Butts in the gutters of Newmarket

I work in Newmarket. I often walk up Alma St, alongside the Maori TV building. It really disgusts me how they come out the side entrance, smoke in this small street and then just throw their butts in the gutter. Even at my worst as a smoker I would try to find somewhere better. There are usually a huge number of butts on display. You'd think as a principle sponsor of Quit-line that they would at least supply their staff / performers / contractors with outside ash trays so they'd leave the surrounds looking better.

I often have lunch in memorial park.  Recently as I walked back to work I passed the front door to Maori TV. I noticed for the first time that they had a sign up but pointing inwards asking people to smoke in the park opposite and not outside their building.

I suppose we should be grateful that there isn't a kindergarden or primary school opposite for them to send their people to smoke in but for the first time since I gave up smoking I was regretting it as that sign so offended me that I would have loved to have had a smoke and stubbed it out on their precious front steps.

ISIS Has Kiwis jumping at shadows

Islamophobia or just downright stupidity? According to TVNZ news, New Zealand businesses with names like Isis or Issis are getting resistence from customers and having to change their names.

There are dozens of New Zealand businesses operating under the name Isis or Issis, which is the name of an ancient Egyptian goddess.

TVNZ

This reminds me of a tale I heard 30 years ago about a company that had spent years building up their diet food business around a product called Aids. Their business got wiped out by the emergence of AIDS in the early 1980s. Ironically one of the early names for AIDS was "Slim" as late term sufferers lost a nearly all their body weight.

Now suddenly the world is focussing on the organisation sometimes called "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" or ISIL, sometimes the Levant gets translated as Syria and thus ISIL becomes ISIS.  Except, of course, this isn't even the name of the organisation. It's name is in Arabic and is more accurately represented as ad-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah fīl-ʻIraq wa ash-Shām (I have no idea what that initialises as, but the French Government has started referring to them as 'Daesh').

Suddenly we are told that people are refusing to do business with businesses with names similar to ISIS. How stupid can you get? Daesh isn't I.S.I.S.; I.S.i.S. isn't Isis. Isis isn't Issis. None of these businesses are related in any way to Daesh.

Salvation Army worker in sex inquiry

What's wrong with this picture?

A Salvation Army  worker and a 15 year old woman allegedly had a sexual relationship. According to Stuff:

"Salvation Army's central division commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ian Hutson, said it had received a complaint several months ago. It immediately stood down the employee and told police.

Police said their investigation was still at an early stage and the alleged victim had not yet been interviewed."

Stuff.co.nz.

Give up?

What ¿Que? thinks is wrong here is that the police were informed "several months ago" and "the alleged victim had not yet been interviewed". Huh? 

So why are the police spending time on the case but not advancing it? Either close the case and say they will do nothing or go and interview the woman and see if there's a case.

OK, it's under age sex, but not really what we think of when we think of child abuse. The Woman's of an age where we tend to ignore the "technical" violation when it's de facto, if not de jure, consensual. The employee apparently wasn't in a position of power over the woman. Ignoring that ¿Que? believes that laws that aren't enforced are ipso facto bad, there's very little going on.