The Herald reports:

A Kiwi Mongrel Mob member, who feared his distinctive Notorious face tattoo would deter job prospects, has been given a role as a personal trainer.
After being in prison twice, Puk Kireka, 31, had chosen to change his life around by studying sport and recreation and getting a job.
According to Stuff, Hawkes Bay business owner Robbie Gale, was inspired by his story that went viral on social media worldwide and reached out to Kireka to help him out by giving him a job as a personal trainer.

That’s very generous of Mr Gale, and a good opportunity for Mr Kireka to turn his life around. I hope he succeeds.

Andrew Little has been ranting about Google not obeying NZ suppression laws, but the truth is his own Government is to blame, not Google.

Stuff has a letter from Google which states that Google has provided forms and a webform to the Government where court orders and suppression orders can be submitted.

The Government never submitted the suppression order to Google. In fact it was Defence Counsel who finally submitted it, four days after it was made and after the Google Trends e-mail went out.

Now as a result of Little’s ranting, Google has stopped Google Trends e-mails for NZ. Wonderful.

The real solution is something I advocated over a decade ago. A secure database of suppression orders. We have an insane situation where media (including KB) have to obey suppression orders we know nothing about.

Now finally the Government is realising this could be the real solution.

Laura Walters of Newsroom reports:

A war of words is raging over the war on drugs, as the Health Select Committee reports back on the most significant piece of drug reform legislation in 40 years.
The parties are divided over a single, but significant, clause in the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill, which enshrines police discretion over prosecution, and prioritises therapeutic options when dealing with possession and personal use of controlled drugs. …

In recent months, there has been a back and forth between National, Labour and the Green Party over whether the proposed legislation will effectively decriminalise drugs.
Labour, including the Prime Minister and the Health Minister, have pushed back on National’s categorisation that this bill creates “de facto decriminalisation by stealth”, saying it doesn’t take away the power to prosecute, and police would do so when needed.

So the PM and Minister both claim it is not de facto decriminalisation. But what do others say?

National Party health spokesperson Michael Woodhouse sits on the health committee and was there when the NZ Drug Foundation, Police Association, psychiatrists and lawyers agreed the bill would essentially decriminalise personal possession and use – regardless of what the Prime Minister says.

So this is decriminalisation but Labour are trying to fool everyone that it isn’t.

I actually support decriminalisation or even better legalisation. But I don’t support trying to con people that a law change isn’t what it is.

Meanwhile, Rotorua lawyer Chris Macklin, representing the Law Society, said he could not think of a single case where police could argue they should prosecute someone for possession of a drug for personal use, under proposed legislation.
No-one who came before the select committee said there could be a case made for a criminal prosecution over a therapeutic approach – regardless of what services were available, Woodhouse said.
If the Government was decriminalising the use of controlled substances, which included meth, synthetics and heroin, there needed to be a wider public debate, rather than slipping it through in this piece of legislation, he said.

So not just cannabis, but also P?

The Herald reports:

A mother and father are battling in the Family Court over whether to get their child vaccinated. …

The father filed an application in January 2018 under the Care of Children Act 2004
with a two-page affidavit outlining his reasoning. That October, the mother filed a 33 page affidavit in response, along with 150 pages of evidence.

That’s the first sign. You respond to a two page affidavit with 183 pages! I can guarantee you it will be rambling. Longer is not better.

These included a letter from the girl’s GP, the results of genetic testing done by a naturopath

Sign 2 – a naturopath can’t do genetic testing.

and “information obtained from her own research on the internet”.

Sign 3!!

Given the Court had already ordered a report from a New Zealand expert, she declined the mother’s application to file additional evidence.

183 pages wasn’t enough!

By John Stringer.

One of the more famous murders in the world, about which many books, articles, and films have been made, is the 1954 Parker-Hulme murder in Christchurch. Peter Graham’s excellent 2011 book So Brilliantly Clever and Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (which ‘discovered’ Kate Winslet before she went on to do Titanic) both cover it.

I’m interested, because I live there, know all the places involved, and my mother may have been at the Port Hills sanatorium at the same time as one of the killers, Juliet Hulme. One of my friends was certainly at school with the killers and my sisters went to the same school as both. The parents of Parker lived in my neighbourhood.

Bert Rieper (killer 1)’s father had a fish n chip shop and fishmongers in Sydenham. My twin sister had several Fish n Chip shops on that side of town and her ex-husband, a fishmongers in Sydenham.  Until the Feb 22, 2011 earthquake, we lived just over the spur from the murder scene.  This is my patch.

This killing is stranger than fiction. A book of the event was actually turned down by a publisher because it was so far-fetched, until it was pointed out it really happened.

I say “World Murder” because this event spanned several nations, incl: NZ, Australia, South Africa, the UK, America, the Bahamas. It’s world famous due to Jackson’s movie; and has a dedicated cyberspace following of numerous websites and blogs covering all the details, people, and speculations over the case.

Two teenage girls in a lesbian relationship enwrapped in a fantasy world of their own creation, with massive superiority complexes, brutally murdered one of their mothers in conservative post-war Christchurch.  But there the twists and turns did not end, and the saga has continued until the present day, almost 60 years later. One of the killers went on to be a hugely successful UK murder-mystery writer. Some of her fictional killings and characters resemble the events of her own real crime. Creepy.

The killing is perhaps best known to modern inquirers as the 1994 Heavenly Creatures murder in which Kate Winslet found stardom.  It was Jackson’s first serious, and ‘proper’, movie (in my opinion).

A bizarre aspect of the murder was that almost all the protagonists changed their names.

• Pauline Parker (killer 1), known as Yvonne, knew herself as Pauline Rieper and only learned her real name after her arrest. Can you imagine if she was convicted as a grim Rieper? She changed her name to Hilary Nathan after she was released.
• The victim, Honorah Rieper was never actually married to her husband, Bill Rieper, so her real name was Parker. Her daughter Pauline was therefore arraigned under her mother’s revealed maiden name “Parker” not Rieper. Bert Rieper and his office colleague Honorah had run away together from the North Is. and lived a secret ‘married’ life in Christchurch.
• Juliet Hulme (killer 2) changed her name to Anne Perry (among others) after she was released.
• Her mother Hilda Hulme changed her name immediately after the conviction to that of her adulterous lover, Bill Perry, ironically Juliet Hulme’s later assumed name.
• The girls had various fantasy names, including “De-borah,” many of which were masculine, such as “Paul.” They also lived within a complex code system of names and aliases attributed to various “saints,” basically teenage girl movie star heroes and literary figures.  Both girls were clever and good writers.

There are some other interesting facts in the case:

• Justice Mahon of the AirNZ Antarctic Erebus Inquiry was a legal junior in the trial.
• The chief prosecutor Alan Brown had a mental breakdown during the trial and went mad. He was often in tears in the court.
• Both of Juliet Hulme’s parents (killer 2) [Hilda and Henry] immediately fled New Zealand, one before the trial was over, the other immediately afterward, abandoning Hulme to Mt Eden in New Zealand.  She had a life of continual abandonment by her parents, often in different countries.
• Hulme’s father, Dr Henry Hulme, was a disaster as Rector of Canterbury University College, despite his intelligence. A brilliant physicist, he was a very bright academic who worked on the Manhatten Project developing the nuclear bomb. He also knew Ernest Lord Rutherford (who incidentally got married in my Papanui church). He went on to have a bright career but remained socially odd throughout his life.
• Henry fled with their young son, Jonty Hulme, who eventually ended up living in Scotland in the insular community clustered around Anne Perry’s successful publishing career (that is (Juliet Hulme). Hilda Hulme/Perry (now in her 80s) Juliet/Anne’s mother is also part of this group. Weird.
• Rudy Gopas painted Hilda Hulme’s portrait but also painted a second secret portrait that showed her as he really saw her (calculating, selfish, cold, conniving).

The main point I want to make, is the psychopathic brutality and utter callousness of the killing of Honorah Rieper/Parker on that day in 1954, which was messy, extremely bloody, slow and unpleasant, and not really conveyed in the Jackson movie.  I will turn to that aspect in Pt. 2.

John Stringer, Christchurch, New Zealand.

NewstalkZB reports:

The head of Customs has handed back $302,000 seized from a mysterious foreign diplomat after he failed to declare the vast sum of cash in his luggage.
The experienced traveller, part of an official delegation invited to New Zealand, was let off with a warning instead of being prosecuted. They had claimed that they had forgotten they had the money in the bag. 

Bullshit.

No-one forgets they have $300,000 in cash on them.

I can only assume they were from an allied country, so we looked the other way.

Presumably the money is for bribes or funding some rebels somewhere.

Juliet Moses writes in The Spectator:

I came across the privilege worksheet that students at Saratoga Springs High School were recently required to complete, tabulating their privilege based on various identity and other factors. E.g.:
+25 for white, -100 for black.
+25 for Jewish, +5 for Christian, -50 for Muslim.

+25 for male, -50 for female.
+20 for straight, +10 for bisexual, 0 for asexual, -150 for gay.
+20 for cis, +10 for trans (passable), -100 for genderqueer, -500 for trans.
Able-bodied +25, ‘retarded’ -200.

And there were other categories, such as for family income, and even for attractiveness. Participants with total scores of more than 100 were told to check their privilege daily, and less than -50, were told they are ‘disprivileged’, the word itself being a revelation for me.

All these privilege scoring systems are nonsense, but this one more so than most. You wonder what sort of demented teacher really thinks being Jewish is more privileged than being Christian in the US. Yeah it is a real privilege to have survived the Holocaust and 2,000 years of persecution.

Anyway I also tracked down the scoring sheet and thought it would be fun to list in order what they regard as being most to least privileged. The insanities are everywhere. Coming from the Middle East is three times less privileged than being retarded! A female billionaire is less privileged than a male average income worker!

1. Billionaire +50
2. White +25
3. Male +25
4. Jewish +25
5. Northern Europe (born) +25
6. Millionaire +25
7. Able bodied +25
8. Banker +25
9. Straight +20
10. CIS gender +20
11. US +20
12. 9+/10 attractiveness +20
13. Middle Europe +15
14. Asian +10
15. Attractive face +10
16. Engineer +10
17. Doctor +10
18. Tall +10
19. Affluent (over $100k income) +10
20. China urban +10
21. Trans (passable) +10
22. Bisexual +10
23. Tall +10
24. Christian +5
25. IT profession +5
26. Teacher -5
27. Short -10
28. Overweight -10
29. Police/Fire -10
30. Short -10
31. Scientist -15
32. Ugly face -20
33. Southern Europe – 20
34. Hindu -20
35. Buddhist -20
36. Social autism -20
37. Poor (under $30k income) -25
38. Sikh -30
39. Immobile -30
40. Latino – 50
41. Disease -50
42. Deaf -50
43. Muslim -50
44. Female -50
45. Intersex -75
46. Black -100
47. Genderqueer -100
48. China rural -100
49. India -100
50. Gay -150
51. Retarded -200
52. Homeless -250
53. Africa -400
54. Trans -500
55. Middle East -600
56. Blind -750

Now work out your scores and post them in comments. If you get +100 or more you need to check your privilege daily. If you are below -100 you are very dis-privileged.

Here’s some scores I’ve calculated:

• DPF 115
• John Key 200
• Jacinda Ardern 60
• Winston Peters 0
• Grant Robertson -55
• Heather du Plessis Allen -350
• Georgina Beyer -815

The original score sheet is below for those interested.

Still crook and likely to remain so until the antibiotics work. I appear to have a lower respiratory tract infection.

Fairly sick so don’t expect any posts until my fever drops away. Off to raid the Pharmac budget this morning!

Michael Littlewood and Michael Chamberlain have published their submission to the Retirement Commissioner on reforms that matter for making retirements savings sustainable. The summary is

1. Higher economic growth
2. Longitudinal household surveys to understand what households are doing and what their aspirations are
3. Set up a centre of research excellence on retirement incomes policies modeled on Dunedin Multi-Disciplinary Health and Development Study
4. Do a first principles review of NZ Superannuation
5. Do a first principles review of disclosure for financial services products
6. Treat all income uniformly for tax purposes
7. Greater mathematical competence in the school curriculum
8. Have an accord between parties on retirement income policies to give certainty

Great ideas. Sadly I predict that none of them will occur.

NewstalkZB reports:

A world first opt-out union membership system is being proposed for New Zealand.
The idea from four academics would see workers signed up to a union at the same time as they sign their employment contract.
Waikato University Management Professor Mark Harcourt told Heather du Plessis-Allan that right now, the system is opt-in, which makes it hard for unions to gather members who are afraid of offending their new employer.

Yeah, Nah.

But if implemented I propose all taxpayers be automatically made members of the Taxpayers Union, with an ability to opt out.

Newshub reports:

Midwives involved in the documented attempted uplift of a baby in Hawke’s Bay have hit out at the Prime Minister for not watching video footage of the incident.
In June, Newsroom released a video investigation showing officials from Oranga Tamariki – the Ministry for Children – at a Hawke’s Bay maternity ward attempting to take a young baby away from her family out of concern for the child’s safety.

The process used by the officials has received criticism, with the Māori mother being isolated from her midwife and whanāu late at night so Oranga Tamariki could try and take her baby. Oranga Tamariki eventually gave up after hours of standoff and the case is now before the courts.
Despite at least three inquiries into the case and Oranga Tamariki’s overall uplift processes being ordered, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Newshub Nation on Saturday she hadn’t watched the video. 

I’m not convinced the video gives us all the information we need. No one has said why the court ordered the uplift. What has happened in the past with this mother?

But having said that, it would be wise for the PM to view the video just to check that what she has been told matches what happened.

The Herald reporting:

Beloved British comedian Rowan Atkinson has reportedly told friends he is planning a reboot of the cult black comedy Blackadder and is “extremely excited”.
The Mr Bean superstar is set to team up with his original co-stars again to bring the 80s series back to life, including Tony Robinson, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, The Sun reports.
It had been previously reported the cast would perhaps consider a one-off show, but now it’s believed a full fifth series is being considered.
The original series ran for four seasons between 1983 and 1989, with each season taking place in a different period of history.

The new season – according to a source of the Sun’s – will be set in the “modern day”, in which Edmund Blackadder (Atkinson) would be a university lecturer.

That could work so very well. I’m very excited. I love all four seasons. I think the second is narrowly my favourite.

Some of my favourite quotes:

• “Wicked Child! Chairs are the work of Belezabub! At our house Nathaneal sits on a spike. And I sit on Nathaneal. Two spikes would be an extravagance…”
• Well, you’ve come to the right place, Bob. A war hasn’t been fought thisbadly since Olaf the Hairy, High Chief of all the Vikings, accidentally ordered 80,000 battle helmets with the horns on the inside.
• “Such activities are totally beyond my mother. My father only got anywhere with her because he told her it was a cure for diarrhoea.”
• “Baldrick, you wouldn’t recognise a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing ‘subtle plans are here again’.”

Stuff reports:

Business confidence continues to slide, with New Zealand companies the most downbeat in a decade, since the height of the global financial crisis.
The Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion (QSBO) for the June quarter, released on Tuesday, showed a fall in general confidence.
More importantly, the majority of businesses surveyed said they expect their own activity to contract in the coming quarter.

This is the more important indicator. Business owners know what the environment for their own business is like.

Christina Leung, principal economist at the Institute of Economic Research (NZIER), which undertakes the QSBO, said the measures suggest gross domestic product (GDP) would fall below 2 per cent in the second half of 2019, below what economists generally had been expecting.
Manufacturers were the most pessimistic in the survey, with a net 23 per cent reporting a fall in output.

Who recalls Labour, Greens and NZ First claiming a manufacturing crisis under National? They even published a report. Of course there wasn’t. But now there maybe.

News.com.au reports:

The French government is facing outrage after revelations that 30 bureaucrats in the southern city of Toulon were paid to do nothing for more than 25 years.
Taxpayers forked out more than $1.6 million a year (€1 million) for the public servants, who were left without jobs after water services in Toulon were privatised.
The city failed to find them new posts but continued paying their salaries, according to a report by the Provence-Alps-Riviera Regional Audit Office, first revealed by local newspaper Var-matin.
One of the “phantom” bureaucrats collected a salary while also working as a manager in the private sector, while others received automatic promotions and pay increases based on length of service.

Not having a job should be no bar to getting promoted!

Liam Hehir writes:

As of this week, rental properties will be subject to new insulation requirements.
Over the next few years, landlords will also need to install fixed heating devices in living rooms and fans in bathrooms and kitchens. Owner-occupied properties are not subject to the same requirements.
The penalties for landlords who do not comply are stiff. You could be subject to a financial sanction if a tenant complains. Not meeting the new insulation standards could cost you $4000, for example.
In a probably not unrelated development, rents are hitting all-time highs.

This will only be of surprise to Ministers.

As reported by Stuff, Trade Me head of property Nigel Jefferies cited two reasons for the increases. First, there’s an overall shortage of rental stock. Secondly, the always escalating cost of compliance is being passed on in the form of steeper rents as landlords look to recover the additional costs they are having to outlay.
Of course, the first of these is the more important factor. If we had more properties available to rent than people wanting to rent them, owners would likely just have to suck up the additional costs. The fact that the new costs are being imposed at a time of shortage, however, means that landlords are confident of their ability to pass those costs on to the tenants who really have no option.

When there is a shortage of rental properties, it is a very bad time to increase compliance costs.