Category Archives: Cause

Mar 21 2013

A Letter to Murray McCully – he replies


The reply to my original letter is posted here as a PDF MurraryMcCully or as a picture below,

This is a response to a letter I wrote to my MP, who had changed his mind about supporting the “same sex marriage” bill, one of ony 4 MP’s to do so in the negative way.

MurrayMcCully

I’m not convinced it’s a form reply.

I’ve let his secretary know by way of a reply what I think .

Erica

Thank you for your reply.

Please, if you would be so kind, and should the Minister care to know,  tell him that, should he be standing at the next election, he will not be receiving my vote, as he has enjoyed in the past.

Of course there are more pressing matters of Economy, Welfare, Education, Health and Security but he had it in his grasp to be someone who actually did something for everyone, and not because he has a fear and loathing of the real meaning of equality, and was cowered by sanctimonious religious bigotry.

You’ll recall I’ve been married 25 years, I’ve no axe to grind, no flag to fly, but to take a stance that it’s all equal except for some is morally bankrupt, and frankly he’s disappointed one time to many.

It might only be one vote, but it might make a difference.

Related articles
Apr 22 2012

Murder Most Foul #4 – Jennifer Mary Beard


JMB


By and large you always think of New Zealand as being an outwardly friendly, people happy, tolerant, peaceful place. You would possibly describe it as such to foreigners, and not as a wild-west like country where crime is rampant. There are though some unsolved crimes that will forever be that, unsolved or unsolvable. This is one of those that still seems to be fresh and top of mind to many, and one that just won’t go away.

Cold case – Uncategorized – New Zealand Listener.

Why was Gordon Bray never charged with Jennifer Mary Beard’s murder in 1970?

The year 1970 was remarkable for investigations into three murders at a time when homicide was rare. The first victim was Jennifer Beard, an English schoolteacher, whose body was found in January under a bridge at Haast, deep in southern Westland.

The nation was first appalled by the young hitch-hiker’s death, then engrossed in the search for the Vauxhall car thought to have been driven by the murderer, then astonished by the lack of any result.

After all, the police had a suspect: Gordon Bray, a burly Timaru truck driver. Everyone knew that he was the prime suspect because Bray had announced it in the newspapers. He was a single man, he had been holidaying on the Coast, he was probably at the murder scene, he drove an old Vauxhall. Beyond one shadowy figure, never identified, no other suspect was ever turned up.

Beard, probably a virgin, was thought to have been relieving herself under the bridge on New Year’s Eve, 1969, when she was attacked. She had been seen with a man in a Vauxhall. She had probably been strangled, although her body was so decomposed that a cause of death could never be firmly established

Was Bray the man seen in the rest area at the bridge? Police had two eyewitnesses and a receipt belonging to Bray that was in a pocket of trousers found at the scene. Police thought the eyewitness evidence weak, especially as the most observant, a boy of 13, had described the Vauxhall he saw as “deep turquoise”.

One of the problems the police faced in their search for the Vauxhall – they checked almost all the 29,000 that were around 16 years old and still being driven in New Zealand in 1970 – was that witnesses described it in various shades of green with primer on its paintwork. Bray’s Vauxhall was dark blue, and the bodywork was in good condition. A jury, they concluded, would be doubtful.

Still, police were satisfied that they had enough evidence to place him at the murder scene. The lawyers remained dubious: “No more than suspicion, and very difficult to prove,” one said.

October 2005 –  Two former West Coast men are calling for police to re-open the Jennifer Mary Beard murder case – 35 years after the Australian hitchhiker was found dead under the Haast River Bridge. She was last seen alive on December 31 in the company of a middle-aged man in a greeny-blue Vauxhall Velox. The identity of her killer has never been found.

But last month  (September 2005) Christchurch businessman Wayne Williams – a former West Coaster who has followed the case for the past 18 years – went to police with information on another possible suspect. In documents supplied to police, Mr Williams describes a man known as Ron (surname unknown) as a possible suspect in the case.

Ron, who worked at the Hardy and Thompson sawmill in Westport at the time, had acted strangely after Beard’s death, Mr Williams said. Mr Watts said that when a police identikit picture appeared in the Westport News on January 30, 1970, Ron abruptly left his job and failed to collect two weeks’ wages.

The Police declined to follow up or entertain this information. The person in question is Ron Hunter, would be approx 72 years old today and could be living outside of NZ, possibly Australia. Who knows?

The man many think was responsible,  Gordon Bray, died in Timaru in November 2003. He always maintained his innocence.

Related articles
Rangitoto Hockey
Apr 5 2012

Jolly Hockey Sticks – the College edition


Rangitoto Hockey

Every year there is a pre-season Inter-College “tournament” at St. Cuthberts College in Remuera. It’s called the Anzac tournament and is by invitation only.

As part of promotion the College hosts the ANZAC Tournament, which is an invitational festival competition of teams from through out New Zealand.

Rangitoto College are the only public school to be invited to participate.

There is a traditional festival dinner held on the first evening of the two day event. Rangitoto College girls broke with tradition a few years a go and dressed “formally” in school uniform for the dinner, and in subsequent years this has become the norm.

This year however having changed school uniform through the year to some new fancy affair the 1st XI Hockey Girls won’t be able to wear a school blazer as the school “pool” of blazers is short the number they need.

Blazers are an optional item of school wear and they are not in common usage other than at formal events and occasion and the school rents them for use for events.

Daughter is besides herself. She feels that not being able to dress up for the festival dinner is a poor signal from the school in a couple of areas. Firstly she thinks that this is an indication of the “worth” of the Hockey team to the School.

The team is in the premier grade, and has won or been in Intercity and National Finals consistently for many years.

Secondly she feels that being able to dress up to represent the college carries with it more kudos and mana among what you could consider a list of élite private schools. She has pride in spades

So she wrote a letter to the head of sports, her coach, and a couple of other teachers in the school. All for the cause. Like I said to her “If you do nothing you get nothing”

I hope something comes of it, she thinks it’s important enough, I hope the school does too.

5th of April update

Having presented her letter to he Dean and her Tutor, as well as the HOD Sports blazers became available. She’s not taking any credit for it of course,  but I told her she should even if she doesn’t believe it :-) My activist daughter, who knew!

Mar 30 2012

Murder Most Foul #3 in a series – David Wayne TAMIHERE- Murderer / Rapist / Robber


Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen

Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just after I arrived in NZ there was quite a sensational murder mystery that unfolded. The “Swedish Backpacker Murders” And the Starring role was taken by one David Wayne Tamihere. Today I was reading an “exclusive” article in Metro Magazine, adn so it’s time I got my thoughts together on this. For me.

David TAMIHERE was convicted of the 1972 Murder/Manslaughter  of Mary Barcham, 23 (stripper),  by Hitting her on the head with a rifle.

Also assaulted a 62 year old woman in her home in 1985.
Also has some other sexual assault and assault convictions on record,  including a conviction for assaulting another woman in her home in the 1980s

And so to the 1989 conviction of Murder of Sven Urban Höglin, 23, and his fiancée Heidi Birgitta Paakkonen, 21, both from, Sweden, travelling in NZ as  tourists. For which he was  sentenced to life imprisonment with a 10-year non-parole period in December 1990.

The body of Heidi Birgitta Paakkonen remains missing at this time.

Some of the background;

On 8 April 1989, backpacking tourists Höglin and Paakkonen from Storfors, Sweden went into the bush near Thames. They vanished and were reported missing in May.

The disappearance led to an intense police investigation under the name Operation Stockholm, and attracted substantial media interest. Police, local residents, search and rescue and military personnel carried out the largest land-based search undertaken in New Zealand, performing grid-searches centred on Crosbie’s Clearing, 12 km from Thames.

Tamihere, a fugitive for skipping bail for a 1986 rape, admitted stealing the Subaru car belonging to the couple. There was only one known key to the car that was found in the possession of David Tamihere, and he claims to have broken into the car with a bit of #8 wire and found the key in the glovebox.  It would seem that there are 3 “experts” who were unable to replicate the feat of getting into the car with the same method.

He was arrested, and tried for their murder starting in October 1990. At the trial three witnesses (fellow inmates of Tamihere’s, granted name suppression by the court) gave evidence that Tamihere had confessed the murder to them.

Two trampers also identified Tamihere as a man they saw with a woman believed to be Paakkonen in a remote clearing. The court also heard Tamihere tied Höglin to a tree and sexually abused him before raping Paakkonen.

Contention:

In October 1991, ten months after the conviction, pig hunters discovered the body of Höglin near Whangamata; Paakkonen’s body has never been found. Höglin’s body was recovered 73 km from where police alleged the murders took place.

With the body was a watch which police claimed at his trial Tamihere had given to his son following the murders. Discovery of the body also contradicted the testimony of a (Secret) prosecution witness who said Tamihere had confessed to cutting up the bodies and throwing them into the ocean.

I understand from reading an article in Metro Magazine  that in prison David Tamihere told various stories and variations on a theme to various people in an effort to cath outr anyone who “ratted on him”.

In the book Hard Cases, the theory Tamihere did not act alone is forwarded, on the basis that as there were no defensive cuts to the bones of his hands, Höglin may have been held from behind while being stabbed from the front.

Most bizarrely is this contention:

Documents obtained from the estate of a deceased Investigate reader have thrown new light on a 23 year old cold case – the disappearance of Swedish tourists Urban Hoglin and Heidi Paakkonen.

The couple disappeared in April 1989 on the Coromandel peninsula, and David Wayne Tamihere was arrested soon after on suspicion of their murders. The body of Urban Hoglin was subsequently found by pig-hunters at the foot of a bluff in the Coromandel ranges in 1991, but Heidi’s body has never been found.

For years it has been presumed Heidi Paakkonen is also buried somewhere in the Coromandel bush, but the documents passed to Investigate suggest that is not the case – she was last seen alive north of Auckland.

The story begins on Kawau Island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf, and a Christian couple’s suspicions in the mid 1980s that a local criminal with drug and organised crime connections had constructed a house complete with a large underground facility. The couple, who’d accidentally discovered the facility while visiting the property on business, felt the complex could have been used to hold people against their will, and because of its remote position primary access to the outside world was via the sea and a private jetty.

Well yes of course, secret underground lair.  Having said that undoubtedly the Police did botch up parts of the case. But I would be very surprised if David Tamihere was not responsible for the killings or has other knowledge that for reasons unknown he hasn’t or will not share.

David Wayne TAMIHERE Released on parole on November 15, 2010, currently denies involvement in these murders. Current a cause célèbre with Metro Magazine and some other media outlets.

Sep 26 2011

What Atheists Have to Believe.


I got listening to a couple of podcasts and the subject of atheism comes up now and again.

But the answer to “What atheists HAVE to belive” can be summed up in a couple of words. Well no that’s not true, the answer is not in the question which isn’t worded particularly well. The thing that I, an atheists, has believe in, and this is all, is that “There is no God”.

That is it. I don’t have to not belive in he Christian God, any God will do not to belive in.

I dont have to believe in  Zeus, Hermes, Hades, Hera, Aphrodite,
or Iuppiter, Mors,  Terra,
or Odin, Thor, Loki, Njordr,
or Krishna,  Vishnu, Kali, Ishvara,
or Shangdi, Mazu, Shou  Xing, Tu Di Gong,
or Izanagi-no-Mikoto,  Izanami-no-Mikoto,
or Cernunnos, Damona, Epona,
or Ra, Isis, Anubis, Osiris,
or An, Ki,  Enlil, Enki,
or Sin, Marduk, Ishtar, Nabu,
or Simurgh, Rostam, Gaokerena,
or Bunyip, Kurreah, Mutjinga etc

not a one do I have to belive in. There is no God.

Being an Atheist does not mean I have no moral standards, or moral code of right and wrong, I don’t find it odd to help my fellow-man, nor do I covet my neighbour’s wife or oxen most of the time.

I have one thing as an atheist to belive in. That is all.

I don’t have to apologise for evolution, I don’t have to explain the uncausable cause of the big bang, I don’t have to belive in an eternal after-life anywhere for any reason. I don’t have to belive that what I think or what I do has any repercussion other than to me and those my actions affect. I don’t have to belive in a judgement book.

Mostly however I don’t have to belive that I will vilify you, ridicule you or otherwise insult your belief in something. If you have personal experience of a God then good for you!, but that’s you and what you saw, I can’t measure it, you can’t replicate or prove it, but I’m not about that you prove it to me, especially not with a Bible of doubtful origin and content, that would be circular reasoning.

Should a God come visit with me and prove they are God then I’ll happily change my mind.  In the meantime I believe that you have a right to what you think, even if you have no basis for that belief, and I’ll continue with mine, based on what I’ve reasoned to be a reasonable position. After all “God did it” is not a reasonable excuse for anything that happens to you, anyone you know or any event in the world that you are too ignorant to think through an explain. Is it?

Sep 18 2011

Not a good day to be a minor league tall poppy. #1 in a series.


Today we bring you  Rabon Khan  and  Rachel Smalley

(1) Raybon Khan. Who seems to set himself as Mr.People, some brainpower gifted individual who urbane toss-offs speak to and for the people.

Well he is a comedian, makes his money with humor, or a sort. The tweet is an inference, and that is all. It’s implied that it’s Germanic, therefore Nazi, therefore Jewish. And frankly that is indeed what it is. Doesn’t make it less humorous. Gallows  humor is important.
(2) Rachel Smalley
Rachel got confused about what she is, and what her tweeting account is. You can’t be both a corporate tweet and a person. You’re either for your or you are you. It’s no good having 999 tweets about good a talking head you are on TV if then in some kind of faux outrage pick a fight with someone, about something you know nothing of, but have formed an opinion on based on your privileged position of being “in” the media. Rachel Smalley is a talking head. She reads an autocue device for a living. That is all.
So what will happen?
Well Raybon will throw himself at the public mercy, “Don’t read it” he’ll cry, which makes him seem like he’s 11 years old.
Rachel Smalley. Well TV3 needs a talking head, she has broad appeal which equals money, and will bring out the same “It was me talking” line that isn’t really an excuse when 99.99% of everything else she tweets is for her not about her.
So two rather minor poppies who’ve brought a collective passing eye-roll towards them that has kept a small part of the nation occupied in the colonies. Nothing in their somewhat small and limited appeal career with change, they’re not people you get favors from or rely on to do you favors. They have passing and fleeting influence as a talking head, but that glitter fades quickly.
#FauxOutrage at it’s best then
Aug 12 2011

Inconceivable! Why I should avoid the newspapers.


I shouldn’t read the newspaper, it annoys me.

Prisons. “Auckland’s Mt Eden prison operator Serco has been accused of bribing inmates with bigger helpings of food and televisions in their cells to encourage them to behave” ….. And? Well the comments page is enlightening. People have issues that being in prison equals additional punishment. That being in prison isn’t punishment enough, being segregated from the general population isn’t a punishment, they should of course be fed gruel and water, and only if they complete their 20 hours of manual labour. It’s a wonder. Sure there are bad people in prisons, they are in he maximum security ones, the ones that allow you a couple of hours outside your cell a day, every day for the next however many years. Sure there are career crims in prison, wherein it becomes some kind of badge of honour, I’m sure they’re not happy. No I don’t have an alternate, a method to rehab people or think they should be loose and running around. By popular thinking they’re in the right place, away from the population to plot and scheme and get no further ahead in life.

Captain Obvious comes to visit with this headline comment “Macsyna King is laying blame for her twin babies’ deaths with their father” No shit Sherlock, this is her book, her story, it’s hardly going to be a confession is it. What were you expecting? I’m sure the book is a wonderful collection of colourful anecdotes, half truths, omission and fabrication, ably conducted by the Mr. Ian Wishart, who is doing it for altruistic reasons only, hardly covering his costs of course.

 It annoys me that today, for instance, the NZHerald didn’t print the #gotakeashit hashtag that NIcola Grigg, the bint who is shagging Ritchie McCaw used in her tweet. So half a story. The other annoying thing is that they gave her column inches. What’s with that? Seems though that she disappeared herself from twitter quick smart, too much adulation I should think.

that is all.

Aug 1 2011

Murder Most Foul #1 in a series


There are many murders that get your attention and pique your interest. Fortunately there aren’t that many that go unsolved. And even the solved ones can twist like a snake when you take what is mostly a superficial look at them. But we have to have an opinion and we have to have questions, it’s the human condition, and you can believe one way or the other that justice was served, or that by your own view it hasn’t.  I can think immediately of two that I have a view on.

Away: Peter Falconio.  (20 September 1972 – c. 14 July 2001)  disappeared in the Australian outback in July 2001, while travelling with girlfriend Joanne Lees and is now presumed dead. It’s rather contentious and tonight (1st August) it was again alleged on TV that Peter Falconio did a runner and is still alive, and has been seen by 4 people no less, since he was allegedly killed. There was a bit of twitterage about this and seems that there is more than a little doubt that he was killed and that he chose to be disappeared. The whole story seems a little improbable, and they did convict someone of a murder.

It’s not possible to put your own reasonings on this, you probably wouldn’t stage your own murder/disappearance. Can you imagine living ‘on the lam’ as it were for what is now a decade? I’m not an expert on this, but how would you survive with a foreign accent in a foreign country, It is possible, people have done it, and will do it again, but I don’t recall any background that would indicate Peter F had a bag of cash and the means to get away with it. Improbable but not impossible.

Home: David Bain. Convicted in May 1995 of the murders of his parents and siblings in Dunedin on 20 June 1994. He was acquitted when retried on the same charges 14 years later.

Never has an event really split people so widely. It is my opinion only that the truth hasn’t been told in this. The police really stuffed it up from the get go. But after a re-trial where the only possible witness, David Bain, didn’t testify what can you conclude?

My two favorite things that are wrong so wrong are; Problems with “index time” that is a central time piece against which everything is timed. What should happen is the lead detective declares the time, and everything you do should be based on the time of that watch/clock/device despite what your watch says. Your watch, my watch, the computer time, the oven, the microwave, the dvd player they all have different times on them, you therefore need a central time clock where you reference too. The police didn’t. Big mistake.

And some really weird way in which you can tell when a computer was turned on. Even if you could, and I still don’t know how you can, particularly if you turn the computer off and then back on again, what use is forensically diagnosing the time, if the time you arbitrarily decide does not match any reference time, it’s just the time you decide on your watch, and not the reference watch. So the forensic test of time will return a time, which is completely arbitrary since there is no way of knowing what time that really is, it could be 10 minutes fast or slow, who knows? Big mistake.

Jul 21 2011

Faux outrage, Faux compassion and chipping in!


or slamming and damning, counselling and group grieving and how I learned to react in a group.

Led mostly by media snippets and reporting (often poorly repeated, and incomplete, inaccurate and angled for spin) the collective ‘we’ is often to quick to anger. Twitter is the new benchmark, Facebook pages would be next. You never hear of a TXT based outrage campaign though.

The hive mind is quick to pounce on indiscretion and verbalise their thoughts. Woe to anyone who swims against the tide. Someone often leads the charge and will whip a horse to death, but then we all have a ‘thing’ that does that to us (that’s a whole new subject).

We’re morally indignant about infidelity, as if we’re all whiter than white, we’re dumbfounded by misogyny, as if men have never leered at a woman of used a stick mag, and we can’t belive that a school would add a computing device to the compulsory list for stationery.

We definitely cannot belive  that the Israeli’s in Christchurch are tourists, although this seems to be a media hobby-horse and not a hive mind collective.

Anything the Government of the day announces can be negative, mostly negative. The twitterverse will be abuzz with the newly disenfranchised in minutes, spreading like a wildfire, it is to behold!

Similarly with a death. the hive mind seems to get it into its head to want to grieve. Mostly for people they never met, didn’t know and didn’t much care for before their death. particularly but not limited to children, young pretty females and young males. This is more a Facebook thing. But we’re all hectored and badgered into having to be part of a group that mourns, without really understanding why. Hey it’s a young person they died in some way or other and we should all feel some collective guilt.

Sure death is tragic, children dying is tragic, young people getting into situations where they kill themselves and others is tragic. It happens daily, worldwide, a lot. Old people die too, but then they had a life already get over it. I don’t need to join a Facebook group or have some faux emotion based on an out of context picture in the press or on Facebook. Ge over yourselves.

As for counselling. What an industry that is, we have to take into personal consideration the thoughts and actions of everyone. This will and does and can lead to sheeplike behaviours and group feelings. Individually no, group yes. Naturally I’m not a psychiatrist or behaviours expert but I’m happy to bet cash on this being true.

So Faux Outrage and Grief, the latest big thing, or just the big thing.

Makes it sound like I’m not on any bandwagon, trust me I get on them, and then I get off most of the, some I just sit on for the ride.

Sep 30 2009

I’m not famous I can make any statement I want


Two words yesterday on twitter “Free Polanski”.

Not from a world recognised name, but a name known in New Zealand. Someone who commands an audience and imparts information, love, humor, and adds that bit in your day that makes a difference. I know, still only a voice on the radio and anyone “could” do it. They can’t he does.

But carelessly or otherwise he’s committed to a statement, a “cause celeb”, and joined a bunch of others calling for something based on what I can only assume is “better than you” -ness

Does that make him a bad person? Not really. But is does highlight that whilst I never met him, never spoken to him, and am not that likely to bump into him in the streets (although that is the most probable), I’ve formed an opinion about what he should and should not be able to comment on.

Except that this is different. We might disagree on political things, he might be left I might be center, we might disagree on Chardonnay over Sauvignon, or free-range over farm eggs. But we can’t disagree on child abuse surely?

Confusing assumed greatness, or significance, and ignoring illegality and moral bankruptcy just seems, in my opinion, to be wrong.

Then just to put the record straight I think Nelson Mandela is a Terrorist. But I’m allowed to say that, I’m not a celebrity.