Police racist for interviewing in English

Brenden Sheehan (whose union background is documented by Insolent Prick) has slammed the Police as racist because they interviewed family members in English and didn’t allow him to sit in on the interviews.

I am surprised that Mr Sheehan thinks that in a homicide investigation, he has some divine right to sit in on interviews. He is not the father of the children.

And as for the Police being racist because they interviewed the children in English. Well if they were tourists in NZ, I could understand such a complaint, but they have lived here for six years, and presumably attended school here for six years. If they are unable to speak in English after six years of schooling, we have a far bigger problem.

I am trying to think of a single other country where you could live there for six years, and then accuse the local Police of racism for interviewing you in the national language.

Could you imagine it in France?

Could you imagine it in Japan?

Could you even imagine it in Samoa?

And nothing in the article suggests a request was even made to do the interview in Samoan.

Meanwhile the Dom Post reports Cabinet is looking at forcing no SOE power company to disconnect power until the planned disconnection has been investigated by WINZ to assess the risks of turning the power off.

Now if there are 500 disconnections a day, I’d guess a WINZ staffer will only be able to do two assessments a day, including site visits, so that is 250 or so extra staff at a cost of $25 million or so (including overheads).

And I can’t imagine any WINZ worker will ever ever want to risk saying it is okay to disconnect, in case something bad happens. So I predict automatic financial assistance for anyone who has forgotten to pay their power bill.

I would have thought the sensible thing for Cabinet to do is to actually wait for the facts to be revealed in the investigation, before making major policy changes.

I’m not actually against power companies being slowed down from disconnecting (it should be a last resort, not a standard credit control feature), but kneejerk policy making rarely leads to sensible policy.