Monday, August 14, 2006

Field dying

The Taito Philip Field affair is in its death throws. There is a short piece about National trying to refer it to the New Zealand Association of Fruiterers and Greengrocers or some such but it is effectively a goneburger. The damned woman wins again and we just gird out loins for her next foray into constitutional abhorrance.

There are two likely runners for the next episode. The first is Comrade Carter's tussle with the High Court concerning the Whangamata Marina. Rockhopper's inside oil on the availability of court papers was right on the money. I await with baited breath as to the subterfuge that awaits us later this month.
The second player appears out of left field with the announcement that we are to have a Government sponsored 'Sentencing Council' which will give 'guidelines' to judges as to which crim gets three days in the slammer and which gets four. I was just choking on the Marmite when the National spokesman on Justice chimes in with 'Oh no you don't'. One of the basic tenets of a democracy as we know it is the total independance of the judiciary from the executive. The headmistress seems intent on ignoring this for her own purposes. The erosion of this principal is perhaps the most serious of her multitude of sins against this country. I don't know what is worse, her doing it for fiscal reasons (paying BA's wages ain't cheap) or doing it at all. Listen up you bloody woman 'Keep your all pervading snout of the judiciary. Do you hear me?'
As an aside to this there are quoted in this piece opinions from three different Ministries that have an in on this - the Ministries of Police, Justice and Corrections. Why in hell do we need three separate bureaucracies to do such patently overlapping tasks? Labour reported last week (with some pride, for God's sake) that the Civil Service had increased in magnitude by a considerable amount since their accession to 'Power'. We need less of these walllies not more.
There is some stuff about a tree in Grey Lynn. I can't be bothered.

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