The Dom Post reports:

A Wellington woman tried to explain to a brutal rapist that she could be pregnant with her first child and begged him not to hurt her.

It did not matter to Bailey Meredith, 17, who violated her over and over during an attack on the Hutt River riverbank on June 11 before beating her unconscious.

She had been out walking when he had grabbed her from behind, ordering her to her knees before saying he intended to rape her.

The victim went on to explain about IVF which she and her husband had been going through but it made no difference.  They were to find out if she was pregnant that weekend instead she was being treated for her injuries and tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

Meredith had pleaded guilty to rape, four charges of unlawful sexual connection, abduction with intent to rape, wounding with intent to injure and threatening to kill.  He has been jailed for eight years.

That seems light to me. In 2010 I blogged the Court of Appeal guidelines being:

1. Rape Band 1 (6 to 8 yrs) – offending at the lower end of the spectrum where there are no aggravating factors, no serious violence, no abduction, the victim is not very young or very old.
2. Rape Band 2 (7 to 13 yrs) – involves moderate violence, pre-meditation, a rape involving more than one offender, or an especially vulnerable victim
3. Rape Band 3 (12 to 18 yrs) – offending with serious additional violence, wit multiple (three or more) aggravating factors. For particularly cruel, callous or violent rapes.
4. Rape Band 4 (16 to 20 yrs) – for multiple offending over considerable periods of time, gang or pack rape.

There was obvious serious violence that left her unconscious.  It would seem to me the case would be Rape Band 2 or 3, not Rape Band 1.

Officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Sergeant Nick Pritchard, said it was one of the worst cases he had investigated.

“This was a sexual attack that involved extreme violence. It was one of the most violent sexual attacks I’ve seen in my career,” he said.

So eight years seems rather light. He did plead guilty which gets 10% to 33% knocked off.  But in theory he could be out of jail in under three years.

The Washington Post reports:

The Obama administration is moving toward major changes in its military train-and-equip program for the Syrian opposition after the acknowledged failure of efforts to create a new force of rebel fighters to combat the Islamic State there.

In comments that appeared to shock even many of those involved in Syria policy elsewhere in the government, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the U.S. Central Command, told Congress on Wednesday that only “four or five” trainees from the program, a $500 million plan officially launched in December to prepare as many as 5,400 fighters this year, have ended up “in the fight” inside Syria.

That has to win some sort of record for wasteful spending. $500 million on training to get four or five fighters!!

And people wonder why so many of us are sceptical of government spending.

Stuff reports:

A senior doctors’ union has condemned an “outrageous” move by Whanganui District Health Board to summon a hospital doctor to a disciplinary meeting over his part in a protest against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

Emergency medicine specialist Chris Cresswell, who is also the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists’ Whanganui branch president, was arrested at last week’s protest after he climbed on top of localo MP Chester Borrows’ car and sat on it while dressed in his scrubs.

 He was given a verbal warning by police, but was not charged.

Now the DHB has called him in for a “please explain” meeting, prompting his association to order it to “pull your head in”.

ASMS executive director Ian Powell said on Thursday that the DHB’s move was outrageous. “Memo to Whanganui DHB: doctors have a right, and in fact a responsibility, to speak out publicly on these matters without you trying to shut down the debate.  Pull your head in.”

The union is in the wrong.

Doctors, like anyone, have the right to write letters, do op eds, attend protests on the TPP or other issues.

But he doesn’t have the right to sit on an MP’s car and refuse to leave until he is arrested.

Doing so while dressed in his employer’s uniform does bring the employer into disrepute.

“This binding employment agreement includes specific clauses to protect the right of doctors to engage in public debate on matters relevant to their expertise and experience.”

Sitting on a car is not engaging in public debate.

The Washington Post reports:

Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed just wanted to get noticed by his teachers.

Instead, he got arrested.

In an incident that has raised allegations of racism and made a Texas school district the target of online outrage, the ninth-grader was pulled out of school in handcuffs after a digital clock he built himself was mistaken for a bomb.

Mohamed, a self-assured kid with thick-framed glasses and a serious expression, had just started at MacArthur High School a few weeks ago. The Irving, Tex., ninth-grader has a talent for tinkering — he constructs his own radios and once built a Bluetooth speaker as a gift for his friend — and he wanted to show his new teachers what he could do. So on Sunday night, he quickly put together a homemade digital clock (“just something small,” as he casually put it to the Dallas Morning News: a circuit board and power supply connected to a digital display) and proudly offered it to his engineering teacher the next day.

But the teacher looked wary.

“He was like, ‘That’s really nice,’” Mohamed told the Dallas Morning News. “‘I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’”

The teacher and school are idiots. If they had any concerns at all about the device, they should have just asked to see how it worked more. But considering it was something a 14 year old is showing off to an engineering teacher (not something that he was hiding and they found), it was taking paranoia to a new level.

“I think this wouldn’t even be a question if his name wasn’t Ahmed Mohamed,” Alia Salem, CAIR’s executive director for the Dallas-Fort Worth region, told WFAA.

Sadly he is right.

Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.

— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015

Nice.

The PSA announces:

After 16 years as national secretary of the Public Service Association (PSA), Richard Wagstaff tendered his resignation to the PSA executive board this morning.

Richard is the sole nominee for the role of CTU President, and is to lead the New Zealand union movement after Helen Kelly’s term ends at the CTU congress on October 14-15.

Erin Polaczuk, PSA’s other national secretary, said “The PSA owes significant thanks to Richard, who has served with great distinction,”

“Since becoming national secretary, Richard has seen the PSA grow from 40,000 members to where we are today with nearly 62,000 members.

“Richard began his union career as a researcher for the PSA in 1988. He continued in that role for 3 years before becoming an organiser in the health, disability and public service sectors in Auckland. In 1997, Richard became operations manager, his last role prior to appointment as national secretary in late 1999.

Richard and I were actually on the same five day Institute of Directors course, around a decade ago. I was impressed that a union was sending senior officials on governance courses.

Helen Kelly has been a very high profile advocate for the CTU. Richard will have big boots to fill.

Stuff reports:

Underpayments to beneficiaries over the past 18 years could cost the Government millions of dollars.

Radio New Zealand reported Work and Income had underpaid some beneficiaries by a day since 1998, as it had paid people from the day after their “stand-down” period ended.

When people applied for a benefit, they often had to wait two weeks for it to start.

Work and Income was meant to pay a beneficiary from the day after the two week period ended, but instead had been starting payments the following day, RNZ reported. 

The Government was now trying to retrospectively change the law dating back to 1998, when the provisions took effect.  

Social Development Minister Anne Tolley downplayed the amount the mistake could cost the Government in unpaid benefits, but said it would not be a “huge amount”. 

The amendment to the law would line up with what was happening in practice, changing the payment date to the day after the stand-down ended, Tolley told RNZ. 

I would have though if practice doesn’t match the law, then it is the practice you should change – now the law.

Sir Toby Curtis is a former chairman of the Iwi Education Authority and part of the Iwi Chairs Forum. He writes:

At a recent Iwi Chairs Forum hosted by Waikato Tainui at Hopuhopu, iwi leaders resolved to actively support the establishment of partnership schools (kura hourua) in their rohe. We also resolved to advocate that the Government expand this initiative and to advocate the concept publicly, in particular the importance of high-quality teaching, high educational achievement and strong supportive partnerships with iwi, communities and other organisations.

These resolutions follow unanimous support from iwi leaders at a hui in November 2014 for a recommendation that the number of kura hourua be expanded and that more Maori communities be encouraged to take advantage of them.

So the combined view of Maori leaders is to support charter schools as good for their communities, but Labour and Greens remain insistent they will be closed and banned.

We believe kura hourua can be a circuit breaker in closing the educational achievement gap between Maori and non-Maori students. While much has been and is being achieved through the kohanga reo, kura kaupapa and kura a iwi movements, a large and persistent gap still exists between the achievement of our children and all others.

Kura hourua is just one of a number of initiatives aimed at lifting Maori educational achievement but compared with other models it provides much greater autonomy and freedom for communities to be part of their children’s education within a culture of high expectations.

The culture of high expectations is critical.

With this model, schools can design the teaching, language, curriculum and organisational practices that work for their children. The use of te reo by both child and teacher can be a key determinant of a Maori child’s success at school. The schools can invest in attracting and developing gifted teachers and leaders, and partner with iwi, community organisations, businesses or philanthropists to support their establishment and their mission.

In return for these freedoms, kura hourua are contractually bound to achieve meaningful, measurable, high academic standards for all their students.

Basically charter schools are a model which focuses on educational outcomes, not educational inputs. It is about what do you achieve, not how do you do it.

The results in cities as diverse as New Orleans, New York City, and Chicago are remarkable. Since Hurricane Katrina, 93 per cent of students in New Orleans now attend charter schools. Of the 47,000 public school children in the city, 85 per cent are African-American and 83 per cent are economically disadvantaged.

The schools, which have open admission and public accountability, have almost closed the achievement gap between overwhelmingly poor students and affluent students. In the past 10 years the proficiency of African-American students in state tests has increased from 21 per cent to 59 per cent.

The reforms have been vindicated on every measure, including suspension/expulsion rates (much lower), achievement of students with disabilities (much higher) and on-time high school graduation and college enrolment rates (dramatically higher). It’s no wonder the Obama Administration has hailed its success.

But Labour can not say no to its union overlords, and keeps campaigning to ban them.

After new Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that he hoped to emulate the political style of John Key, the Australian Financial review asked me to do an opinion piece on how Key has been successful, in contrast to Abbott and others. It was published yesterday. You can read it here or it is embedded below.

DPF Oped

Stuff reports:

The sale of Lochinver Station, vetoed by the Government, would have created only a couple of contracting roles and potentially one part-time job, Associate Finance Minister Paula Bennett says.

Ministers rejected the $88 million bid from Pure 100 Farm Ltd – a subsidiary of Chinese owned Shanghai Pengxin – because the benefits to New Zealand were not “substantial and identifiable”.

That was despite Overseas Investment Office recommendation it be approved.

The Overseas Investment Office found that the purchase would have had the following benefits:

• job creation
• increased export receipts
• greater productivity
• additional investment for development purposes
• increased processing
• indigenous vegetation/fauna
• trout, salmon, wildlife and game
• historic heritage
• walking access
• offer to lakebed and riverbed to crown

Their overall assessment was that the benefits taken together are likely to be substantial and identifiable.

I hope I’m wrong but I suspect if the buyers were Canadian, not Chinese, the Government would have okayed the sale, as they know there would be less fuss about it.

And it is an easy decision for the Government to say no. It means the New Zealanders who currently own it will now have to sell it for a lot less to a NZ buyer. They will be the ones out of pocket, not the Government.

The three bills drawn from the ballot yesterday are:

Social Security (Pathway to Work) Amendment Bill – Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni

This Bill lifts the threshold of how much persons can earn before their benefit is reduced by abatement rates. The thresholds
are currently $80 per week for those on Jobseeker Support and $100 per week for Sole Parent Payment and Supported Living Payment and this increases them to $150 per week.

It is not necessarily a bad thing to have a higher threshold before abatement starts, but what would be useful to know is the cost to the taxpayer if this bill is accepted.

Climate Change (Divestment from Fossil Fuels) Bill – Green MP Dr Russel Norman

This bill will would ban public fund managers (such as ACC, NZ Super Fund, Govt Super Fund) from investing in companies directly involved in the mining and production of fossil fuels.

It is a ridiculous bill.

Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill – Labour MP Clare Curran

This Bill amends the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act 2013 and establishes a Technical Advisory Board to which matters must be referred in instances where the Minister will be required to exercise his or her discretion or prescribe an additional area of specified security interest.

I think this bill is worth supporting, at least at first reading. The TAB would provide expert advice to the Minister on network security, and they can analyse and make recommendations around intended directives.

The Herald reports:

Damian Wereta might be locked up for the next 17 years, but it could have been worse.

The Crown wanted preventive detention — an indefinite term of imprisonment — for the 35-year-old Paremoremo inmate who “shanked” two fellow prisoners.

But this morning Justice Pamela Andrews declined the application, instead jailing Wereta for another 7 years 9 months.

The term will be served on top of the 11 and a half year stint the Black Power member was sentenced to in 2013 for a Dunedin armed robbery and a vicious attack on a group of Corrections officers while on remand.

The father of seven

Remember Labour is proudly campaigning for the rights of people who can’t afford children to have as many as they like!

has an extensive history stretching back to 1997 and features 68 convictions, including an attack on a Crown prosecutor in court.

Sounds like an ideal candidate for preventive detention.

The judge agreed but because the two counts of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm represented Wereta’s second strike, the 93-month sentence would have to be served in full without the chance of parole.

Excellent. Remember again Labour is vowing to repeal this law.

If the law had been in place earlier he would very likely be on a third strike and that means he would have got 14 years, not seven years nine months.

Stuff reports:

There were angry exchanges during parts of the debate after NZ First MP Tracey Martin took issue with suggestions people should wait to have children till they could afford it.

But ACT leader David Seymour refused to apologise for that stance, saying it was not only what most New Zealanders believed, “It is what the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders do”.

It is what probably 80% to 90% of families do. They discuss when they can afford to have children, and how many they want and/or can afford.

We’re not even back into surplus, and once again opposition parties are demanding huge amounts of extra spending, with no ability to pay for it.

David Seymour on PPL last night: “people should have children when they can afford it.” We disagree. pic.twitter.com/QtF0xB91Wf

— New Zealand Labour (@nzlabour) September 17, 2015

Amazingly Labour are proudly promoting the fact that they think people who can’t afford to have children, should have them!!!

Seymour did not say you have to be rich to have children. We have a generous welfare state that gives huge assistance to families with children. What he said is that the vast majority of families have children when they can afford it. This is often a matter of timing – you can afford better at 32 with savings that 21 without for example. And you may be able to afford two children, but not five.

But we have this bizarre Labour Party which proudly promotes the fact that they think people who can’t afford to have children, should have them.

This may be Labour’s stupidest social media tweet ever – and there is a lot of competition for that title.

Kiwiblog foreign correspondent Cactus Kate bravely attended a Donald Trump rally on behalf of Kiwiblog, so she could report back on what is actually happening there:

“I don’t care much for the chances of ever implementing Donald Trump’s “feed me less” tax policy coupled with promised massive spending or his ridiculous stance against gay marriage.  I also don’t care much for the identity of the US President because alone in the US political system they cannot make that much a difference in the real world.  Obama has proved this to be true more than any other.  So many promises and hope and yet so little delivery for his adoring fans.

Trump admires marriage so much he has had three weddings and god knows how many women on the side, but with an open mind I travelled down to San Pedro for the day to the USS Iowa for Kiwiblog to hear Trump’s short impromptu rally to Veteran’s For a Strong America, a group who have now curiously endorsed him.

The most appealing proposition was to go on a battleship. I mean who is going to turn that down? I’ve never been on a battleship. The event with national anthem, pledge of allegiance and chants of “Trump” was as spectacularly American as the post Summer Slam WWE Monday Night Raw I attended last month in Brooklyn.

Yes I too like possibly hundreds of million if not a billion  people would like to live in the USA but I can’t. I can only spend 90 days at a time here then I have to leave and re-enter and woman-up to the bitchy face customs again. Unlike the many illegal economic immigrants (and they are not refugees) crossing the border from Mexico still, I accept this law and the sovereignty of the USA attached to decide who she likes to have living and visiting here and for how long. I wasn’t alone in the paying audience some who had parted with $1,000 for their seats. The impotent rabble outside whinging don’t understand this. Yes even us white folk from nice countries like New Zealand have to follow immigration laws. Shocking.

Every speaker reminded the crowd that men and women fought so the rabble could come and protest. Every speaker also reminded the crowd to large applause that illegal immigrants were receiving better healthcare than these veterans. The protestors were better behaved and orderly than anything outside a National Party meeting. This may though have something to do with a thousand Americans coming on and off a battleship, many veterans and many very possibly packing heat.

Donald Trump, who once famously appeared on WWE fighting Vince McMahon in the “battle of the billionaires” (when neither actually probably was) make no mistake is a show biz politician. But then so really was Ronald Reagan and today Trump will be joining the other candidates debating in his library. Reagan didn’t turn out too badly. Fortunately David Farrar’s influence with the GOP didn’t extend to getting me a ticket to that yawn fest and I can do something more American like go to the movies and eat the world’s largest popcorn and drink the world’s largest coke.

Trump has turned himself into the candidate of the people. the anti-candidate. Like in New Zealand the Beltway typically do not understand the voters at all and like the repeater from NBC behind me who repeatedly falsely claimed the protestors were drowning out the speakers, misses the point of Trump completely.

The Media Party were in attendance, just like in New Zealand they overblew the protestors and focused on the most radical people in the audience they could find to say things.  The star was a young Mexican man who like plenty in America actually arrived and are here legally and support Trump’s most outrageous campaign wish – to erect a wall on the Mexican border and have Mexico pay for it.  I doubt this young man’s soundbites were cut in any other way than to make Trump sound Mexican-hating.

So in Trump we have an otherwise dodgy loud multi millionaire telling us that he is the rebel and the underdog. He’s not a Bush (my wife is Mexican and I speak Spanish) or a Clinton (my husband is Bill and you may like to wink wink pay his “speaking fee” instead of donating directly and openly to my campaign). The Republicans with Bush, Cruz, Christie, Huckabee, Rubio and Trump have what I would only studiously term some very serious chop chop to execute before the inevitable face off with The Robot that is Hillary. The woman best remembered as extorting her husband into standing by her side for her Presidency charade after forgiving him for blowing a cigar in the vagina of another woman.  Oh and don’t forget The Hill-bot from her private server has personal emails so boring that someone should really check her pulse regularly.  The best thing her campaign team could do right now is to leak some fabricated dirty emails between the Clintons just so some voters may actually believe they are real.

Don’t get me wrong Trump’s few announced policies make absolutely no sense and from a purist point of view he has been and will get destroyed in debates. But he is a candidate for our time. He can get away with blue murder on the campaign trail and needs to keep doing precisely what he has been doing – letting loose. This is what makes his campaign a must watch and why tickets are being scalped to attend these sorts of events. It is theatre at its finest. I couldn’t work out however if this woman was Trump’s hairdresser or a repeater not that interested in interviewing people accurately:

Middle America are dismissed by idiotic polisnobs (such as the knobs on Twitter polluting us all with their free snide opinions) as “uneducated”. These people are anything but.  They *are* America and they all vote and unlike the illegal immigrants all up in arms at Trump and having the political left speak for them, they’re actually eligible en masse to vote. Many like WWE, actually understand Honey Boo Boo, Duck Dynasty, shooting, God and the NRA. Underestimate their power at your peril. America isn’t about Los Angeles and New York, what the tourists and stereotypes on exported TV are. The bits in between are the most important and unless you have spent a decent amount of time with actual Americans not the Democrat liberal flower apologists for America you will misunderstand this.

I sat next to a man who had served on the USS Kittyhawk. To say he was euphoric about Trump is an understatement. Every second he seemed to turn to his wife and grab her hand harder, every word was induced through first the nose then the lips like a fine glass of Screaming Eagle. During parts of the speech the entire row of buttocks surrounding me came off their chairs with glee. Trump has made this Presidential race exciting.

The issue the Democrats will have with Trump is that he isn’t really attracting the religious far right who will infect his campaign. They are uneasy with him. Therefore to campaign against him they can’t write him off in one carefully constructed poll driven swipe.

The best they are doing now is predictably calling him racist and that he is a joke.  Having stayed at the Trump Soho last month I can report that there is no race boycott at that hotel and many of the guests were African-American, most of the entertainment at the hotel were too.

Trump’s blatant sexism and snide off the cuff remarks aren’t motivated by religion. I don’t think he’d really care about a lazy abortion or two with his shagging record or to beg and bully any mistress to actually have an abortion if the need arose so I think he’s just genuinely repulsive in a way that you would get in New Zealand if you crossed Bob Jones with Winston Peters if New Zealand had a Presidential race.

That though makes him genuine and dare I say it from polls currently and what I saw on the good ship USA Iowa with slogans such as “illegal immigrants get better healthcare than Veterans”, “the silent majority are not silent anymore” – fast becoming in a diverse land still ruled by middle America, highly electable.

Just when you thought that Trump couldn’t get any more theatrical he insists like a Commander on leaving the ship first for his waiting limousine, stopping right in front of the protesters and smiling and waving at them.

It is enough to make the left wingers and professional protesters who forget what they are actually angry about, spit out their Taco Bell.  Which is why Trump should always be welcome in this Presidential campaign and why it is not the worst thing in the world if he ends up as President.

Fascinating to look at the length of tenure of Australian PM since WWII:

1. Robert Menzies 16 years (retired)
2. Harold Holt 2 years (died)
3. John Gorton 3 years (rolled)
4. Billy McMahon 2 years (defeated)
5. Gough Whitlam 3 years (defeated/sacked)
6. Malcolm Fraser 8 years (defeated)
7. Bob Hawke 9 years (rolled)
8. Paul Keating 4 years (defeated)
9. John Howard 12 years (defeated)
10. Kevin Rudd 2.5 years (rolled)
11. Julia Gillard 3 years (rolled)
12. Kevin Rudd 0.25 years (defeated)
13. Tony Abbott 2 years (rolled)

So you had the Menzies era, then a series of short-term PMs. Then from Fraser to Howard you have huge stability, and since Howard no Prime Minister elected at one election has survived until the next!

WCC have announced:

This morning Wellington City Council voted yes (7-6) to join an online voting trial for next year’s local body elections.

The Mayor of Wellington, Celia Wade-Brown, says Wellington City Council has shown it is progressive and willing to try online polling in the Smart Capital.

“The proposed pilot for the 2016 election will be a real time exercise with real candidates and a real result,” she says.

“We use online mechanisms as a way of increasing participation in many council processes, from Smokefree issues to our Long Term Plan, so it makes sense for us to participate in the online voting pilot.”

Deputy Mayor Justin Lester, who is also Chairperson for Council’s Governance, Finance and Planning Committee, says it’s all about increasing participation and creating better accessibility for all.

“Wellingtonians are the most tech savvy people in the country, so this city is perfect for this trial to take place. Four out of ten Wellingtonians voted in the last local body elections, so, if this trial means we can get those numbers up then I think it’s well worth exploring further.”

Very pleased to see Wellington join the trial – both because as a resident I’ll get to use it, but more importantly because you need at least one major council involved to make it economic.

Eight Councils have agreed to take part in the trial for next year’s local body elections – with a confirmation vote still needed to be taken by Dunedin City and Marlborough District Councils.

The government will then decide whether the trial will go ahead. That decision will be made by the end of the year.

I hope the Government doesn’t hinder or block the progress made.

Thanks to the Councillors who voted in favour – Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, Deputy Mayor Justin Lester, Jo Coughlan, David Lee, Mark Speck, Malcolm Sparrow and Nicola Young.

A Members’ bill ballot will be held at noon today. Three bills will be drawn.

The bills entered in the ballot are listed below.

The bills by party (Ministers excluded) are:

• National – 14/34
• Labour – 30/32
• Greens – 14/14
• NZ First -12/12
• Maori – 1/1
• ACT – 0/1
• Total – 71/94

If the other 20 National MPs got a bill in the ballot (or could get agreement of the hierarchy for their bills) then the chances of a non hostile bill being drawn would increase from 14/71 to 34/91 or from 20% to 37%.

The Herald reports:

The Treasury has carried out the analysis of anonymised information after being given access to a detailed dataset compiled by the Ministry of Social Development.

The work is part of the Government’s “investment approach” to social spending, which aims to identify where up-front spending can cut costs later.

Treasury’s preliminary analysis shows that children with specific risk factors could have cost taxpayers an average extra $256,000 by the time they hit 36.

Finance Minister Bill English said it aimed to identify which families were the most vulnerable, what help they received and whether that made enough difference.

“It is a bit more intense than we thought – that cycle of dependency is tighter, it is a smaller group of people I think in a longer term, which highlights for instance that a lot of these families will need sustained, intelligent support.

“We are making a lot of progress with this compared to five or six years ago – flying pretty much blind to now getting much more of a picture of what really happens. It shows that some of these kids are likely to be getting multiple services, these families, some might not be getting much at all.”

This work is potentially very important. Identifying at risk families before things go dramatically wrong could make a real difference.

The work has frustrated Labour, who say the exercise crudely simplifies what are complex, real-life situations.

“The social workers who are in this space already know how to identify the families that need help,” Labour’s spokeswoman for children Jacinda Ardern said. “Our problem is that we are not properly resourced to deal with it.”

This makes me despair. First of all social workers can only identify families they are already dealing with. But secondly to put reject using science and data to identify families more likely to be at risk is just dumb. Labour’s answer to almost everything is to reject change, and just demand more money.

The Treasury research comes as a Productivity Commission report, released yesterday, found the 10,000 “highest-cost clients of the social services system” each cost at least $500,000 in lifetime services.

Ouch. That is a total of $5 billion on 0.2% of the population.

More cost-benefit analysis to allocate funding has worried unions, including the Public Service Association, which has said the “lottery” of contestable funding causes too much uncertainty.

I care more about outcomes.

Jeremy Corbyn has chosen as Shadow Chancellor possibly the only MP to the left of him.

Here are some quotes from John McDonnell:

It’s about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA.”

Go the IRA!

Because of the bravery of the IRA and people like Bobby Sands we now have a peace process.

The brave Bobby Sands who blew up the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry. And the brave IRA who killed 500 to 600 civilians, including some young children.

he wished he could “go back to the 1980s and assassinate Thatcher”

A real democrat.

“In the first week of a Labour government, democratic control of the major economic decisions would be restored by ending the Bank of England’s control over interest rates and bringing the nationalised and subsidised banks under direct control to force them to lend and invest their resources to modernise our economy and put people back to work.”

No more independent reserve bank.

“I was up in Liverpool a fortnight ago, where Alec McFadden, one of our [union] organisers, launched the Sack Esther McVey Day on her birthday.

“I spoke at a packed public meeting … there was a whole group in the audience that completely kicked off quite critical of the whole concept, because they were arguing: ‘Why are [we] sacking her? Why aren’t we lynching the bastard?”’

He seems to often advocate violence against women he disagrees with. A charming man.

Stuff reports:

Parliament looks set to ditch a controversial and unused provision against using television footage from the debating chamber for satire or to ridicule or denigrate them.

The “anti satire” rule came about during the previous Labour government and was apparently aimed at preventing people from using Parliament TV footage for you-tube videos mocking MPs and Parliament.

The rule has never been used and the Clerk of the House and Parliamentary Press Gallery said in submissions to the Privileges Committee that it risked making Parliament “seem out of touch and weary of criticism”.

The Privileges Committee agreed though expressed reservations about people using Parliament TV footage to present a “false or misleading account of parliamentary proceedings”. 

Glad to see the Privileges Committee agree the ban on satirical use should go. Was also good to see the Clerk of the House advocating for its removal.

The committee’s report followed an inquiry into the use of social media as a growing number of MPs use twitter, live streaming and Facebook to communicate with voters. 

Recent examples including criticism of Parliament’s Speaker sparked the inquiry, which looked at whether there should be rules slapped on social media that made it a contempt to make certain comments or use video or photographic footage in some instances. Speaker David Carter had asked them to consider the matter.

But the committee backed away from new rules governing what MPs posted on social media when the House was sitting, saying any comments made by MPs on social media, including comments made from the debating Chamber, were not part of parliamentary proceedings.

However, it also warned that MPs were not protected by Parliamentary privilege, so should be aware that anything they said on social media was potentially actionable in court.

Also that MPs could be found in contempt under existing rules for what they say about other MPs.

Stuff reports:

A sex shop next door to a childcare centre has some parents unhappy about a “straps and buckles” display right in front of children.

Nauti NZ, a store in the centre of New Plymouth, has been asked by Chere McGregor to remove a lingerie laden mannequin from its window.

The shop is next door to the Clever Kids Education Centre, around the corner from a ballet school and across the street from a yoghurt shop.

A yoghurt shop?? I can understand being next to a childcare centre isn’t ideal, but what is it about yoghurt eaters that makes then anti-lingerie?

McGregor, an advocate for human trafficking prevention organisation HOPE61, said the location meant too many children were at risk of seeing the provocative item, which she considered a “degradation of women”.

“What is that saying to our kids?” McGregor said.

“How many glances do kids have to take before it sits in the back of their minds and starts to pip away?”

The mannequin was an “active enticement” for young men who visited the shop, she said.

“When they see that they learn ‘that’s a great way to treat women, let’s go and sexually abuse her’.”

Oh get out of here. Seeing a mannequin in lingerie leads to sexual abuse. The complainant sounds like Patricia Bartlett.

As well as speaking with the shop’s management, McGregor made a complaint to police, who referred her to the New Plymouth District Council.

So you complained to the Police why?

Customer and regulatory services manager Mary-Anne Priest said while she had not received any formal complaints, comments of concern had been posted on the council’s Facebook page.

Priest said a council officer had checked the window display, but it was was not in breach of any bylaws.

“We didn’t find it to be offensive. It’s more of a moral debate, I think,” she said.

If they had a mannequin dressed up as Mr Slave with a gerbil heading somewhere it shouldn’t, then there would be an issue. But a bit of lingerie – please!

But Lilly said she designed her window displays with much consideration and removed the mannequin as soon as McGregor complained.

So why again did she go to the Police?

“There’s no toys in the window, it’s just lingerie.

“We keep everything at the back. We’ve frosted the windows and had a wall built to conceal all of the inconsiderate products.”

Sounds a very conscientious owner.

Stuff reports:

Uber is a practical pre-pension income source for 62-year-old Lindsay Ferguson.

The Lower Hutt man has spent the past eight years working as a consultant, and before that worked in senior management positions in the public sector.

But a few months ago he turned to Uber as an income source in his lead-up to becoming eligible for the pension when he turns 65.

Ferguson said he enjoyed driving and was attracted to Uber because he liked being his own boss, the flexibility the job provided and the safety of being able to view passengers’ rating and not carrying cash.

“I thought it was a brilliant application of new technology to an old industry.”

He was clocking up about 35 hours per week, taking home an average income of about $1200 and sometimes up to $1700 if he worked more hours.

That’s not bad money, and you can earn that without needing to buy your way into a company or co-op.

But Uber’s future in New Zealand largely hangs on the Ministry of Transport’s Small Passenger Services Vehicles review, expected to be completed before the end of the year.

Uber made a submission on the review in April asking for a more flexible, faster and cheaper process for the licence required to operate a small passenger service vehicle.

“Much of how this business will grow depends on the outcome of the review,” Peppitt said.

The 28-year-old who introduced Uber to New Zealand said under the current regime it could take up to three months and cost drivers more than $2000 to get registered.

He said he would like a 24 hour registration turn around which cost less than $100, something which had been achieved in other markets around the world.

“That is not impossible in New Zealand, it just requires a bit of work to get there.”

Reducing barriers would make Uber an attractive way for anyone with a car to earn extra income by sharing their vehicle casually, he said.

Reducing barriers would be a great thing. I hope the Government does.