mike carey

Not even presidential candidates? I guess that means we have to make up pseudonyms for all of them, not just Donald Drumpf. That could be fun!

Isn't it the candidate's real name?

Because he's serving breakfast? Or is breakfast.

A thoughtful article about 'rape culture' from the victim of an assault. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/12/i-didnt-understand-culture-until-i-was-attacked?CMP=share_btn_tw

I quite like a G&T, or even straight tonic water [or bitter lemon]. However, I'm quite partial to a glass of straight gin to sip on, I'm just worried that I'll drink too much of it! Next time I go abroad I should buy a couple of litres of Bombay Sapphire at the duty free on the way home. I can always use more of those blue bottles!

Sooo, ArVaGuy, it was that good?? Is that better?

I think we need to be careful to distinguish between what courts do and what police investigors do. In a trial there is and should be a presumption of innocence. Where an alleged crime is being investigated, whether it's because there is physical evidence of something that may be a crime, or because there's a complaint that what may be a crime has happened, the task of the police investigator is to establish the facts, not to make any assumptions about the guilt or otherwise of any people who might be linked to the event. In doing so, they have to remember the level of proof they have to establish, and that is that the person is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. In the case of an alleged sexual assault, the person making the complaint is entitled to be believed in their claim that something has happened, but the investigator should make no assumptions about guilt or innocence. Whether it is assault, sexual assault or rape, or something else [or indeed that no offence has occurred], is what the investigator has to determine from interviews and/or physical evidence, and in some cases the starting point will be that something physical happened between two individuals. Believing a complainant is accepting that it is their perception of what has happened, nothing more. It does not mean accepting that their perception is objectively true or that if they have accused someone that the person is guilty. Beyond anything else, the police should be aware that aggressive questioning based on an assumption of guilt is likely to result in tainted evidence that is inadmissable in court.

A Ten Commandments app sorta rings alarm bells for me!

'Irony day' sounds like 'a rainy day'.

If you're on a Windows device look for Character Map in the programs. Some computers have keyboard short cuts but I can't make them work. In the mean time, à á â ç è é ñ ï ó

I'm a little questioning of the whole idea of cultural appropriation, and if it is a thing, where does it start and end. Some cultural expressions may be seen as defining a particular cultural group, but others are just something that members of the group like. Anglo-Australians and -Americans have 'appropriated' food culture from every immigrant group. What is the line, if there even is one, between cultural appropriation and adopting and adapting an idea? Can it be respectful, or is it always a type of theft? Oh, and on dreads, who do they belong to? Are they Afro-Caribbean culture that African Americans have appropriated? Are they part of an Ethiopian culture that Jamaicans appropriated? Or are they all of the above as well as being a hippy cultural artefact used by all sorts of people? I think in Bieber's case it is an affectation.

Saw this guy on TV this evening, an Uber driver who started a blog of his experiences and now has a book offer from Harper Collins. One of his stories is about having a gay escort as a passenger. He's not hard on the eye, either. http://diaryofanuberdriver.com/

Je ne suis pas Miss Piggy!

Thanks, Unicorn. Governments get agitated about what judges do, or what cases are prosecuted but they can't sack the judicial officers short of gross impropriety. While they are not court proceedings, we are in the midst of a Royal Commission into the way institutions like churches, schools and welfare agencies responded to sexual abuse of children. It interviewed the former cardinal archbishop of Sydney via video conference a few weeks ago from Rome and that generated a lot of media coverage in Europe and elsewhere that may not have happened if he had been questioned in person in Australia. The RC has resulted in scores of people coming out and saying that they had been abused as children up to 30 or 40 years ago but hadn't said, or had been silenced because they weren't believed. Most want only an apology for the way they were treated. In the last few days a few cases for compensation have been launched against wealthy private schools. (A Royal Commission is an inquisitorial judicial enquiry that seeks to establish the facts of a situation. It won't, and sometimes can't produce evidence that can be used in a court but will tell people what didn't work in the past so that procedures can be set up to prevent a recurrence.)

Wow, 53.

I was disagreeing with the characterisation that QTR says "accusation" = "indisputable fact", the rest of the quote was for context. I thought what I meant was clear, sorry that it wasn't clear to you. And yes, I should have thrown in an 'alleged' before victim as well as saying alleged crime. The purpose of my post was to express the view that people often make unwarranted assumptions and judgments when allegations of sexual assault are raised, and more commonly when the complainant is a woman. (There is a different set of negative dynamics when the complainant is a man.) The flip side of the Duke/Bryant/DSK cases are cases like the Cosby accusations and those against Jimmy Saville at the BBC that were widely dismissed because they were 'just not possible'. (DSK had a disadvantage too, in that so many people thought it was perfectly in character.) Judges in the Commonwealth of Australia are appointed by politicians, for criminal courts by state governments. Judges are not shy to object to political 'interference' in judicial processes, including objecting to minimum sentences enacted by parliaments. For lower courts prosecutors are usually police, for more serious cases the police hand the brief of evidence to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The prosecutors in the DPP are called Crown Prosecutors and are appointed by the Attorney-General. Neither judges nor prosecutors are party-political appointments.

That is wildly inappropriate. Proving an accusation is false is almost impossible and if the evidence doesn't stack up it's easy enough for the police or the [crown/state/district] prosecutor to say so and not proceed. If the police don't believe a claim they have no right to insist that the complainant recant their complaint. As in this case, the prosecutors should keep the details on file in case better evidence comes up.

I disagree with this characterisation. @quoththeraven is not a man-basher nor do I think she takes the view that accusation equates with guilt. Without putting words in her mouth, I read her take on this as taking issue with the frequent dismissal of rape claims as the alleged crime being somehow the victim's fault or that critics deny the power differential between alleged perpetrator and alleged victim. I don't think QTR was talking about the specifics of this woman's claims, but rather the immediate reaction to dismiss her claims before any further information came out. The power differential is relevant and real, 'She should just say no' should not be the default reaction in such cases. The discussion was about how to deal with rape accusations in general, not about the merits of this specific case. 'This woman lied so all rape cases are questionable' is not a reasonble position to take. (And of course not all rape victims are women.)

JD, just tell him you are happy no matter how his life works out but that you love him and don't need all the details of his life. Tell him he doesn't need to prove anything to you. He doesn't need to tell you how successful he had been because you like him whether he has been successful or not.

Texting while driving is incredibly stupid and dangerous. You're practically begging for typos.

Perhaps a little unsettling!

Brian, you don't need to defend how you conduct your sessions!

Clearly it's not Ireland, the car is left-hand drive.

Oh, too much of a dream!