- Port Hills 2024.png (233.32 KiB) Viewed 833 times
- Port Hills Fire 2024.png (256.97 KiB) Viewed 833 times
New Zealand
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Karearea
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Re: New Zealand
I see the Wikipedia page for the 2017 fire has already been updated to reflect the new event, thus:
Also, I read that the current event covered 630ha as at earlier today, and note that the extent of the 2017 fire was 2,075ha so this one has covered a bit of ground already...In February 2024 a similar fire started in the same area, triggering a state of emergency, a major deployment of firefighting helicopters, and evacuations of nearby houses.[4] Lessons learned from the 2017 fire contributed to the official response and strategy for the new fire.[5]
Around the world thoughts shall fly In the twinkling of an eye
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CharlieOneSix
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Re: New Zealand
That's a hell of a lot of helicopters in a small area!
- nzfire.jpg (52.09 KiB) Viewed 818 times
The helicopter pilots' mantra: If it hasn't gone wrong then it's just about to...
https://www.glenbervie-weather.org
https://www.glenbervie-weather.org
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Karearea
- Chief Pilot
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Re: New Zealand
Ya, I wish them all God-speed.CharlieOneSix wrote: ↑Wed Feb 14, 2024 11:02 pmThat's a hell of a lot of helicopters in a small area!
nzfire.jpg
Around the world thoughts shall fly In the twinkling of an eye
Re: New Zealand
Yes, one was lost in 2017 when the bucket line snagged his tail rotor so fingers crossed their lookout is good!
- Burnt Area 15 Feb.png (295.94 KiB) Viewed 798 times
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Karearea
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Re: New Zealand
ODT Feb.26 2024: Golriz Ghahraman facing new fourth chargePolice are laying a fourth charge against former Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, who had her first court appearance for alleged shoplifting delayed again.
The former lawyer was due to appear in the Auckland District Court on Wednesday morning to face three shoplifting charges for nearly $10,000 worth of goods she allegedly took from two boutique stores.
On Monday, the Auckland District Court registry confirmed Ghahraman’s first appearance had been pushed back to March 20, following an earlier adjournment in January after a third shoplifting charge emerged.
Ghahraman’s lawyer Annabel Cresswell confirmed to the Herald police were laying a new charge against her client.
Cresswell said it was a standard adjournment for when a new charge is laid.
Police are considering diversion and other issues that are considered at this early stage in the court process, she explained.
The New Zealand Herald has yet to obtain details of a fourth charge.
Details from court documents for the first three charges show the 43-year-old is accused of stealing $2060 of clothing from Scotties Boutique in Auckland’s Ponsonby on December 21, and $7223 worth of clothing from the same store two days later last year.
Both of the Auckland charges carry a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.
Ghahraman is also charged with stealing $695 worth of clothing from Wellington’s Cre8iveworx store on October 22 last year. That charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison.
The total value of items she is alleged to have shoplifted is $9978.
In an earlier statement, Ghahraman, who resigned from Parliament in January, apologised for her behaviour and said she did not excuse her actions.
She cited "extreme stress” and linked it to previously unrecognised trauma. She said she was seeking help from mental health professionals.
In her statement, Ghahraman said the stress had led her to act in ways that were "completely out of character".
"I am not trying to excuse my actions, but I do want to explain them.
"The mental health professional I see says my recent behaviour is consistent with recent events giving rise to extreme stress response, and relating to previously unrecognised trauma.
"People should, rightly, expect the highest standards of behaviour from their elected representatives. I fell short. I’m sorry. It’s not a behaviour I can explain because it’s not rational in any way, and after medical evaluation, I understand I’m not well.
"It is a great honour to serve as a Member of Parliament. I am proud of my advocacy work on human rights and foreign affairs, and particularly proud of campaigns that resulted in practical improvements to the electoral laws governing donations and overseas voting.”
Around the world thoughts shall fly In the twinkling of an eye
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Karearea
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Re: New Zealand
Includes footage of the offence in question:
Victim Judith Hobson reacts to the Grannybasher sentencing decision [2:38]
Victim Judith Hobson reacts to the Grannybasher sentencing decision [2:38]
Around the world thoughts shall fly In the twinkling of an eye
Re: New Zealand
'Posie Parker' has come to the incredible decision that women are female and men are male. The 2000 strong baying mob turned out to challenge her presence in New Zealand and Parker was doused in tomato juice by a trans woman for her outrageous opinions. Not wanting to be more brutally abused by the mob she returned to the UK that night. Victory to the mob! Police looked on from a safe distance.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/498 ... -dismissed
Eli Rubashkyn, who has been charged as Eliana Golberstein, has previously pleaded not guilty to assaulting Parker and one of her supporters, despite having the assault screened on NZ TV for several nights by the very supportive TV 'journalists', who implied that Parker and her supporters were probably the next best thing to fascists and in league with the Devil. Rubashkyn, born in Bogota, will face trial for assault but I suspect the result is a foregone conclusion. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300996 ... face-trial
A granny, who was one of the 150 to 200 supporters of Parker, was punched in the face by a now anonymous male for expressing her beliefs, as Karearea has said.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/498 ... -dismissed
Eli Rubashkyn, who has been charged as Eliana Golberstein, has previously pleaded not guilty to assaulting Parker and one of her supporters, despite having the assault screened on NZ TV for several nights by the very supportive TV 'journalists', who implied that Parker and her supporters were probably the next best thing to fascists and in league with the Devil. Rubashkyn, born in Bogota, will face trial for assault but I suspect the result is a foregone conclusion. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300996 ... face-trial
A granny, who was one of the 150 to 200 supporters of Parker, was punched in the face by a now anonymous male for expressing her beliefs, as Karearea has said.
Re: New Zealand
From the Australian section of The Spectator
James Allan
New Zealand’s imperial judiciary
Getty Images
If you cast your eyes across the Tasman right now, you can see the beginnings of an imperial judiciary, the makings of which are being cheered on at every step by many of those in the lawyerly caste and in the law schools. What do I mean by ‘an imperial judiciary’? I refer to a country where the top judges – committees of unelected ex-lawyers if we want to deal in specifics – are giving themselves new-found power at the expense of the elected branches of government. Under the cover of purportedly applying the law they are usurping power to themselves. This may involve what is known as ‘proportionality analysis’, where the unelected ex-lawyers ask themselves whether they believe what the elected parliament enacted was reasonable and justifiable and proportional to the intended goal. Or it may involve interpretive techniques that sever the attribution of meaning from any consideration of what the legitimate authors of the law – in a democracy that means the elected branches, not these committees of ex-lawyers themselves – intended it to mean and from what the words the legislators chose clearly mean in light of those intentions. Or again it might involve infusing and substituting their own judicial moral sensibilities for those of the elected politicians, often using the notion of ‘the principle of legality’ to do so. Basically, my grievance boils down to alleging various forms of judicial usurpation.
Now if I’m going to throw around that sort of charge of ‘an imperial judiciary’ as regards our neighbours across the Tasman, I need to provide some examples. So I will. Two years ago the top NZ court decided the Make It 16 case. I have written about this at length in the New Zealand Universities Law Review but in basic terms the top court decided – no, it announced – that the right to vote should apply at 16 not at parliament’s preferred 18 years of age. They made a formal declaration that parliament’s voting age infringes people’s rights, indeed a fundamental right. Which right? The right to be free from discrimination on the basis of age. But here’s where it gets good. The statutory bill of rights in NZ has a s.12 that enunciates in explicit terms that every citizen who is of or over the age of 18 has the right to vote. It also has a s.19 anti-discrimination provision which picks up on another statute – made by parliament to be clear – that triggers age discrimination at 16. So the timeless, fundamental right the judges refer to only exists because the legislature happened to enact the age of 16, in a process no less arbitrary than picking 18 as the voting cut-off. The judges also implicitly held that their statutory bill of rights is inconsistent with itself; that age 18 was not a justified, reasonable limit on this rights infringement; that the judges should intrude into this wholly political matter. And have I mentioned that the Kiwis take voting sufficiently seriously that the right to vote is singly entrenched in a special statutory provision that requires a super-majoritarian process to change it? Not to worry. The judges (4 to 1) swept that all away in a display of sophomoric reasoning, virtue-signalling and, yes, self-regard that gives what we saw here in the Love case a good run for its money.
In 2022, the top NZ judges also posthumously quashed the conviction of Peter Ellis. This saga dates back to my years living in Dunedin, NZ and the Ellis conviction (upheld again and again by the judges over there) was one of the most egregious miscarriages of justices I have ever seen. Hence this 2022 quashing was long overdue, if far too late for a by-then-dead Ellis himself. But the courts could have done this using bog-standard public interest common law principles. Instead, the judges chose to infuse tikanga and mana (Maori customary law and a person’s honour) into NZ law. On what basis unelected ex-lawyers could do this is beyond me, leave aside the fact no one has a clue what the reach or meaning of these concepts is.
The activism doesn’t stop there. A fortnight ago the top NZ judges decided the Smith case. Smith is a Maori climate change campaigner who brought proceedings against seven of NZ’s biggest companies for an injunction to stop them from contributing materially to climate change. Yes, you would have thought this is purely a political matter. Wrong! Basically, Mr Smith was inviting the judges to become hero judges and inject themselves into this heated debate. And they did (and this in a country that has enacted an emissions trading scheme). Until a few years ago the defendants’ motion to strike out these proceedings would have won and been a no-brainer – as happened at first instance and at the Court of Appeal. But the hero judges of the Supreme Court reinstated all of Smith’s claims after giving leave to hear the case. So it goes back to first instance with the judges now having inserted themselves into deciding what actions on climate change are and are not reasonable. It’s judicial usurpation and puffed-up, sanctimonious judges on steroids. (And note that it is pure sophistry to reply, ‘We’ve only allowed the case to proceed’ when the judges have made clear they have (or rather gave themselves) the power to make new law here, whether they opt to use it this time or not.)
At this point you’ll be asking, ‘Who appointed these top judges?’ Well, three of the six were appointed by the supposedly conservative National party. And their appointees in these three cases were arguably worse than Labour’s. (In the voting case the only dissenter was a Labour pick.) So just as we see here in Australia the right side of politics is structurally incapable of making good judicial picks of people who are interpretively conservative – don’t get me started on the Liberal appointees to our High Court who were in the majority in Love and who overturned the Al-Kateb case. The same goes for Britain and Canada. Only after five decades have the US Republicans figured it out. You need to publish a list of candidates from whom you promise to make all your top judicial picks. That opens them up to scrutiny. It gives you people who can handle being hated. As an aside, it also absolutely prevents you from doing a world first and picking the wife of the retiring top judge she is replacing (as the Libs did, and not getting a remotely interpretively conservative judge either).
Puffed-up, pontifical and presumptuous top judges are a huge problem around the Anglosphere. NZ’s imperial judiciary is particularly bad. But here in Australia we are now living through our top judges regularly indulging in proportionality analysis-type exercises when we have no national bill of rights and where no legitimate lawmaker actually gave them that power or asked what these committees of unelected ex-lawyers happened to think as regards what’s reasonable and justifiable. This is the legal caste that broke at least 70-30 for the Yes side in the Voice debate. It is so out of sync with the average voter it should just do its job and stop with philosopher-king indulgences. Meanwhile, maybe the new NZ government will actually try to rein in their imperial judiciary over there. That would require bravery when all we see from most conservative politicians is evidence of non-spinery status.
James Allan
New Zealand’s imperial judiciary
- Judiciary.jpg (57.78 KiB) Viewed 634 times
If you cast your eyes across the Tasman right now, you can see the beginnings of an imperial judiciary, the makings of which are being cheered on at every step by many of those in the lawyerly caste and in the law schools. What do I mean by ‘an imperial judiciary’? I refer to a country where the top judges – committees of unelected ex-lawyers if we want to deal in specifics – are giving themselves new-found power at the expense of the elected branches of government. Under the cover of purportedly applying the law they are usurping power to themselves. This may involve what is known as ‘proportionality analysis’, where the unelected ex-lawyers ask themselves whether they believe what the elected parliament enacted was reasonable and justifiable and proportional to the intended goal. Or it may involve interpretive techniques that sever the attribution of meaning from any consideration of what the legitimate authors of the law – in a democracy that means the elected branches, not these committees of ex-lawyers themselves – intended it to mean and from what the words the legislators chose clearly mean in light of those intentions. Or again it might involve infusing and substituting their own judicial moral sensibilities for those of the elected politicians, often using the notion of ‘the principle of legality’ to do so. Basically, my grievance boils down to alleging various forms of judicial usurpation.
Now if I’m going to throw around that sort of charge of ‘an imperial judiciary’ as regards our neighbours across the Tasman, I need to provide some examples. So I will. Two years ago the top NZ court decided the Make It 16 case. I have written about this at length in the New Zealand Universities Law Review but in basic terms the top court decided – no, it announced – that the right to vote should apply at 16 not at parliament’s preferred 18 years of age. They made a formal declaration that parliament’s voting age infringes people’s rights, indeed a fundamental right. Which right? The right to be free from discrimination on the basis of age. But here’s where it gets good. The statutory bill of rights in NZ has a s.12 that enunciates in explicit terms that every citizen who is of or over the age of 18 has the right to vote. It also has a s.19 anti-discrimination provision which picks up on another statute – made by parliament to be clear – that triggers age discrimination at 16. So the timeless, fundamental right the judges refer to only exists because the legislature happened to enact the age of 16, in a process no less arbitrary than picking 18 as the voting cut-off. The judges also implicitly held that their statutory bill of rights is inconsistent with itself; that age 18 was not a justified, reasonable limit on this rights infringement; that the judges should intrude into this wholly political matter. And have I mentioned that the Kiwis take voting sufficiently seriously that the right to vote is singly entrenched in a special statutory provision that requires a super-majoritarian process to change it? Not to worry. The judges (4 to 1) swept that all away in a display of sophomoric reasoning, virtue-signalling and, yes, self-regard that gives what we saw here in the Love case a good run for its money.
In 2022, the top NZ judges also posthumously quashed the conviction of Peter Ellis. This saga dates back to my years living in Dunedin, NZ and the Ellis conviction (upheld again and again by the judges over there) was one of the most egregious miscarriages of justices I have ever seen. Hence this 2022 quashing was long overdue, if far too late for a by-then-dead Ellis himself. But the courts could have done this using bog-standard public interest common law principles. Instead, the judges chose to infuse tikanga and mana (Maori customary law and a person’s honour) into NZ law. On what basis unelected ex-lawyers could do this is beyond me, leave aside the fact no one has a clue what the reach or meaning of these concepts is.
The activism doesn’t stop there. A fortnight ago the top NZ judges decided the Smith case. Smith is a Maori climate change campaigner who brought proceedings against seven of NZ’s biggest companies for an injunction to stop them from contributing materially to climate change. Yes, you would have thought this is purely a political matter. Wrong! Basically, Mr Smith was inviting the judges to become hero judges and inject themselves into this heated debate. And they did (and this in a country that has enacted an emissions trading scheme). Until a few years ago the defendants’ motion to strike out these proceedings would have won and been a no-brainer – as happened at first instance and at the Court of Appeal. But the hero judges of the Supreme Court reinstated all of Smith’s claims after giving leave to hear the case. So it goes back to first instance with the judges now having inserted themselves into deciding what actions on climate change are and are not reasonable. It’s judicial usurpation and puffed-up, sanctimonious judges on steroids. (And note that it is pure sophistry to reply, ‘We’ve only allowed the case to proceed’ when the judges have made clear they have (or rather gave themselves) the power to make new law here, whether they opt to use it this time or not.)
At this point you’ll be asking, ‘Who appointed these top judges?’ Well, three of the six were appointed by the supposedly conservative National party. And their appointees in these three cases were arguably worse than Labour’s. (In the voting case the only dissenter was a Labour pick.) So just as we see here in Australia the right side of politics is structurally incapable of making good judicial picks of people who are interpretively conservative – don’t get me started on the Liberal appointees to our High Court who were in the majority in Love and who overturned the Al-Kateb case. The same goes for Britain and Canada. Only after five decades have the US Republicans figured it out. You need to publish a list of candidates from whom you promise to make all your top judicial picks. That opens them up to scrutiny. It gives you people who can handle being hated. As an aside, it also absolutely prevents you from doing a world first and picking the wife of the retiring top judge she is replacing (as the Libs did, and not getting a remotely interpretively conservative judge either).
Puffed-up, pontifical and presumptuous top judges are a huge problem around the Anglosphere. NZ’s imperial judiciary is particularly bad. But here in Australia we are now living through our top judges regularly indulging in proportionality analysis-type exercises when we have no national bill of rights and where no legitimate lawmaker actually gave them that power or asked what these committees of unelected ex-lawyers happened to think as regards what’s reasonable and justifiable. This is the legal caste that broke at least 70-30 for the Yes side in the Voice debate. It is so out of sync with the average voter it should just do its job and stop with philosopher-king indulgences. Meanwhile, maybe the new NZ government will actually try to rein in their imperial judiciary over there. That would require bravery when all we see from most conservative politicians is evidence of non-spinery status.
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Karearea
- Chief Pilot
- Posts: 4838
- Joined: Thu Sep 10, 2015 5:47 am
- Location: The South Island, New Zealand
Re: New Zealand
Stuff: Extent of Golriz Ghahraman’s shoplifting revealedFormer Green MP Golriz Ghahraman would browse stores and then hide clothing in bags before exiting.
Ghahraman appeared in the Auckland District Court on Wednesday, following a shoplifting investigation which found she had stolen around $8367 worth of clothing from three shops. She pleaded guilty to all charges and will be sentenced in June.
...
Ghahraman has previously appeared before the court on a charge of careless driving. ...
Re: New Zealand
I suspected that the usual victim pleas would be forthcoming - death threats, mental problems etc. If former occurs then leave social media and produce some evidence of speaking to a psychiatrist if the latter is real.
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Karearea
- Chief Pilot
- Posts: 4838
- Joined: Thu Sep 10, 2015 5:47 am
- Location: The South Island, New Zealand
Re: New Zealand
Stuff: Green MP suspended amid migration exploitation claimsThe Green Party has suspended one of its MPs, Darleen Tana.
The party confirmed the action after Stuff asked questions about her links to alleged migrant exploitation at her husband’s company.
A worker claims he is owed about $25,000 in wages and holiday pay by the business. ...
Around the world thoughts shall fly In the twinkling of an eye
Re: New Zealand
Warbirds Over Wanaka is back after a break of several years. Sadly the Mosquito has been sold to someone in the States - after a very lengthy rebuild here - so it won't be seen here again. Wanaka is a town in the South Island near Queenstown. The F-16s are based at Christchurch - where there is a USAF facility - for the duration of their visit. The event is extremely popular amongst a population that has only a small air force and no fast jets after the Skyhawks were sold off by the Labour Government in 2005. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/ten-years ... 2J2PLET54/
Re: New Zealand
Sold out event, to folk starved of military aviation presence:
https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3502 ... ew-heights
and a glimpse into Air New Zealand's fairly recent past and fashions
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/air-n ... T2GSZTNAM/
https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3502 ... ew-heights
and a glimpse into Air New Zealand's fairly recent past and fashions
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/air-n ... T2GSZTNAM/
Re: New Zealand
A shame that they don't get to keep the Mossie that they lovingly restored.
I don't suppose the Yanks will appreciate it for what it truly is.
I don't suppose the Yanks will appreciate it for what it truly is.
Re: New Zealand
I hope they don't race it!
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Rossian
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Re: New Zealand
Was the rebuild done with plywood? I seem to remember from the excellent book "The New Science of Strong Materials(or why we don't fall through the floor" that the Mossie had big problems in the fareast in the latter stages of the war because the humidity caused the wooden components to delaminate. Or do more modern adhesives eliminate that problem?
The Ancient Mariner
The Ancient Mariner
Re: New Zealand
I remember reading about the problems in damp or wet operations. Hopefully they used the best stuff in the rebuild!
There's quite a lot about it here Rossian:
https://vintageaviationnews.com/warbird ... eport.html
There's quite a lot about it here Rossian:
https://vintageaviationnews.com/warbird ... eport.html
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Karearea
- Chief Pilot
- Posts: 4838
- Joined: Thu Sep 10, 2015 5:47 am
- Location: The South Island, New Zealand
Re: New Zealand
A couple of excellent brief videos from Warbirds Over Wanaka in this ODT article; the second of them shows about the front and centre view I had, and shows the Mosquito:
ODT: Boost of at least $40m from air show
ODT: Boost of at least $40m from air show
Around the world thoughts shall fly In the twinkling of an eye
Re: New Zealand
Many thanks for that.
I used to attend airshows as an amateur photographer (with serious equipment).
Highlights were being soaked by the spray from a Harrier at the Sunderland (International!) airshow held on the seafront at Sunderland - my regular position was perched on the seawall. At high tide the displayline was overhead my position.
When my son asked to accompany me to an airshow (for his 30th birthday treat) I was able to acquire VIP tickets to Farnborough the year that the Vulcan returned. Our seats in the grandstand were alongside the runway at the point where the Vulcan rotated and climbed steeply (and noisily) at which point I was 'overcome' as my son had never experienced what I had become familiar with.
"That's what I've been talking about!"
Did an aircraft actually exceed Mach 1 during your display?
The Lightnings use to arrive from behind the crowds scaring the bejabers with the sonic bangs.
The displays that I attended dated back to Acklington (when Vampires and Meteors were the latest equipment) through Hunters to the Lightnings, F16s and the Su's.
Sadly, displays in the UK seem to be a thing of the past - Sunderland and Farnborough are no more.
Acklington is now a prison (or a young offenders Institution?).
Shoreham ended with a bang!
I used to attend airshows as an amateur photographer (with serious equipment).
Highlights were being soaked by the spray from a Harrier at the Sunderland (International!) airshow held on the seafront at Sunderland - my regular position was perched on the seawall. At high tide the displayline was overhead my position.
When my son asked to accompany me to an airshow (for his 30th birthday treat) I was able to acquire VIP tickets to Farnborough the year that the Vulcan returned. Our seats in the grandstand were alongside the runway at the point where the Vulcan rotated and climbed steeply (and noisily) at which point I was 'overcome' as my son had never experienced what I had become familiar with.
"That's what I've been talking about!"
Did an aircraft actually exceed Mach 1 during your display?
The Lightnings use to arrive from behind the crowds scaring the bejabers with the sonic bangs.
The displays that I attended dated back to Acklington (when Vampires and Meteors were the latest equipment) through Hunters to the Lightnings, F16s and the Su's.
Sadly, displays in the UK seem to be a thing of the past - Sunderland and Farnborough are no more.
Acklington is now a prison (or a young offenders Institution?).
Shoreham ended with a bang!