Corruption: it begins with the schools

This article shows that corruption begins with the schools: a uniform seller is being threatened with a High Court injunction for selling school uniforms. The sellers says that after selling uniforms for Manurewa High School for years, she was last year asked to bid for an exclusive contract and to detail "incentive options" for the school. In other words, she would have had to tender for the contract, and specify what kick-backs she was going to offer the school.

How this is not corruption is beyond me. The best thing to do would be for the Commerce Commission to smack the school board down, then for the parents to revolt and replace the entire board. New Zealand is one of the least-corrupt countries in the world, but how can we maintain that good standing if we allow stuff like this to happen?

Cowboy cops and their adventures in misconduct

This article in the Otago Daily Times provides further evidence about the fiasco that was the Megaupload raid. It describes how the police anti-terrorist squad was turned out to raid a family home despite a complete absence of evidence; how evidence from a member of the diplomatic protection service (the arm of the police that protects the prime minister) was suppressed to justify an airborne assault; and how police didn't follow their own procedures in planning the raid.

This is just more evidence of the cowboy mentality the New Zealand Police have. What I think happened was:

1) FBI asks NZ police for hlep
2) Managers in the NZ police get excited at the possibility of working with the FBI
3) NZ police decide that since they are finally playing with the big kids, they'd better show off as much as they can
4) Turn out the anti-terrorist squad to show how tough they are and that they are too big kids now!
5) Do whatever the FBI tells them to do, NZ laws and procedures be damned

Seriously, there are several top NZ cops who should be on the dole queue now: they've shown that they can't be trusted to follow the law or even their own rules. Get rid of them. They're a danger to themselves and the New Zealand public.

Suck on this, Air New Zealand

For once, the little guy has won! According to this article, a man who was over-paid a total of $70,000 by Air New Zealand, over a period of several years, does not have to pay any of the money back. Moreover, the court has awarded him costs: in other words, Air New Zealand not only doesn't get their money back, but they have to pay his legal bills as well as their own.

Normally, if someone is over-paid, I'd say that the honest thing to do is to give the money back. But in this case, not only was his salary never specified by Air New Zealand, but he queried the amount he was being paid several times over several years. Every time he queried his payment, he was told that it was correct. Almost a year after the over-payment was identified, they sacked him, saying they could no longer trust him!

It seems to me like he did all he could to do the honest thing. I suspect that when the over-payments became known to the bureaucracy, they sacked him to cover their own blunderings.