Police Try Common Sense ... And Gain Respect

In a liberal democracy, it is the province of the (adult) citizens to decide not only the laws by which they wish to be governed, but also the manner in which those laws should be policed. By this last statement, I mean: should a particular law always be enforced to the letter or should the police be given (and expected to use) the discretion to ignore minor breaches in certain circumstances?

So what is an example of how we do want to be policed?

This afternoon, I was unloading the shopping from the boot. It was a fair bit, as it was New Year’s Eve and people were coming over. No parking spots were available in the strip outside my house as several had been taken by non-residents wanting an easy walk down to the beach (fuck off, you arseholes). So I put the hazard lights on and pulled up in the no standing zone on the corner.

As I was unloading, the police drove past. They looked at me. I gave them a wave and shrugged my shoulders. They just nodded and drove on. I noticed them driving back past as I was parking the car about 100m up the street a couple of minutes later. If I’d still been there, I’d probably have gotten a ticket, but they’d seen I am a local resident and given me some leeway.

This is the type of law enforcement the vast majority of citizens want and expect: mature police with an interest in being part of the local community, using common sense and discretion for small events; technically illegal, but doing no material harm.

Other examples of such small breaches of the law I’m referring to are: driving at 5 - 10 km/h over the speed limit, puffing on a joint around the corner from the pub, having a piss behind a tree, two blokes (both at fault) getting into a fight where neither was seriously hurt, some people getting drunk at a party and going for a nude run.

All of these examples are the types of events where most people would consider a fine or an arrest neither fair and proportionate to the act nor a sensible and effective use of police resources. They would expect the police to tell the perpetrators to stop because their behaviour is illegal and just move on if their instructions were complied with. If instead the “persons spoken to” mouthed off and / or continued, most people would also agree that they brought the fine or arrest on themselves.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you think smoking a joint should be legal. It currently isn’t and the police are put in a difficult situation if they encounter people doing it. There is however a view amongst much of the community that given the trivial nature of the offence, if you are polite to the police, comply with their instructions and don’t antagonize them in such situations, they should in turn leave you alone.

I’ve seen examples of exactly this occurring. I’ve also seen the police being heavy handed in similar situations and thus losing trust and respect.

Citizens expect police to see themselves as part of the community. Part of this is understanding how the public expects to be policed and acting accordingly. If the police service does this in a mature way, in return they will find a respectful and co-operative community.

Why Should She Pay Anything To This Loser?

The law is an ass. Well, in this case, the law is inadequate and the judge is an ass.

How is it in any way fair or reasonable that a couple separates, agrees on a property and custody settlement, then seven years later, one of them is allowed to claim money from the other because they have since made a mess of their life?

That’s what has happened to a woman who separated from her husband who, according to the evidence presented was violent, smoked dope and drank to excess almost every day during their marriage. By mutual agreement, she kept the mortgaged home and the kids, he kept an investment property, a car and his super.

In the ensuing seven years, the husband not only drank and smoked more, but developed a gambling problem, lost his job and eventually was declared bankrupt. He’s now an “invalid pensioner”.

Incapable of working are you? Really? Too fucking lazy and busy feeling sorry for yourself to clean up your act and get a job, more like it. The pension is for people who can’t hold down a job because they genuinely cannot work. This is either because they are disabled or chronically ill, not because they won’t stop drinking. Excessive drinking and drug abuse are not such chronic maladies that people cannot stop.

Now this grub thinks that he has some right to ask his former wife to give him more money because his life is such a mess … and the judge agreed with him, despite offering the opinion that he had perjured himself as to their initial agreement.

How was this absurd piece of judicial activism able to occur? Because she never got around to actually divorcing him. The 12 month time limit on challenging settlements did not apply because they were still technically married.

The biggest problem with this ridiculous ruling is that it sets a precedent which is clearly at odds with the views of the majority of the community. It is the community who should decide what is right and just in areas like family law, yet Justice Philip Burchardt seems to believe that the law should or in fact does require one spouse to continue to support the other, years after separation, because they did not formally divorce.

No, they shouldn’t. If a marriage breaks up and one person hasn’t been working, they will obviously need some support while they get back into the workforce. But there is clearly a time limit beyond which each person’s circumstances are their own responsibility and not a consequence of the marital arrangements. That time is far less than seven years.

The judge should have thrown this case out. The husband is a loser who has brought his own life to this point. His wife is not responsible for his maintenance. Instead of grifting, how about some mature self examination, cleaning up his act, getting a job (any job to start with) and being a man his children can respect?

With such a precedent set, other bludgers may well use it to try to make claims for undeserved support long after a de facto relationship ends. Since there was no formal marriage and hence no formal divorce, would the 12 month time limit on claims also not apply here? Why not bring a claim, then settle beforehand, effectively using the threat of costs as blackmail?

Did you think of that, Justice Burchardt? I’ll bet you didn’t.

How is it that a couple who do not formally marry can be considered de facto married in law, yet a couple who are clearly de facto divorced are not considered so when it comes to maintenance claims?

One might also ask how this claim ever reached court. It could only be because the husband was receiving legal aid or some speculative solicitor took the case on a no win, no fee basis.

If the former, whoever approved legal aid for this case should be severely censured. This loser is already bludging off the taxpayer and scarce legal aid budget is allocated to funding his undeserving claim, when people facing excessive and often false charges are unable to adequately defend themselves because they are poor?

If the latter, the case should have been thrown out and the wife’s costs awarded against the husband’s solicitors as a warning to other scumbags.

It will be interesting to see how many women need to be stiffed in divorce settlements for them to join the fight to make divorce law more equitable. Since the 1970’s, there hasn’t been much incentive for women to support such changes, as they tend to end up with the house and kids and / or be the beneficiaries of undeserved and excessively lengthy maintenance awards. Now more women are coming into marriages with significant assets and are working and earning more than their husbands, how will the feminist lobby react?

A final lesson from this case: If you separate from your spouse and don’t want to get back together, divorce them as quickly as possible, lest they drink and gamble everything away, then come slithering before Justice Burchardt.

Sack and Charge This Idiot

What sane society allows a train driver to stop the train and call the police because passengers would not stop singing?

The worst thing about this incident is that we have become a society in which it is possible for a train driver to form the belief that not just is it reasonable to tell singing passengers to stop, but it is also justifiable to call the police and so grossly exaggerate the events that 15 to 20 officers turn up with sniffer dogs and the train is stopped for a significant period of time.

According to the article, Queensland Rail says that "neither the driver, nor the guard called police". Who believes that without corroboration?

How come 15 to 20 police, plus dogs were waiting for the train at the next station?

Reading quotes from the article, passengers were simply singing loudly. No swearing or bawdy songs, nothing yobby; just happy people enjoying themselves. There were children on the train. None of their parents reported concerns about any of the behaviour.

The police made no arrests.

There is one person who should be arrested: the driver. There are plenty of possible charges: public nuisance, wasting police resources, making a false report to police. There is no way 15 or 20 police would turn up to a train station unless the driver had grossly exaggerated and possibly even fabricated events.

Now the passengers are probably thinking what aggressive dickheads the police are. This may be very unfair. How do we know the driver didn’t report a violent disturbance by a large group? The police would have had to respond in force to a complaint like this. Which is precisely why they should throw the book at this turd.

Additionally, the driver should be sacked by Queensland Rail. If the union tries to bung on an act, take them to court. Any union bloody mindedness in a situation such as this is precisely why we need legislation preventing strikes by vital services such as public transport, fire brigades and hospitals. For such highly unionized, public service industries, the Fair Work Ombudsman should be equipped to handle legitimate grievances (and dismiss illegitimate ones).

It has always been the case that some people in positions of authority have misinterpreted a sense of entitlement as a licence to abuse their power for personal reasons. Free societies recognize this and censure it.

It appears a more recent development is for absolute peons such as train or bus drivers, bar staff, council workers, clerks etc. to believe they actually have some meaningful authority. Those with a sufficiently weighty chip on their shoulder seem increasingly bent on trying to include the rest of us in this delusion by making absurd requests under the guise of pretend rules.

If we tolerate this, they will not only keep doing it, but become emboldened to even more bullshit. Make formal complaints, find out their names and publish them wherever you can. Make sure they are aware that the consequences of trying it on with you will not be worth it.

Perhaps this more recent development of shitkickers believing they can get away with bunging on acts is a symptom of Western society’s increasing emphasis on rights over responsibilities.

To the train driver: Your responsibility is to drive the fucking train and stop it at the stations. It’s not hard. That’s why you don’t get paid as much as say, an engineer or an airline pilot. Your right is to collect your pay each fortnight and have a work environment free from violence. You do not have a right to stop passengers from singing loudly and in particular, you do not have a right to hold up 400 passengers while you make a false complaint to police because you are unhappy with your pathetic, loser life.

Hopefully the police will charge this idiot and the press will publish his name and address. Maybe some of those inconvenienced passengers can tell him personally what they think his rights and responsibilities are.

Council Oxygen Thieves Ban Cricket

It could be from a satire: Boroondara Council in Melbourne has banned 20/20 cricket from many of its grounds after a “risk assessment”, prompted by a broken car window.

Not two day and 50 over matches; just 20 overs a side. One can only presume the survey found that the number of sixes hit per 20/20 game was unacceptably high, but the number hit during other forms of the game was not.

This is exactly the kind of Kafkaesque bullshit, promulgated by public service oxygen thieves that citizens need to vigorously oppose.

I shudder at the thought of the scientific shoddiness of the “risk assessment” procedure used, as well as the useless jobsworth who conducted it and the idiot local councilors who voted in favour of the ban (if a vote was even required).

There are balls hit over the boundary in all forms of the game. Fingo even hit a big six last weekend (followed by a catch to deep mid on).

A simpler way to mange council liability is to require all clubs to have appropriate public liability insurance, which all registered clubs have anyway. The insurance companies will work out the premium from the estimated number and severity of claims. This is how it’s always worked in the past, with no meaningful problems, so the council can just get on with its real job: mowing the outfield and preparing the pitch.

Instead, we have someone who probably knows nothing about cricket making an unreviewed and ignorant decision to ban only certain forms of the game, thus affecting a large number of people playing a traditional Australian sport.

Another possibility is that this decision is the first step in a secret agenda to remove the cricket pitches from these parks permanently so the council does not have to incur the expense of maintaining them.

The people who make decisions like this are worse than merely lazy. They don’t just eat up wages, doing nothing useful: they actively ruin the amenity of citizens. They hide behind anonymity and bogus “regulations”, made up by themselves for their own protection.

The way to deal with them is public exposure. This is what they most fear.

The cricketers affected should identify the council employee who has made this recommendation and the local councilors who have made the decision and distribute their contact details to all affected parties. Make sure they are acutely aware of your opinion of them and whether they should continue in their positions.

Let the councilors know that a vigorous campaign will be conducted against their reelection.

It is not enough for people to merely be angry but take no action. Look at the UK, with its jungle of ridiculous regulations, stifling an enormous number of what sane citizens see as reasonable civic freedoms. The same thing is starting to happen here. If we don’t want this trend to continue, we must have the types of people who make these decisions removed from any positions of influence and dismantle the self perpetuating structures they have put in place to ensure their survival.

These are not people who can be reasoned with, because they would not listen even if they could understand the counter argument. They are a cancer, consuming public funds and destroying public amenity, inventing idiotic rules and procedures in a failed attempt to justify the unjustifiable: their own existence. If they are not weeded out of all positions of any authority, they will continue to destroy our quality of life and freedom to enjoy ourselves with their inane regulations.

Update:

If we do end up with a referendum on recognising local government in the constitution, do not vote Yes, unless you want to greatly increase the power of local councils and hence have much more of these bullshit decisions.

The proponents of the Yes vote will mostly be Greens, local governments and their supporters. They will tell you recognition will have no unintended increase in local government powers, but they will be either deluded or lying. It only takes one activist judge.

Why Lock Someone Up For 14 Days?

A juror who pulled a sickie to go to London and see the musical Chicago with his mother has been sentenced to 14 days in a “young offenders’ institution” for contempt of court. Presumably this comprised 7 days for pulling the sickie and 7 days for choosing such a lame way to spend his day off.

How clearly were the requirements of jury duty explained to the jurors, particularly that the defendant’s future is at stake, so being off sick isn’t an option unless you can’t get out of bed?

I know that’s obvious to many of us, but given the abject fecklessness of the majority of modern youth, this little twat probably viewed his actions as akin to ringing in sick to skive off from a low paying job he hates anyway. His mother’s response: “We thought he’d get a slap on the wrist” shows were he gets it from.

Yes, you’re right, love. He was only helping decide whether or not someone accused of a criminal offence is actually guilty. But don’t worry, it’s not a big deal if he skipped off to London with mummy for the day to watch some poncy musical and wasted dozens of people’s time, not to mention a day’s extra legal fees for the defendant. How old is this little cunt? 14?

I had to laugh at his mother’s other comments: “He wanted a career in government but now he’s got a criminal record.” Probably fortunate for the citizens of Britain that’s no longer a possibility.

It’s not the harshness of the punishment that is the problem: it’s the type. What possible net benefit to the community is there in a 14 day custodial sentence, for this or any other offence?

How is there any restitution derived from serving 14 days in prison? What is the cost to the community of housing and feeding someone for 2 weeks? What requirement is there for the community to be protected from the anti-social behaviour of this dangerous thug?

I was under the impression judges were required to take the above into account in sentencing. Britain is struggling with massive debt and a judge wastes public funds on a short custodial sentence for a first time, non-violent offender who makes Morrissey look like a cage fighter?

Surely there is a large amount of graffiti and refuse needing removal in the Greater Manchester area. How about a boot in the arse, a fine equal to the day’s jury service fees for the 11 jurors who had to be sent home, plus 50 - 100 hours of community service?

No, we’ll waste taxpayers’ funds locking him up for 14 days instead. Nice work Judge Rudland, you dunce.

Contempt of court … is it really so strange?

Virtual Battles, Real Twats

How much of the negative response to the Red Cross’ pronouncement that game play in computerized war games violates international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention was an overreaction by people who hadn’t clearly read what was actually said and how much was well founded suspicion of the motives of lefties who would impose their agenda on yet another area of our lives if they could?

Reading the comments below many internet articles on this topic, there is plenty of the former. Reading some of the quotes by the Red Cross, there is genuinely some of the latter as well:

The International Committee of the Red Cross says they may ask developers to adhere to the rules themselves or "encourage" (the article’s emphasis) governments to adopt laws to regulate the video game industry.

Ask the developers to adhere to “the rules”. And if they quite reasonably tell you to fuck off? You’ll organise a campaign against them will you? Try to damage their business until they give in to your demands?

Evidence of a far more dangerous mindset is: “encourage governments to adopt laws to regulate the video game industry”. Yes, let’s make laws banning game play which allows gamers to without penalty do things which you find offensive or which would be illegal in reality. While we're at it, let’s ban Grand Theft Auto and Mafia and not let anyone play the bad guy.

The two quotes below leave little doubt that this is more than just academic chatter:

“There is also an audience of approximately 600 million gamers who may be virtually violating IHL (International Humanitarian Law) … Exactly how video games influence individuals is a hotly debated topic, but for the first time, Movement partners discussed our role and responsibility to take action against violations of IHL in video games. What should we do, and what is the most effective method?”

"While National Societies shared their experiences and opinions, there is clearly no simple answer. There is, however, an overall consensus and motivation to take action."

Add this guff from anti war crimes organisation TRIAL, with their incredibly tweely titled paper Playing By The Rules and we can detect the seeds of an organized campaign to control gaming content in order to pursue leftist political agenda:

"It would be highly appreciated if games reproducing armed conflicts were to include the rules which apply to real armed conflicts. These rules and values are given by international humanitarian law and human rights law."

"One possible course of action could be to encourage game designers / producers to incorporate IHL in the development and design of video games, while another could be to encourage governments to adopt laws and regulations to regulate this ever-growing industry."

Yes, we must ensure we teach our children to always “play by the rules”, even in games. Your rules, of course.

“No! No! These are rules agreed by all civilized societies via the Geneva Convention. All our military must obey them or face prosecution as criminals. We must ensure realistic games reflect this so that our children learn what is right and wrong.”

Yes, the Geneva Convention is indeed an agreement between some nations regarding rules of engagement and how they will treat each other’s military and civilians. Soldiers are definitely bound by it and prosecuted if they violate it.

But why would it be incorporated in a game scenario like WW2 on the Russian front, or a Roman siege campaign?

What if you want to play the bad guys? Many people like to play the insurgents.

What I mean by “your rules, of course” is that the types of lefties who support government regulation of war gaming rules are also the people who believe our troops should behave according to the Geneva Convention even in conflicts where the enemy clearly does not, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why should a game not put forward the political view that maybe the rules of the Geneva Convention are only to be obeyed when we are fighting enemies who accept them? Why should a game not have the ability for the player to turn on and off the Geneva Convention in the settings?

Why should the Red Cross be allowed to make political statements, but not game developers? Actually, organizations like the Red Cross and TRIAL are actively encouraging game developers to make overt political statements, but only ones with which they agree.

“Encourage game designers” is fine if it means working with them and showing them evidence of studies linking violent behaviour with playing certain types of violent games. There is nothing wrong with making suggestions to game developers such as if you play as certain countries, then you lose benefits or are directly disadvantaged if you violate the Geneva Convention.

These types of rules already exist in some games. For example, in Civilization, if you raze cities or use nuclear weapons, you can end up fighting a coalition of all the other nations on the planet.

More insidious is the campaign to have governments legislate and regulate game play. This is the epitome of the leftist agenda: rules governing not just every aspect of social interaction, but now private behaviour in a virtual world.

If you have enough rules constraining behaviour, most people will obey and we can weed out the troublemakers and reactionary counter-revolutionaries. Eventually, we’ll have a society where all citizens think and behave “correctly” because everyone will have been brought up believing anything else is wrong.

The response I’d like to see from game developers?

Put the Geneva Conventions in as a rules option in Game Settings, but make sure that certain enemies ignore it. Turning it on for the player would help show people just how difficult it is for our troops to fight such an enemy when hamstrung by a fifth column of left wing lawyers, journalists and activists, waiting to accuse them of war crimes if they put their own safety above that of enemy civilians … and yes, many of those civilians are as much the enemy as conscript soldiers. Turning the setting off and flattening a mosque full of Taliban just adds to the satisfaction of the overall gaming experience.

Conversely, if you’re playing as a militia, allow them to take Red Cross or aid workers hostage.

Have scenarios where you can play the army of a brutal dictator or rebel insurgents. Round up civilians and shoot them. This would of course turn the population more against you, to which you could respond with more brutality.

Or why not a scenario where you have left wing activists helping the enemy? You could have the option to round them up with your security service.

Let’s see how realistic these lefties really do want gaming to be.

David Cameron Not Into Wife Swapping

David Cameron’s refusal to sign an amendment to the EU financial treaty was likened by one French source to “a man attending a wife-swapping party without his spouse”.

If that’s an apt description, then it’s a good thing he didn’t sign. How typical: a coterie of slippery continentals all fucking each others’ wives while their households crumble around them. Britain, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland are the only ones who apparently think that a bunch of frogs, krauts, wogs and dagoes fucking your wife is not something they’d be into thankyou very much … but they might have a look when the Dutch put it on the internet.

Why would Britain sign a treaty which gives significantly greater control over its financial sector to a cabal of lefty Eurocrats, some of whom who have commented negatively about “Anglo-Saxon free market influence”? Britain has already abrogated control over much of its agricultural policy and its social laws to Europe, to the point where citizens can be extradited to foreign countries on corrupt charges or on accusations of "crimes" which would not even be offences in Britain. Many of its citizens are of the view that their government should be taking some of these powers back, not giving away sovereignty over one of their nation’s few remaining competitive advantages.

The treaty amendments are really a device to transfer as much of London’s financial influence as possible to Paris and Frankfurt anyway. Britain must now be breathing an enormous sigh of relief that it kept the pound. Norway of course would never have been stupid enough to expose its very sensibly accumulated sovereign wealth fund to the slippery, incompetent Eurocrats and the lazy, corrupt economies they wish to subsidise.

One of the new financial treaty proposals is that:

To prevent excessive deficits, countries in the treaty will have to submit their national budgets to the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, which will have the power to send them back for revision.

Umm … I thought part of the original agreement when creating the Euro was that member countries would limit deficits to within a certain percentage of GDP. So are they now saying that this rule will actually be enforced?

What has happened until now? Was a country’s internal audit simply believed? Tell me which of these governments’ word you would take at face value: Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Estonia.

Countries were meant to be properly audited prior to being allowed to join the Eurozone. Greece has clearly obtained its membership by fraud. An auditor would have to be completely incompetent not to pick up Greece’s debt problems when it joined the Euro in 2000 – 01. They have not suddenly materialised in the last 10 years. This then leads to the conclusion that the problems were known, but covered up for political reasons; all the more reason for Britain to stay out of this corrupt system.

It is typical of the left’s dishonesty to call what is happening in Europe a crisis of capitalism. The crisis is the financial contagion caused by imposing a common currency and set of fiscal rules on culturally and economically disparate countries. If countries like Greece had not been allowed to join the Euro, they could have defaulted as has happened historically. Lenders would have taken losses, but there would have been no need for bailouts and the consequent debt contagion and massive increase in instability.

The Eurozone is an invention of academic, socialist technocrats, who usually call themselves Social Democrats or similar. It is the forced linking in pursuit of political ideology of parts of the European economy which should never have been joined, coupled with the cover ups of fraudulent state accounting to achieve these political ends which is overwhelmingly the driver of the severity of the current European problems.

“Free market” economic policies do not imply the absence of regulation any more than a free and open society implies the absence of laws. Regulation is needed to ensure access to market information, as well as to guard against anti-market activity such as pricing below cost to strangle a smaller competitor or criminal activity such as collusion and other forms of market manipulation.

The scale of Europe’s financial problems is not a crisis of free market economics: it is a crisis of technocratic socialism and its egregious rule making enterprise.

Migrants and Australian Values

A letter by Asif Qazi published in the SMH on 22 Feb, 2011 reveals the attitude of many more recent migrants which angers citizens of Western countries.

He suggests: “Migrants live with whatever values they are comfortable” and “They should not be expected to follow or practice any lifestyle that is in conflict with their values and beliefs”.

WRONG. Where there is no material conflict between Australian laws and social customs and the behaviour ensuing from migrants’ values and beliefs, they can behave how they like. Where there is conflict, OUR laws and customs take precedence.

If their adult daughter wishes to live with her boyfriend prior to marriage, or not to marry at all, that is her right here. Most women wear bikinis on the beach in this country. If their daughter wishes to do the same, that is her legal right.

It does not matter that they are offended by criticism or even parody and satire of their religion. The freedom to criticize through all devices from academic discourse to polemic to satire and mockery is a core Australian value.

It is not acceptable for migrants to demand a special, segregated swimming area for “their” women at Australian beaches because of their religious or cultural values. It is totally unacceptable for aggressive, Muslim men to attempt to create a de facto one, particularly since the overwhelming majority of them don’t even live anywhere near the beach and do not pay rates to the local council. This behaviour should be met with vigorous opposition by local residents and the local police.

There are not and should never be special laws for community groups such as sharia for Muslims who do not agree with Australian court decisions. Alien cultural values are secondary in such cases.

It is precisely the support of such “we’ll live how we want” attitudes under laissez-faire interpretations of multiculturalism by the left that has led to the separatist agenda of many Muslims in Western Europe, now that they feel they have the numbers. Given European evidence, it is not unreasonable that Australians are suspicious of Muslim immigration.

The analogy with British migrants remaining connected to their heritage is absurd: modern Australia is founded on British culture. That foundation is overwhelmingly the reason why Australian society has its current structures.

The dominant culture of modern Australia is north western European and Protestant. Other cultures have enhanced Australian society by adding to this core, not creating copies of themselves as competing alternatives.

Protestant philosophy is about far more than religion and has been from its very beginning. At its heart are its tenets about the relationship between individuals and institutions. When John Wycliffe translated the bible into English, it was a political statement fundamentally about the right of individuals to read, discuss and hold a public opinion on not just matters of religion, but matters of government.

That a society founded as an outpost and penal colony only 220 years ago has developed into the free and prosperous modern Australia is testament to the strength of this philosophy.

One may compare the histories of Canada and Argentina as further evidence: two countries with large land area and abundant mineral and agricultural resources. Argentina was in fact colonized and began to be developed long before Canada. The overwhelming reason for the great disparity in current prosperity: Argentina’s history of Catholicism - its discrimination against prosperous, educated northern European migrants, its eschewing of scientific and technological education and development and its cultural acceptance of centralised authority, which helped prevent mass land ownership.

I suggest that common and deeply held beliefs regarding the relationship between individuals and between individuals and institutions and the consequent nexus between individual freedom and civic duty is the crux of “core Australian values”. It is what has made Australia a destination for so many migrants.

These “values” are learned from experience. You must integrate with Australian society to understand them. The more alien the culture from which our migrants come, the more imperative that this idea is impressed upon them.

Police "Us And Them" Mentality Alienates The Public They Serve

The dishonest and vindictive arrest of Andrea Turner is sadly, one of many instances of police aggression toward ordinary citizens. It is actions like this which reinforce public opinion that the police do not see themselves as part of the general community.

The police clearly have an “us and them” mentality, reasonable when dealing with professional criminals, but inappropriate when dealing with the general public. That they refer to themselves as a police “force” rather than a police “service” is telling. That this attitude is so ingrained within police culture must be the fault of senior management.

Particularly bad in this case is the absurdly false charge of “photographing a police officer in the course of their duty”. It is unsurprising that aggressive police would try this on: it gives them a pretext for destroying evidence of police wrongdoing, for example if they were filmed using excessive force.

Photographing or filming police is not per se a criminal offence. If it were, how could citizens ever gain objective evidence against police if they act outside their powers?

Aside from the corruption and venal aggression toward a clearly innocent member of the public, there are three other factors in this matter pertinent to the evaporation of public respect for and trust in the police service: cowardice, wasting resources and whitewashing complaints.

Cowardice because the officers decided to pick on someone they clearly perceived as a soft target.

Wasting resources because, by my reading of the article, there were at least two uniformed officers originally present, with three more called for back up and an additional five who decided for some reason to turn up, including two detectives who should have been investigating a real crime.

Whitewashing complaints because none of the police officers involved has been reprimanded over the incident and there has been no internal investigation, despite the judge clearly expressing the opinion that one of the officers involved had committed a criminal offence by falsifying a public record, namely the description of events surrounding the arrest.

Why has this officer not been charged? Any citizen would be. If police intentionally abuse their power, they must be brought to account. If they intentionally break the law, they must be prosecuted, as you or I certainly would.

Equally important, why haven’t the names of these corrupt police been published? They have not been charged, nor does any prosecution appear likely, so publication of their identities is not sub judice. In fact, their names were read in open court during Andrea Turner’s civil suit against the police.

Read the mealy mouthed response of the Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Belinda Kontominas in response to the question of why she didn’t publish their names.

In fact, there is a comment by Andrea Turner on the above page specifically naming the two officers who tried to illegally arrest her on the train:

Elisha Anne Bullock, Belinda Kaye Hocroft, both of Hurstville Police Station.

Given the malicious nature of the arrest for a non existent crime, I do not see how these two police officers can hide behind the uniform and have the NSW Police defend their conduct as an error in the line of duty. The law should allow the officers to be sued personally in events such as this.

In the absence of such a course of action, the best censure and defence society has against a repeat of similar corrupt, thuggish police behaviour is public exposure. Spread the names of these dishonest police across the media so that everyone who encounters them knows what they have done and can deal with them accordingly.

The police regularly ruin reputations, careers and even lives with false charges, yet fight tooth and nail when there are calls for criminal behaviour by police to be prosecuted according to the law. This hypocrisy has been a major factor in eroding public trust in the police service.

What most citizens primarily want from the police is simple: an environment safe from theft and violence and the law enforced honestly. Pursue criminal gangs and prevent violent morons from bashing and robbing people.

If the police saw most members of the community as sharing this common goal, they may find allies, rather than a distrustful “them”.

Drunken Teenager Challenged Police To Shoot Him ... So They Did

Apparently there are circumstances in which it is reasonable conduct for 3 well armed police officers to shoot to kill a 15 year old boy armed with two knives. At least, that’s what the Victorian coroner seems to believe.

In an act of cynicism insulting not only to the dead boy’s family, but the intelligence of the general community, the police went even further and tried to argue “suicide by cop”: that the boy had in effect forced them to shoot him dead.

Bullshit, you lying scum. You recklessly killed a 15 year old child who clearly needed medical care.

I suspect the main reason for the police refusing to admit any culpability or even negligence is to avoid both civil and criminal liability. A deeply ingrained police culture of refusing to admit mistakes in almost any circumstance exacerbates the problem.

Some 15 year olds are (physically) almost men, but Tyler Cassidy wasn’t. Look at his picture. He was a boy, not a man.

He was waving a couple of big knives about and allegedly challenging the police to shoot him. I’m sure the police lawyer eagerly seized upon that. Well, if he TOLD the police to shoot him or he’d kill them, I guess they must have had no choice.

Four ADULT officers, armed with batons, capsicum spray and guns couldn’t disarm and subdue a 15 year old boy armed with two knives? Admittedly two of them were women, so at the risk of appearing sexist, maybe they were out of their depth physically (which begs the question as to why they were present).

How about the two male officers surrounding him, then one belts his forearm with an extendable baton, while another belts him across the back of the knee? I thought the police were trained in basic martial arts. They were apparently able to spray him with capsicum and avoid the “need” to shoot him for a period of more than one minute.

Even if the police really had to shoot, what possible justification is there in 3 officers pumping 5 shots, all aimed to kill into a teenage boy? Couldn’t one of them have just shot him in the thigh or the bum?

The coroner had the hide to say the police “acted within the limitations of their training”. Well, that’s OK then. If they aren’t trained to deal with such a situation, blast away.

Tyler Cassidy wasn’t a 200 pound, hardened criminal. He was a drunken, emotionally disturbed child. What “professional training” do you need to understand there were ways to resolve the situation other than shooting him five times?

How about common sense, empathy and a bit of guts?

Speaking of guts, do any of you have the courage to actually protect the community and go after some professional criminals? If there are no adverse findings for shooting a teenage boy, I’m sure you can justify shooting a few members of “Middle Eastern crime gangs” or “terrorism suspects” who “resist arrest”. Apparently it’s OK for them to shoot the police, so why not earn some real respect and get them first?

If the public felt like the police saw themselves as members of the community and saw them going after real threats, rather than soft targets, maybe we’d respect you and support your pay rise claims.

Vale Peter Roebuck ... Ya Dirty Old Perv

Peter Roebuck’s predilection for the overzealous caning of young boys appears to have finally caught up with him. Apparently, he leapt to his death from the balcony of his sixth floor hotel room while police were questioning him regarding a sexual assault complaint.

The South African police have refused to comment on the precise allegations which prompted their questioning of Roebuck. Given the nature of his previous conviction and his somewhat hasty departure from the hotel room, it’s unlikely the current complaint was your standard sportsman or politician pressuring a young woman into sex.

One can only speculate based on the available evidence, but it does look very much like he had been up to something pervy with young boys.

Vex News has a different take on events from the mainstream press, including excerpts from Roebuck’s 2001 trial:

In a statement, the victim said Roebuck told him: "I'm going to cane you now. Then it will be over and I will forgive you and, if I don't cane you, I will feel differently about you."

Roebuck asked the boy to bend over and delivered three "forceful strokes" over his clothing.

Roebuck then pulled the boy towards him, in what appeared to be an act of affection. He then asked if he could look at the marks on the boy's buttocks, something which he in fact did.

When passing sentence, the judge observed:

"It was not appropriate to administer corporal punishment to boys of this age in circumstances such as these. It seems so unusual that it must have been done to satisfy some need in you”.

Rumours about Peter Roebuck had been circulating in the cricket fraternity even before his conviction, particularly that he enjoyed caning little black and brown boys just a bit too much. In fact, Fingo and teammates were discussing this very topic at training only a few weeks ago.

It is not known whether Roebuck liked to soften the young bottoms up with a good reaming, prior to administering his brand of strictly applied corporal punishment, but I believe that is the standard “old school” method. Giving the boys a cuddle and inspecting the marks afterward adds a soupcon of idiosyncratic perversion; a fleeting whiff of the miasma which infested this man’s soul.

When coaching or teaching young boys, it is important to be able administer discipline efficiently. Below is an example of what RTBB will now call “The Roebuck Method”. With the aid of a step ladder, multiple boys can be reamed, then caned at the same time, with the resulting “train tracks” and snail trails easily inspected and documented.

The above method is rumoured to have been employed in the Knox Grammar School boarding house.

Perhaps Peter Roebuck’s ghost will haunt boarding houses around the globe. Teenage (and perhaps younger) boys will occasionally feel a ghostly swish across their bare buttocks as they step out of the shower or bend over to pick up their shoes.

Additionally, why are people heaping praise on his cricket journalism? He talked shit.

Mate, You Are Uzzy!

If you want to see an example of extreme wogginess and why the word “wog” is used in the derogatory context it often is, look no further than this clip of Usman Ahmed (Uzzy) fighting Ashley Sexton in Jan 2010.

It’s 3.36 of non-stop, derisive laughter, unless you’re a wog.

First comes Uzzy’s ring entrance, dancing around and beating his chest to some hip-hop like a cross between a monkey and a peacock. This goes on for about 1.30.

Next, he ponces about in the ring by himself until Ashley Sexton tries to get through the ropes. The terrifying Uzzy goes over and gets right in his opponent’s face, puffing out his bantam chest and eyeballing him all the way to the centre of the ring.

Ashley Sexton doesn’t seem too concerned. You can see him laughing to his corner prior to the touch of gloves.

Unfortunately for Uzzy, like most yappy little dogs, his bark is a lot worse than his bite. Ashley Sexton delivers a one punch knockout about 1.55 into the fight.

It’s a superb punch and Uzzy takes more than a minute to get back to his feet, even with his corner holding him up.

Uzzy fights at flyweight (112 lbs), so he’s smaller than an average sized woman. Here’s his professional boxing record. As of October 2011, he had 6 wins from 12 bouts, 4 of those against fighters who haven’t won a bout and the other 2 against guys with 1 and 3 professional fights. Additionally, none of Uzzy’s 6 wins have come by KO, so he couldn’t knock a pea off a chop.

Uzzy was 6 from 9 when he fought Ashley Sexton, who was 8 from 8, with 4 KOs. It was for the vacant British flyweight title, so worth stepping up in class, but even so I suspect Uzzy’s manager should have worked out he was well overmatched. All the posing in the world isn’t going to worry someone who can knock you out with a single punch.

Remember those Boppo the Clown air filled punching toys? They stood about four feet tall on a curved base, so when kids punched them, they bounced right back up for more.

Fingerton Corp will market Uzzy Boppos, except if you punch them hard enough to keel over, they will stay down until you help them back up.

Uzzy has also been immortalized in the lexicon via the phrase: “Mate, you are Uzzy”, delivered in a Lebanese accent. It is an order of magnitude up from the more widely used: “You are shit, mate”, also delivered in a Lebanese accent.

More Well Thought Out Economic Policy From The Greens

Bob Brown and the Greens have made yet another ill thought out venture into the economic policy debate, this time suggesting lowering the corporate tax rate for small and medium enterprises (SME).

All sounds quite reasonable at first: help small businesses invest in capital expenditure and staff by cutting their taxes, while making big corporations pay more … until you think through how the policy could actually be implemented.

We can and should have progressive tax rates for individuals. This works because each person has (legally) one tax file number.

However, the relationship between companies and individuals is many to many. Companies can and usually do have multiple shareholders and directors. Many people are shareholders and directors of multiple companies.

Suppose company tax rates are structured so that the first $100,000 or $1,000,000 of profit attracts a 25% tax rate, with 30% tax on all profit after that. The tax minimization strategy available to many is to split into multiple incorporations, each qualifying for SME tax status. A company earning 5 times the profit threshold could split into 5 ACNs and reduce its tax rate from 29% to 25%. Sophisticated accounting could probably reduce this further.

This is clearly against the spirit of the proposed tax changes, but not actually illegal. How do you make it illegal in practice?

Outlaw people being directors or shareholders of more than one company in the same industry subgroup? Outlaw it if the companies had the same registered or business address?

Either would be an outrageous violation of economic liberty. Why should a citizen not be allowed to own shares in or be a director of more than one travel or real estate agent or clothes shop?

Oh well, if they really were separate business on separate premises, that would be OK. Allright then, I’ll just register my 5 companies at separate addresses. How would the tax office know the difference?

If more sophisticated manoeuvering were required, a company with 5 directors and shareholders could split into 5 entities, each with one director and shareholder and a (secret) side agreement. This is illegal because it is a conspiracy to defraud the ATO, but how would it be proven, particularly if the shareholders were family members?

Imagine the tortuous set of rules and the Byzantine bureaucracy which would be required to ensure compliance with the intentions of such a system. But then, tying everyone up with countless rules, creating enormous bureaucracies and then berating those who fight against them as selfish, redneck, buccaneer capitalists is standard practice for the left.

The Greens' response to the above would probably be to say: "Oh yes, but people shouldn't do that and would be prosecuted if they did."

Yeah, OK ... We'll just make policy on the basis of how people should behave in the leftists' fairytale world of "moral, socially aware" people (or their definition thereof). Let's not worry about the costs and logistical nightmare of enforcement in the real world. We'll change people's behaviour with propaganda directed at their children.

This is typical of the Greens, particularly when they hold forth on economic issues. All touchy feely and would be nice if people and the world were different, but totally infeasible to implement in practice. They have not even given the logistical issues one iota of meaningful consideration, perhaps because their grasp of economics is so limited, they simply were not aware of them. They even make Wayne Swan look halfway competent.

There is nothing wrong with singling out very large corporations from particular industries, such as banking and mining and making them pay higher tax rates to support the security of the environment which allows them to post record profits.

There already exists a Petroleum Resources Rent Tax, levied on the principle that the oil companies are lessees of the land from which they are extracting a finite resource, which is still owned by the Commonwealth of Australia (as it is the lessor).

We could already have a mining rent tax along the same principles, had it not been so poorly handled by this government.

Extra taxes on the big banks (which most citizens support) are possible, via a range of measures: increasing the tax rate just for them, increasing banking licence fees, increasing compulsory funding of the prudential regulator, or requiring a minimum percentage of bank capital to be invested in low interest, Federal government bonds.

This last provision could be quite lucrative in terms of tax revenue: if 10% of bank capital was required to be held in government bonds which paid 1% less than the government's normal cost of funds, CBA and Westpac would effectively each be paying $40M extra in tax per year.

That doesn’t sound like much, but a 1% increase in the tax rate for banks would only translate into approximately the same amount of extra revenue. Additionally, it allows the government to borrow cheaply and forces a certain percentage of bank capital to be invested securely.

Measures such as increasing the insurance premium for government guarantees of bank deposits are bad policy because this ends up being a tax on all of us, as costs are passed through via lower deposit or higher lending interest rates.

The compulsory investment of bank capital in government bonds does not increase banks’ cost of funds, but does decrease revenue, although so does an increase in tax rates. Both will have a tendency to increase lending interest rates in the absence of regulation.

Of course, if the Howard government had kept 51% of the CBA, it would add a lever with which to control fees, deposit and lending interest rates via competition, as well as earning a nice dividend each year and we probably would not be having the conversation about exorbitant bank profits.

So, good work Bob! More quality economic policy from the Greens.

If you want to talk about economic issues, stick to advocating government investment in green technologies which will create revenue and jobs. There is no reason why governments should not attempt to pick winners by taking equity stakes in local solar panel manufacturers or geothermal power start ups like Geodynamics.

Tilt the playing field by adding a tariff proportional to the gap in efficiency between locally made cells and imported ones, or on the cost of CO₂ involved in transporting them here. Allow a higher renewable energy certificate multiplier on locally manufactured solar systems. Maybe then Silex wouldn’t have had to close its solar panel plant, costing 100 jobs.

Keeping Sex Offenders In Prison

Over the past few years, there has been considerable debate on whether serious sex offenders should be kept in prison after their sentence has expired if their reoffending post release is believed to be a significant risk.

Debate in Victoria as far back as 2004, prompted by the release of Brian Keith Jones, dubbed Mr. Baldy because he abducted boys, shaved their heads and raped them, eventually led to the Serious Sex Offenders Monitoring Act, which allows strict conditions to be placed on released offenders well past the end of the parole period.

New South Wales had the notorious Dennis Ferguson, who consistently reoffended and made no attempt at rehabilitation while in prison. The problem brought to public attention by his case in particular was that if someone like him serves their full sentence, they are released into the community with no parole period and hence nothing other than informal supervision by police, who may end up being the subject of a harassment complaint if the pervert in question finds a sympathetic bleeding heart to assist him. Absurdly, Ferguson was going to be allowed to stay on his release with a family with an eight year old daughter.

I can see three issues which require not just debate, but prompt and clear resolution (so often the inevitable disagreements in public debate are used by weak governments to avoid action).

Firstly, are there circumstances in which a sex offender is deemed such a risk of reoffending that they are detained indefinitely after the end of their original sentence and if so, is separate legislation necessary?

I think there are definitely such circumstances (Dennis Ferguson being a possible example). Further, I believe most of the community would agree with me. There are many cases in which child molesters or serial rapists have made no meaningful attempt at rehabilitation while in prison and have been deemed a high risk of reoffending by prison psychiatrists. Their civil right to be given a chance to reintegrate into the community at the end of their prescribed sentence is exceeded by the rights of others to be kept safe from their likely predatory behaviour.

I’m not in general a supporter of utilitarianism, but I think its principles usefully apply here: the probability of the person committing more crimes, combined with the severity of the consequences for their victims far outweighs the detriment to their own civil liberties.

We use the same argument when forcibly detaining people under the Mental Health Act. In fact, it is precisely this law which should be used to detain unacceptably high risk sex offenders indefinitely. There is no need for an entirely new act of parliament: if necessary, amend the Mental Health Act. Anyone who cannot control their urges to molest children or rape people should be considered criminally insane by any reasonable, operational definition.

In 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled that the US Federal Government had precisely this right. There are many elements of the US legal system which we should eschew, however I believe this is an example we should follow.

My second question is: If serious sex offenders are to be released back into the community, but close monitoring of a strict behavioural regime is deemed necessary for a long period ie. several years, is specific legislation such as Victoria’s Serious Sex Offenders Monitoring Act necessary or desirable?

Such legislation is currently necessary because offenders did not have strict conditions built into their parole when originally sentenced, sometimes many years ago. In the case of Dennis Ferguson, no strict, formal supervision on parole would have been possible because he served his full sentence.

I suggest it will remain necessary, as it is less open to abuse than its alternatives.

Suppose society attempted to instead handle the supervision problem via the Crimes Act, whereby sentencing guidelines were changed so that serious sex offenders or even other violent criminals were given, for example 25 years with a 10 year non-parole period instead of the current 15 and 10 and the judge had the ability to a priori impose parole monitoring conditions. Note that the Sex Offenders Monitoring Act only allows for a maximum 15 year supervision order. If someone had not reoffended within 15 years of strict supervision and behavioural control, it is highly unlikely another supervision order would be granted, so in this aspect, altering sentencing guidelines to allow much longer parole periods has the same effect as the provisions of the Sex Offenders Monitoring Act.

The difficulty with the proposed alternative is that judges would need to impose such long parole periods and strict conditions as a matter of course for a given range of offences, with only extraordinary reasons allowing any deviation. It would therefore cause effectively all people committing these types of offences to receive very long sentences. Release from prison at the end of the current “normal” sentence would thus be at the discretion of the parole board, informed by medical advice and the prisoner’s behavioural record. However, there would be no formal discretion as to the conditions and period of any post release monitoring; only in the rigour with which monitoring was performed. Sentences passed many years ago cannot take into account any genuine rehabilitation (if that is possible) and would therefore always err on the side of caution.

Some may hold the view that this conservative approach is desirable when it comes to sex offenders, however it is possible subsequent changes in community attitudes, unsupported by evidence, may lead to political pressure on parole boards to keep offenders incarcerated for the majority of their parole period, regardless of behaviour while in prison. In the absence of separate monitoring legislation, they would eventually be released into the community, angry and resentful at their long sentence, with little or no supervisory parole period, in complete contradiction to the original intent of the sentence.

Additionally, such long parole period sentencing conditions can be inappropriately extended to a host of other crimes in law and order auctions during election campaigns. There tends more public scrutiny and debate if a government seeks to amend separate legislation such as the Sex Offenders Monitoring Act to cover a significantly wider range of crimes than if it seeks to amend sentences and guidelines for existing offences.

My third question is: How do we safeguard against cynical or ideologically motivated governments extending specific monitoring or indefinite incarceration legislation to a much larger range of crimes, in the absence of any evidence it will work?

This last point is no theoretical discussion: there have already been calls to keep non-sex offenders in prison beyond their sentence.

My view is that indefinite incarceration should only be via the Mental Health Act. We should not allow any specific legislation which gives governments and their agents the power to keep sane citizens in prison past their sentence: it is too easily abused. It is effectively detention without the right to a trial.

Specific legislation to provide for strict behavioural controls and monitoring on release is a different matter. The person has been released as per their sentence. Imprisonment only occurs if parole conditions are breached.

It is more difficult to abuse the intent of the legislation by extending it to other offences because the law must then be changed and those amendments passed by both houses of parliament.

It would not be unreasonable for society to consider legislation which requires a minimum parole period (either some fixed time or proportion of sentence) for all custodial sentences. This is to counter situations where, for example a violent criminal is given 10 years with a non-parole period of 7, but does the full 10.

Model prisoners do not do their full sentence. Those who do are probably the highest risk of reoffending. It is reasonable to apply a utilitarian argument here and require strict monitoring for a year or two.

Adjunct to such legislation needs to be a strong Ombudsman’s office to support released prisoners in cases of abuse of the parole system via harassment and the right to a judicial hearing to assess the evidence if accusations of a breach of parole are made.