No Surprise

It is no surprise that our latest convicted murderer, Haiden Davis, has the all the usual hallmarks - out on bail for a previous crime when he committed the murder; a string of previous convictions.

It is no surprise that he graduated from shoplifting to theft to stealing cars to violence before killing.

It is no surprise that he owes thousands in fines.

It is also no surprise that he yelled obscenities at the Judge and no surprise nothing is added to his sentence for the outburst.

A superb piece of reporting by TVNZ last night when they revealed that Davis had ignored his home detention, he was consorting with people he shouldn't have been with, he was in a stolen car which they lost when it took off at high speed through a red light, he was seen with trial witnesses and so on.

What will be done - we all know - nothing! What a surprise. 

Meantime the father of the boy Davis murdered asks why he can't take the Government to Court as they could him in his business if he allowed somebody to be killed. Good point.

Meantime our other killer, Bailey Kurariki is back in Court having breached his bail conditions again (how many time six, seven or more?). We saw film of him striking and spitting on a TV cameraman. Why wasn't he charged - you and I couldn't do it!.

Why don't we follow the American pattern of having bail conditions applied to a monetary amount. They should have to put the $$ up front and lose it if need be. Of course the do-gooders will say it favours the rich, which is true, but what else can we do as they just ignore the conditions. Again if they are not considered dangerous, not liable to approach witnesses etc and have no previous convictions then they should get bail.

On Radio NZ today they said we have more appeals to our Supreme Court than Germany does to theirs. Why? We pay (Legal Aid) and in Germany the time awaiting any appeal does not count towards the time spent in jail - that is if sentenced to 10 years and they appeal the sentence doesn't start until the result of the appeal is handed down.

The Government have just announced their scheme for expanding Broadband. I will see what it says before commenting.

Animations

I have been looking into putting animations (GIF's) into a Blog. Finally decided to look into it and the simplest way seems to be -

Find the animation you want by going to the appropriate blog or website.

Open another browser.

Sign into your Blog and open a document that you are creating (that is a new posting).

Click where ever you would like the animation to go in this posting.

Click on the animation and simply drag the image to your blog post that is also open on the screen.

You must re-size the two browsers so that both can be open on your screen at the same time. This can require a bit of playing about with.

Seems to work OK.

I've always liked this cancer one.

Earth Hour Day

It was Earth Hour Day last night when cities all around the world switched off their lights for one hour from 8.30 PM. We did our bit. One of our long life bulbs gave up the ghost and we didn't replace it until this morning!

However, we realise that we can't just dispose of the old bulb - but what do we do with it.

The Council website says nothing and in fact it warns that if a bulb breaks then special measures must be taken; measures which it says are not printed on the packets in NZ.

Crazy!!

It does say that you can contact a firm to dispose of them but this is only suitable for large organisations who have hundreds.

Coming and Going

Coming - TIVO the recording device similar to Sky TV's My Sky has been bought by TVNZ . But in another bit of marketing brilliance it will be disabled so that it doesn't skip ads, although it will fast forward at 30x times speed. Why then get it, as opposed to a Hard Drive Recorder?? And don't they understand that the 12 year old kids will soon hack it so it does skip ads.

In the States they have had a conference about DRM in DVD's etc and it was brought up how Obama gave Brown some DVD's but because of the restrictions on playing in another country, (zone), Brown can't play them!! The industry continues to shoot itself - not in the foot but in the wallet.

I see that the Christian Science Monitor newspaper is to close. (Thats a misnomer if there ever was one - the word 'science' in their approach to medicine).

Newspapers are sadly an almost doomed industry - well at least the paid versions are; although I still think the niche market versions will survive. When we were in the UK the Metro (a Swedish idea) was the giveaway newspaper and we thought it was great.

Whats going? Illness.

Sarah was sick but she is much better now thanks to the drugs she was prescribed.
However, the lead up wasn't so good as she picked up the medicine and took one dose but didn't feel any better. She came around to our place and Christine didn't think it seemed right so looked up what she had been given, on the Net. It wasn't the correct drug.

So after some discussion with the hospital it turned out they used an old name and the chemist just thought it was a slight spelling mistake (one letter different) from another. However no harm done thank heaven and the new one has worked a treat.

Cricket Jessie Ryder (the boy from Naenae) has scored another ton - in fact a double ton.

Role Models

I didn't realise until a few days ago that the two idiots (there must be other words - cowards, scumbags etc) that violently attacked the Prime Minister on Waitangi Day were related to Hone Harawira. I see that that they are pleading Not Guilty.

Didn't they do it?? Of course they did - so how can they plead that they didn't. The 'Justice' system is crazy.

Hone has defended them because they are 'Maori and family'. How can anybody defend criminals even if they are your family. Even if it was your child that attacked somebody you should be telling them in no uncertain terms that they are wrong.

And worse, he has today invited them to lunch at the Beehive. What sort of impression does this give - criminals feted by an MP. He is saying it is OK to be a criminal. Of course he may argue they haven't been convicted yet and they have pleaded not guilty. I say again - did they not do it. Is it a case of mistaken identity by 50 people and was it not them that were grabbed by the people with the PM.

At least the Indian shopkeeper who defended himself against the thugs that attacked his shop and stabbed him has now been told that he doesn't have a case to answer by the JP's. Why did we waste our money on charging somebody defending himself?

It looks as if Clarke is off to the UN. One thing you can say about her is that she is competent. Bit of a different type of role model.

Rugby - Matt Goddard - 5 Yellow Cards one Red (Red derserved). What an abysmal performance. Chiefs - Blues great game - great refereeing - Mark Lawrence of South Africa.

Poor Monty

We were around at Sarah and Joe's on Wednesday night and Monty did not seem too well; not feeding properly and sleeping a lot so she took him to the hospital.  It turned out he had a hernia and had an operation on Friday, Hopefully he will be home today (Saturday). 

With the talk about health care I can only say what a great experience she had. Immediate attention and getting a top person (a Professor) out of bed at 2 in the morning to come in to carry out the examination etc.  

I was reading an American blogging on and on and complaining about 'Socialised Medicine'  in the UK.  He didn't seem to have a clue - he seemed to think it was compulsory to go to a NHS hospital not understanding if a person was wealthy then they could go private if they wished - exactly as in the US. While, if they were poor they would get looked after at no cost to them in the UK 'Socialised Medicine' system whereas in the US they could have huge costs or not be looked after at all.

They are the only industrialised country with a private system - everybody else is wrong.

The thing I can't see is how they continue to put up with paying overall twice as much as any other industrialised nation with half the outcome.  

Actually I can see why! The problem is that they are held hostage by the extremely wealthy health industry wanting to greedily make money at the expense of the average American. A couple of weeks ago Obama said the US Health 'system' should try to solve what is wrong with a sick person - not just carry out test etc to run up bills!! 

Last week we watched a BBC documentary about people arriving at a hospital at some ungodly hour like 2 AM to join the queue (hundreds long) to get seen by a doctor. One woman with cancer couldn't pay a cent so it was tough - just have to die with no medical help unless she could find a charity hospital to look after her. She couldn't and that was why she was at the hospital they were filming. Sickening is the pun. 

Do I have faith that Obama will fix it. No -  the lousy ratbags who run the 'system' will be too strong.  I hope I am wrong. 

PHF

Looking around amongst my stuff I found a photo taken when I got awarded my Paul Harris Foundation Fellowship way back on 15 December 2003 some 3 years before I stated blogging. So to keep the picture in perpetuity (maybe) here it is.