So I wonder if there is just a little bit of vindictiveness in this action by police:
A High Court judge has reserved his decision on an appeal by police over a District Court's acquittal of author Alan Duff on traffic charges.
In the High Court at Rotorua today, Justice Paul Heath also reserved his decision on an application from Duff's lawyer to have the appeal thrown out.
Duff, who is temporarily living in France, was found not guilty in Taupo District Court in June last year.
Police laid charges after he failed to remain at the scene after being stopped for speeding in September 2007.
Two further charges of resisting arrest were dropped with Judge Chris McGuire criticising police for laying them in the first place.
He said in his written judgment that evidence in support of the resisting charges was "unpersuasive and vague" and police were right to seek leave to withdraw them.
"The result, however, is that I am left uneasy over whether police prosecutorial power was used wisely and fairly," Judge McGuire said before dismissing the other charges.
Duff was charged after he was stopped for speeding north of Taupo.
This ties in with something I wrote a couple of days ago about the police being partly to blame for the legal aid blowout. I don't know if Duff is legally-aided, though his money woes are well-documented.
You have to wonder about the wisdom of pursuing a trivial matter such as this, after the last attempt to convict got a working-over by the judge.
Here is an information release that may be of use to TV3's news team:
Vladimir Putin is the Prime Minister of Russia, not the President.
And Dmitri Medvedev is the President of Russia, not the Prime Minister.
******
I dream of the day when the offensive utterings of one Mr Laws no longer dominate the media. There's clearly an opening for some aspiring blogger to make a name for him/herself by devoting a site to the witless ravings of the man - much like the site Editing the Herald so cleverly savages the New Zealand Herald. God knows, I tire of the buffoon's antics.
However. I can hardly let this pass without comment.
Talkback host and Wanganui mayor Michael Laws remains defiant despite a Broadcasting Standards Authority ruling that found he had used "sustained personal abuse" against two firemen.
Later on we learn that Laws accused the Fire Service of using "little dead Polynesian kiddies as a marketing tool", merely because someone pointed out that the fire that killed four children, might have been prevented if chips had not been left unattended in a frying pan, and if smoke alarms had been installed and operational.
During the attack, Mr Laws said Cocker should have the "er" removed from his name and said: "You're a cock".
He called the firemen "dickheads in a uniform", "idiots", "morons", "arseholes" and said racism was going on.
Mr Laws is ever so talented at exposing racism. He knows what it looks like. He sees it every time he looks in the mirror.
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