http://www.stuff.co.nz/lightbox/nationa ... &width=640
What a stupid interview. What the fuck is the point in asking such an interesting guy like the police head from the Aramoana massacre questions that the media has already widely publicised the answers to?

CRUSH THEIR GUNS!!!!!!

you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers

MAKE THEM PRESS THE BUTTON ON THE CRUSHER!!!

slidecontrol wrote:you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers

And that's fairly easy for that cranky geriatric to say from behind a sheet of bullet proof glass.

He's dead now.

Cops found 18 firearms in that dicks house. Incredible.

Guns are scary

I'm a bit worried that there is a subtle anti-hero stance creeping into some of the reporting. Who cares what set him off, the guy was no better than any clock tower sniper or school shooter. He was a random shithead NOT a wronged man.

i concur.

Oli wrote: He was a random shithead NOT a wronged man.

Are you sure Oli, he's white and everything, maybe all that discrimination against white heterosexual males got too much for him?

his surname is dutch - he was clearly unstable.

but but you'd be pissed off to if everytime they posted a photo of you you had sweaty pits and a dumbbell behind your melon

Oli wrote:I'm a bit worried that there is a subtle anti-hero stance creeping into some of the reporting. Who cares what set him off, the guy was no better than any clock tower sniper or school shooter. He was a random shithead NOT a wronged man.

Psycho cop killing douchebag. I've been pissed off ever since they started calling him a "big softie" who "snapped". He was a nutter who it looks like had been preparing for a big showdown with authority for a frighteningly long time. He shouldn't be celebrated; he should be buried underneath an open-bottomed septic tank that drains a big public toilet thus that we can all go shit on his grave

Hmmm, not sure I'd go quite that far!

happybaboon wrote:Cops found 18 firearms in that dicks house. Incredible.

Guns are scary

guns can be scary but really they're tools, like hammers, chainsaws, nailguns or circular saws: with proper training, they can be very useful.

Just apropos of the Army/Navy Ariforce wrangle going on, there is a total review of the NZDF: basically we have to face the fact that we are a nation of 4 million people (so the size of greater Melbourne) living not too thickly spread out on some islands in the middle of a very large ocean. We have a lot of resource we claim in that ocean, and basically we need to be able to back it up if we want to exploit it.

The interesting thing to me is the activities of, particularly, China in giving aid to struggling pacific island "nations" and in return receiving their support in international fora, the completely unstable clusterfuck that is Indonesia (go to Bali for a holiday? You must be on crack). and some other interesting geopolitical stuff thats happening not too far from us.

Australia has announced that it will beef up its armed forces, and focus on its own "patch" more, and logically we should as well. Though making our specialist people available if it ensures interoperability, and importantly engenders goodwill among the people we could rightly consider allies is no bad thing (SAS to Afghanistan is the obvious example here).

My view on the NZDF is that we have three separate and competing command structures, with their own patches to protect, agendas to advance, and hands on the money tin. All have valid claims and all need decent, reliable, interoperable with likely allies, modern kit. The most expensive part of almost any military system is the training of the people to use it and the retention of trained staff. My view is that we cannot afford the three separate command structures anymore and need to look for another model. The one that most closely fits the tasks that our armed forces are likely to encounter is, in my view, the US Marines. They are a small (by comparison) ready reaction force, and the key difference between them and other branches of the service is that its a one stop shop: they have some of their own heavy lift capacity (aero and marine), their own armour, helicopters, air cover (F14's A-10s AH64's you name it): basically the idea is they get told to go, they go, they have all their own kit and they take it with them. They can be deployed quickly, efficiently, and can do whatever: take a port, guard it, special forces stuff, etc etc. Its a very interesting way of working, and the point is there is no inter-service rivalry etc. Our reorganised NZDF would logically concentrate on a Coast Guard/resource protection role, but that strikes me as a workable model: One chain of command, one budget, everybody working for the same agreed agenda. One of the issues is that one of the things that makes our separate forces work is that they have years of tradition, Royal patronage (Navy) and all that. Some way of keeping that would have to be managed.

But since its my money, I want the most bang* for my bucks.

*disclaimer: I just read about this stuff and think about things: I dont know much about anything really.


*geddit?