This is a common native spider, and its brown, furry appearance does prompt my daughter to regard it as ‘cuddly’. It’s our native Nursery-Web spider. In this shot the arachnid has emerged from hiding to position herself by the nursery at night. So this is a nocturnal picture (late summer). These spiders are still about. They’re common in the bush areas around our house, and one was even sunning itself on the bricks by our garage this morning.

Mum

Click for larger, higher res image

Stuff reports:

A Northland deputy principal who has admitted sexually abusing pupils was flagged as a potential predator in 1999 as a student teacher but signed off as suitable anyway.

Despite a further warning in 2009 – that time by police – he was allowed to continue as a teacher for 11 years until his arrest last month.

Concerns about James Parker were first lodged with the Teachers’ Council when he was a provisional teacher, having newly started in the profession.

Parker pleaded guilty in Kaitaia District Court this week to 49 charges of indecent assault, performing an indecent act and of unlawful sexual connection.

The attacks, on boys aged under 16, occurred over nearly eight years at Pamapuria School.

A decade later police received a complaint from a child via a parent and investigated Parker.

They could not gather enough evidence at the time to prosecute Parker and instead wrote to the school to alert the board of trustees about concerns.

However, the board did not act on the letter, did not advise the Education Review Office and did not advise the Teachers’ Council.

What a sad preventable case.

I understand that Parker was the staff rep on the Board of Trustees, which may have discouraged their discussing the issue, and that most of the current Board were not there at the time of the Police letter. The principal has to take the bulk of the blame for not acting on it, and making sure the new Board members were aware of the issue.

The Daily Mail reports:

Oral sex is good for women’s health and makes you feel happier, according to a study which studied the effects of semen’s ‘mood-altering chemicals’.

The Greens often call for things bad for you to be banned, and good for you to be compulsory so I eagerly await their policy mandating oral sex to be compulsory – or at a minimum highly subsidised by the state 🙂

The State University of New York study – which scientists carried out via survey rather than through practical experiment – compared the sex lives of 293 females to their mental health.

It follows research which shows that seminal fluid contains chemicals that elevate mood, increase affection, induce sleep and also contain at least three anti-depressants.

Maybe there is intelligent design after all?

The most significant findings from this study, published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, were that, even after adjusting for frequency of sexual intercourse, women who engaged in sex and ‘never’ used condoms showed significantly fewer depressive symptoms than did those who ‘usually’ or ‘always’ used condoms.

So their conclusion:

The research suggests it is not just that women who are having sex are simply happier, but that happiness levels might be related to the quantity of semen within their body.

You can’t argue with science.

Hat Tip: Cactus Kate

Two reports out today on ACC. One from the Auditor-General and one by the Privacy Commissioner. Both individually and jointly they are fairly damning. Some extracts from the AG:

When Ms Pullar met Mr McCliskie in September 2011, the issues that she raised with him were arguably general issues about ACC, rather than (or not only) specific to her claim. However, the matters that ACC investigated because of Ms Pullar’s approach to Mr McCliskie focused on its handling of her claim.

In our view, the matters that Mr McCliskie recorded in his email of 14 September (illegal access to files, incompetent ACC specialists, fraudulent activities by ACC staff) are areas of risk with which a Board should be concerned. That was Mr McCliskie’s original reaction.

We looked for some reporting back to the Board, or to Mr Judge and Mr McCliskie, on the issues raised by Ms Pullar. This included issues raised at her meeting with Mr McCliskie, in her emails to Mr McCliskie of 14 and 15 October, and in the list of 45 issues presented at the 1 December meeting. We did not find any evidence of this.

We have some observations about why ACC might have failed to appreciate the risks arising from the privacy breach and the allegations of systemic wrongdoing.

In this environment of change and transition, Ms Pullar’s allegations, and the privacy breach in particular, were not recognised for the risks they presented. We have no view as to whether Ms Pullar’s wider allegations are in any way justified. We have not inquired into
those matters. However, we consider that accusations of systemic illegality and fraud are issues that any public sector organisation should take seriously.

Both Directors acted unwisely in my opinion, and as the AG noted they failed to seperate out the operational issues raised by Pullar (which were for management) and the more general allegations of wrong-doing, such as privacy breaches.

I can’t do quotes from the Privacy Commissioner report as some idiot has set the pdf, so you can not copy and paste text. Grrr, that pisses me off. Why would you set a public document to not allow copying extracts. Don’t you want the extracts to be accurate rather than retyped?

The overall assessment though was ACC had no strategies in place to properly manage data and privacy, which led to a history of privacy breaches and complaints.

I would note that ACC Minister Judith Collins has already seen a significant personnel change at board level, and instructed ACC to focus on restoring confidence in how it deals with data and privacy.

The response from Judith Collins is above. I think the reports vindicate the decisions she has taken to date.

John Hartevelt at Stuff reports:

The liquor industry has scored a win over the planned regulation of RTDs in the Government’s alcohol reform package.

I think it is a win for common sense, and actually a win for reduced harm from alcohol.

Justice Minister Judith Collins yesterday revealed she had dumped an earlier plan to ban the sale of ”RTDs” (ready-to-drink) with more than 6 per cent alcohol content from off-license stores.

Alcohol reforms initially announced by former Justice Minister Simon Power originally included a ban on RTDs with 5 per cent alcohol or more from off-licenses.

The proposed ban was effectively a form of prohibition.  Research (a phone poll, two point of sale surveys and eight focus groups) Curia did for Independent Liquor left me in no doubt that the impact of trying to ban RTDs over 5% would be a significant substitution effect, with many people going from say 8% RTDs to (on average) 13% self-mixes. Note that the research Curia did for ILNZ was over a year ago, and I have no ongoing commercial relationship with them.

The experience in Australia with increasing taxes on RTDs also produced empirical evidence of increased substitution to spirits, and this is one of the reasons the Law Commission did not recommend this measure.

Instead, the bill will include a ”regulation-making power” for the Government to restrict the sale of RTDs in future. Until the powers are exercised, however, RTD sales will be left to work under the industry’s own code.

”The Government has decided to give the alcohol industry the opportunity to introduce its own measures to limit the harm to young people caused by RTDs,” Collins said.

”The industry has offered to put in place a voluntary code on RTDs. If the industry measures are ineffective, Government has the ability to take action through a regulation-making power in the bill. This allows restrictions on the sale of RTDs at any time in the future.” …

The association promised in April to:

– Limit the production and distribution of new RTDs to a maximum of two ”standard drinks” per single container.
– Show clearly the number of ”standard drinks” on each container.
– Ensure no RTDs have ”specific appeal to minors”.
– Comply with the Code for Advertising Liquor, administered by the Advertising Standards Authority.
– ”Invest and support” responsible drinking educational programmes.

There are some RTDs which are, shall we say, a but anti-social. I’m not a fan of the Bigfoot RTD which was a large 6 – 8 standard drinks in one container.  There is a certain incentive to finish a container, and people don’t tend to share containers as they might say individual drinks.

So a self-regulatory limit of say 2 standard drinks per container has merit in my opinion. A restriction on the number of drinks per container is much more sensible than trying to ban 6% RTDs, when people would then buy 40% vodka. The reality is that some RTD drinkers do not like the 5% RTDs (they call them lolly water) and prefer the stronger ones.

A limit of two standard drinks per container means they have as much alcohol as a standard double nip in a bar.

There were also two other problems with the proposed prohibition on RTDs over 5%. One is that under CER, the RTDs could be made in Australia, and imported here. We would simply be exporting jobs.

The third is that prohibition does not work as well as self-regulation. If you ban say 8% RTDs, then manufacturers could do inventive stuff like sell a container which has (for example) rum in one part and coke in the other, and you just mix them together to make your own RTD (just as many self-mix from spirits from mixers).

I have no doubt that the proposed prohibition on RTDs over 5% would have not only failed, it would have increased overall harm from alcohol. I am glad the Government is going for something that will work, over something that sounds good, but would be harmful.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister John Key says euthanasia already happens in our hospitals – and if he was terminally ill, he would consider it.

Doctors disagreed with him last night, saying his view of the situation was too simplistic.

We definitely have passive euthanasia – it is quite common. Active euthanasia, would be very rare, but I suspect there are cases where the drug dosage is increased with a quicker end in mind.

Mr Key said yesterday that he could understand the argument that legalising euthanasia might put pressure on the elderly to end their lives early, in the face of “rapacious grandkids”, but “I don’t really buy that argument”.

“I think there’s a lot of euthanasia that effectively happens in our hospitals,” he told Newstalk ZB.

“. . . If I had terminal cancer, I had a few weeks to live, I was in tremendous amount of pain – if they just effectively wanted to turn off the switch and legalise that by legalising euthanasia, I’d want that.”

As would many people, who are denied the choice.

Of course with euthanasia, there is a risk of abuse. Just as with fracking there is a samll risk of small earthquakes and with our criminal justice system there is a risk of innocent people going to jail.

These are all reasons to minimise risk, and have strong safeguards in place. They are not reasons to not allow people to decide to die if in pain and suffering.

Also yesterday, Mr Key revealed that his views on gay marriage had changed, largely in response to having children.

He has stated his support for a bill legalising gay marriage, but said: “If you asked me questions on same-sex marriage 20 or 30 years ago, I might have taken a different view.

“But the way I look at the world now is I look at our own kids and my No 1 priority for our children is to be happy, healthy and safe.

“I don’t think they are gay, but if they came along and said they were, I wouldn’t love them any less.”

A great attitude.

I recently met a mum whose five year old may turn out to be gay or trans-gender. He loves to wear dresses, put on jewelry etc and complains why isn’t he a girl. Now it may just be a fad or a phase, or it may be that he is “wired” that way. I asked the mum (and she is straight, and the dad is straight) if they tried to discourage him, as he may end up with a lot of teasing through his childhood if he continues to dress up as a girl etc and she said that they never ever want him to think there is something “wrong” with him. They just absolutely love him to pieces for who he is, and will just support and love him regardless of where it leads. I thought it was such a cool attitude.

The son is pretty precocious also. As a five year old when he discovered there were no costumes at school, he went along to see the principal to lobby for the school to buy some costumes for dress up.

Sheep graze in snow covered paddocks near Wedderburn with the Hawkdun range in the background. Winter, Central Otago, South Island New Zealand. Photo by Sarah Sisson.

Hello all and welcome to Wednesday Wallpaper for 22 August.

This week we head up the road from our home to Wedderburn for some snowy ovine action.  We have seen precious little snow around Central Otago this winter, so I presume that will translate to never ending rain during barbecue season – or  biblical grade droughts.

Speaking of the bible, there is one Hell of a ‘discussion’ flaring up on today’s General Debate  on the topic of  creationism in schools….too heated for this artistically inclined fruitcake.

Download the big version from this link:  [free iPad wallpaper] Password = freewallpaper

See you next week!

Cheers – Todd

p.s. more than happy to photos how our images are created or evolved in the comments stream.

[more photos of the New Zealand landscape] [follow sisson new Zealand photography on facebook] [blog]

NZ Herald reports:

Education authorities have no idea how many sex offenders are working in New Zealand classrooms.

If the answer is anything greater than zero, then that is a problem – both potentially that they are working, but more that authorities do not know how many.

But information released by the Teachers Council under the Official Information Act indicates Miki is unlikely to be the only teacher with convictions for sex crimes.

“We are not able to advise how many teachers are working who have convictions for assault or crimes of a sexual nature because we do not hold information on which teachers are working,” said council director Peter Lind.

Why do we have a Teachers Council again?

Away on snow most of the day, so little posting. But fill up your time reading this love story. It’s pretty captivating.

I’m in Queenstown for a couple of days. BMW NZ must have seen the photo Whale took of my almost backing a car down a bank, and decided I need some upskilling.

So they have kindly put me on their BMW Alpine XDrive, which in their own words:

Put your driving skills to the test in the most challenging driving conditions the Southern Alps have on offer, behind the wheel of our latest BMW X Range vehicles.  Guided by professional BMW Instructors, you will discover first-hand the class-leading, road-holding capabilities of BMW’s xDrive technology – the world’s most intelligent All-Wheel Drive system.

Having acquired the skills you need to drive in these extreme snow and ice alpine conditions, you will then experience power-slides in the skid circle and compete in timed challenges on the ice slalom. High-speed hot laps with a professional driver, on snow-covered roads are the only way to finish the day.

There is a more than reasonable chance that you’ll get to see a photo of me driving off a cliff and landing a few hundred metres down. If I manage to avoid driving into an icewall, it should be a bloody fun experience.

There are times when I wonder that if I lived in the US, would I be able to be in the Republican Party, when they have candidates such as Todd Akin standing for the Senate.

I could never be a Democrat. The only left-wing party I think I could ever join would be the right faction of the NSW Labor Party 🙂

I guess I could be a US Libertarian Party member, but I actually believe in achieving things. Anyway it is all academic, as I am happy here in NZ.

Fox News reports:Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin resisted calls to withdraw from the race Monday over his controversial comments on rape, despite mounting pressure from GOP leaders who roundly condemned his remarks and threatened to cut off funding. 

Up until this he was 9% ahead of the incumbent Democrat.

Akin, a six-term GOP congressman, is challenging Democratic Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill for her seat. His chances looked fairly sunny — up until he told an interviewer that a woman’s body can typically prevent pregnancy during a “legitimate rape,” as he argued against allowing abortions in cases of rape, claiming such pregnancies are uncommon in the first place. 

“It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Akin said. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” 

How can an experienced politician, let alone a half decent human being, say something like that?

He basically just told every rape victim who got pregnant that their rape wasn’t real rape. Jesus Christ.

Sadly a fair proportion of rape victims do get pregnant to their rapist, and have the anguishing decision about what to then do.

One can have a legitimate debate on the legality of abortion, but you have to be a particular type of insensitive moron to make comments like Akin did.

Good to see the GOP dumping on him from a huge height. However the damage is done.

John Hartevelt at Stuff reports:

The decile rating of schools has been scrapped from Education Review Office reports.

ERO chief review officer Dr Graham Stoop made the surprise announcement yesterday in an effort to “correct the stereotype that a school’s decile equals performance”.

I’ve got no problem with this. The decile rating is still public information for parents who want it – but it is not part of an ERO report as it is not a factor in school quality.

Teacher union the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) said clear information about the social and economic context of schools should be published in place of the decile ratings, which were “crude”.

It suggested including data on student transience, the number of children with special needs or English as a second language and the number of children attending breakfast clubs.

Excellent. As I often say the answer to bad data is good data. Don’t ban or suppress data, but focus on presenting the most meaningful data.

Stuff reports:

The West Auckland resident said he recorded the meeting because he did not like some of the probation officer’s comments.

In the recording the officer talks about the difficulty of managing people on home detention for ”pretty sick crimes” who ”still have a need for, for instance, child sex”.

Referring to one case he says: ”I’m not able to supply them with child sex but we’ve worked out a plan where, hey, we’ll go out to get a prostitute who comes to the house and she dresses up as a child.”

I’m glad the probation service doesn’t actually provide child sex to pedophiles – just prostitutes dressed up as children. That makes me feel so much better about paying my taxes.

I guess if the offender was in for bestiality, the officer would hire a prostitute to dress up as a horse, and if for necrophilia he’d try to hire a zombie prostitute.

Note I’ve got no problem with paedophiles hiring consenting adult prostitutes dressed up as whatever they want. But I’d rather it wasn’t taxpayer funded!

Bryce Edwards wrote:

Of course Goff and his party played the crucial role in sending New Zealand into the Afghanistan war, so his current stance would appear, to some, to be hypocritical. Goff refuses to say that Labour’s intervention was wrong, essentially suggesting that it has only been wrong under the National Government, but few will be convinced. Goff’s view of the future is bleak: ‘Afghanistan was slipping towards civil war…. He said success in Afghanistan relied on a local administration that could capture the “hearts and minds” of its people. The Karzai administration had failed on that front, and Goff said it was “deeply corrupt”. “It is involved in drug trafficking, supports war lords, and hasn’t got the support of the people. Why are our guys dying to defend an administration of that nature?”‘ Ironically, those criticisms were, of course, the exact ones made during Goff’s tenure as Minister of Defence. Goff’s words now amount to an admission of defeat.

David Shearer’s position on the withdrawal appears to be more cautious than Goff’s, and is effectively the same as the Government’s. When interviewed today Shearer said: ‘I don’t think we should be cutting and running, because that will undo the very good work we’ve done over the last nine years. But we shouldn’t be staying any longer than we have to – I’m talking about months, rather than a year and a half’ – see TV3’sFirstline – Leave Afghanistan ‘as soon as practical’ – Shearer.

Labour’s position has been all over the place. Goff has been saying one thing, and Shearer another. Plus Shearer’s position varied throughout the day.

This suggests to me that Labour’s parliamentary unit is not operating as effectively as it should be. The moment news of the three further deaths broke, there should have been a quick meeting to determine what the Leader would say, and then if he signed off on it, it should be communicated to all MPs with clear instructions that no Labour MP is to say anything beyond that.

This is not advanced political management. This is basically Politics 101. A party needs to speak with one voice on issues like this. Goff is saying the mission (which he started) has failed, while Shearer is saying it has not.

The Herald reports:

More than 40 protesters held an hour-long working conditions “teach-in” outside the Burger King outlet at Aotea Square in Auckland yesterday.

After the speeches, two protesters tried to enter the store but found the door blocked by security guards.

The Unite union national director, Mike Treen, said the protest was to speak up for the company’s workers about a culture of exploitation over pay and individuals being intimidated not to join the union.

I’d say an exploitative employer is one who deducts PAYE from its employees pay packets, and instead of paying the PAYE to the IRD as legally obliged – they instead spend it on political campaigning.

The Herald reports:

A heated debate has erupted in Gisborne over whether pyjamas should be banned from being worn in public.

The trend of wearing nightwear to the supermarket, cash machine or around the CBD has become more popular recently, annoying some locals who say it shows a lack of self-respect and lowers the town’s appeal.

I’m all in favour of PJs in public!

Gisborne deputy mayor Nona Aston said in her view it wasn’t the council’s place to create a bylaw forbidding sleeping clothes outside of the home.

Exactly.

Gisborne mayor Meng Foon said as long as people were clean, he didn’t mind what they wore. Some people wore “hardly anything”, like bikinis, while shopping in the town.

In Cairns, you’d see guys shopping at the supermarket in shorts only.

Tina Law reports:

Dr Smith said hysteria was sweeping the country about the practice, and he called for some “science and commonsense” to be injected into the debate.

He likened the fracking debate to a modern-day version of the Chicken Licken story, in which a hen thinks the sky is falling in after an acorn hits her head.

He accused the Christchurch City Council of “jumping on the Greens’ ‘Don’t Frack with New Zealand’ bandwagon”, saying fracking had been done in New Zealand for decades and was used in the building of the Clyde Dam.

But Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said Christchurch had experienced 12,500 quakes, so it was “entirely reasonable” for the city to ban the controversial practice until someone could provide evidence it would not trigger more of them.

“We’re not going to take a risk on something that we are uncertain about until there is some certainty.”

Absolutely wrong. You don’t ban things until they are “proven” safe (an impossible thing to do). You ban things when they are proven unsafe.

It was not an entirely reasonable thing to do. It was an entirely kneejerk thing to do.

Gaynz.com reports:

[S]peaking briefly to GayNZ.com Daily News yesterday afternoon as she left Auckland’s Aotea Centre after helping open a Human Rights Commission conference encouraging diversity and ‘a fair go for all,’ Collins said of marriage equality: “I’ve got no problem with it.”

On enabling same-sex couples to legally adopt children she responded: “I’ve got no particular problem with that either.”

It’s great Judith is supporting allowing same sex couples to marry, if they want to.

It is likely the first reading on the bill will be Wednesday 29 August. However unclear if it will complete the two hour debate that night.

People may be surprised at how certain MPs vote.

I’m heading to Auckland next week for The Project [R]evolution. It is a digital and social media conference organised by AUT, the US Embassy and Social Media NZ.

The keynote speaker is Alec Ross, Senior advisor for innovation to Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

One can see who is already attending. The full programme looks really good and I am looking forward to attending. I have a complimentary media ticket, but am travelling up  to Auckland just to attend.

A stark reminder of how the Greens out global solidarity ahead of NZ’s interests.

Audrey Young reports:

Meanwhile, the Green Parties of New Zealand, Australia and Canada are joining forces to campaign against the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

They issued a joint statement yesterday after Metiria Turei, co-leader of the NZ Greens, held a press conference in Canada with her counterpart from there.

Among the Greens’ concerns is the prospect of the heavily protected Canadian dairy industry being de-regulated, removing safeguards which they say aim to preserve farmers’ livelihoods.

So the NZ Green Party is against NZ dairy farmers being able to have fair access into Canada!!! Their concern is to protect inefficient subsidized Canadian farmers, not to help NZ farmers export more milk.

The Financial Post point out how the Canadian system works:

Canadians must hope New Zealand and Australia force Canada to scrap its protectionist supply management system for dairy, poultry and eggs before being allowed to join the coveted Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The Aussies and Kiwis have been upset with Canada over these agricultural subsidies for decades and are doing consumers in Canada, and the economy as a whole, a favor by opposing them.

Canada’s dairy, poultry and egg farmers belong to government-sanctioned cartels that keep out foreign competition with the help of tariffs as high as 300%. The government guarantees their success by setting a floor price. The result is monopoly profits and an estimate, by the OECD, that Canadians overpay $3 billion annually for these foodstuffs.

The Greens basically don’t like trade. They voted against the FTA with China which has seen us export an extra $12 billion to China since it was signed. They want Canada to keep up its tariffs of up to 300%.

As the most remote developed country in the world, trade is vital to our future. Yet, the Greens want to kill it off.