Wanker of the week

Winner: The defenders of Luis Suarez

That fuckwit biting footballer is the obvious choice, but I’m running with all of the people suggesting his ban was too harsh. Admittedly there can be few people who haven’t felt like nibbling on an Italian, but only true wankers can claim there wasn’t enough evidence to prove his third attack. Yip a wanker and a masticator.

Honourable mentions: The voters of East Coast Bays you are on notice, nothing is worth that dim-witted fool; Maui’s Dolphins whose small number belie their constant interruption to commerce; the dufus principal of St Johns College for kicking out a kid because of his hair, proving that wankers don’t happen overnight but they do happen.

Saint of the last seven Days

Winner: 27 absolute heroes.

The fire fighters, police officers and others who were given bravery awards this week for their work in the aftermath of the Christchurch quakes. We salute every one of you.

Honourable mentions: actress Amy Adams for giving up her first class seat to a soldier; old age for constantly clawing away the support base of New Zealand First; and Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement for being brilliant, creative and funny and reminding us that we can produce greatness.

Wanker of the week

Winner: Chief High Court Justice Helen Winkelmann

Winkelmann has decided that author and journalist David Fisher's confidential notes and transcripts from his book on Kim Dotcom are not covered by the Privacy Act, meaning the GCSB and police can get their mitts on them. Curse you Winkelmann you complete wanker – you’ve just helped undermine research in this country for the sake of the spies. Because you clearly didn’t think about, here’s what it means.

Honourable mention: Tony Blair. On the growing presence of violence in Iraq Blair, with a completely straight face, said, “We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this. We haven't". Firstly, Tony, stop using the term ‘liberate’. Every time you do there’s trouble. Secondly, unless the ‘we’ being talked about is you and George, go fuck yourself you pompous, irrelevant, wanker. FYI you can earn quite a bit of money by making a citizens arrest on him. Tell me that's not got the makings of a terrific drinking game, and it’s probably less painful than streaking, too.

Saint of the last seven days.

Winner: The English football team

Because it’s the only thing they’ll win this week.

Honourable mentions: Rachel King for putting together a terrific writer’s festival programme in Christchurch; The Beatles, 50 years since they came to these shores and the music is still great, except for You can’t buy me love, which offends prostitutes everywhere; and Michael Schumacher for simply getting out of bed, you great man.

Back in January New Zealand's spy agency the GCSB attempted to take possession of the confidential notes and transcripts of author and journalist David Fisher’s interviews with Kim Dotcom. Fisher, acutely aware of the magnitude of this, quite rightly told them to bugger off.

When I first wrote about this, I said that if the GCSB pushed the issue then I’d ‘enthusiastically riot’. Well, they have and in the High Court yesterday they won.

Looks like I’m getting dressed for a ruckus, then.

And I mean it. This is a massive issue that strikes at the heart of research, and should concern all of us. Regardless of what you think of Dotcom, and you can see him as the world’s worst villain, you must be able to see that research in sensitive topics will become extremely compromised by this move.

If the transcripts and notes of my book on gangs (and my new work on murder), many of which were highly compromising to some people, were requested from me I would either have to defy the order and go to prison or hand over the information and take the consequences of that.

Hands up everyone who wants to do research now. And if you do, you’ll only be able to do it on uncontroversial topics. Everybody with sensitive information will be too scared to talk. Certainly you will not be able to investigate anything that may involve whistle blowers.

The GCSB may think their stoush with Dotcom is that important to run roughshod over his rights – and appear to have done so – but in this instance it is squeezing the life out of academic inquiry at the same time.

The ramifications of this move should trouble us. It should make us angry. The first thing we can do is express this anger. Write letters, speak to politicians, raise awareness.

In doing these things, let’s hope intelligence wins over intelligence gathering.

If not, my promise of direct action should not be seen as hollow. The freedoms we enjoy were hard fought for. They are worth fighting to protect. The GCSB is meant to protect our freedom; and while they may think they are doing that, they are actually destroying it in the process. 

Forgiveness is not something you often come across from victims of crime. It is, I guess, a natural reaction to lash out at those who hurt you. And few people have been hurt worse than the families of the woman and two young girls killed in the car crash by a Dutch driver who went through a stop sign a couple of weeks ago.

It was a surprise to many, then, that a spokesperson for one of the families expressed sympathy for the Dutch driver who has torn so many lives apart. Accidents happen, he said. 

In return, one might have hoped that the court case (the driver has been charged with careless use of a motorcar causing death) would be quick, so that shattered lives can focus on mending. Instead the driver has entered no plea. In itself this slows the process down, but it also raises the obvious possibility of a not guilty plea. This is quite within his rights, of course, but given police describe the evidence as “independent and sufficient” one can reasonably expect any goodwill extended to him will evaporate.

This dissipation will only increase among the public when it is more widely known that he was responsible for another incident that wrote off his rental vehicle earlier on the day of the fatal crash.

While I don’t know the victims, they do come from my community of Sumner. The hurt here is evident, and this may mean my objectivity is not all it could be, but I hope the bloke does the right thing, puts his hand up and takes his punishment on the chin. If not, I suspect the only forgiveness around will be that offered to the victims for changing their mind and damning this bloke to bits.

Wanker of the week

Winner: George Bush

Bush has obviously had his number retired here at Wanker of the Week but he deserves special mention as Iraq begins to fall into the hands of Muslim extremists called ISIS. To put them in context, ISIS has been disowned by Al Qaeda for being too fucking genocidal. Iraq has gone from being a largely secular and stable country with a nutcase dictator to one of the most dangerous countries in the world soon to be run by an infinitely worse nutcase dictator. Well done, George, you will always be remembered as perhaps the greatest wanker of our lifetime.

Honourable mentions: Aaron Cruden for taking a quick tap penalty and potentially losing the ABs record winning streak, we can tell it was wrong because Dan Carter wouldn’t have done it; the University of Reading for saying they had a super computer that had beaten the Turing test and by implication fundamentally changing how we view the ability of machines (it proved to be utter bollocks); and whoever can save our Maui dolphins from extinction and isn’t – you complete and utter wankers.

Saint of the last seven days.

Winner: The Civilian Party

The satirist Civilian gaining $33,000 to spend on an election campaign is hands-down the best ever use of electoral funds. Given the pool of money is fixed at $3.2m, it’s not a waste of taxpayer money, it’s just stopping other parties spending it. Brilliant. Furthermore the Civilian’s explanation was exquisite: “There are other joke parties getting funding, like the Conservatives and Act”. Never was a more saintly sentence said.

Honourable mentions:  On test debut for the Black Caps, Mark Craig takes eight wickets, hits his first ball for six and is awarded man of the match. – not a shabby start to test cricket; and Rik Mayall, nuff said.

In a recent study by my research mate Ben Elley and me, 80 per cent of prisoners reported that they wanted to change ‘a lot’.

This suggests promising intent but recidivism data show most of them don’t make it. Most return to live among the very conditions and influences that contributed to their offending in the first place. The support they have is so poor as to be unable to spare much moral, and even less practical, help. Often they are reliant on people who are wholesale criminal or drug and alcohol addled.

Talk about individual responsibility all you like, but making serious life changes under these conditions is a battle too big for most.

It was little surprise, then, that when we reviewed Pathway Charitable Group’s prisoner reintegration programme we found the thing most valued by people leaving the prison gates was the support offered by their two field workers. All of the offenders appreciated the facilitation of the things they individually needed (alcohol and drug programmes, help with housing, employment etc) but nothing was more important than having somebody to rely on when the chips were down. This included having a positive voice to help with simple things like setting up appointments, and more intimate things like being supportive when old negative associations were being broken.

The results after year one were undeniably encouraging. Prisoners who engage with the Pathway programme were found to be 33.3 per cent less likely to be reconvicted and 42.8 per cent less likely to re-imprisoned. This doesn’t just say good things about what Pathway does but, in my view, it should guide changes to New Zealand’s probation service.

Currently, probation officers are meant to assist people on parole by reintegrating them back into society, ostensibly fulfilling the role successfully employed by the Pathway programme. They are also tasked – quite rightly – with protecting the community through monitoring offenders’ activities. These two roles are often at odds, however, making them absolutely untenable.

Take this for example: a recently released prisoner is on parole and banned from drinking. He has some life stress and finds himself drunk. He knows he needs help so he goes to his probation officer and says, ‘I’m in a bit of trouble and so I had a drink’.

The probation officer promptly sends him back to prison for breaching parole. Fair enough you might say, the prisoner had conditions and broke them. But what it means in reality is that people on parole, who under stress do things they aren’t meant to, don’t tell their probation officer. Instead of getting help, they get deceptive. The whole show then becomes a farce. The very thing that is meant to assist rehabilitation becomes its biggest impediment.

Instead of being counseled to deal with what is causing the stress and being placed on an alcohol course, for example, the parolee is stuck in whatever rut is causing him problems until it inevitably spirals out of control with the result being a new victim. Where exactly is the winner in that?

We need to divide up the roles of probation into surveillance and support (perhaps provided by NGOs). The latter will mean a person is assigned to those parolees who demonstrate a commitment to change (it’s a waste of money on those who don’t) to work alongside them in a mentoring and supporting role.

It is a simple solution to an obvious problem and one that will pay-off by reducing costs and victims. From a lose-lose to a win-win.

Wanker of the week.

Winner: Referee Glenn Newman

Newman was the video ref who, during the Blues v Hurricanes game, made what Sports Freak described as “possibly the worst refereeing decision ever”. I was once sin-binned at an under 13 comp for swearing, something I believed meant the ref was as bent as Banksie, but I’ll concede that the case in point is marginally worse. Get your shit together TMOs, if you can’t get it right in slowmo, what’s the point of having you?

Honourable mentions: Act leader Jamie Whyte and former leader Richard Prebble for both coming across as complete buffoons on Radio New Zealand regarding the John Banks conviction; FIFA and the obligatory bribery allegations around appointing Qatar as world cup hosts; and Concussion for wrapping its mitts too tightly around the great Kieran Read.

Saint of the last seven days.

Winner: Justice Edwin Wylie

‘Mr Banks, I find you guilty of the charge’. In just nine words Wylie shows that a strong and independent judiciary, upon which a healthy democracy rests, is alive and well in New Zealand. Furthermore, he got one right up a lying and smarmy politician. Very saintly indeed.

Honourable mentions: Valerie Adams who, with an always-lovely smile, quietly wins her 48th tournament on the trot; the German astronaut who took that terrific space photo of where he used to tramp in Canterbury; and our cat PussPuss who this week learned to fetch (here’s the proof, doubters).


And, yip, I still have the same bloody problem. The facebook and Twitter counters are still not registering hits but they are working. Fuck you, Weebly.