Hewitson on Slater

Michele Hewitson interviews Cameron Slater for her weekly interview.  Some extracts:

spoke to him during the lunch break on Wednesday and, during that phone conversation, he said he thought the judge would reserve his judgment, which proved to be the case.

He then proceeded to say, mildly for him, rude things about the judge.

When we met on Thursday (he’d suggested we meet at the zoo, which was tempting but he would have enjoyed being photographed outside the monkey cage far too much) I asked whether it was clever to slag off a judge to a journalist.

He said: “He’s been rude to me!” But was being rude about him clever?

“Probably not. But then again, you know, do I trust … the justice system and that the judge will put aside personal feelings … ? Am I stupid? Probably.”

I’m quite sure the Judge will put aside personal feelings.

I asked if he was a bully and he said: “Yep. I admit that.” That’s not an attractive trait to admit to. “No, it’s not.” He says the drugs he was taking for his depression caused the “self-limiting mechanism” that most people have to “disappear”. …

He used to earn, he says, probably $150,000 a year and did so for years and now he’s on a sickness benefit and the family home has gone.

He is in a prolonged battle with his insurance company over a cancelled income protection policy.

He says he has been “a complete arsehole to live with” and “rude, abrupt, thoughtless, uncaring” to his wife.

He hasn’t been happy and hasn’t liked himself for years now. He is working on happiness and is now off the drugs he says his insurance company “made” him take and which he believes made him madder.

He said, perhaps hopefully, that he thinks the blog has become more temperate. “I’m not using nicknames and derogatory terms.” (He was still calling North Shore mayor Andrew Williams a “clown” last time I looked, but that’s almost affectionate for him.)

I’m not sure most people would term “corpse fiddler” temperate, but that was off-blog.

For Cameron, corpse fiddler is temperate!