Tim Part 2
Thank you for many of your comments on Tim, I’ve been in contact with him via the phone. He says he was shocked by how hard they came down on him, made some comments about the judge being married to a cop and wanted to point out that the inflation rate is now 4% and he believes that will have negative impact on the economy. He wanted to make sure I made that point on his behalf.
He will be appealing the sentence and says Prison is much colder than it was last time he was there and has asked if I can bring him a coat and some reading material, my suggestion of Mein Kamph brought the house down.
I want to reiterate my beleief that his harsh sentence had everything to do with him challenging authority and little to do with fraud. I state again that I don’t justify Tim as a young radical at Uni commiting fraud, but do want to point out that the Police spent an enormous amount of energy and resources to dredge through his past and use anything against him. These fraud charges relate to stunts he pulled 10 years ago and I want to again remind everyone that at the very last possible second before the VERDICT was due, and after a pretty stirring Defence summing up that included Dr Martin Luther King and Ghandi, the Prosecution attempted to call a mistrial because one of the Jury members had just happened to have shared a lecture theatre with Tim TEN YEARS AGO! Now forgive me, but for the cops to have researched all the Jury members pasts to see if any of them criss crossed Tims seems like the type of resources used on CSI: Miami! They REALLY REALLY wanted to nail him. Tim fought the Government, and the Empire struck back, not only by throwing him in Prison with no home detention possibility, but by dredging up past mistakes he has made (all of which he promptly plead guilty to) they have succeeded in discrediting Tim and what he had to say.
So let me take this short moment to remind people what this was about – regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, I think we all agree that the Maori land confiscations of last century led us, in part, to the race problems and frictions we see today. What Labour did by passing the Foreshore and Seabed legislation WAS confiscation by legislation. Remember 5 appeal court judges unanimously voted to allow Maori to have their day in Court over this issue. They didn’t say Maori would win their claim, but that there was a case to be heard. Labour respond to that by simply passing legislation to take all the seabed and foreshore, they acted unilaterally because they feared a right wing bloke backlash along the lines of, “Those Maaaris want our beaches’, and reacted hard so that they could avoid that blowback. Denying people access to the beach was never what this was about – it was about due process, Maori deserved to have their day in Court over this issue, and they were robbed of that. This isn’t a race issue, it’s a justice issue, please don’t forget any of that in this mix of sedition and fraud nonsense. The actions of Labour will be issues our grandchildren will be fighting over, all Helen did was create ANOTHER grievance for political expediency.
The one good thing that has come out of this, is that the majority of your comments and even the media seem to have picked up that the sentence was bloody hard and that there were some other interests at play here.
6 Comments:
Bomber - re the historical stuff, can you clarify for me:
(a) When was Tim charged with the historical fraud
(b) When was he tried for the historical fraud
(c) Do we know if the Police knew about the historical fraud prior to the sedition, and hadn't acted on it, and only took action because of the sedition?
Hello David, thanks for taking an interest. Look I'll forward your questions to Tim, I'm supposed to be seeing him this Saturday, I've asked him to write a prison blog so we can all read what it's like in our defunct prison system first hand. I've answered your questions to the best of my knowledge, but don't take it as gosople until I get the answers back from him.
a) As far as I know, the charges came about after Police raids on Tims house after the infamous axe-through-window installation art project.
b) he plead guilty to the conspiracy to break a window first up and then as they shook him down, they brought the other charges against him which he admitted straight up and the decision was made to sentence him after the sedition trial because he pleaded not guilty to that.
c) I hadn't thought about that David, I don't think the cops are that imaginative. But I would be interested to see what the average cost of a prosecution would be for something like this, and then compare that with what this case cost. Perhaps information through the Official Information Act?
I'm really keen to read Tim's prison blog. Will be holding you to that Bomber!
Martyn,
I don't think you or Tim needs to defend his actions. It's done. He's pleaded guilty.
This line of 'attack' needs to be the double-dipping, being sentences twiced for one crime (c. 1995). You are described the details as I seemed to recall them.
The sentance in 1995 was NOT suspended if I recall correctly. Perhaps they could have found some obscure reason to amplify the two month sentence, but an ADDITIONAL sentance for something he has already served for is ridiculous.
Give Tim my best wishes.
...............cheers ryan
Ryan,
you can't be sentenced twice for the same crime.
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