NewstalkZB reports:

Former Labour Minister and list MP Ginny Andersen has reshared a meme on her personal Instagram of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and King Charles meeting at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Samoa that poked fun at the shape of His Majesty’s trousers.

The former police minister has since removed the post from her social media accounts.

Luxon and Charles were attending the meeting in Apia this week, as leaders and foreign ministers from 56 Commonwealth nations came together for the annual summit. The pair snapped a photo together while there, which the Prime Minister shared on Instagram.

“King Charles III has a great love of New Zealand. It was a pleasure to have an audience with His Majesty today in Samoa,” Luxon captioned the post.

The post Andersen reshared – a meme created by the page @cindywithsign – took the picture shared by Luxon, overlaying the screenshot with a sign that labelled a clothing blunder the King had in the photo as a “king*ssy”.

“What I’m saying to you is that showing his king*ssy on main like that is just crazy [crying emoji],” the sign read.

I don’t think she needed to remove it. When do you look at the photo, it is sort of funny.

Not particularly wise for an MP to reshare it, but it is sort of funny, and done in humour not malice.

The Liberal Party has been the dominant party in Canada for many years. However in the recent provincial elections in British Columbia they were not even on the ballot, as they were looking to come a distant third – so they pulled out.

Their withdrawal has allowed the more leftish NDP to narrowly beat the Conservatives by one seat, but what the Liberals did would be the equivalent of Labour not standing any candidates in an election, so the Alliance could win.

The Liberals ruled BC from 2001 to 2017. Here’s the number of seats each party has won since 2000:

The Conservatives went from 2% in 2020 to 43% in 2024, a remarkable achievement. They won’t quite get to form Government due to the Liberals pulling out to stop vote splitting, but probably will in time.

Stuff reports:

A Northland principal has questioned the level of nutrition in the new free school lunch programme that will be rolled out from next year at a cost of $3 per meal.

The moment I saw this paragraph, I knew who the principal would be.

However, Hora Hora School principal, Pat Newman, said at $3 per meal, he doubted the new external providers of the food would prioritise health.

“I don’t think families from homes with more funds would be sitting down to $3 meals. Why should kids from lower income families be made to do that?“ Newman told Stuff.

The current model of providing lunches on site meant children had “nutritious, healthy and nice food”, he said, whereas the Minister was only interested in “saving money”.

Of course it is Mr Newman, who is quoted regularly by media as a critic without reference to the fact he stood for Parliament for the Labour Party.

Radio NZ reports:

The Ministry of Health has not won itself many friends this week with its failure to inform minister Casey Costello that one of its staffers is related to her arch-rival in Parliament.

Costello has every right to feel aggrieved.

For months, she has been working with health officials on tobacco reform policy, all the while, unbeknownst to her, one of them was the sister-in-law of Labour’s Ayesha Verrall.

It is staggering that no-one told the Minister. This was not a minor conflict, but the sister-in-law of her direct parliamentary opponent, and in an area which she had been most attacked about.

The Chief Executive and/or the secondees in the Minister’s office should have advised the Minister.

It is true, as has been stressed by Verrall and Labour leader Chris Hipkins, that many MPs have relations who work in the public service. Hipkins points out that when he was a minister, he regularly held meetings attended by a National MP’s sibling.

Public servants can’t choose their relatives. That should not be a barrier to them being in the public service, and we never want to see again the disgraceful treatment of Madeleine Setchell who was sacked at the behest of a Minister, who then lied about it, because her partner worked for National.

But Ministers should be aware of political conflicts with senior staff, so that it comes as no surprise to them, and that they can be reassured about how the conflict is being managed.

The ministry has accepted as much and apologised for the “oversight”. It says the responsibility lay with the ministry and not with the staffer, who it says followed all the correct protocols.

“The ministry’s conflict of interest protocol is well communicated to all staff and was adhered to by the individual in this case. Specifically, appropriate declarations were made and management plans put in place.”

Given that, the health official herself should also feel deeply let down by her employer.

By the ministry’s account, she did everything that was asked and expected of her.

The fault is with the ministry, not the employee. Having said that, it would be prudent considering the seniority of the staffer, the role of the person she is related to, and the sensitivity of the policy area she was in, to have proactively asked if her conflict had been disclosed to the Minister.

Hipkins has not helped Labour’s case in initially describing the official as Verrall’s “distant relative”.

When it comes to in-laws, there are varying degrees of closeness, but “distant relative” is not a fair descriptor for a sister-in-law. Hipkins says he misspoke.

A distant relative would be a second cousin, not someone married to your sibling or is the sibling of your wife.

There has been a large amount of confidential material in the area of tobacco and vaping leaked to the opposition and/or the media. Now personally I think it is highly unlikely that Verall’s sister-in-law would be the leaker, as she would know she would be under intense scrutiny. But you can imagine the surprise to the Minister who has had ministry staff leaking to Verrall in this area, and then finds out the principal advisor in this area is Verrall’s sister-in-law.

Willie Jackson writes:

The backlash generated by ACT, National, NZ First, Hobson’s Pledge and other right-wing bad faith actors towards Solicitor-General Una Jagose’s prosecution guidelines, has been nothing short of a race-based moral panic to fan the flames of racism rather than challenge them.

Sure. Opposing racism is racism.

Jagose’s prosecution guidelines were not new! These guidelines had been in place to ensure that when a judge passes sentence, they have the flexibility and independence to pass judgments that ensure mercy and rehabilitation are at the heart of our justice system.

This is so justice is fair.

It is concerning that Labour’s fifth highest ranked MP doesn’t understand the difference between prosecutors and judges. This is not a trivial technical error. Does no one in Labour (or the Herald) fact check what Willie writes?

For the benefit of Willie, and his staff, the prosecution guidelines have zero impact on a judge passing a sentence. None at all. They are guidelines for prosecutors in deciding whether to charge someone with a crime.

The prosecution guidelines list all those who should have a fuller context looked at before a judge passes sentence.

This was not a one off error. Willie literally has no idea what he is talking about.

The Herald reports:

Onslow College said the gym previously had a seismic rating of 70% of the NBS and O Block had a rating of 55%. …

Gym (Block Q): An overall NBS rating of 15%, with the ceiling braces posing the greatest risk.

I’m not an engineer but as a lay person I don’t understand how a building can be assessed at 70% of NBS one moment and then 15% the next.

The Herald reports:

The Māori Development Minister has cautioned the group tasked with deciding the future of Ihumātao – which has so far cost the Crown $500,000 – that they could be shown the door, if they fail to find a solution.

It has been almost four years since former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern oversaw the purchase of the highly-disputed Auckland land from Fletcher Building for $29.9 million.

This was private land, with 480 houses to be built on it. Ardern spent $30 million of taxpayer money to buy it (which was ruled by the Auditor-General to be illegal), and set up a committee to decide on a mix or housing and other uses for it.

The houses they stopped being built there – 480 – is greater than the entire first two years of Kiwibuild.

So four years later we have $30 million spent, $500,000 on a committee that has done nothing and no houses.

Documents show Te Puni Kōkiri (the Ministry of Māori Development) has contributed $200,000 to cover costs for the steering group.

A contract valued at $300,000 was also entered into with the office of the Kīngitanga in June last year, to engage with the local community and produce a report on potential land use options.

Jackson said disestablishing the group now would see that money go to waste.

LOL. It has already gone to waste. Willie just wants more of it.

NewstalkZB reports:

Former Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson told Mike Hosking all this group is capable of doing is talking.    

He says he wouldn’t give them an ultimatum, he’d just boot them now. 

Abolish the group, and have the crown offer to sell it at cost to local iwi or hapu, and they can spend their own money then deciding what to do with it.

The Spinoff reported:

On a quiet Friday afternoon in August, justice minister Paul Goldsmith announced the appointment of three leadership roles at the Human Rights Commission: Stephen Rainbow as chief human rights commissioner, Gail Pacheco as equal employment opportunities commissioner and Melissa Derby as race relations commissioner. The three are scheduled to take up their new roles next month. 

Human rights commissioner appointments have historically been uncontroversial, even if the commissioners themselves sometimes court controversy in the role.

This is nonsense for a start. What they mean is that when the appointments are the normal left-wingers, then the media don’t cover it. There was in fact lots of criticism of Paul Hunt being appointed considering he was in the Corbyn faction of the UK Labour Party, but it is only controversial if it is left wingers who are upset.

But documents released under OIA to The Spinoff last week suggest the recruitment process wasn’t straightforward, with neither Rainbow nor Derby being put forward as shortlisted candidates by the independent panel tasked with conducting the “transparent process”.

Of course not. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. The Government wants Commissioners who believe in equality, while the officials want ones who only believe in equity.

In 2003 I founded Mt Hobson Middle School and led it for 18 years.

Emily Martin is a wonderful young person and so superbly supported by her family.

The reasons she gives (from 27mins on) for Mt Hobson Middle School being a key to her development is exactly why we are applying for Charter Schools.

Happy listening.

Alwyn Poole
alwyn.poole@gmail.com
Innovative Education Consultants Ltd
Education 710+ Ltd
(both sites currently being re-done)
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

Not a huge amount of change in the last three days, except five of the six forecasts now have Trump winning Pennsylvania, and hence the White House.

Almost 32 million Americans have already early voted.

Geoffrey Kabat writes:

In 2003, UCLA epidemiologist James Enstrom and I published a study of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)—also called “secondhand smoke” or “passive smoking”—in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Using data from the American Cancer Society’s prospective study of 1 million adults, we concluded that ETS exposure was not associated with increased mortality.

Since that conclusion flew in the face of the conventional wisdom that had long driven state and local bans on smoking in public places, our study understandably sparked a controversy in the public health community. But the intensity of the attack on us in the pages of a medical journal—by critics who were certain that our study had to be wrong but typically failed to provide specific evidence of fatal errors—vividly illustrates what can happen when policy preferences that have taken on the status of doctrine override rational scientific debate.

We see this in so many other areas of science. Findings that contradict policy preferences are often attacked by scientists.

The response to our paper was largely political. This was evident from the fact that the ACS attacked the paper during the two-day embargo period, before it went online. The clear intent was to delegitimize the study in the court of public opinion. This initial attack invited others to pile on, alleging flaws in our methods. But as the BMJ‘s editors pointed out, those charges generally were not backed by any reference to actual data from the paper.

The head epidemiologist at the ACS condemned our paper as tobacco industry “disinformation,” and other tobacco control activists went even further, citing our paper in a federal racketeering case against cigarette companies. They alleged that the paper was part of a tobacco industry conspiracy to discredit scientific evidence concerning the hazards of smoking. This use of lawfare rather than open scientific debate seemed designed to have a chilling effect on researchers studying passive smoking, discouraging them from reporting politically inconvenient results.

The organizers of this attack felt it necessary to portray us as corrupt agents of the tobacco industry, even though we had long track records researching the effects of smoking and other questions in public health. Our paper included a 200-word declaration stating that the tobacco industry had no involvement with the paper.

We saw similar with the Covid-19 science. Anyone who deviated from the accepted line was pilloried.

The new paper from the American Cancer Society, published last April in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, comes 21 years after the brouhaha over our BMJ paper and sheds further light on the controversy. This major ACS paper aims to further reduce the incidence of cancer by providing data that can be used to improve policies and practices. …

The “population-attributable fraction” (PAF)—that is, the share of cancer deaths that could be prevented if a given risk factor were removed—is 28.5 percent for cigarette smoking and 0.7 percent for secondhand smoke—a 41-fold difference. Although the PAF for secondhand smoke is statistically significant, the magnitude of the risk is negligible and similar to the risk estimate in our BMJ paper.

So the ACS attacked the paper 21 years ago, but has now just released its own study that backs it up.

For the scientific enterprise to succeed, unpopular findings must be discussed objectively, rather than dismissed summarily as obviously wrong. Leveling ad hominem attacks at researchers for alleged pro-industry bias is no substitute for a rigorous and fair-minded analysis of the data.

The part in bold should be nailed up on the wall of the Royal Society.

One can of course still make a good policy case for banning smoking in enclosed areas, even if the risk of actual cancer or heart disease from second hand smoke is low. You can make a policy case on the basis it is very unpleasant for people to be subject to second hand smoke on the basis of irriting the eyes, making you cough, the smell etc.

Radio NZ reports:

Waikato public hospital has told nurses not to speak to patients in any language other than English.

A memo sent to all nursing staff last Friday, obtained by RNZ, said concerns had been raised about other languages being used, and that exclusive use of English in all clinical settings was safer for treating people.

A doctor who saw the memo said it was clearly aimed at Indian, Filipino and Pasifika nurses, who were healthcare “heroes” but were now being victimised.

No one is being victimised by being asked to speak in English in health clinical settings, just as English is also the required language for aviation. The need for clarity and clear communication saves lives.

Having said that, there should be some flexibility. If both parties to a conversation are more fluent or comfortable in another language, then I have no problem with that being used. So if a patient is more fluent in Mandarin, and a health professional speaks Mandarin, then that helps clear communications.

However if there are more than two people present, then English should be used unless everyone can understand the other language. You shouldn’t have one healthcare professional unable to understand what is being said.

In 1992 the Canberra Times asked 300 political and history academics to nominate the five greatest Australian PMs. The results of that survey tells us much more about the academics than the PMs. Their top six were:

1. Ben Chifley, Labor, won 1 election, served 4.5 years
2. John Curtin, Labor, won 1 election, served 3.75 years
3. Alfred Deakin, Protectionist then Liberal, won 1 election , served 5 years
4. Gough Whitlam, Labor, won 2 elections, served 3 years
5. Robert Menzies, Liberal, won 8 elections, served 18.5 years
6. Billy Hughes, Nationalist, won 2 elections, served 7.5 years

Placing Gough Whitlam over Robert Menzies is so ridiculous it is funny.

Radio NZ report:

E tū union spokesperson Michael Wood, himself a former transport minister, told Nine to Noon on Tuesday privatisation would undermine safety.

“Having appropriate aviation security is one of the most safety critical things of the system, and the prospect of privatising those services does compromise them,” Wood said.

“We, alongside other unions, have real concerns about this and staff are extremely concerned about what this might mean for the safety of everyone who uses our airports.”

Around the world, almost all airport security is done by the private sector, not the Government.

The notion that changing airline security from the CAA to Airports is extremely concerning for safety is hysterical. The reality is you could abolish aviation security entirely, and 99.9999% of flights would be unaffected.

If security was privatised, Wood feared competing interests could lead to lacklustre safety measures.

“If they were airports or airlines who could deliver these services… [They] have an interest in other operational matters,” he said.

“If things are running late, that costs airlines a lot of money and that starts to bring other incentives into the system, other than the safety of ensuring everyone is appropriately screened and that process is done well.”

What Michael Wood is saying is that if airports ran airport security, then they might actually work to reduce massive queues, as it is in their interest to do so. Wow, that would be terrible.

NZ Initiative Chair Roger Partridge has written an excellent report, called Who Makes the Law?

It deals with how the Supreme Court has gone from interpreting law to making law, and how we can change this.

If I could pick any one report for Parliament to act on, then this would be the report out of the many good ones they have done. It is about fundamental democracy.

Partridge notes the following ways in which the Supreme Court has acted unconventionally:

1. The Court has embraced a very loose or ‘liberal’ approach to interpreting laws passed by Parliament. This approach involves the Court narrowly interpreting, ‘stretching’ or even ignoring clear statutory language the Court does not like. Through this process, the Court has essentially granted itself the power to rewrite laws made by Parliament.
2. The Supreme Court has changed its approach to the ‘common law’ – the body of law developed by judges over many centuries. The Court now thinks its role is to reshape or ‘develop’ the common law’s legal principles to give effect to what it thinks are contemporary social values. This means that unelected judges are making policy decisions that would traditionally have been left to Parliament.

There are many examples in the report. But what I like is that the report doesn’t just whinge about this. It proposes concrete actions Parliament can take to improve things. They are:

1. Passing legislation to overturn aberrant judicial decisions and ensure the courts give effect to Parliament’s wishes, such as the Ellis tikanga ruling to be over-ruled and replaced with a comprehensive statutory framework for how and when tikanga should be considered by courts
2. Adding ‘guard rails’ in the Senior Courts Act by defining the meaning of the rule of law to limit the Court’s activist tendencies.
3. Amending the Legislation Act 2019 to constrain the Court’s loose approach to statutory interpretation and to require judges to adhere more closely to statutory text
4. Make it clear that the courts cannot use common law presumptions to displace or qualify clear statutory words, adopt meanings inconsistent with statutory purpose or adopt unreasonable interpretations.
5. Repealing or amending provisions like section 6 of the Bill of Rights Act that invite judicial rewriting of statutes the courts do not like.
6. Supreme Court judges could serve for a set period (say, 5–7 years) before returning to the Court of Appeal. This would be balanced by promoting Court of Appeal judges to fill the vacated Supreme Court positions. Such a rotation system could help prevent our most senior judges from becoming too detached from practical realities.emphasise judicial restraint and respect for the sovereignty of Parliament and the rule of law

It is no surprise that some legal academics have reacted negatively to the report. They are no doubt delighted to have a progressive Supreme Court implementing a policy agenda they agree with.

This is from an Associate Professor on Twitter. I actually like much of what he says in other areas, but here I have to laugh at the reference twice to how informed commentators say there is no real concern about the Supreme Court. This is probably the case in university law schools, but let me say that amongst lawyers and politicians on the centre-right there is huge concern that has been growing for some time.

The Supreme Court decision on the Three Strikes Law was such an act of blatant defiance, that it is no surprise there has been a backlash.

Nicole McKee announced:

The Government is listening to New Zealanders and Cabinet has agreed to recommend modifications to the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee says.

I’m glad they took on board that the bill as introduced was so watered down from the old law, that it would not be worth proceeding with. And the two changes made go in the right direction, but fall short of what I hoped for.

“Originally the Bill set the threshold for triggering the regime at more than 24 months imprisonment across the board. While the qualifying sentence exists to ensure severe penalties are reserved for serious cases, we agree with submitters that this was set too high and are lowering it to make sure that offenders face appropriate consequences for serious violent and sexual offending.

Cabinet is proposing that the qualifying sentence threshold will be reduced to more than 12 months imprisonment at the first strike. As a result, more offenders will face stiffer penalties if they go on to commit serious crimes.

The threshold will remain at more than 24 months imprisonment at strikes two and three to ensure that the resulting stiffer penalties are reserved for more serious offending, as is the intention of the Three Strikes regime.

So they have lowered the threshold for first strikes from a 24 month sentence to a 12 month sentence. In reality this may not capture many more people as if a prison sentence is for less than 24 months anyway, it is often converted to home detention.

The threshold for first strikes should be conviction of a qualifying offence. There is no extra penalty for a first strike – but they get the formal court warning about future strikes. Why would you want to allow people to avoid getting a warning if they get home detention instead of prison? The idea is to deter.

“We are also making sure that those who received strike warnings under the previous regime for offending which meets the qualifying threshold will keep these warnings going into the new regime. Those who were warned under the previous regime will face consequences if they continue to offend.”

It was outrageous that those who had strikes under the old law were being reset to zero strikes. So it is good that some of those strikes will be carried over. But rather than carry all strikes over, they are only going to carry over strikes that would have been strikes under the new law. This means between half and two thirds of strikes won’t be carried over.

A test of this revised bill is whether it meets the test laid down by Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith, who in opposition said:

“It is unimaginable that offenders such as Wiremu Allen, who was convicted of a third strike offence which entailed breaking into a house, demanding money from the victim and then shooting him, would not receive the maximum mandatory sentence today.

So how would Wiremu do under the revised bill:

He got 10 months for his first strike offence of injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. That strike is not carried over because he would not get a strike under this law.

Ge got 13 1/2 months for his second strike of robbery. That strike is not carried over because he would not get a strike under this law.

So Wiremu is happy. Neither of his first two strikes would be strikes under this law.

His third strike of a home invasion armed with pistols where he bashed the victim and his associate shot the victim in the knee would at best be a first strike under this law. He would have to bash or strangle at least two more victims before he gets what Goldsmith said he should get – the maximum sentence without parole.

It seems the Government has been captured by officials again. They knew they had to make changes to the bill as introduced, but have made the smallest possible change. It is no surprise officials are against the bill. They probably all studied criminology at Victoria University. There’s only one criminologist in NZ who actually believes in deterrence.

To see how bad the advice is, look at this article in the Herald:

The Government has toughened Three Strikes 2.0 in response to feedback that the initial proposals were too soft.

How much tougher can now be revealed: the Ministry of Justice estimates that 4312 more first-strikers, 649 more second-strikers, and 88 more third-strikers will be added in the regime’s first 10 years, compared to the estimates for the original proposals (7795 first-strikers, 266 second-strikers, and 11 third-strikers).

In percentage terms, the number of first-strikers would increase by 55%, second-strikers by 244%, and third-strikers by 800%.

This is just nonsense. You can tell that by looking at the numbers for the 12 years the much tougher law was in place for. The numbers were:

• 14,687 First strikers
• About 750 second strikers
• 25 Third Strikers

So there were 25 third strikes under the original law in 12 years and the Ministry is saying under this softer law, there would be 88!

Using the thresholds in the introduced bill, only 7 of the 25 third strikes would “earn” three strikes. Under the new threshold, that increases marginally from 7 to 8.

So we have 12 years of actual data showing under this law, there would only have been eight third strikers. Yet the Ministry says it will lead to 88 third strikers. The addition of two extra qualifying offences could not explain this huge difference.

And officials said a retrospective regime contravened a fundamental justice principle: that you should only suffer penalties that existed at the time of the offending.

Officials are bullshitting Ministers. Carrying over strikes earns under the old law is not retrospective in any way. As I stated in my submission:

Legislation is retrospective if it applies to an event or action that has already taken place. Carrying the strikes over would have no impact on an individual for their past actions, unless they commit a crime in future. The punishment will apply to their decision to commit a crime, in the knowledge of what the law now provides.

No criminal will be given a penalty that didn’t exist at the time of their offending. The officials are completely wrong in calling it retrospective. They hoodwinked Ministers initially on this. The officials should be called before a select committee and asked to justify their advice which contravenes not just the general definition of retrospective but also the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee guidelines.

While it is very close, the poll based projections are that Kamala Harris is more likely than not to lose to Donald Trump. She is now attacking him on the grounds he is unfit for office. While I agree with her, that is not going to get her the few remaining swing voters. Anyone who thinks he is unfit is already with her. Those undecided are not unaware of who Trump is, and just calling him a fascist won’t persuade them.

In my Patreon post (paywalled), I outline the one way I think Harris can win the election, and that is by focusing on an area that is a weakness for her, but can be turned into a strength – inflation.

The Herald reports:

The whānau of a man on a hunger strike to protest constitutional injustices says he was close to death when the court ruled Francis Shaw has the right to make his own decisions, even if he could die.

Shaw, a Rimutaka Prison inmate, is now 92 days into his hunger strike.

“He was going to die if he didn’t have any fluids, that’s a definite,” his brother Cameron said.

Shaw, who was jailed for 10 and a half months on charges of common assault, assault with a weapon, and possessing an offensive weapon, told prison staff on July 17 he was on a hunger strike and had not eaten since arriving there two days earlier.

I’ve lost track of how many hunger strikes Shaw has had. Hew doesn’t seem to be very good at them.

I think his first one was in 1989!

In 2020 he wanted a Maori Parliament.

In 2021 he was striking for a written constitution.

There’s been lots of stories about his various hunger strikes in prison. Sadly very few stories about all the victims of his criminal offending.

The Herald reports:

A review of legislation that gives the Crown the power to take private land for public infrastructure projects like roads, schools and police stations has been completed.

The review could potentially lead to faster and simplified land acquisition processes.

Some caution is needed here. The RMA reforms are about allowing people who already own property to easier develop their own property.

The Public Works Act is about the ability of the Crown to take your property off you, without your consent.

It is what you call a necessary evil. Without it, no new roads could probably ever happen. But it is ripe for misuse, if it is made too easy.

“For example, all infrastructure projects that use the act must meet a high threshold of being of national and regional significance. While a high threshold is important for protecting private property rights, there are many worthy and necessary projects that are vital for a particular region or community but may not be nationally significant.

This sounds good in theory, but can you trust local government not to abuse it? The Wellington City Council is talking about using the Public Works Act to confiscate Johnsonville Mall off Stride Properties, purely because Stride won’t redevelop the mall. Using the PWA to try and blackmail a property owner into spending money that isn’t commercially sensible is reprehensible.