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Wednesday 5 December 2012

ROYAL MARRIAGE AND BABY


As the most corrupt parliament in the history of New Zealand goes through the motions of public submissions while it prepares to do great evil to marriage, it is a most refreshing contrast to see at the other end of the world a royal marriage rejoicing at the blessing of conception and pregnancy and looking forward to giving birth.

Down under, abnormality, vile corruption and anti-social wickedness. At the top of the world, normality, pure joy and the great common good in which society is founded and made secure.

Thursday 15 November 2012

CORRUPTED EQUALITY


Calling equal what is not equal and never can be is not equality. It is corruption. Corruption of language, corruption of truth, corruption of reality.

The literal joining of a man and a woman in marriage--the sexual, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and legal union of a man and a woman--is unique. It is not equal to anything else, it cannot be equal to anything else. To pretend that a partnership of two men or two women is equal to it and to pretend that it is inequality if we do not call it equal defy logic, language, truth and reality.

In marriage 1+1=1. In all other forms of partnership, whatever their basis might be, 1+1=2.

1 is not equal to 2 and never can be. Saying that if we do not pretend that 1=2 is discrimination is stupid, and degrades fundamental values. Whenever we do that, whenever we disregard reality, we pay a price. Corrupting the word marriage for the sake of vociferous minority who can never in truth be married will further corrupt marriage. The more marriage is corrupted the more society is corrupted, and social problems will multiply.

There is no doubt that the corrupters will have their way, because they have played the long game and have stacked the Parliamentary deck. But ''If you sow the wind you reap the whirlwind.' They have the puffery so they will sow the wind. But they will have to answer for the whirlwind that New Zealand will reap.

Wednesday 31 October 2012

CORRUPTED TELECOMS AND CORRUPT CHORUS


Corruption is not just being on the take. It includes corrupted thinking. In an entity that is meant to be providing a service fundamental to the functioning of society, namely communications, corruption is not caring about human-beings, not being interested in their interaction, not being interested in their well-being, not being interested in providing the fundamental service that is its fundamental duty.

The sprawling mess that is now New Zealand's telecommunication sector--which includes the ludicrous shemozzle of having <i>sixty</i> ISPs in this city-sized country--has handed Chorus a stranglehold. And it is answerable to no one--certainly not to people, or to Parliament, or to any MP. It arrogantly thumbs its uppity nose at customers, at Telecom NZ, at MPs, at everyone.

When pressure was put on Chorus to provide broadband to eight waiting customers in my small area, and my street has fibre running under one edge--a request that could easily be fulfilled by putting another 8-port block in the nearest street-cabinet--it thumbed its nose at everyone and rudely handed out a written form-letter response that would have made Goebbels proud. 2016, perhaps, is the unofficial prediction from Telecom, made more in optimism than reality, but Chorus says there are 'no plans' to upgrade that cabinet.

To rub a bag of salt in the wound the secretary of the MP (Nikki Kaye) who made the request lives in an area where there are a hundred households waiting for broadband. But even from her position nothing can be done to get Chorus halfway honest.

There is only one way to get telecommunications right in this country, but it is so politically incorrect amongst those of the blue- and red-flag 1% that they would never do it. Re-nationalise the whole shebang. Give the sixty a year to wind down and take their last profits, then make the whole industry an SOE, answerable to Parliament, with someone of the calibre of Peter Troughton running it (when he ran Telecom NZ as an SOE he made it sing).

Only then would it be what it should be: a public entity, providing a vital public service, answerable to the people through Parliament and their MPs.

And the foul corruption now oozing from the Choruses of this world would be cleaned out forever. We would no longer have to listen to the vile, anti-human, antisocial noise that Chorus thinks is sweet telecoms music.

Tuesday 16 October 2012

VOTING AFTER THE MONEY

The Auckland Energy Consumer Trust, which owns 75.4% of the energy-and-infrastructure company Vector, and therefore gets a large chunk of the dividend that Vector pays every year, which it pays out to consumers. Good.

The AECT Board is a democratically elected body, elected every three years. Good.

But one has to wonder greatly at the timing of the dividend payment this year, election year. It was given out only a couple of weeks before the voting papers. We must assume that the money will make us feel so warm and fuzzy towards the present incumbents that we will vote them back in, for fear of not getting so much lovely money every year. That is bribing us with our own money.

There should be a very large separation between the two events so that there can be no accusation of using our money to influence voting.

Monday 27 August 2012

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MARRIAGE


Those who want to interfere with the definition of marriage say they are being falsely and unfairly discriminated against by normal people.

That is not true. What normal people are doing is upholding and defending the truth of what marriage is, and refusing to have it discriminated against with falsehoods.

The real discrimination is being perpetrated the other way, for in denying the truth of what all married people are, the others are fiercely discriminating against them.

False discrimination is discrimination founded on a lies. Those who are denying the truth of what marriage is are pushing a lie.

I someone said, 'I want to be a lawyer; everyone has the right to be a lawyer; everyone should have that right equally; and by having a narrow definition of "lawyer" society is discriminating against me--so change the definition, Parliament', that would actually be discrimination against real lawyers, because it would destroy their profession, it would remove their unique situation and status. It would therefore be discrimination against them, it would be discrimination against what they are, using a lie.

Trumpeting 'lawyer equality' would just be putting the lie in fancy dress--making it appear valid with claptrap, with a meaningless slogan. It never can be valid, it never can have a true meaning, because lawyer is lawyer is lawyer is lawyer is lawyer. Changing the meaning of the word to mean anyone who is in a range of unlawerly situations only destroys a word; it achieves nothing in the real world except confusion.

Only those who qualify to be called lawyers may be called lawyers, and only those who have qualified have the right to a licence to practise as lawyers. To insist on that is not discrimination against non-lawyers. It is reality.

It is not a 'right' to be defined as something you are not and never can be. It is not a 'right' to have a legal licence to call yourself something you are not and never can be.

Friday 24 August 2012

EUTHENASIA IS CORRUPTION OF LIFE


Regardless of how much pain or distress there may be, life must always be valued more. Otherwise pain and distress will be valued more than life. Life must always have by far the highest value.

Monday 13 August 2012

GOLD AND PINK

Most people are gold. A small minority are pink, but they want to be called gold, so they are screaming for 'gold equality', which is impossible, because pink is not gold and never can be, but they intend 'getting' it by changing the legal definition of pink to gold. But they will still be pink, no matter what they are called.

But, sadly, all the gold people will then have nothing to call themselves because 'gold' will have been destroyed and made meaningless. And their unique equality will have been destroyed with it.

Saturday 11 August 2012

DEMOCRACY AND TYRANNY


When laws are changed for a manipulative minority rather than for the true good and desire of the majority, that is tyranny not democracy.

Everything enshrined in law should benefit society. There is no benefit to New Zealand society if to satisfy its lust for money a small minority owns even a part of the means of supplying electrical energy to the rest. And there is no benefit to society if to satisfy abnormal lusts a tiny minority changes in law the meaning of marriage so that they can pretend to be what is sexually, spiritually and logically impossible.

On the contrary. In both cases New Zealand society will be harmed.

DEJA VU, THEY DID YOU TOO


In the nineteenth century in the United States the government confiscated and sold off large chunks of the assets of the native Americans against their will--to satisfy greed. Now, in the 21st century, the New Zealand government is about to confiscate and sell off large chunks of the assets of native New Zealanders, Pakeha and Maori, against the will of the majority--to satisfy greed.

Progress!

EQUAL IS NOT UNEQUAL


Those who want to change the definition of 'marriage' by dictate of statute say they want 'marriage equality'--they want to have what truly married people have. But forcibly changing the meaning of the word will not give them that; it will only give them 'equality' with something different, something that is no longer truly marriage. They will have 'equality' with nothing, they will have won nothing. They will have destroyed marriage in order to claim it. They will have only its ashes.

As Shakespeare said: 'Tis won as towns with fire: so won, so lost.'

It will also have been destroyed for everyone else.

It is not 'marriage equality' if the State forces upon all married couples a fundamentally different definition of their state of being (particularly when that is done at the behest of an unrepresentative minority). For the State to say to married couples, 'Your situation is no longer unique to you and all the couples like you, it is no longer what all of you committed to for life, it is now just one of many situations, including many that are fundamentally unlike yours', that is forcing inequality upon them. At present all married people are equal, all over the world. If they are made equal to something else their equality will have been destroyed, and because to achieve that the definition of marriage will have been destroyed it will not have created equality for anyone.

CORRUPTING COMMUNICATION


When the meaning of a word is wilfully changed to mean something it does not mean, cannot mean and has never meant, when its meaning is corrupted, communication with it is also corrupted. Language exists for communication, it exist to enable communication: efficient, direct, simple, straightforward communication. When a word is corrupted it can longer be used to represent the idea or state that it once represented, so communication with it becomes so corrupted that it becomes impossible.

At the moment if a man says, 'I am married' we know instantly without any explanation that he is talking about a state in which he is the husband and a woman is his wife. If a woman says, 'I am married', we know instantly without any explanation that she is talking about a state in which she is the wife and a man is her husband. And if we read the same phrases in a book written hundreds of years ago or thousands, or hear it in old film, we have the same instant knowledge. All the explanation needed is in the meaning of the word. Communication is direct, efficient, instant, simple.

But if the corrupters of marriage, both the state and the word, have their way, it will no longer be possible to communicate about marriage directly and efficiently. And communication with the past will be lost. For then when people say 'I am married' it will be necessary to go into a long-winded explanation, because they may mean what marriage has always meant and truly means, or they mean that they using it to describe the so-called 'sexual' cohabitation of two men, or two women, or five men and three women, or sixteen women and two men, or one man and five women, etc., etc. Communication with the word will be so corrupted that it will be impossible. The word will no longer have a useful meaning, it will be useless. It will have to be replaced by sentences and paragraphs.

There is some irony in that. People who want to be able to call themselves married--to be 'equal' with truly married people--can do so only by changing the word for the state. If they succeed they will only be applying a changed word to themselves, they will not be applying the reality of what it once meant. The reality cannot change, regardless of what they do to the word. Homosexuals cannot have sexual union; therefore they cannot be married. If they call something else marriage they will still not have the sexual-physical-mental-emotional-and-spiritual union that is what marriage is, they will have only the word for it, but it will be a word stripped of meaning, a useless collection of letters.

Yes, words change over time, and may acquire new meanings. Take 'mouse'. It no longer means only a small rodent, or someone who is as timid as one. It also means a device for controlling a computer. That is fine. But the new meaning has not replaced and destroyed the original meanings. So we can still communicate efficiently, using a single word, about rodents and timid people. We can communicate with people in the present day, and with all the people in the past who have used that word in books, other writings and other media. But if the new computer meaning was suddenly written into the law as the only meaning, then communicating about rodents and timid people would no longer be possible with a single word. There would always have to be an explanation to avoid confusion. Simple, direct, efficient communication about rodents and mouse-like timidity would be lost for ever.

'Mouse' is not one of the most important words in the dictionary or in society, but even so its destruction would not be insignificant because it is a word in common use and there is no other word that means the same thing.

And take this sentence: 'He bought a rose for his beloved.' The creates a mental image of man buying a rose, probably red, to give the woman he loves. But if the meaning of 'rose' was changed to mean any plant, to mean whatever you wanted it to mean, to mean something different to everyone, that poetic sentence would become a meaningless, grey, dead thing. And if the sentence was 'He bought a rose to give his beloved on the day they were married', and 'rose', 'beloved' and 'married' have been deprived of their meanings, that
sentence would no longer mean anything.

The Prime Minister has said that if the law is changed it will not affect his marriage. He is wrong. For when the word 'marriage' is corrupted in law, by having its meaning forcibly changed in statute, every true marriage will be corrupted, because in law it will no longer be what it really is--the only true possibility meant by that word. It will be made just one of countless possibilities, and therefore its true state will be made meaningless. No longer will it be a rose, unique and special; it will have been turned into just another weed amongst countless weeds. Including his marriage.

When 'marriage' no longer has a specific meaning that is universally understood, when it is by force of law given a meaning that is different for everyone, it can no longer be used to transmit thoughts from one mind to another. It is socially useless. Language is vital in society; without it there is no society. When we corrupt it we corrupt society. Humpty Dumpty said, 'Words mean whatever I say they mean.' That was in a story, where it was amusing although it was also obvious that it was very stupid--and we all know what happened
to Humpty Dumpty. He fell off the wall and was smashed beyond repair. But if his foolish notion is taken out of the story world into the real world, and is set in the concrete of the law, communication will be corrupted. And when the word legislated into oblivion is one at the very heart of the social fabric and the long history of the world its loss will not be just the corruption of language it will also be the corruption of society. And it will
lead to even worse corruption. The 'What does it matter?', 'Anything goes', 'Why make a fuss?', 'Who cares?' attitude, and the nonsensical notion that such questions are a valid argument, will continue their corrupting, cancerous spread into countless aspects of social functioning. As Shakespeare said, 'It is not and it cannot come to good.'

AN OLD WICKED TRICK AND SALAMI



Now the self-styled 'Queer Avengers' have said that changing the definition of marriage in human law so that they can call two men or two women married is not all they want. They also want polygamy and polyandry and any mixture of them, what they like to call polyamorous'--they want groups of people of any number and any mixture of genders to be able to call themselves married, and to have the same legal rights as those who are married in the true sense of the word.

That is an old, very corrupt trick. You know there will be objections to what you really want (at least what you want now), which is to change the meaning of the word marriage to include pairs of homosexuals, so you put forward a proposal far beyond that, a proposal outrageously wicked. Then people say, 'I wouldn't go that far' but they accept what you really want at this moment because it does not seem nearly as bad in comparison. So you win.

Whether that acceptance is grudging or not does not matter. You win. Your tactics are specious, evil, devoid of truth and reason, but you win by a trick. You get the 'democratic' numbers by trickery. And you get more numbers than you might otherwise have done, because Muslims and extreme Mormons will join you. All you need is the numbers in Parliament. It does not matter how you get them. Numbers are numbers.

If you wanted $10 from someone you pretend you have the right to it and you demand $1000. Your opponent does not have the stomach for a fight and thinks, 'I don't owe that person $10, but handing over $10 is not nearly as bad as fighting about $1000, so I'll give in.' So you get the $10. Then you come back another day and demand $10,000, and you get $100. Then later you demand a million, and you get the $1000 you demanded at the start.

There is also the old salami game. Slice by slice you get more and more of what you want, till there is nothing left but the rind, so you get that too. Homosexuals began with that to establish their position,and now they have moved on to the old wicked trick. In New Zealand they began in 1989 by saying (and they lied) that <i>all</i> they wanted was for homosexual acts to be decriminalised. Their lie fooled just enough people and they got that. But that was the thin end of the long wedge they planned to drive into society. Their next step was to have themselves written into section 21 of New Zealand's Human Rights Act so that no one could then refuse them any employment position on the grounds of 'sexual orientation'. That meant they could then with impunity get themselves into position of power and influence--positions in which they could shape and dictate public opinion, and policy, and law.

Now they are going for what they always wanted: being able to call themselves 'married' by changing the meaning of the word. They can never have what marriage really is in truth, because it is logically impossible, a gross contradiction in terms. They can only have a corrupted and meaningless version of the word, not its true reality, but they cannot see that. They are like big kids who are not allowed into a small tent, because it does not belong to them and they cannot fit into it, so they pull it down and sit on it and kid themselves that they are now in it. But a shapeless mass of canvas lying in the dirt is not a tent and never will be, no matter how many times your queer and vengeful soul insists that it is one, and that it belongs to you, and that you are now the equal of those who own it and fitted it.

Friday 27 July 2012

CORRUPTION OF LANGUAGE AND LAW


'When men cannot change things they change words.' Roman proverb.

'Righteousness raises a people to honour;
to do wrong is a disgrace to any nation.' -- King Solomon (Proverbs 14:34).

What a hypocritical nation New Zealand is! Its national anthem is a great and fervent prayer to Almighty God titled 'God defend New Zealand', and that phrase is repeated all through its five verses. Over and over and over again, countless times over the years, New Zealanders have proudly raised their voices in 'God defend New Zealand' and have sung out their plea to God to 'make our country good and great', to 'make its praises heard afar',  to 'bless this place', to 'guard our country's spotless name', to 'let our cause be good and right'. The last verse of the anthem ends with a great cry to God:

'Make us faithful unto thee,
God defend our free land.
Guide her in the nations‘ van,
Preaching love and truth to man,
Working out thy glorious plan,
God defend New Zealand.'

And the New Zealand Parliament begins each sitting day with this prayer:

'Almighty God, humbly acknowledging our need for Thy guidance in all things, and laying aside all private and personal interests, we beseech Thee to grant that we may conduct the affairs of this House and of our country to the glory of Thy holy name, the maintenance of true religion and justice, the honour of the Queen, and the public welfare, peace, and tranquillity of New Zealand, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.'

But now the New Zealand Parliament and if the opinion-polls are right the majority of New Zealanders are about to treat God, the truth, Jesus Christ, and God's glorious plan with obscene contempt. They are about to change the country's laws on marriage so that they will no longer be true, they will no longer adhere to God's glorious plan, they will no longer have anything to do with the facts of life and the real world.

Marriage rightly is and always has been the union, the literal joining, of a man and a woman. They are joined sexually, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and therefore legally. The legality is the seal on the actual union. The man and the woman truly become one flesh, first and foremost sexually: they are literally joined at the hip. And from that union children will normally come. Marriage is the union by which society extends itself through time and space. That is only possibly when a male and a female sexual organ are mutually engaged--an erect penis and a vagina. A rectum, a finger, a fist, etc., are not sexual organs; they cannot make sexual union.

Marriage is not, as the common New Zealand myth has it, 'only a piece of paper.' It is the actual union of a man and a woman, sealed by law. It cannot be anything else. To change the meaning of the word is to change it from the truth to an obscene and socially-destructive lie.

But now with lying slogans like 'marriage equality' a tiny but very vociferous minority is pretending that it is being discriminated against, that it is being denied marriage. For although marriage is only sexually, logically and linguistically possible between a man and a woman, they want to turn language, truth, reality, and right and wrong upside down and inside out so that they can call two men or two women 'married.' But interfering with the word does not change the fact that two of the same sex cannot be sexually joined. That is possible only with two mutually admissible sex-organs; it is possible only with a penis and a vagina; it is possible only with the union that will in normal circumstances bring children into the world.

No one is being discriminated against. If you are of age and there is no incest or other valid impediment you are free to marry. If you are a man you a free to find an agreeable woman; if you are a woman you are free to find an agreeable man; when a man and a woman agree to marry they are free to marry. There is no discrimination.

The 'discrimination' claimed by homosexuals does not exist. It is not discrimination to define the word marriage as the union of a man and a woman and exclude all other meanings any more than it is discrimination to define blue as only the colour of the sky and exclude the colour of blood, grass, buttercups, etc. To use any word truly and correctly is not discrimination. The attempt to change the meaning of marriage is a blatant lie that will degrade the institution and meaning of marriage and flies in the face of Almighty God who ordained it.

God loves homosexuals with divine love, and everyone must love them with neighbourly and brotherly love, but no one should love unrighteous acts or attempts to justify them with lying slogans and the alteration of human laws. God's laws do not change, because they rest on eternal truth. No matter how much 'democracy' may be manipulated with vociferous propaganda it cannot change eternity.

The great words of the Marriage Service speak eternal, immutable truths: 'DEARLY beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church: which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence and first miracle that he wrought in Cana of Galilee, and is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men: and therefore is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God. Into this holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.'

When a nation rebels against God it must expect punishment. It can sing 'God defend New Zealand' all it pleases, but he will not defend those who defy him. He will punish the nation that does, he will in love punish it to bring it back to him; so if New Zealand goes ahead with this obscenity it will bring that consequence upon itself. What we sow we reap. 

If we sow the wind we will reap the whirlwind.

Friday 13 July 2012

NZ DOES NOT HAVE FREE AND FAIR LOCAL-BODY ELECTIONS


New Zealanders quite rightly look down on countries where repressive or manipulative regimes prevent elections from being free and fair, from being truly democratic--i.e., elections in which anyone can stand and anyone can vote and there is no interference with the ballot-paper before the election or during it.

But under the heading of elections for local government, New Zealand's elections have not been free and fair since at least 2002, because a corrupt trio of key officials have been interfering behind the scenes with the ballot-papers by severely restricting who can be on them.

Democracy is representative government. If it is prevented from being representative it is not democracy. That corrupt trio of officials, by their wilful failure to comply with excellent statute, have ensured that New Zealand's local-government elections cannot possibly be representative.

If people are to do a full-time job they must be alive, they must be housed and clothed and have enough money to be able to transport themselves about. Those elected to local government in New Zealand are elected to a full-time job for three years. But if the remuneration set for them is not enough, even for those basic requirements, then the only people who free to do stand for election are ones who have independent means.

But because the corrupt trio called the Remuneration Authority has wilfully ignored statute, because it has wilfully ignored the clear, simple mandatory criteria for setting remuneration that Parliament has laid down in Clause 7 of Schedule 7 of the Local Government Act 2002 (LGA2002), there are many local-government elected positions that are paid so little that only those of independent means can stand. That means the ballot-paper is being restricted to a tiny, unrepresentative sample of people. It is not available to all. That is not democracy. Therefore local-government elections in New Zealand are not free and fair.

It is instructive that the Remuneration Authority never cites Clause 7 of Schedule 7 when issuing its determinations. It cannot, because it does not adhere to it. Instead it adheres to what has become known as the Pool Formula, a weird, complicated formula invented by a former chair of the Authority, a formula that would make Einstein's head spin, and has nothing to do with sense, or the real world, or democracy, or the rule of good law.

And Clause 7 of Schedule 7 of the Local Government Act 2002 is very good law:

7 Mandatory criteria for Remuneration Authority
(1) In determining remuneration under clause 6, the Remuneration Authority must have regard to the need to—
(a) minimise the potential for certain types of remuneration to distort the behaviour of the persons listed in clause 6(1) in relation to their positions as listed in clause 6(1); and
(b) achieve and maintain fair relativity with the levels of remuneration received elsewhere; and
(c) be fair both—
(i) to the persons whose remuneration is being determined; and
(ii) o ratepayers; and
(d) ttract and retain competent persons.
(2) The criteria in subclause (1) do not prevent the Remuneration Authority from determining allowances additional to salary for attending meetings.

But because of the infamous Pool Formula and the corruption of the Remuneration Authority in the setting of local-government remuneration many people elected to local government are paid less than $10,000--even as little as $206 a year. That is glaringly in breach of Clause 7. Councillors on the old Auckland Regional Council were the lowest-paid regional councillors in the country, paid only $22,000 for a seniour management position--about half what their counterparts in Wellington were on.

Section 238 of the LGA2002 says explicitly that failure to comply with the Act is an offence, and directs us to section 242 under which offenders are to be haled into the District Court and fined up to $5000. But when that was attempted against the Remuneration Authority the judge who was on duty that week in a backroom of the Auckland District Court blocked the case from coming to court. How? By lying. She ruled that failure to comply with the mandatory criteria in Clause 7 of Schedule 7 of the LGA2002 'is not an offence known to law.' Section 238 clearly says it is. How did she get away with that? The first level of her lie was to pretend that a case in an English court in Battersea in the 1940s gave her the authority, which was of course nonsense because it was the wrong jurisdiction, the wrong country and the wrong century, so it had no bearing on New Zealand now. But her lie was a double lie, because the English case did not say what she quoted it as saying. She made it up.

The corruption got worse, because when the documentary evidence of her arrant lies was put before the Judicial Conduct Commission he found in her favour!!!

New Zealand's unfair, unfree local-body elections continue...

Thursday 28 June 2012

TELECOM'S DISGUSTING DIALUP

Long ago I was with Telecom New Zealand, which was so bad that I called Telecom Rex, or T. Rex for short. But recently because I was getting far worse service from another provider I decided to change back to TelstraClear, but between the two of them they so messed up my voice and Internet lines that they managed to cut them off, and said I could not get them back for 30 days. In trying to get all that sorted out, I happened to called Telecom, and to my astonishment got superb service and was up and running again in a tad over nothing flat.

But there was a horrid fly in that lovely jar of ointment, because in this neck of the woods, thanks to governments that took a while to realise that we really are in the twenty-first century, I cannot get broadband till 2015, so I have to use dialup.

Telecom told me that its dialup service was $9.99 a month for <i>unlimited access.</i> It lied. Because my Internet line kept cutting me off. The physical line was checked by Chorus and found to be excellent. But then I realised, because I happened to be staring at the screen precisely twenty-four hours after I had connected, that it was cutting me off at that mark. A bit more testing confirmed it beyond all doubt.

Telecom's dialup system has a programmed timeout. It will not run for anyone for more than twenty-four hours. Then it disconnects you and you have to dial back, which means you will probably lose the download you were running and have to start it all over again, and if it is one that will take longer than twenty-four hours it is impossible.

At first Telecom denied that it has a timeout programmed in to its dialup service. Then it checked with Alcatel, its supplier, and found that there was.

But it refused, point-blank, to take it out. All it has to do is remove a line or two of program. But it refuses. It wants to be offering us an 'unlimited' dialup 'service' that is limited to twenty-four-hour chunks. It wants to cut you off. It obviously likes being the marketing department for its competitors. That is, in effect, its policy.

When it told me that, I called the Commerce Commission. Now, I hope, Telecom will discover, once again, that there are laws in New Zealand. A service must be of merchantible quality, and you are not allowed to lie to customers, to mislead them with 'unlimited' when they will get only twenty-four-hour chunks.

Then I looked up the Yellow Pages, and saw a company that has no idea of how to create an attractive name, and calls itself NooZoo (0800 151 111), but offers a seven-day free trial of its dialup service. After having been badly bitten by Telecom that was a very attractive offer, so I signed up and changed my ISP ASAP.

NooZoo said it does not have a timeout (Telecom, according to someone who knows the industry, is the only dialup provider that does), and its service runs at a very good speed, and it costs only $9.95 a month. I shall drive it mercilessly for a week, and if it keeps doing what it is doing now, NooZoo will have my dialup account.

I do have to pay for at least three months after that, but that is fair, given that the free trial enables me to know exactly what I shall be getting.


The only drawback is that NooZoo has no mail-servers, so Outlook cannot be used on it, but I have an account with a very good mailserver provider elsewhere (DigiWeb), so $5 a month solves that problem.

Telecom has yet to get it into its entire head that if you treat customers badly you make them customers of someone else. If the dialup part of its empire was as good as the people handling the other services that I have with it, it would be brilliant. But its dialup is disgusting. Steer clear of it. Unless you like being deliberately cut off.

(Footnote: Noo Zoo's dialup did run and run and run and run and run, at a very impressive throughput, so the sparrow easily defeated T. Rex. I signed up, and dumped TR.)

Thursday 31 May 2012

SEXUAL ABUSE ENTRENCHED IN NZ


Sexual abuse across all social classes by men and women, boys and girls, well- and poorly-educated, is deeply embedded in New Zealand society, and despite being explicitly outlawed in public places by section 4 of the Summary Offences Act 1981 it is everywhere considered so normal and acceptable that any law against it is a dead letter.

If a black man is punched in the head because he is black, that is racial abuse of the physical kind. If he is called a nigger, that is racial abuse of the psychological kind. Everyone understands that. Both are acts of racial abuse, both hit him hard in his mind and heart, and both damage both the abused and the abuser.

Words are powerful. The words we use, the words we choose, express our thinking and shape it. Then our thinking shapes our actions.

What are inaccurately and euphemistically called four-letter words, which Tolkien aptly called Black Speech, is sexual abuse of the psychological kind. It pours black abuse on the emblems and the essence of manhood and boyhood, girlhood and womanhood. Especially manhood and boyhood. Even a term that on the surface abuses women‘s genitals is most often hurled at men by men: the c-- word is the worst insult that can be flung at a man; it says he has no manhood.

The destructive power of the black words is multiplied by the fact that they do double duty as terms of strong mockery. For example, the black word for the penis also means a stupid fool, the black word for the glans penis means a very stupid fool, the black word for the testes is part of a term that means a gross and mindless blunder, the black abbreviation for the scrotum means something disgusting and repellent. Boys and men thus constantly have rammed into them the message that what makes and marks them as male is a disgusting and repellent joke. That is a monumental lie.

Women get off comparatively lightly, but it is small wonder that breast-feeding is rejected by so many when the word used for the breasts also means a stupid mistake. That too is a destructive lie.

The f--- word, when made personal with 'you', is a wish for what is obviously thought to be the worst punishment that can be inflicted. As rape yes, but it abuses the most loving act in human life, a damnable lie underscores the rest of the abuse.

Until New Zealand recognises that it is subjecting itself to a torrent of psychological sexual abuse in its addiction to Black Speech and starts eliminating it the physical sexual abuse that arises from it will continue.

For a start, section 4 of the Summary Offences Act 1981 should be rigorously enforced. Which means that police officers must stop using sexually abusive language. Radio and television should eliminate it from the airwaves, and if an otherwise worthwhile programme that includes is shown it it should be preceded by a clip that says what it contains and that it is sexual abuse so must be treated with contempt--in short, the abusive guns should be spiked. The Broadcasting Standards Authority should recognise and fulfil its responsibilities.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which New Zealand has signed, and which it affirmed in our Bill of Rights Act in 1990, lays down the fundamental principle of law as 'recognition of the inherent dignity and worth of the human person.' Together with 'recognition of the equal and inalienable worth of all members of the human family' that is *explicitly defined* as 'the foundation of freedom justice and peace in the world.' So in law and in truth whenever we denigrate our inherent dignity and worth we threaten our freedom, our justice, our peace.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says 'disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind'. That is always so. Therefore to eliminate the barbarism of sexual abuse and assault we must eliminate the contempt that leads to them. Which includes the contempt pouring like black pus from countless conversations.

It is simple cause and effect. That which is held in contempt will inevitably be attacked. There are attacks for good and attacks for evil. Evil attacks are caused by evil contempt. To eliminate them, it is necessary to eliminate the evil contempt. How is evil contempt recognised? It shuns the truth.

We recognise the arrant falsehoods of sexually abusive actions and images, but although the country is drenched in sexually abusive language few recognise it and care. The daily barrage of falsehoods about what makes and marks us as male and female, and which constantly drives down our self-esteem, male self-esteem in particulary, must be recognised for what it is and ruthlessly stamped out. We must accept and honour our bodies, not denigrate them.

When we tell falsehoods to ourselves about ourselves we act falsely to ourselves and others.The only difference is a matter of degree. In some the manifestation is extreme: rape and rape-murder. In others it is poor treatment of themselves and others, especially by men of women. Everyone who uses Black Speech is responsible for the damage it causes.

As W.H. Auden wisely observed:

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn.
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.



Tuesday 22 May 2012

DUBIOUS PROCESS DESTROYS JUSTICE


In theory, the justice system is due process, which always gives you what is due to you--it gives you your rights, and gives you all that is right and just and true. It should. The very word, 'justice', comes from the Latin word ius, which means right, so justice is in theory about getting things right, making things right, setting things to rights.

But in practice what you get in New Zealand's justice system is not due process. You get a chancy game of dubious process that has nothing to do with your rights, with what is right or true or just.

Dubious process is not interested in people, in life, in anything true. It is interested only titles, position, the careless and petty exercise of petty, pettifogging power.

New Zealand prides itself on having a good justice system. It does not.

If you are haled into the District Court on some charge in which the police think they can get a victorious notch in their belts, and those who accused you lie, and the judge believes the lies and convicts you you can in theory appeal to a higher Court and ultimately you will get justice.

But a conviction on lies should not have happened in the first place, because in law, under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, and under international law, under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which New Zealand is a signatory, and which it has also affirmed in the Bill of Rights Act, you are deemed innocent until proved guilty, and you have the right to a fair and impartial trial by a competent authority. So the District Court judge should have the competence to tell whether people are lying, and should be very careful to make sure he finds out if they are. And he has to make sure that guilt or innocence has been proved. But proof is possible only by using logic; and under the rules of logic it is only if the premise is true and the reasoning is true that the conclusion be true. Therefore a verdict not founded on the truth and true reasoning should never issue from any court, even if it is the lowest level of the system.

But what actually happens is a stacked lottery. Because if the District Court judge is too stupid to see that your accusers are lying, if he does not apply logical analysis to what they said, and thus blinds himself to all the places where they contradicted themselves, where they contradicted each other, and where they said things that cannot possibly be true in the real world, and then 'reasons' falsely from all their falsehoods, he will hand down the wrong verdict. He will convict an innocent person.

Then the lottery stacked against you can get far worse. Because to overturn a decision in the District Court you have to appeal in the first instance to the High Court. Again, you have the right to a fair and impartial trial by a compentent authority, and again you are to be deemed innocent until proved guilty.

But if the gown of the High Court judge is cut from the same cloth as the gown of the District Court judge, you will get the wrong verdict affirmed. Then the obvious thing to do is appeal to the Court of Appeal, the second-highest court in New Zealand's four-layer system.

But then you run into the even bigger jaws of dubious process. Because to get to the Court of Appeal from the High Court you have to ask for leave from the High Court judge who has just agreed with the District Court judge's wrong verdict. You have to ask permission of the judge whose judgement you want to call into question. No judge can even pretend to treat that request fairly and impartially. What High Court judges truly want you to go to the Court of Appeal and trash their rulings? None, obviously, so they cannot be fair and impartial when you ask permission to go and do it.

So you will get a refusal, of course. But that's OK, because you can then ask the Court of Appeal for special leave to appeal to it. But the Court of Appeal is not, in law, obliged to consider anything except points of law. It only has to consider if the law has been interpreted correctly. It can, and it will, refuse to consider anything that is only a point of fact. So if the verdict against you was based on lies, not facts, and you are questioning the verdict on that ground, the Court of Appeal will refuse permission to give you special leave to appeal to it. It will say the law was interpreted correctly, there is nothing more to be said. And it was, it was just that the facts used under that interpretation were lies not facts.

But that's OK, because then you can appeal to the Supreme Court of New Zealand. The law says so. And it also says that, unlike the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court is obliged to hear appeals in which there has been a significant miscarriage of justice.

But there you run into the biggest jaws of dubious process. Because in 2004 the Supreme Court ruled that if the Court of Appeal refused to give you leave to appeal to it, the Supreme Court cannot and will not hear your appeal. What!!!

Therefore if the District Court goofs and the High Court goofs, that is it. You can never get justice. You can go no higher. The dubious process wins, and the District Court, is in effect made senior to the Supreme Court.

You could try applying to the Governor-General to exercise the Royal Prerogative. But your request will not actually be handled by the Governor-General or the Queen he represents. It will be handled by some lowly lawyer buried somewhere in the bowels of the Justice Department. And even if the answer is yes, the request will then be referred to--guess who?--the Court of Appeal!!! Which is hardly likely to admit that it goofed the first time you went to it.

So the corruption of dubious process wins. Your life is wrecked. Permanently. By serial incompetence in blue shirts and black gowns.

New Zealand has a shonky system. If it gets things wrong they can never be put right.

After 10,000 years of civilisation, this is as far as this country has got.

As an experienced barrister once said to me: 'There's no such thing as the rule of law. It's just a judge's opinion.'

If the judge is a fool, you get folly, not justice.

And New Zealand's system of appointing judges is shonky, so your chances of standing before a good one are not good. The way police officers are employed is obviously not top-notch either, so there are too many prats running about in blue shirts messing up people's lives. Pre-recruitment testing should be a lot better.

Sunday 29 April 2012

BIG NOTES FOR OFF-KEY OPERA


The lieder of the vanishingly-small big-act party, John Banks, has been accused of being a song way off key with 50,000 cracked notes and laughing (anonymously) all the way to the bank. The New Zealand Herald reports that he broke the law by not declaring the donor of a $50,000 donation to his unsuccessful 2010 campaign for the Auckland mayoralty. The Prime Minister, John Key, is happy with Banks' hymnsheet, or attempt at lieder, or lie-duh, or spin, or explanation, or story, or act, or beat-down, or absolute straight truth, or whatever it is.

The shonky deal National did with ACT and Banks to hand him the Epsom seat in its attempt to fiddle MMP and so get more than one seat on its side of Parliament, after which he became the ACT leader, now looks as if was just the overture to the next act in yet another shonky Kiwi opera.

Time will tell. As the old saying says: 'Truth will out.'

Banks says 'it will all come out in the wash.' What colour will the water be?

So far, not crystal clear. National Business Review pulled together much of the media torrent.

And added more the next day.

The editor of the Gisborne Herald had this to say about it..

Saturday 31 March 2012

SCANDALS OF POLITICIANS AND EX-POLITICIANS


The ACC-Nick-Smith affairs is a dirty rock dropped into a sewage pond. The ripples of yucky cronyism keep spreading. Cronyism is just corruption spelt differently.

National Business Review summarised the affair brilliantly.

The New Zealand Herald had this take on it.

And the Dominion-Post said this.

Then the ripples of name-dropping touched the Prime Minister.

At the same time ex-politicians on both sides of the political divide were ruled in court to have been a tad less than honest as Lombard, the company they directed, had crashed and burned leaving debts of well over $100 million. They paid the penalty by being declared guilty and sentenced. One, a knight, was urged to give up his title.

All of which makes this little gem look astonishingly prescient. Sort of.