Maybe Google isn't as technical as we think ;-)

Jeez - time to upgrade to Tomcat 5.0 / 5.5 by now you would think! (Or at least keep up with the patches and get up to 4.1.31)

Hmmm - going to have to post the photo later - apparently not ALL of blogger is fixed yet...

[Edit] Here we go!

Helen Clark acting fraudulently again?

So who is really surprised by that?
Burt does a very quick summarization here: http://burtnz.blogspot.com/2006/03/investigate-magazine-doonegate.html
With the original investigate article here: http://www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_nov_2.html

However if this is all true (or remotely true) then it would seem that former Police Commissioner Peter Doone would have a pretty good case against the PM for slander / defamation? And it is my understanding that this could be taken down a civil law route so that the whole prima facie but not in the public interest could be avoided. I'm pretty sure that if Doone raised an interest in taking up the case there are a number of people who would help him fund it (my hand is up). If not though I might have to conclude that Ian Wishart is connecting some dots that aren't really there?

However it would also explain what Helen's vitriole against Investigate recently - she is trying to discredit the magazine before this can get some legs maybe?

Anderton's real reason exposed

State-owned Kiwibank has taken a controlling stake in New Zealand Home Loans for an expected price of $8 million in a bid to grab a bigger market share.
full story

So now we see the real reason kiwibank needed a futher $20m of our money injected.
Of course we can now see Labour's way forward to their Socialist 'utopia'. Gouge the private citizens of their hard earned money - then use it to buy all the companies on the stock exchange until everything is state owned again...

(So far we have an airline, a bank, a loans company... )

Swapping pests for natives

The ARC is running a great program at the moment over the weekends where you can bring in your pest plants and swap them for some natives for planting.

Given that we have about a 20m by 10m plot at our place that we want to plant out with natives this works out quite well.

We just turned up with a bag of weeds, most of which we had no idea what they were so kind of looking for some help in identifying them. Turns out we had 5 of the top 10 noxious weeds in there, as well as 2 plants they weren't even able to identify and have taken away for further analysis :-)

The part of the programme I actually like is that they are providing pretty good information on native plants that can be used to similar effect to many pest plants like Jasmine. So rather than just saying you should get rid of that (like the Agapanthus) they are actually providing decent alternatives to get the same result.

Abolish the youth rate!

I actually agree with the students completely - the youth rate should be abolished! Of course the fact that what they really want is the youth rate to be the same as the minimum wage is a different point!

I cannot believe the alleged "police brutality" from the students hinges on the number of police officers that were used to remove a couple of the protestors. The news showed quite clearly how 4/5 officers removing a person is far more peaceful than 1 - because with 4 you can quite effectively carry a struggling person away whereas with 1 you would probably hurt them quite badly in the process!

But then again these are the same people who believe that pay rates are solely based on the number of hours worked... (and have nothing to do with retention rates and progression possibilities?)

GDC in receivership

Not to kick a dog while its down - but this really is not that surprising.

GDC may claim this is because of shifts in the market and competition - but really it is just due to the fact they were lousy at what they did. I do not know a single company / person that had used them that had good things to say about them; and every company I know that had used them did not anymore...

If only we actually had the choice to move away from those other dogs in our lives:
public health and public schools...

Why this scalp so quickly?

Some people seem to think that there might actually be some honour left in the Labour party - sorry I just wonder if it is to stop any questions about the AG's role in the Crown Law report to the police (that never showed up) regarding the pledge card activities:

...but there appears to be agreement that unless police begin prosecutions today, it will be too late.
But police say they are waiting for advice from Crown Law – and Crown Law says its report is a week away.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3606330a6160,00.html

I would have paid more attention to this at the time if I hadn't been ignorant of the fact that one of the top officials is a Govt MP...

[edit]National says public confidence in the police and Crown Law will be corroded if Labour gets off on a technicality after using taxpayer funds to promote its pledge card during the 2005 election campaign.
I quite like this quote in the context as well :-)[/edit]

Prima facie

Prima facie is a Latin expression meaning "at first sight," used in common law jurisdictions to denote evidence that is sufficient, if not rebutted, to prove a particular proposition or fact. In most legal proceedings, one of the parties has the burden of production, which requires that party to present prima facie evidence of all facts essential to its case. (See also burden of proof.) If that party fails to present prima facie evidence on any required element of its case, its claim may be dismissed without any response by the opposing party. A prima facie case may be insufficient to enable a party to prevail, however, if the opposing party subsequently introduces contradictory evidence or asserts an affirmative defense.

For example, in a criminal prosecution, the Government has the burden of presenting prima facie evidence of each element of the crime charged. In a murder case, this would include evidence that the defendant's act caused the victim's death, and evidence that the defendant acted with malice aforethought. If the prosecution were to fail to introduce such evidence, then its case would fail on grounds of "failure to make out a prima facie case," even without rebuttal by the defendant.

Incentives

Lindsay Mitchell blogs some interesting stats about Student Loans : The truth about student loans
But I think her last point needs repeating:
It's quite obvious that the current scheme, combined with the benefit system, produces the worst of incentives. These will be exacerbated when people don't have to pay any interest.

This is my problem with the whole interest free bribe from Labour. The fact that for what is probably the first major debt of many young peoples lives, we are making it so that economically they SHOULD borrow as much as possible and pay it off as slowly as possible, hardly seems like a good lesson in a country with a negative savings history.

Personally I don't actually have a big issue with the Government subsidising student loans - but if they are going to it has to be in the lines of a payment top up etc which actually incentivise good repayment habits.

A better situation from my perspective would actually be for the Government to stop handling the student loans at all, but act as a guarantor for student loans taken out from a bank. The banks would fall over themselves to get the business and with the Govt as guarantor should be able to give rates around or better than the current mortgage rates. Would save the tax payers a whole lot of money and bureaucracy too....