Man stole trampoline 'to feed his family'

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Forums › Politics › Man stole trampoline 'to feed his family'

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#1828802 25-Jul-2017 08:58

Geektastic: Is there no statute of limitation which would make prosecution impossible so long after the fact?

There is, and she cannot be prosecuted.

Personally, I find it reprehensible that she continues to see no wrong in what she did. If she said "This is what I did, it was wrong and I regret it" then I would admire her bravery and honesty. But she's effectively saying "this is what I did and it was justified and I am not sorry". To me that is disgraceful. An MP (and lawyer) should be supporting the law and public order. You cant selectively apply it or the whole system will collapse.

Each to his own, but I suspect this was Turei's political suicide.

frankv

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#1828805 25-Jul-2017 09:16

kryptonjohn:

Personally, I find it reprehensible that she continues to see no wrong in what she did. If she said "This is what I did, it was wrong and I regret it" then I would admire her bravery and honesty. But she's effectively saying "this is what I did and it was justified and I am not sorry". To me that is disgraceful. An MP (and lawyer) should be supporting the law and public order. You cant selectively apply it or the whole system will collapse.

An MP and lawyer should be supporting *just* law -- after all, the whole purpose of Parliament is to change laws to make them just. It makes no sense to just believe that the law is right. You *can* selectively apply it, so long as there is ethical basis for what you do. In fact, I'd suggest that every person every day selectively applies the law.

So, the question is whether the DPB laws and associated bureaucracy operated in a just manner. It's disappointing that, assuming Turei believes she did no wrong, she hasn't really addressed this. I suspect it's something that the Govt (and Labour) also doesn't want to investigate too closely either; if it should be found to have been unjust (and I'd bet that there *would* be cases of that, even if it wasn't system-wide), then it would open a huge can of worms.

kryptonjohn

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#1828815 25-Jul-2017 09:26

You can't just go around making personal declarations that the law is unjust to suit yourself. That's anarchy.

networkn

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#1828819 25-Jul-2017 09:35

kryptonjohn:

You can't just go around making personal declarations that the law is unjust to suit yourself. That's anarchy.

100% agree. If she is a lawyer, would they not be investigating her for professional misconduct. I am pretty sure the legal community takes a grim view of it's members stealing funds from the public.

MikeSkyrme

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#1828825 25-Jul-2017 09:44

networkn:

kryptonjohn:

You can't just go around making personal declarations that the law is unjust to suit yourself. That's anarchy.

100% agree. If she is a lawyer, would they not be investigating her for professional misconduct. I am pretty sure the legal community takes a grim view of it's members stealing funds from the public.

Tax lawyers do this for corporations daily.....

Michael Skyrme - Instrumentation & Controls

Wiggum

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#1828826 25-Jul-2017 09:46

networkn:

kryptonjohn:

You can't just go around making personal declarations that the law is unjust to suit yourself. That's anarchy.

100% agree. If she is a lawyer, would they not be investigating her for professional misconduct. I am pretty sure the legal community takes a grim view of it's members stealing funds from the public.

Turei wants to be in charge of social development in a labour/Greens coalition government.

Should that now happen, the PM would have to sack her, or in the very least investigate her admission very thoroughly, either way she would be sacked. I don't really get why she came out with this? Sure she may have gathered a lot of support for herself, and also lost a lot of honest/hardworking kiwi votes in the process. But at the end of the day, she has done herself no favors. I believe the woman has committed political suicide and the longer the greens hold onto her, the more detrimental it will become for them.

MikeAqua

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#1828831 25-Jul-2017 10:02

frankv:

You *can* selectively apply it [law], so long as there is ethical basis for what you do.

History has shown that we can't rely on ethics instead of law. Ethics differ widely between cultures and individuals, and are highly subjective.

Many experiments and real life events have proven peoples' ethics to be highly flexible/optional and quickly surrendered in difficult situations.

The law and in particular criminal law, human rights law and (to a lesser extent) employment law generally reflect minimum standards of ethical behaviour. They exclude particularly many particularly unacceptable behaviours and do so in a largely objective way. They change over time to reflect societies views.

Mike

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Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

Fred99

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#1828832 25-Jul-2017 10:02

networkn:

kryptonjohn:

You can't just go around making personal declarations that the law is unjust to suit yourself. That's anarchy.

100% agree. If she is a lawyer, would they not be investigating her for professional misconduct. I am pretty sure the legal community takes a grim view of it's members stealing funds from the public.

She wasn't a lawyer at the time.

This was also more than two decades ago.

frankv

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#1828833 25-Jul-2017 10:05

kryptonjohn:

You can't just go around making personal declarations that the law is unjust to suit yourself. That's anarchy.

I agree. But it's only the "to suit yourself" that you introduced that makes that true. People can, and do, daily decide which laws are right and which aren't.

Pretty much everyone knows right from wrong, and also knows that the law only approximates the distinction. Sometimes what's legal is wrong, and what's illegal is right. An obvious back-and-white example is homosexuality; prior to 9 July 1986 it was illegal, after that it was legal. You can't tell me that homosexuality suddenly became "right" at that instant on 9 July 1986. So either the law was unjust before that instant, wrongly criminalising some moral people, or it was unjust after that instant, wrongly allowing people to do something immoral.

If you're going to castigate someone for "breaking the law", first you need to assure yourself that it was a just law.

networkn

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#1828835 25-Jul-2017 10:06

Fred99:
networkn:

kryptonjohn:

You can't just go around making personal declarations that the law is unjust to suit yourself. That's anarchy.

100% agree. If she is a lawyer, would they not be investigating her for professional misconduct. I am pretty sure the legal community takes a grim view of it's members stealing funds from the public.

She wasn't a lawyer at the time.

This was also more than two decades ago.

Is there nothing preventing a criminal from becoming a lawyer? Ie had the bar of known of her crime would she have been admitted to the bar?

Wiggum

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#1828838 25-Jul-2017 10:10

She has admitted guilt. Therefore we CAN assume she has broken the law. It a different story if there were these allegations against her, but in this case she has admitted that she has committed benefit fraud.

Prosecution is normally very easy if the wrong doing is admitted.

kryptonjohn

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#1828862 25-Jul-2017 10:16

frankv:

kryptonjohn:

You can't just go around making personal declarations that the law is unjust to suit yourself. That's anarchy.

I agree. But it's only the "to suit yourself" that you introduced that makes that true. People can, and do, daily decide which laws are right and which aren't.

Pretty much everyone knows right from wrong, and also knows that the law only approximates the distinction. Sometimes what's legal is wrong, and what's illegal is right. An obvious back-and-white example is homosexuality; prior to 9 July 1986 it was illegal, after that it was legal. You can't tell me that homosexuality suddenly became "right" at that instant on 9 July 1986. So either the law was unjust before that instant, wrongly criminalising some moral people, or it was unjust after that instant, wrongly allowing people to do something immoral.

If you're going to castigate someone for "breaking the law", first you need to assure yourself that it was a just law.

Easy - I am very comfortable that it is a just law. There is an allocation of cash available to support people in need and it is reasonable that if people have other forms of income that needs to be taken into account. So if you have flatmates giving you cash, you need to tell. MT lied and said she had no such income. She was taking a benefit and lying to increase it. Also at the time there was a requirement to name the father of her child so that he would be made to contribute to the child's upbringing instead of you and me. As I understand it she claimed she didn't know when she did.

There is now issue with just law here... and MT has thumbed her nose at everything I consider to be important in a test of character.

allio

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#1828866 25-Jul-2017 10:20

Wiggum:

Turei wants to be in charge of social development in a labour/Greens coalition government.

Should that now happen, the PM would have to sack her, or in the very least investigate her admission very thoroughly, either way she would be sacked. I don't really get why she came out with this? Sure she may have gathered a lot of support for herself, and also lost a lot of honest/hardworking kiwi votes in the process. But at the end of the day, she has done herself no favors. I believe the woman has committed political suicide and the longer the greens hold onto her, the more detrimental it will become for them.

As you’re clearly someone who would drop dead before ever voting Green, I'll take your eulogy for Metiria and the Green party's political future with a grain of salt.

Thanks also for your declaration that no "honest/hardworking" kiwis (I presume you generously include yourself in this group?) could empathise with her situation. What does that make the rest of us, in your books? Go on, say it.

Presumably you are also calling for the PM's resignation over his far more recent deliberate rorting of the taxpayer-funded housing allowance, which he paid back only very reluctantly and belatedly after he was caught and publically outed. At the time Mr English was a wealthy and highly resourced Finance and Deputy Prime Minister – not a struggling solo mum/student. Makes his offence somewhat worse, wouldn’t you say?

Fred99

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#1828878 25-Jul-2017 10:25

networkn:

Is there nothing preventing a criminal from becoming a lawyer? Ie had the bar of known of her crime would she have been admitted to the bar?

Yes there is. I'm not sure if she's been admitted to the bar anyway - has she? All I know is that she has a law degree and worked as an employee for a law firm a long time ago.

Wiggum

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#1828880 25-Jul-2017 10:29

allio:

Thanks also for your declaration that no "honest/hardworking" kiwis (I presume you generously include yourself in this group?) could empathise with her situation. What does that make the rest of us, in your books? Go on, say it.

I stand by that statement. The election results will tell. Most honest/hardworking Kiwis dont want a fraudster in charge of social development. What a disaster! The election results will be the proof. Happy to retract this statement and admit I got it wrong after elections.

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