No money for police ammo and weapons training, but $50million for a cycle way.
No money for police ammo and weapons training, but $12.7million for a new climate 'super' computer to give wrong answers even faster than before.
Do you think this shows the correct priorities?
A government’s proper job is not to build cycle-ways or to forecast the weather – even if it could do either well. It’s to protect individual rights. If it can’t do that then it should stand down. If the top level of the police force can’t do that, they should announce that properly or stand down, instead of playing silly buggers with the government and with the public who pay their wages.
This is the same police force that insists that when confronted by an armed madman you should avoid “confrontation” and ring the police instead – and who, when people have rightly chosen to defend themselves instead of waiting for the Keystone cops to arrive, have pursued actions against them through the courts for the crime of taking their lives more seriously than the promises of a force more concerned with “protecting perimeters” than the people being shot at.
The same police force who last week were telling whoever wanted to listen that they’re going to have to sell police houses to meet their budgets.
So this latest “threat” by a cash strapped police force may simply be brinkmanship to attract more funding – just as last week’s threat was. But it’s going to give cold comfort to people whose lives are on the line with a gun in their face, and who are told that they aren’t allowed to defend themselves because a trained policeman is on the way.
UPDATE 1: No money for ammo, but enough for a whole new bureaucracy.
No money for weapons training, but plenty for surveys like this.
No money to defend New Zealanders, but $300 million plus change to “keep them warm.”
UPDATE 2: As Oswald says,
“Your average plod couldn't shoot his way out of a wet paper bag as it is. The last thing they need is reduced training”!
14 comments:
I was sent a survey form for this.
It invited me to fill in the survey online, but told me they'd send me the complete thing by mail anyway. The letter came with a pen also.
What a stupid waste of money. I filled it in anyway, just to get in a dig at the fact that the ONLY public service I've used (off the list provided, roads etc excluded) was MAF, and that was to complain because they'd opened a parcel and stolen some malted barley from me. Exactly the same malted barley I can buy here, and have imported before when local stock was depleted. MASSIVE bio-hazard that.
Bastards. Wastrels. Thieves.
Have a look at the movie 'Out of the Blue' to see what happens when unarmed civilians and out-gunned cops are faced with a lunitic. Perhaps David Gray would have been calmed down a bit if the poor dead cop had only told him that John Key was planning a cycle way for David to ride to town.
I prefer "Into the blue". Jessica Alba in a bikini for most of the movie.
Arrrgh, and now this!
We need to be closing useless "agencies" not creating more of them.
It's OUR money, you pricks, not yours.
By all accounts most of the police force are thick as two short planks. Just about any drongo can become a police oficer.
I certainly do not want them armed.
Regarding some of the things which money was spent on:
Climate change computer was used to make the decisions surrounding protecting peoples lives in the face of potential future climate changes. This includes peoples lives. Weather can be predicted to greater and lesser extents as is the reason why people pay for forecasts.
Keeping people warm is also protecting Kiwis since more than 1,600 people die every year, partly due to cold homes. The government has an obligation to protect the lives of citizens, no?
What use is an armed police officer to someone who has died from a cold home?
Ah, no.
NOT PC: "A government’s proper job is... to protect individual rights."
Isn't someones life their most prized piece of peoperty? Shouldn't their right to have it be protected?
NOT PC obviously thinks it is...
Not their right to have it, their right to not have it taken away. Big difference.
If you say it's up to the state to keep everyone alive then you obviously expect them to do their grocery shopping and hold their hand when they cross the road and wipe their bum for them so it doesn't get infected.
"Not their right to have it, their right to not have it taken away."
That is merely your assertion.
So...when circumstances are out of someones control...wouldn't this constitute their life being taken away? So then you are advocating the government providing heating to people who "need" it?
In fact, you are advocating Welfare in cases where someone cannot provide for themself.
Am I missing something Twr?
You're certainly missing the point of my post, yes. Assuming you're the same anonymous (which is why you should think of something to call yourself), you asserted "The government has an obligation to protect the lives of citizens, no?".
I countered saying that the government (essentially other people), has no duty to keep someone alive, merely a duty to not take action to remove life (or liberty) from someone. Doing nothing is not taking action. It is certainly not my responsibility to feed everyone who spends all their money on beer or smokes, however you seem to think it's ok for me to be forced to do so. In this situation, what motivation do my neighbours have to not spend all their money on beer and smokes when they know that I'll be forced to fill in the gaps?
The government is not necessarily the "other people" you suggest. People pay their tazxes and in exchange expect to receive protection of their rights. The same as any other transaction.
A person could rightly expect that they have a right to exist in their country.
Therefore it follows that the government they 'employ' to protect their individual rights has an obloigation to protect such rights as any other so contracted party would.
The government (working on behalf of those who willingly pay taxes to it and elect it) takes taxes from everybody else because it essentially owns the land under your feet. Despite you having a property title this is subject to certain conditions, one of which being that you must pay taxes and the other that the police can enforce others percieved rights against you.
You assume that our government is not libertarian. How wrong you are. Our government is working privately on behalf of those who elected it. These people assert their sovereignty over the land of NZ.
You may assert your own liberty as you wish however you would be doing so on land which is "owned" by a large libertarian group called mainstream NZ and they will defend it with force. The same way that you defend your own property with force. I invite you to assert your own inherent freedom any time you wish and assert your own perceived rights on others. See how far you get.
What you forget is that everybody thinks slightly differently. Values and ideals are not exactly similar between everyone. Therefore the rights of an individual are perceived differently in a libertarian society. You have no right to tell another person what their rights are - you have no divine power over them to determine what is best for them any more than they have to tell you what your rights are.
Inevitably libertarianism leads to a clash of groups who perceive different rights. Long story short the winning group ends up being government and the rest put up or shut up.
Simple really.
There are so many moral and factual errors there I don't know where to start!
In short:
- people don't pay their taxes cos they want to, they do it cos they have to
- the government *has* to be the accumulation of "other people". What else could it possibly be? It wouldn't continue to exist if all the people disappeared
- people get virtually no say in what the government they *employ* does for them. They can't opt out, and they can't stop the will of the rest of the country resulting in their possessions being forcibly taken from them.
- the government certainly does not own the land under your feet, and it's absurd to suggest it should. I know that these days it tries to act like that, but it's certainly not right to do so.
- why on earth would you want to try to tell others what their rights are? Personal liberty should be the fundamental right, with the respect of others' rights being the fundamental responsibility. This should be entrenched so there is no further argument about it, and so people had no way to just make shit up like they do now.
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