Similar Posts

- Advertisement -

9 Comments

  1. TOO LATE

    Sitting in your favorite arm chair
    tuned to your TV screen
    your quarter acre section
    is looking rather green
    you know you have no problems
    you do nothing out of the blue
    you’ve got a steady record
    and a nice warm home to go to

    Yet you shrug and say what of it
    we all have demons in the closet
    and when it is too late to stop it
    will you remember Neil Roberts?

    When you’ve tried your hardest
    to make a simple dream come true
    people you’ve never met before
    seem to know all about you
    now there’s nothing you can do
    they’re tapping all your calls
    then you know the banana republics
    got you by the balls

    Yet you shrug and say what of it
    we all have demons in the closet
    and when it is too late to stop it
    will you remember Neil Roberts?

    They say that you’ll have happy years
    they say a good man has no fears
    they say that even walls have ears
    as freedom slowly disappears

    Yet you shrug and say what of it
    we all have demons in the closet
    and when it is too late to stop it
    will you remember Neil Roberts?

    …legendary Aotearoa punk band No Idea (1984)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XsY8_jfJ58

    1. I remember Neil Roberts I think, objected to having our records amalgamated on computers. Died.
      Good lyrics thanks.

  2. Wondering. Jesse Shane Kempson was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years for the murder of Grace Millane. If we’d listened to the most vigorous concerns about CCTV and mass surveillance would there have been enough evidence to convict him?
    The video evidence of where he was, when was critical.
    What about all the other cases where street CCTV has assisted in solving situations?

    Should suspicion and fears about sinister use of such information mean we don’t have it at all?

    1. Peter – It is hard, we catch the latest perps, we hope. Then what? There have always been perps, and the papers are full of the nasty stories. Do people take steps to improve things, keep themselves, others safe? Each case is treated as an aberration and the victim’s report is read out with the same phrases about hurt, and their lovely nature, and how the perp will be out in three years time if they behave, and the loved one has been wiped out for ever. People spend their whole lives working for the betterment of the community, trying to improve conditions, for children, for parents, for young offenders, for troubled youth, for drug takers and alcoholics, to cut out brutalising in prisons. Also to keep people in prison who are constant or repeat offenders.

      People could help themselves byttaking an interest in their own and others welfare, before they are jolted into it by some tragic happening. Grace Mullane was young, just out of uni I think. She was following a behaviour that apparently many young adult women do, go away from home and play up. But there need to be rules about how far the playing up goes. How did she know that pick-up for the night would do so? She didn’t. Prostitutes have to face this blank moral face regularly and try to keep themselves safe. But sometimes they lose their lives. Did Grace feel divine, deserving of everything going well for her especially, in a world where one’s heart should break reading about all the cruelties, not just when there are national fights as in Ukraine but everyday. But we aren’t troubled, we are all right, so we don’t read or listen to those stories.

      1. Grey Warbler. It doesn’t behove any of us to judge the late Grace Mullane – more so when “thinking” facts, using abbreviations, and then having the nerve to suggest that this dead young woman was “ playing up “ because her social milieu differs so radically from that of times past.

        I suggest that you not speculate about whether Grace Mullane felt “divine.” Trusting people tend to assume that others are equally trustworthy; Grace was young, she had a lot to drink. How she felt is her business, and dragging her into arguments about surveillance and suggesting that she may have somehow contributed to her own shocking demise,sucks. Respect the dead please.

        1. Applewood
          You have lost your sense of balance about women as citizens. Fact: Grace helped to bring about her own demise by her actions. Those who don’t look life in the face and watch out for themselves are lucky if they don’t strike problems. If someone has sex, it puts both in a vulnerable situation, but females are usually the most vulnerable. One should know it, and make an attempt to keep oneself safe. Do middle class women not face the sort of problems that prostitutes do; are they in a different better class? When a prostitute is murdered do all the nice women in the country set up fund raising projects to honour her?

          You say preachily respect the dead – I do. I think what sucks is your emotional, irrational attitude not mine. A way of preventing murder like this is not to participate in sex with someone you have only known for a few hours.. Grace looked young and sweet and expected to be treated as such, but objective assessment says that the news about treatment of women is often bad. At an age regarded as adult, with full intelligence, a careful woman should be adopting a self-protective approach with strangers.

          Someone who was very vulnerable and was murdered was Lena Harrap, who had Downs Syndrome. It is disgraceful that she could not be left alone to enjoy a lone morning walk. I feel extremely sorry about that, that women can’t have the freedom to go out into the community in a normal way, respected and not molested.
          https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126464351/auckland-woman-28-found-dead-after-going-missing-during-walk

          I didn’t expect to be censured for what is an obvious conclusion to anyone interested in good relationships in civil society on this, a blog for thinking adults. I consider the response to my original comment is inappropriate, have replied, and will not interact further on this.

Comments are closed.