chris is one of my oldest and closest friends. We met at a Young Nationals AGM in 1991 when I voted against him for Information & Publicity Officer:-)

He got elected nonetheless, and we’ve been mates for over 15 years. Chris and I both did volunteer work at Party HQ in the early 90s, so it’s fitting he’s now taken over the top job. I remember the then Chief Executive Roger Gill always telling Chris to get a job and get a haircut. Well he still needs the haircut!

I felt queasy reading this morning that at the trial in Dunedin it was revealed that despite the charge being “failing to supply the necessaries of life” the baby was in fact quite deliberately killed and was placed into a plastic bag and thrown out the window.

I can’t fathom how anyone could do that to a kitten let alone a baby, let alone their own baby.

Economist David Friedman (no the surname is not a coincidence) blogs on a study of whether increased access to Internet pornography leads to an increase or decrease in sexual assaults, or rape.

It found about a ten percent drop in rape for a ten percentage point increase in Internet access. There was no similar relation for murder, which suggests that the result is not simply picking up the effect of some third variable that correlates with both internet access and violent crime.

It’s a correlation, not a causative finding, but still very interesting that there is a possibility pornography may be able to act as a substitute for rape. The full 56 page paper is quite comprehensive.

New Zealander Christiaan Briggs has been sent to jail in the UK for eight months for his assault on teenager Billy Leeson, which left Leeson in a coma (who has had four brain operations since and is still in pain). Briggs had *not* been drinking when he assaulted Leeson.

Briggs is a former Green candidate, a peace activist and Iraqi human shield.

Are We Lumberjacks thinks the sentence is ridiculously light.

Propoents on increasing the drinking age to 20 claim that after it was lowered in 1999, the number of 18 and 19 year olds in alcohol related crashes increased.

Dean Knight points out that the the number of crashes actually decreased. A study claims that because the decrease was less than the decrease for 20 – 24 year olds, this was a “relative increase”. One can debate the validity of such a comparison, but it is important to note that there was not any actual increase in alcohol related crashes after the law change.

The petition has just hit 40,000. Slowed down massively over the long weekend, but speeding up again now.

Not yet a NZ record though. I created the online beaaches for all petition in 2002 or 2003 and it got to a bit over 100,000 signatures.

Firefox 2.0 is out a couple of days early. One can FTP it from (link removed by DPF as Mozilla is asking people to await the official release)

If you use Internet Explorer, go try Firefox today. It rocks.

Only hassle is a fwe of the extensions have been disabled. But I suspect updates for them will occur within a week or so.

A couple of interesting blog entries from the UK about disliking or even hating your opponents. A Lib Dem says he no longer dislikes Iain Dale, and Iain Dale responds that in the past he has found it far easier to campaign if he actively dislike his opponents, but the older he gets the more difficult he finds it is to do this.

I have to say there are not a lot of MPs from other parties I hate, or even actively dislike. I’ve always liked Marian Hobbs who was the “opponent” in the last campaign. Ditto there are very few in Labour who I personally (as oppossed to politically) have a problem with. I will admit to a very very low opinion of the PM’s ethics, but I counter that with an appreciation of her (arguably former) political skills. And Michael Cullen’s wit can only be admired and appreciated.

In reality there are only two MPs in Parliament (neither Labour) whom I would say I have a pathological dislike of.

I do recall that old saying by Mike Moore than those on the opposite side of the House are your opponents, while those on your own side are your enemies. There is a definite element of truth to that. Some of the most bruising encounters I have had are with internal battles. Luckily not a huge number of them, but very memorable.

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If asked to name a single thing the Families Commissioner has done, I, like most people I suspect, am hard pressed to recall any achievements.

This is quite unlike othe ragencies such as the Children’s Commissioner where they have had involvement in a number of cases and issues.

Even Peter Dunne, whose party insisted on the creation of the Families Commission, seems luke warm on its achievements.

Think of what else could have been achieved with its $28 million budget. That could gfet you 80 or so extra social workers for CYPFS.

For those who don’t think there is a systemic media bias (less so in NZ I have to say than the US and UK), this leaked story of a BBC “impartiality summit” gives food for thought. Highlights:

* Executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran
* Would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity.
* BBC’s ‘diversity tsar’, wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.
* Was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.
* Political pundit Andrew Marr said: ‘The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.’
* Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to ‘correct’, it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it ‘no moral weight’.
* One staffer told how he once wore Union Jack cufflinks to work but was rebuked with: ‘You can’t do that, that’s like the National Front!’

Hat Tip: Iain Dale