The latest poll is from One News Colmar Brunton. Key details are:

• National 45% (+1%)
• Labour 43% (+1%)
• Greens 6% (nc)
• NZ First 3% (-2%)
• ACT 1% (nc)

This poll was taken the week before National’s annual conference. A remarkably good result for National after 21 months of opposition.

Sure Labour/Greens remain ahead. But people forget election campaigns matter and to date it doesn’t look like the Government will have delivered much to campaign on. All National needs to do is take 2% off Labour or 1% off the Greens and they’re in Government.

For Preferred PM it is:

• Jacinda Ardern 41% (-4%)
• Simon Bridges 6% (+1%)
• Judith Collins 6% (nc)
• Winston Peters 2% (-3%)
• Christopher Luxon 1% (+1%)

Martin van Beynen writes:

Ellis worked as a childcare worker at the Christchurch Civic Creche. In 1991, an allegation by one of his charges eventually escalated into a police investigation in which about 120 children were interviewed by specialist Social Welfare Department interviewers. About 40 children reported some form of abuse, some of it mundane, some of it fantastical and bizarre, featuring infanticide and cannibalism. …

As a youngish court reporter, I saw the videos, listened to the children in court and heard all the evidence. My view was the accounts emerging from the interviews of the children were totally unreliable. It just seemed common sense.
The first problem was the lead-up to the interviews. Some of the parents were networking and had already asked their children leading questions before their specialist interviews. Some children had talked to each other.
The social welfare interviews were professional enough for the time but the children were hardly ever challenged, no matter how fanciful their answers. If the answers were inconsistent or incoherent, then they would be asked again in more elaborate form until an acceptable answer was elicited.
In many interviews it was not so much about believing the children but believing the children only when an implausible answer became more plausible. If they did not disclose or were unclear, they were brought back for more interviews. The children, most between 5 and 8, were recalling events from two or three years earlier. 
Interviewers fed them tidied-up summaries of their most plausible stories and then told them to continue. As the interviews continued, allegations became more bizarre, as though the children believed they had to perform better to satisfy the adults. Some almost begged for the interviews to end.
The quality of evidence rendered the convictions against Peter Ellis not only unsafe but farcical.

Not just unsafe, but farcical. And that is from someone who sat through the evidence.

UN Watch reports:

Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan were among members of the UN’s 54-nation economic and social council, a principal organ of the world body, who voted to single out and condemn Israel yesterday as the only country in the world that violates women’s rights.
The Jewish state was harshly and repeatedly condemned in a resolution, adopted 40 to 2 with 9 abstentions and 3 absent (see breakdown below), for allegedly being the “major obstacle” for Palestinian women “with regard to their advancement, self-reliance, and integration in the development of their society.”
Out of 20 items on the UN Economic and Social Council’s 2018-2019 agenda, only one — Item No. 16 against Israel — focuses on condemning a specific country. All the other focus areas concern global topics such as disaster relief assistance and the use of science and technology for development.
The resolution completely ignores how Palestinian women’s rights are impacted by their own governing authorities—the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza—nor does it mention how women are discriminated against within patriarchal Palestinian society.
Moreover, ECOSOC concluded its annual session by ignoring the world’s worst abusers of women’s rights, refusing to pass a single resolution on the situation of women in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, or DR Congo, all of which ranked in the top ten worst countries in last year’s Global Gender Gap Report, produced by the World Economic Forum.

Being condemned by Saudi Arabia for your record on women should be seen as high praise.

Human Progress blogs:

Former Vice President, and Democratic presidential nominee hopeful, Joe Biden, has recently placed the “point of no return” even sooner, in just 12 years’ time. “[H]ow we act or fail to act in the next 12 years will determine the very livability of our planet,” he said earlier this week.
 
Environmental problems are certainly real, but alarmists do a disservice to the cause of tackling those challenges when they use cataclysmic language to describe the near future.
 
As Harvard University’s Steven Pinker noted in his book Enlightenment Now, psychological research has shown that “people are likelier to accept the fact of global warming when they are told that the problem is solvable by innovations in policy and technology than when they are given dire warnings about how awful it will be”.
 
But instead of focusing on solutions, like nuclear power, which does not emit CO2, and other technological breakthroughs that have the potential to reduce carbon emissions, some well-meaning people resort to apocalyptic rhetoric. Humanity has reached the “point of no return” many times already, according to past doomsayers.
 
In 2006, Al Gore warned that unless drastic measures were taken “within the next 10 years,” the world would “reach a point of no return.” That would place “the point of no return” in 2016.
 
Thirty years ago, in 1989, an unidentified senior U.N. environmental official told the Associated Press that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels” if drastic action was not taken by the year 2000. The ocean has not swallowed any nations since his prognostication.
 
In 1982, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program Mostafa Tolba said that lack of action by the year 2000 would bring “an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust.” His prediction of an environmental “nuclear holocaust” in just 18 years failed to materialize.
 
Back in 1970, Harvard University biologist George Wald claimed that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” His prediction would place the end of civilization sometime between 1985 and 2000.
 
Also in 1970, North Texas State University philosopher Peter Gunter wrote, “By the year 2000, 30 years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
 
In 1969, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich said, “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” It is a good thing he did not put down money on that proposition, or he would have had to pay out 31 years later. (In fact, it would have served his bank account well to stay away from wagers entirely).
 
The frequency of hyperbolic, failed predictions of catastrophe would be more amusing if they were not so damaging to the public’s perception of real environmental challenges, including climate change.
 
Fortunately, there are also many environmentalists who hold a less pessimistic and more realistic view. Rockefeller University professor Jesse H. Ausubel, who was integral to setting up the world’s first climate change conference in Geneva in 1979, has shown how technological progress allows nature to rebound. For example, increasing crop yields to produce more food with less land reduces the environmental impact of agriculture. In fact, if farmers worldwide reach the productivity level of the average US farmer, humanity will be able to return a landmass the size of India back to nature.
 
In addition to technological progress, economic development can also help protect the environment. As people rise out of extreme poverty, they often come to care more about environmental stewardship. The incredible decline in Chinese poverty spurred by economic liberalisation, for example, has coincided with better preservation of forests. China had 511,807 more square kilometres of forest in 2015 than it did in 1990. Once a country reaches around $4,500 in GDP per capita, forest area starts to rebound. This is called the “forest transition” or, more broadly, the “environmental Kuznets curve”.
 
Many other such reasons for optimism exist. Yet the new report’s “2050 scenario finds a world in social breakdown and outright chaos,” David Spratt, the research director at the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, told Vice.
 
Not to be outdone in pessimism, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has predicted that “the world is going to end in 12 years” without urgent action, rather than in 31 years’ time.
 
In the year 353, a bishop called Hilary of Poitiers also predicted that the world would end in just 12 years, in 365. It is a safe bet that Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s forecast ends up as inaccurate as his was.

They don’t understand that hysteria doesn’t convince people.

Stuff reports:

The 47-year-old man appeared in the Hutt Valley District Court on Saturday morning following the midnight melee, in which police responded to what they called reports of a ‘steamroller’ being used to damage vehicles that had congregated at an industrial site. 

Someone online quipped that not all heroes wear capes.

Of course he will face legal sanction for what he did. But I suspect a few of the neighbours may chip in to help pay his costs.

By coincidence the following night the number of boy racers dropped from 90 to around 10.

Stuff reported:

Support Women’s Sport Basin Reserve – the name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue but that could be the new name for Wellington’s historic cricket ground.
A $100,000 fundraising drive has kicked off to get two years of naming rights for the Basin Reserve.
The move, to rename it Support Women’s Sport Basin Reserve, has the support of Wellington Mayor Justin Lester and councillor Fleur Fitzsimons.

That campaign is so wet, that a family of 10 could drown in it.

I can’t think of anything more likely to piss people off and harm the campaign for women’s sport.

An insightful take at The Standard:

Let’s not bother with the criminal waste of tax on hundreds of working groups, existing to successfully suppressing oppositional opinion through co-option.
Oranga Tamariki has got three investigations underway for removing children, and is being kicked all over the park by the media. Cue another year of paralysis by analysis.
There is no reform of the justice sector.
There’s no substantial reform of social welfare, in particular no raise in base welfare levels, so no improvement in poverty levels this term. That’s another generation of 25% of our children.
Transport remains a fully self-inflicted disaster, with light rail gone from even starting for at least another term, mortality and injury and traffic congestion all soaring, and the only items of note to open this term will be National-inspired motorways in the Waikato.
There are no new partnerships with Labour-led councils such as Christchurch or Auckland, and the ones there are like City Rail Link and Christchurch rebuild were started under National.
Tax policy is a full-throated policy wasteland, with no Capital Gains Tax and no other tax reform either as long as Ardern is PM, so National’s tax settings continuing to oppress most of New Zealand.
Teaching at both secondary and tertiary level is a policy disaster with massive untested reforms to demolish polytechs and removing secondary decile ratings, with little stable to replace them. Great they’re paid better.
Nothing about water charging, and won’t be in this government. Free money to business.
A weak-ass carbon reform, with little attempt to change the carbon pollution of the vehicle fleet or farming industries.
KiwiBuild is largely unrecoverable, although there is indeed sterling work with HNZ building new rentals. Maybe the Urban Development Agency will help, in a few terms.
And now, intervening via television into an iwi-Fletchers housing partnership, over the top of layers of court and local government mandating, the Prime Minister gets in to stop a Mangere housing development. Few other suburbs in Auckland need new housing more, and she stops it.

A pretty good summary.

It’s not ‘transformational’, it’s not the year of delivery. What is this government?
This is the weakest leadership on policy of any government since the last term of Holyoake, 60 years ago. That’s on Ardern.

That may be true. But a case can be made that Holyoake achieved more in his 4th term than Ardern in her first. His Government negotiated continued access to UK markets after they joined the EEC. They also abolished the native school system and raised the general medical subsidy for beneficiaries.

From Simon Bridges’ speech:

The Government claims that their investment in health this year is the biggest ever. Yet we have the biggest DHB deficits on record. There are fewer elective surgeries happening under this Government each and every week. And 38,000 more people aren’t seeing their GP because of the costs.
 
Yet despite claiming to be a caring and compassionate Government, they only put an extra 1 per cent into PHARMAC for life-saving drugs. That doesn’t even cover inflation.
 
 
 
This is a Government that has put 75 times more money into a political slush fund to help NZ First get re-elected than it has into PHARMAC.
 
 
 
It’s those drugs I want to talk about today, and I want to talk very personally.
 
 
 
You may have heard the incredible story of Tracey Elliott. Tracey is well known to some of you here today. Tracey was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer in April 2014. The doctors told her she had 12 days to live. She did everything she could to fight it.
 
 
 
She started on Herceptin, had 60 rounds of chemotherapy and over 20 radiation treatments.
 
 
 
She defied the odds and won. But then it came back. She then went on a drug called Tykerb, which cost her $2300 every month she was on it.
 
 
 
It worked – and the cancer disappeared. But just this year, the tumours came back. This time though it was in her brain and surgery wasn’t an option. Her entire frontal lobe was a tumour.
 
 
 
She was told there was only one drug that would work. It’s called Kadcyla and it costs her and her family $9000 every three weeks. It’s fully funded in the UK and Australia. Over the past five years her treatment has cost her and her husband Troy over $500,000.
 
 
 
They now have to sell their house to be able to keep affording the drugs. That’s a decision New Zealanders shouldn’t have to make.
 
 
 
Tracey’s husband Troy has written to Jacinda Ardern two times about her story. Jacinda Ardern ignored every single letter.
 
 
 
Tracey’s story isn’t unique. All of us have stories of loved ones and friends who have been affected by cancer.
 
We need to do something about that. Over the last couple of hundred years many people have come to New Zealand for better opportunities and lives.
 
 
 
They shouldn’t have to leave again to get access to life-saving drugs. In Government, we were faced with some large challenges like the Global Financial Crisis and the Christchurch Earthquakes.
 
 
 
And we funded Herceptin because it was the right thing to do. But we’re now in a position where we are able to do more. It’s not up to someone else, Jacinda Ardern.
 
 
 
I’m sick of reading in the newspaper that people are going without life-saving drugs when I see this Government wasting billions and billions of dollars on policies that do not work and do not improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders.
 
 
 
It’s not right that the Government can find more than $2 billion for fees-free university but it can’t afford life-saving drugs.
 
 
 
It’s not right that the Government can find $3 billion for the Shane Jones slush fund but it can’t afford life-saving drugs.
 
 
 
And it’s not right that the Government can find more than $300 million for working groups but it can’t afford life-saving cancer drugs for deserving New Zealanders like Tracey.
 
 
 
New Zealanders shouldn’t have to set up Givealittle pages just to stay alive.
 
 
 
As Prime Minister I will not stand by and watch as people die when we have the opportunity to do more.
 
 
 
The next National Government will fund and dedicate an extra $200m for PHARMAC to fund cancer drugs.
 
 
 
We will ensure those drugs go to those who need them. We would expect the drugs PHARMAC buy from this fund to be those that demonstrate high levels of effectiveness internationally.
 
 
 
We don’t want just more drugs – we want drugs that will save and prolong lives.
 
 
 
We also want to put an end to what has become known as the ‘Cancer Postcode Lottery’.
 
 
 
Cancer is New Zealand’s single biggest cause of death. Too often people in regional New Zealand are disadvantaged because they don’t have access to the same services as those in our biggest cities.
 
 
 
It doesn’t just mean they don’t have the same ability to get treatment. It means often their diagnoses are far too late to prevent it becoming terminal.
 
 
 
New Zealand leads the world when it comes to treating kids with cancer. We figured out what works and we did it, and made it as effective as possible. Sadly the system hasn’t figured out how to do it for everyone.
 
 
 
This Government wants more Wellington bureaucrats in the Ministry of Health setting the strategy.
 
 
 
National wants medical experts, clinical professionals and the best in the world leading the charge towards making cancer care in New Zealand first class.
 
 
 
You may have heard of a man called Blair Vining. Blair has stage four terminal bowel cancer. Earlier this year he started a petition that got over 140,000 signatures. Blair’s plea is incredibly important.
 
 
 
He wants to stop people going through what he has gone through. As Blair’s daughter Lily said, it shouldn’t matter where you live in New Zealand or whether you’re rich or poor, anyone with cancer should be able to receive the best possible care.
 
 
 
National will introduce legislation in our first one hundred days to set up a National Cancer Agency to deliver better diagnoses, better access and better treatment for cancer sufferers across New Zealand.

It’s all about priorities. Labour’s priorities are getting NZ First re-elected and having lawyers and accountants have taxpayers pay for almost all their tertiary education.

National is showing what you can achieve with different priorities.

The Herald reports:

A health union boss has unleashed a scathing attack on the Minister of Health, calling his political leadership “fiscally irresponsible” and without vision.
In a speech to the Hospital and Community Dentistry Conference in Napier this morning, Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Ian Powell accused Health Minister Dr David Clark of a “rambling, confused or nonsensical” leadership.

And this comes from a traditionally Labour friendly union!

Ardern got two major pieces of info wrong on the firearms laws (application to non citizens and offences by registered owners) but has also branched out her misinformation to transport.

The Herald reports:

Jacinda Ardern has been accused of showing no sympathy for constituents in the Auckland Central electorate where she was once based as a list MP, and criticised for incorrectly saying it is an issue for the NZ Transport Agency. …

He was gobsmacked to hear the Prime Minister tell Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB this week the issue of compensation is a matter for the NZ Transport Agency.
“She has no idea what she is talking about,” said Kaushal, who said the project is being jointly funded by the Government and Auckland Council, who have set up a company, City Rail Link Ltd, to build the 3.4km underground rail project between Britomart and Mt Eden.
A spokesman for the NZ Transport Agency confirmed it has nothing to do with the CRL.

So compensation has nothing at all to do with NZTA. It is a political matter for the Government the Auckland Council.

Stuff reports:

Canada’s registry began life with an estimated cost to the public purse of C$2m. Over the years, the price escalated exponentially. …

Given the prominence of the Canadian example, it is worth considering its lessons if only to avoid the myths and pitfalls, chief among which was a price tag that experts like Alberta-based independent firearms expert Dennis Young and put at C$3 billion (NZ$3.4b).

They said it would cost $2 million and it ended up at $3 billion!

I’ve been supportive of the previous tranche of gun law changes but the registry has been tried before in NZ, and also failed.

There is nothing to suggest that the Police have gained the competence to run a secure effective registry.

When the Canadian registry was introduced in the wake of a mass shooting in Montreal, it was not the first legislative crackdown on legal gun ownership but the second.
Gun owners felt unfairly conflated with criminality and they flouted the obligation to register in large numbers. Some actively obstructed the process: one wag registered his soldering gun. There were expensive court battles.
In all its 17 years, the registry never contained more than about 7 million guns, roughly a third of the estimated guns that were otherwise legally owned.
Registering guns – shotguns and small calibre rifles in particular – is not like registering cars and boats. In order for your car to be useful you must take it out into the world and use it on public roads where police can monitor it.

So in Canada only one in three guns got registered.

The Herald reports:

DairyNZ is not the only organisation to question the cost of the Zero Carbon legislation. 
The bill’s regulatory impact statement (RIS) revealed that New Zealand’s economy could miss out on up to $50 billion worth of economic growth because of the Zero Carbon Bill.
The RIS, written by officials at the Ministry for the Environment, reveals that New Zealand’s economy will grow to $522 billion by 2050 if the zero-carbon legislation is not adopted and the status quo is maintained.
However, if the legislation does come into force – as it is expected to later this year – the RIS showed New Zealand’s GDP in 2050 will be between $472 billion and $476 billion.
That is a difference of $45 to $49 billion.

And that is an annual difference, not one off.

I understand it is even worse than that. The modelling is based on the assumption of technological breakthroughs. Without such assumed breakthroughs, the impact on GDP is much higher – more a 30% drop instead of 10%.

We’ll all be hugely poorer while China in two days will produce more emissions that all those saved by NZ.

The four great offices of state in the UK are Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary.

The four new holders of those office are:

• PM; Boris Johnson, great grand father Ali Kemal is Turkish and was a refugee to UK in 1909. Also Johnson was a US dual citizen as born in the US
• Chancellor: Sajid Javid, parents were Muslim immigrants from Pakistan in 1961
• Foreign Secretary: Dominic Raab, father was a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia in 1938.
• Home Secretary: Priti Patel, parents are Ugandan Indians who migrated in late 1960s

A beatup story on Labour MP Duncan Webb, based on comments he made nine years ago.

The Herald reports:

The new chairman of the Environment Select Committee at one stage suggested it would be okay to eat kiwi birds if their population was large enough, and compared commercial whaling to fishing.
The divisive views aired in 2010 came to light today following new Japanese whaling ships going back to sea earlier this month.

Let’s see what he really said.

When asked about whaling, he suggested it was like fishing.

“If I was Japanese I’d call it harvesting, just like we do when we’re fishing,” he said then.
“The fact of the matter is we do eat animals and a whale is just a mammal.”
He objected to the use of the term slaughter when talking about whaling, saying it was “utterly emotive”.

Webb is quite right. Whaling is just a form of fishing. Now when certain types of whale species are endangered they should not be hunted. But if you have just as many whales as herring, then you can’t discriminate on the basis of aesthetic appeal.

But he didn’t stop there. He went as far as to suggest there could be circumstances where eating kiwi meat was okay.
“What’s different between a kiwi and a mallard duck. If a kiwi had such a population that it was a pest, like the pukeko is in some parts of Westland, well you’d want to kill it. And if you’re going to kill it, why not kill it and eat it,” he told CTV.

Again absolutely correct. If we had 10 million Kiwi in the country, we’d hunt and eat Kiwis. The emu is the national bird of Australia and you can order emu at many Australian cafes.

But those views are in stark contrast to the Government’s Predator Free 2050 project which aims to see thousands of kiwi birds roaming the country freely – without the threat of introduced predators.

There is no contrast at all, let alone a stark one.

Kiwis are endangered because they have a very low population. Total support for increasing their population.

There is no conflict between that belief and saying that hypothetically if there were millions of Kiwis, it would be okay to eat them.

A total beat-up story against Duncan Webb. Little surprise that it seems to have originated with Newshub.

Stuff reports:

Students who were told their private school would close may see it saved as negotiations begin to buy the Wellington campus.
Samuel Marsden Collegiate School, Whitby principal Narelle Umbers announced two weeks ago it would shut its gates by the end of the year, leaving 178 pupils without a school to go to and about 20 teachers without jobs.
However, parents who since formed a “parent action group” in an attempt to work to save the school met on Thursday night to announce a prospective buyer – The New Zealand Institute of Sport founder John Fiso.
​Fiso plans to partner with parents in a bid to keep the lower-North Island campus operating and will begin formal discussions with the board of trustees next week.

I do hope they can keep it open. We looked last year at moving to Judgeford (near Whitby) and one of the attractions was having such a high quality school such as Marsden Whitby nearby.

“We’ve indicated that we want to negotiate with them and we’re getting organised. The student roll has been increasing for the last 14 years. This partnership will enable us to secure that bright future for the school community.”
It was not certain at this stage how much it could cost Fiso and potentially parents to keep the school open, he said.  Iff the price was too much they may still have to look at closure.
“We have to go through a proper due diligence process. This is a positive step to pursue that opportunity. I’m confident that the Marsden trust board will want a successful outcome from this too.”
Green said the best case would be for stakeholders to move fast enough to secure the confidence of parents and students that the school had a future.

Great to see the community get behind efforts to keep the school open. It is obviously very valued.

The Guardian reports:

A former nurse fabricated claims about a murderous VIP paedophile ring in Westminster that prompted a multimillion-pound Scotland Yard inquiry that tarnished the reputations of innocent public figures, a jury has found.
Carl Beech, 51, alleged he was among the victims of an “establishment group” – including politicians and military figures – who kidnapped, raped and murdered boys in the 1970s and 1980s, triggering an ill-fated £2m police investigation that shut without a single arrest being made.
The former NHS manager, known under the pseudonym “Nick”, was found guilty after a 10-week trial at Newcastle crown court of 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of fraud over a £22,000 criminal compensation payout.

What is appalling is how the deluded ravings of a fantasist were taken seriously by Police resulting in an 18 month witch-hunt.

His claims, pushed by the discredited Exaro news agency, were splashed across national newspaper front pages. The deputy leader of the Labour party, Tom Watson, met Beech to talk about his allegations, and the former health worker told the trial the politician was part of a “little group” supporting him.
The Metropolitan police officer leading the inquiry, Det Supt Kenny McDonald, had described Beech’s account as “credible and true” on TV news bulletins in December 2014. He retired on the eve of the trial.

Yes the officer in charge proclaimed to the media that the fantastical allegations were true.

Beech claimed the gang included the former prime minister Edward Heath, the ex-home secretary Leon Brittan, the former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, the D-day veteran Field Marshal Lord Bramall and the TV star Jimmy Savile. Others accused of abuse were the former head of MI6 Sir Maurice Oldfield, the late Labour peer Greville Janner and the ex-head of MI5 Sir Michael Hanley.
Beech alleged the offences had taken place in an array of locations such as Dolphin Square, the exclusive private members’ Carlton Club, Elm Guest House in London, Heath’s yacht, military bases and London zoo. He claimed he had been ferried from school by a driver to the “parties”, where boys were abused by a group of men.

The most ridiculous aspect was his claims that MPs from different parties attended these pedophile parties. Yeah, if you are that way inclined you really are going to publicly molest kids in front of your political enemies.

Beech informed Scotland Yard about three alleged child murders, including of his friend Scott who he said was deliberately mown down by a car in 1979 in a revenge hit-and-run. The murder occurred, Beech claimed, after he had been warned by Hanley not to have any friends.
Beech said he had tried to save another boy who he claimed was raped and strangled by Proctor. He alleged that, on a third occasion, Hanley had ordered Beech and three other boys to choose which of them was to die at an abuse session attended by Brittan and Proctor before a child was beaten to death. But the police could find no evidence to back up his claims.

Sounds like the Peter Ellis case!

Generally if someone claims they know about three child murders they are either a fantasist or the most unlucky person alive.

Jurors at the trial were also played a video of 95-year-old Bramall, who did not give evidence in person because of ill-health, thumping the desk as he told detectives he had no sexual interest in children.
In the interview in April 2015, seven weeks after his home had been raided by police, the former head of the British army told detectives: “I am absolutely astonished, amazed and bemused. I find it incredible that anybody should believe that someone of my career standing, integrity, should be capable of any of these things, including things like torture. Unbelievable.”
At one stage, Bramall was asked if he could swim as Beech had alleged some abuse had happened at “pool parties”. “I landed at Normandy and I jolly nearly had to swim,” he said.

The poor man having to endure that.

Beech should be jailed for a very long time.

A guest post from David Garrett:

Before and after his abortive attempt to repeal the three strikes (3S) law, Andrew Little’s only comment on it was and remains that it is “silly”, and “the high water mark of policy stupidity”. To the best of my knowledge, he has never actually explained what is “silly” about it, or explained why he thinks it is “stupid”. Perhaps he thinks  the voters are stupid, and will just take his word for it? So, do his  officials agree with him? It would seem not.
 
In a report on 3S released in December last year, Justice Department officials said inter alia  “the existing evidence is mixed and more robust research is needed to understand the true effects of these laws” and “Research in this area appears to be prone to political bias.” Aint that the truth.  However buried in the report is this:
 
“…in comparison with second strikeable offences committed before the law came into effect there has been a drop in the number of second strike offences since the laws implementation.”
 
That statement clearly states that specific deterrence is occurring. Leaving aside for a moment that deterrence was never seen as the primary purpose of 3S this is a crucial admission. Although Winston  Peters has never spelled out what he means when he says “it  [3S] doesn’t work, does it?”, the context suggests that he means there is no discernible deterrent effect. He cannot mean that 3S is not dramatically increasing the length of sentence for both third and to some extent second strikers, because that is clearly occurring. I doubt he means that it “doesn’t work” because the judges of the Court of Appeal have deliberately misinterpreted its meaning, and the judges of the High Court have enthusiastically taken their cue from our highest court.
 
It is important to record that a  key reason for 3S being promoted as a reform proposal was widespread public outrage at serious violent or sexual offenders repeatedly getting parole and going on to commit more serious crimes. Three strikes makes a huge difference to that progression, as parole is not available at 2nd strike stage, and maximum terms are imposed upon racking up  a 3^rd or subsequent strike.   Opponents of Three Strikes, like Peters, claim it doesn’t work.  That is patently false. Three Strikes works in two distinct  and quite different ways: those it can deter, it deters.  Those it can’t deter, it incapacitates for longer periods. Simple. Blunt. Effective.
 
While some of  my colleagues in Sensible Sentencing are unhappy with the report, I  look beyond the subtly biased language throughout it and see the nuance. An example of subtly biased language is that 3S is estimated to cost “over $2.7 million” without giving any context at all to that figure. In a Corrections  budget of over a $1 billion, 80% of which is spent on staffing and maintaining prisons,  $2.7 million is literally a drop in the bucket.
 
Put more accurately, the cost of 3S in terms of prisoner beds is miniscule, and there is no impact at all on staff numbers; strikers are treated exactly the same as any other sentenced prisoner. So what is the fiscal impact of 3S? There are now about 380 second strikers, and 9 third strikers. The second  strikers are serving whatever the judge gave them without parole, so those 380 odd effectively  take up an extra  prison bed only  for the period between when they would normally be paroled and the end of their judge imposed sentence.
 
The nine third strikers, who (aside from the murderers) are serving the maximum sentence for their crime, are for accommodation purposes at least in the same category: they are taking up a bed for the period between which they would have otherwise been released and the end of their sentence. This already miniscule impact is of course lessened still further by the fact that in every single case of third strike murder, the judges have magically found it would be “manifestly unjust” for these inevitably brutal killers not to be eligible for parole. However the third strike numbers are so small that whether they are paroled or not makes no practical difference to costs.
 
The Justice Department report includes a useful graph showing offending pre and post 3S in three categories of crime: sexual assault; Robbery/aggravated robbery; and “serious assault”. I was struck by how similar the shape of the  graph is for the same post-3S period in California, with sexual assault being the only category which appears to remain totally unaffected by the law change. I am not a psychologist, but I suspect this is because sexual offending is driven by very hard wired primal urges; if one is sexually aroused by young children, or by the power “buzz” of abducting and raping women, deterrence is very difficult if not impossible to achieve. It is notable that the first third striker – the so called “bottom pincher” – was convicted of indecent assault on a prison officer while he was serving his second strike offence. (The so called “bottom pinch” was much more serious than that, while still admittedly being a low level indecent assault). The crucial point is that the offender had so little control of himself that he was unable to resist his sexual urges towards a prison officer, while in prison. He is in fact just the kind of offender 3S aims to keep locked up for long periods, and I am very happy that he is in jail for up to seven years.
 
It is also fair to say – as the report does – that few changes are “easily attributable” to the new law. While there has been a sharp decline in serious assault since the law came into effect in June 2010, it is fair to concede that this decline began prior to June 2010.   There has also been a steady decline in the robbery/aggravated burglary category, but again arguably this decline began before June 2010.
 
As the report readily concedes, the almost complete lack of any research makes it very difficult to tell whether the continuing decline in the latter two categories of serious offending  is related to 3S or not. I suspect that this government will never commission any such research for the very simple reason that they are totally uninterested in whether the law is effective as a deterrent or not. It does not fit the Labour/Green ideological beliefs – encapsulated by Kim Workman’s ludicrous claim that “prison is not full of bad people; it is full of good people who have done bad things.” That is demonstrably false – those “good people” in prison have an average of 46 convictions – but that is a whole different discussion.
 
Greg Newbold tells me that prisoners are very well aware of both the existence and impact on them of 3S, and this accords with my own very limited experience of talking to “strike” offenders. What impact does the judges’ refusal to properly apply the law have on reoffending? Who knows, no research has been done. Once one accepts, as both Newbold and I do, that prisoners are not all morons who cannot understand cause and effect, it is logical to assume that the judges’ re-writing of the law has had at least some blunting effect on the impact of the law.
 
As I said earlier in this piece – and as I said many times in the House – the primary purpose of the law is protection of the public from violent offenders who will not change their behavior. As long as it survives, the law will ensure that there are no more offenders who are able to rack up dozens of convictions for serious violence on members of the public – they will be in jail, and unable to hurt Joe and Jane Citizen. Certainly they will be a risk to their fellow inmates, but them’s the breaks. Prisoners can avoid becoming victims of their fellows by not going to jail in the first place; prison officers choose  to work with what the Corrections Department euphemistically calls “some of our most challenging citizens.”
 
So, is three strikes “silly” as Little claims? Not according to his own officials it isn’t, although some solid research is required to show just what its impact is. The law is safe – for now – because the members of the New Zealand First caucus refused to back Peters on repeal of it. Hopefully the next National government will commission the research that is clearly sorely needed. Perhaps such research might even convince the 48% of Green voters who, in a Curia poll, supported the law.
 

Fascinating report at AJC:

A witness to a heated grocery store encounter between state Rep. Erica Thomas and a man she accused of uttering racist comments told authorities she didn’t hear him make those remarks, according to a Cobb County police report.

A Publix employee told a Cobb County officer that she witnessed part of the conversation and heard Thomas “continuously tell Eric Sparkes to ‘Go back where you came from!’” but did not hear Sparkes utter those words to Thomas.
In a tearful video, Thomas accused Sparkes of using that phrase, which echoes a tweet by President Donald Trump that sparked a national uproar. Her account quickly went viral and triggered a wave of support and backlash.

So this state politician got sworn at because she was trying to use the express lane at a supermarket despite having too many items. She then goes home and makes a video where she claims Sparkes told her to “go back to where you come from”, insinuating he was a racist motivated by Donald Trump.

In fact the witnesses say she is the one who said that (multiple times) in response to being called out for her improper use of the express lane.

Sparkes happens to be Latino Democrat!

It seems to be some sort of psychological condition for people to try and make themselves into a victim.

Chris Trotter writes:

THERE WAS A TIME when it was really quite hard to dislike the Greens. Back in the days of Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons; of Nandor Tanczos and Sue Bradford; of Sue Kedgley and, yes, even the rather dour Keith Locke. There was also that bloke who called himself the “Musterer” (instead of the “Whip”) whose name I have completely forgotten. [Ian Ewen-Street – thankyou Google!] When they first made their way up the steps of Parliament, back in 1999, I called them “The Magnificent Seven” – so perfectly did they cover all the bases of ecological politics.

If you counted yourself among the Left of New Zealand politics, and you didn’t vote for the Greens, you needed to be able to supply yourself with a very good reason why not. The Party made not voting for them a lot harder by being so damn nice. They practiced politics in the way most people agreed it should be practiced: by sticking to ideas and to the policies those ideas gave birth to; by refusing to get down in the gutter with those politicians who seemed to regard politics as an excuse for being personally vicious and cruel.

And now they run attack ads against opponents mocking them for their accent.

It is still possible to catch an echo of the Magnificent Seven in the 2017 intake of Green MPs. Chloe Swarbrick, in particular, would not have been out of place in that special company. Sadly, however, Swarbrick is the exception. For the most part, her Green party colleagues have lost that tremendous likeability that made it so hard for the Left to vote for anyone else.

Chloe is very genuine and likable.

The great problem now facing the Greens is that Labour finds itself in possession of the most likeable political face New Zealanders have encountered for many decades. When set against “Jacinda”, the Greens’ James Shaw comes across as a low-energy compromiser. Meanwhile, his co-leader, Marama Davidson, strobes identity politics in a fashion calculated to make a sizeable majority of the electorate feel decidedly queasy.


Neither Shaw, nor Davidson, is likely to hold in place many voters not already completely sold on the Greens’ brand of identity politics. The party is fast taking on the character of a political cult: filled with zealots determined to enforce their policies on what we should be permitted to drive; what we should be encouraged to eat and drink, what it is acceptable for us to think; and what we should be allowed to say.


It’s a long way from Rod’s beaming optimism, Jeanette’s grandmotherly wisdom, Sue B’s and Keith’s commitment to social justice and peace, Sue K’s safe food, and Nandor’s illegally resinous dreadlocks.

The good old days.