The Flintstones of the Cyber Age..

The government's reputation took a turn for the worst last night and for several reasons. Trying to slide the controversial file-sharing legislation through under urgency - supposedly that was for earthquake related legislation - has left them with egg on their faces for a number of reasons.
The first is indeed that the bill had no business being passed under urgency, it needed to be looked at again and some of the relevance of it discussed after the various political parties and MP's had a chance to get a much firmer grasp of their understanding of the internet than they obviously currently have.
Let's look at how this bill works. The idea in a nutshell is that if you are caught sharing 'copyrighted' files, then after three warnings, the Copyright Tribunal has the right to fine you up to $15,000 and to send you (in two years time, after the review) to the District Court who can order your ISP to shut you down for up to six months.That's of course as long as it's you that holds the account.
Riiiight.
So for Mrs Bloggs 16 year old son who likes to download movies he doesn't pay for using Mum's account which she knows not a lot about - what is the legislation going to achieve? 
If I decide to buy prepaid broadband via a stick,  and use it to download  whatever - how exactly is that going to work from an ISP perspective?

Oh but wait.. there is someone who made this comment, and I'll quote it from the Stuff source here:
"Everybody just keep doing what you're doing. They can't stop us. This is just a scare tactic. The internet was built on open sharing of information and forever will be the case.
No one actually steals an entire movie or CD, when sharing you are just transferring tid bits (sic) of the whole from all over the place. Then whatever program you are using puts all of these parts together.
If they really cared about it, why not ban the programs that put all of the little bits together?
Why this bill was passed so urgently is the real question that needs to be answered. The NZ government is corrupt"
This person raises some salient points.
The legislation itself reminds me of a farmer who has a fox killing his chickens. To fix the problem, he shoots the rooster.
It does not address the problem in any way that is likely to be workable. At the first sign of a court battle, they are going to lose, because the issue is exactly that the downloader has not brought down one single byte of information that makes up a file from a specific place or source - but a huge array of bits from a wide variety of sources. That the software then puts it all together to produce a finished file that someone can lay copyright to in terms of what it looks or sounds like is an incidental factor from a legal perspective. It can't be any other way, in reality.
Next you have to look at how on earth they think this is police-able in the first place. For gamers who play a lot, their downloading potential is very similar in terms of  the amount as say, someone who likes to download 10 to 20 songs a month. You cannot tell what is being downloaded, only the amount of the bandwidth used. So does this mean the government is going to be able to severely cut down on the unemployed numbers by employing everyone without a job to actually physically look into every account holder's pc? Because that is what would have to happen for this Bill to have any teeth. Withdrawing servioce on suspicion is absolutely not democratic - and I cannot see how it could be upheld in a court.
Sure, if four or five movies are being downloaded, that is going to take a lot of grunt. But all that will happen then is someone out there will invent a way to highly compress the file size.
I don't condone people downloading copyrighted files that the owners could make money from if they were legitimately paid for; it would be like someone using my blog content without my permission on their own site. My work for free? Course not.
But as far as the government is concerned, they've put through a Bill that hasn't been thought through properly and for what? To make themselves and by proxy, the rest of us kiwis appear to be the Flintstones of the Cyber Age.

What happens when you don't report child abuse

If you are connected to a child and see that it is in the process of being abused whether physically, sexually or psychologically, or even simply neglected, then the new legislation being introduced in Parliament tomorrow tells you in no uncertain terms that if you do not protect the child by reporting what is happening to it to the relevant authorities, you will be prosecuted and the maximum penalty is 10 years imprisonment.

To me, that is fantastic news.

We’ve gone from a society of sweeping things under the carpet for far too long when it comes to protecting our wee ones. Too much “don’t want to get involved, not our business” bullpuckie has seen far too many of our infants abused, beaten, raped, or outright killed. Almost 125,000 reports of abuse, of which 56,000 needed further investigation, came in last year through CYFs. On average 16 children are killed every year.

According to the Child Matters reports:

·         New Zealand has the fifth-worst child abuse record out of 31 OECD countries.

·         On average, one child is killed every five weeks.

·         Most of these children are under five and the largest group is less than a year old.

·         Ninety per cent of all child deaths are caused by someone the child knows.

·         Nearly 9000 children a year are born "at risk" (1 in every 30).

·         124,921 notifications were made to Child, Youth and Family in the year to June 2010.

·         Child abuse costs New Zealand about $2 billion each year.

Studies have found abused and neglected children to be at least 25 per cent more likely to experience difficulties such as delinquency, teenage pregnancy, low academic achievement, drug use and mental health problems. It has to stop and it is time that the government put some action legislation into place that actually means something considerably more than the much hated- Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking bill, which did precisely nothing whatsoever to curb the problem of child abuse and went  a lot further than any sane person should have wished in persecuting perfectly responsible and good parents. The confusion over the Section 59 amendments still reverberates today and to be honest, it needs to be completely scrapped.

But this piece of legislation is different.

I’ll not forget the horrifying story of wee Nia Glassie, where neighbours had seen some truly horrific occurrences – yet did and said nothing to protect this tiny little scrap of humanity. The anger many of us felt that because they did not, resulting in this poor little kid being systematically beaten to death over a matter of months in her all-too-short life, meant that there was national disgust over such apathy and a strong call for accountability.

This Bill does that well by the looks of it. Justice Minister Simon Power told a press conference that he didn’t want to wait for the wider changes coming to the Crimes Amendment Act – this one had to happen now.

“A person can be found liable if they live in the same household as the victim, are closely connected to the household or is a staff member at a hospital, institution of residence where the victim lives.,” he says.

It means that each and every one of us carry a responsibility to ensure that the smallest members of our families and our communities are as safe as we can make them – and if we see they are not, then by law, we are now required to ensure we let the relevant authorities know. Me, I’m absolutely behind the bill 110 percent.

The accountability of hospital staff

How much real accountability does the public health system actually have, one wonders? When a formal complaint over a relatively severe injury incurred during surgery while the patient’s proverbial lights were out can result in one single letter from the head of surgical services at Rotorua hospital – who never spoke to the injured person concerned at all – saying, pretty much,  sorry but while we acknowledge you’ve had this injury, no-one here is admitting to it, so to us it doesn’t exist except for the fact we are picking up the physio bill.

Is it just me or is there something terribly wrong with this picture? Yes, we’ve all heard about the terrible things that can happen in a hospital – my own mother, after a triple bypass surgery at Waikato Hospital was given 300mgs morphine rather than the 30mg she had been prescribed. To this day, they don’t know how she survived that – needless to say at 65, she was one very ill woman for a few days.

Did the hospital do anything other than let her know this had happened? Well, no – but the bottom line was at least they did that. If she hadn’t been the tough old bird she is, it is very likely it would have killed her – would we have heard about this slip up then?

In the instance above, the patient, who had had a six hour operation on a tumour in her upper neck, woke up later that night to a mother of a headache and to find an egg the size of a softball on her upper left skull area, blood and gunge all around it and through her hair – all of this witnessed by both family members and hospital staff. And this was after being three hours instead of the usual 45 minutes in recovery because every time she was moved a fraction, she would  scream in agony over her shoulder. This injury was not in relation to the surgery, according to the woman who did the scans on the shoulder; if it had been it would have been the shoulder opposite to the surgery. Her surgeon was absolutely puzzled the following morning when he investigated the lump and the mess that injury has created on the head and hair. He wasn’t there when the patient was moved, having finished his job after suturing the wound so could have no answer for how and when it could have happened. That something had happened, he didn’t doubt – but he had no idea what or when, other than the time frame when the patient was still unconscious.

The scans and xrays organized by the patient’s family doctor showed muscles on front and back of the shoulder had been pulled – much the same as you would get when someone is falling and you have grabbed an arm to try and unsuccessfully stop the fall. Two weeks after the operation, the patient still has only 30 percent use of the shoulder.

Yet no-one in the surgical team is saying anything. As far as the hospital is concerned, nothing happened despite the very obvious fact that something did. A formal complaint only got the one page letter and after seeing, I have to say that it was pretty disgustingly callous way to treat anyone.

So… what happens to the old folk who ‘don’t like to make a fuss”? How many people ARE being hurt when at their most vulnerable?

What about the kids, the babies? If a surgical team or the orderlies that handle these patients day in and day out cannot do so without a good understanding of the innate faith these patients and their families put in them to handle with care and dignity their loved ones when they are unable to do so for themselves – then what they hell are they doing in that job?

I’ve been looking on the net for any reports or reviews into just what does happen when it comes to ‘medical misadventure’ and so far, I’ve only been able to find one released in 2005 – and that more concerned with surgical mistakes – operating on the wrong person or the wrong limb.

I’m going to be digging a bit further – there has to be better answers than I’ve found somewhere. But thing I do suggest. If you or yours falls into the same category as the women above, then make a fuss. Jump and  down about it. Because it is unprofessional NOT to admit to causing injury, especially when the injury could create bigger problems for the patient than what they originally went in with. These medical professionals have a legal and moral set of choices when it comes to this kind of thing and letting the patient  and their family know exactly what happened so that appropriate health measures can be taken to ensure full return to health should be an absolute priority.

The stupidity of our justice system defies belief...

When two men are charged in two different courts for the same crimes; that is, they allegedly committed them together, you would expect that a) the lawyers might act in concert when it comes to suppression orders  or b) the judges at the least may do what the lawyers have not. In the Scott Guy case, a glaring example of the utter lack of understanding of the internet by the upholders of our laws is making a mockery of not only themselves but the whole justice system.
In the first instance, the lawyer for the 21 year old builder who is up on six charges, but not including the murder of Scott Guy, asked for name suppression at his client's Queenstown court appearance. This was granted, but every detail of the six charges was plastered in the Southland Times, The Otago Times, the Herald etc etc - and the internet.
In the second instance, the lawyer for Ewen McDonald, who is up on charges relating to the murder of Scott Guy, did not ask the Palmerston North court for name suppression, but did ask for suppression of the details surrounding the six other charges he is facing. In both instances, both judges granted the suppression orders.
Now, it does not take a rocket scientist to work out that if you really want to know what those six charges were, simply look up the news on the 21 year old's court appearance.
If, as one lawyer uses as the excuse for suppression, it is to ensure their client has a "fair trial", then surely they could have done their homework a whole better than it is obvious they have - isn't that what we pay lawyers such exorbitant fees for?

What is it going to take for the legal profession to begin to understand the power of the internet? The most determined rubber neckers in the world know perfectly well that any information is available anywhere - if a suppression order stands here in this country, it is of no use whatsoever if someone based in America puts it on a blog that has as its server something based in a country that has never even heard of New Zealand.
Is it perhaps time we really looked hard at revisiting the suppression orders altogether? It's bullpuckie and insulting to potential jurors intelligence to think that browsing the net is going to replace the cold, hard facts that are presented to them in a court case. The only way that could be said to prejudice that is if the offender has quite a record for similar offences - and as the jurors currently are not allowed to know that (which is the height of blinding justice) that could be a fair call. But the Weatherstons and McDonalds of this world often don't have previous criminal convictions, so even that is a moot argument.
 So to use the 'fair trial" excuse is to my way of thinking lame-brained in the extreme; a lawyer seeding himself a betting hedge. Nothing can take the place of the information that is put before jurors in a court of law; they get to see, hear and experience far more than any journalist or armchair critic ever will.
To use suppression to protect identity should only ever be in the case where a parent or other close relative has sexually abused a child - the child could be identified. Outside of that, these particular kinds of maggots should never have the luxury of such protection. The boot on the other foot was graphically depicted just recently when the 'comedian' was charged with raping his daughter - name suppression meant everyone was throwing names into the ring, which made it highly offensive to the innocent comedians who also have daughters.
Our laws are draconian in some instances and the lawmakers mills of change grind so exceedingly slowly that what changes are made quite often are still half a century too far behind the current eightball.
We need to ensure our judges particularly, who make these judgments understand how the internet works a heck of a lot better than they seem to. If the Palmerston North judge did - he'd have shaken his head at Ewen McDonald's lawyer and asked him why he hadn't done his job properly vis a vis working with the 21 year old builder's lawyer, so that both sets of suppression orders could be the same - and look to be professionally concerned enough to have done the job properly.
Perhaps it is time we looked at changing the system markedly so that we have professionally trained pools of jurors who do this on a full time basis.
I don't know - but what I do know is the case that is before us now hasn't even got off the ground and at least one of the lawyers and a judge have made a bit of an ass of themselves. Whatever next?

Police head still hanging onto a long gone innocence?

So our new Police Commissioner Peter Marshall 'hasn't seen any evidence' that our police force front liners need to be armed. The on-average, 2500 assaults on police every year obviously don't matter that much. What are you trying to say Mr Commissioner - that your boys and girls in blue all have thick heads?
I find this really quite strange - every year the stats for police assaulted in keeping Joe and Joanne Public safe are increasing - and not only increasing, they are becoming more violent in terms of weapons used.
The MOTH, when watching the news tonight about the jailing of the toerag that attacked Bruce Mellor came out with the startling pronouncement that Senior Constable Mellor should not have been out there on his own and more fool him. I looked at the MOTH in genuine amazement. Did the MOTH  not know that  the said constable was in a rural town which the decision makers often didn't believe required or could afford a second officer? Not SC Mellor's fault he has penny pinching bosses. The minute he started his patrol that night, all he had was a shoulder radio to make the "10-10, 10-10" call signalling that an officer was down. If the machete had smashed that - what then?
The MOTH decided it was perhaps prudent to find out a bit more about that before passing judgement - and it's something I wish the rest of the do-gooders who are bleating about arming our police would do as well.
Throwing the odd punch isn't as de rigeur now as pulling out a machete, a hammer, a knife or a gun. The shock the nation used to go into when a police officer got shot would reverberate for months around the hills, but these days it's become just another shake-the-head occurrence. And I'm sorry, but I just don't believe it should be that way. Australian police are fully armed and have been since 1995 after the murder of two constables in Crescent Heads. Their Police Federation CEO says their police officers would not go to work if they weren't. Furthermore, he also noted in a TV3 interview a year or so ago that New Zealand's stats for shot police officers far outstrip the Australian stats.

It appeared that while former Police Commissioner Howard Broad was looking positively at the potential of arming police by the end of this year - and that Police Minister Judith Collins was also sympathetic to it. Indeed, even the slowly grinding mills of government have before them this week a bill designed to enforce judges to utilise the fact that in sentencing, if the offender has assaulted a police officer, then it becomes an aggravating feature in the sentence handed out - in other words, they get a much harsher sentence. Although why judges have to be forced into doing this, as this bill will make them do, I don't know - they already have the ability to use the law, up until now it has been preference whether they do or not.
But with Commissioner Marshall,  new brooms being what they are, the latest reports are coming through that in less than a week since he took over the role, Commissioner Marshall is not in agreeance with this.
One has to ask why not? What "evidence" does he need? Putting a gun or taser, the latter method which he seems to prefer, in a locked space in a locked car was never going to help those shot by Jan Molenaar in Hastings.
Today's criminals seem to be different from those of yesteryear. Last century, last millenium for that matter, there appeared to be some kind of code of honour that no longer exists today. Every man, woman and dog is out for themselves and if you get in the way, you either better have the wherewithal to stop what's bearing down on you, or you will end up flattened. Whatever innocence as a nation that New Zealand had, whatever it was that made a caught criminal sigh and put their hands up when cornered by police, has gone. Between 1890 and 2000, just 19 police officers were shot while on duty - four of them in one event. Since 2000, there have been three - one sixth the total amount of the previous 110 years in just a decade.
The amount of young kids who are creating pursuits in cars and who then, when cornered, take to police with hammers or machetes or whatever is hugely increasing. These young mongrels know that these officers are NOT armed - so there is no respect and they will turn like the little ferals they are.
Most of us need to remember that our police do the job they do because they believe they can make a difference in the community they live, work and play in. We need to be a bit more thankful there are enough out there who choose to put their lives on the line every day - who have families who take deep breaths and try to keep silent the wee voice that hopes the start of the shift will not be the last time they see their loved ones.
It's time our police were armed - there is no reason for them not to be.
My message to the Commissioner is to ask whether or not, at 57 years of age, your best years are in last century. Because if they are and if you cannot keep abreast of the changing times and the very real need to protect those you represent at the head of the pack, then stand aside and let someone who can, do the job.

The leaky boat of insurance

News yesterday that the government could be bailing out the financially strapped insurer AMI anywhere between $500 million to $1 billion is enough to make even the totally uninsured wince.
Where exactly is our nation of 1.8 million workers meant to find all the funds to pay for, in the short term, the Christchurch earthquake - from munted infrastructural requirements ranging from temporary portaloos to roads (never mind accommodation) - the Pike River Mine disaster royal inquiry, the drought-struck farmers bailout, the finance companies guaranteed by the government against fallout for the Mum and dad investors - and SCF alone is taking one billion dollars of that.
That's just for this year.
Big insurers like Vero are taking the opportunity to really push the boot in by leading the accusations that if people want cheap insurance, they get what they pay for - insurance companies who do not have the money to pay out when a disaster such as this strikes. Yet - isn't this what we are insuring ourselves for? And considering the last major disaster outside of both Christchurch quakes was the 1931 Hawkes Bay earthquake (the 2007 Gisborne one was only $16 million of damage and largely covered by the EQC) one also has to ask, where did nearly 100 years of funds supplied by the one in four households and businesses of NZ who do insure themselves, actually go to? Considering that AMI spent annually just 3.7 percent on reinsuring for big disasters as opposed to the average 10 percent spent by the global insurers, who like bookmakers, layoff against such events in this way - that still means that 90 percent of money gained seems to have vanished down a black hole somewhere. Personally, I don't believe there is much of a difference between 3 percent and 10 percent in this context, although I might, from a business perspective if undercutting competitors premiums costs by as much is as suggested, be more inclined to want to do as Lumley's do and reinsure at say, 16 percent.
The government is in one heck of an invidious position - in fact, in probably no other lead up to an election has either major party probably wondered quietly to themselves whether it might not be a blessing to be the Opposition for the next three years. Any party that gets into power this year will be absolutely wincing at the books - because what's happening isn't affordable, both from an internal and external perspective.
Absolutely everything that could go up, has gone up and most by much more than 10 percent in the past two years. With of course, the sole exception of wages. Most median wage earners won't have got a pay rise this year and of those I know that have - precious few - the average is between one and two percent. Food, power, petrol, GST, I give up - has anything reduced in price? Even councils are getting together across the country and putting up the charges of dying in their boroughs by more than 10 percent in most cases for cemetery plots or other associated costs. Despite the recession and the job redundancies, most of the beggars are also raising their rates - a thing I believe is almost unforgiveable.
But back to the insurance. How can we afford to be shelling out this kind of money to insure that the insured of AMI still have insurance? It's ludicrous, because at what point do you stop and say, hang about - aren't we opening the doors for any corporate company to come in and say, carry on chaps, the old boys network will bail us out if need be.
The bottom line is, we can't afford another $1 billion. AMI has gone down the gurgler. There needs to be a way to look at rebuilding the losses of those who were insured yes - but not by giving the money to AMI.
I dread to think how Bill English is structuring our budget, due next month. Instead, the only news I've heard so far is that NZ is considering ensuring all tobacco products are sold in uniform drab olive green. Inspiring, much.

Waka heading into stormy waters

Oh dear.... the plastic waka furore is really stirring up the muddy bottom of the pond. On one hand you have Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples defensively stating that Maori should be one of the first in line for the Rugby World Cup tourism spin-off instead of utterly left out as he believed they were during the Americas Cup and on the other, you have people like MP Shane Jones saying hang about, a) we can't afford this with the huge financial dent the Christchurch earthquake has left us all in and b)if it's a business proposition, then the iwi concerned, Ngati Whatua (o Orakei) should be shelling out the $2million for it and its furnishings itself.
It's a hard call and trying to sit on the fence is definitely an uncomfortable experience. Some have pointed out that we spent $33 million on the America's Cup, which is true - but not before we had won the thing first. That money was spent on the boat needed to defend it here in New Zealand, which we did successfully before losing it the second time around. The spin-off to that was huge, there is amazing money out there and our designers, sailors - our country, was given huge kudos for a very long time to come because of the win.
What would the spinoff be for the taxpayer who is expected to pay for a plastic waka-shaped restaurant and event hall?
And let's not forget that the democratic way of tendering this job out didn't happen; it was presented by both Ngati Whatua and Pita Sharples as a fait accompli, so as far as value for money is concerned, we've gotta lump that.
I'm of the belief that if tourists want to really feel the way Maori tradition is, they are best to toddle off down State Highway 2 to Rotorua - a two hour road trip that means nothing to most of our tourists and be educated by those who have been doing this for as long as there have been tourists. Rotorua will also host three games - so the opportunity is ample.
If Ngati Whatua want to do this, then fine - by all means go ahead. But I have a problem with both why I should be paying for it when they have funds of their own and let's face it, this IS a business proposition that the iwi alone will benefit financially from and also from a tourism viewpoint, a tag the iwi is using to hold up on the possibility of dragging it around the world - that is the job of Tourism New Zealand, not a local iwi who it seems to me, is simply using that as a justification.
If I as a taxpayer was going to benefit from this, I might look at it. But I already have the venues for the intangibles of tourism at hand and because the hard cash that walks through its doors will be for the iwi to count and bank - there is no benefit to me at all here, that I can see.