Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

….and fur­ther Madam Speaker, I can­not recall…..oh shit there it goes again, last week it was Helens nose and now my nose is start­ing to grow…..

David Benson-Pinocchio

 

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

From Inves­ti­gate mag­a­zine.

 This is from 1998, one year after the “for­got­ten” incident.

 

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Pete “the Fist” Hodg­son has come out say­ing that National want to “buy” elec­tions because of their com­ments over the polit­i­cal advertising.

Pot, Ket­tle, black Minister.

Labour tried and indeed suc­ceeded in buy­ing the last elec­tion. The only dif­fer­ence between National and Labour is National used their own money and Labour used mine and every other taxpayers.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

The union hacks are now lin­ing up behind Benson-Pope with one of them being Richard Good.

---

Richard Good, the PPTA’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Otago and South­land says the union is usu­ally involved in every step of the com­plaint process but he has never been advised of a seri­ous parental com­plaint against Mr Benson-Pope.

Mr Good says he has been in the job 19 years and has records of all his deal­ings with Bay­field High School, but nei­ther the for­mer prin­ci­pal Bruce Lead­bet­ter nor Mr Benson-Pope ever advised him of a seri­ous com­plaint from a parent.

---

Not sur­pris­ing at all Mr Good since David Benson-Pope was in your posi­tion imme­di­ately prior to you and you are now his Elec­torate Chair­man. Fur­ther David benson-Pope was the union rep at Bayfield.

My expe­ri­ence of Unions involved in seri­ous alle­ga­tions of this sort is for them to arrange a glow­ing ref­er­ence for the teacher con­cerned then help them get a trans­fer else­where based on the glow­ing reference.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

After spend­ing over $1 mil­lion in tak­ing the issues before the Envi­ron­ment Court and after hav­ing the Court give its go ahead, the Gov­ern­ment is set to “veto” the pro­posal to build a marina at Whangamata.

Why?

Who knows. Envi­ron­men­tal pique?, Maori lob­by­ing? No one but the min­is­ter knows.

If rumours are indeed true and the Min­is­ter is about to veto the pro­posal it begs the ques­tion, What pur­pose does the Court have? Why would Kiwis waste their time going through the court process, it would be bet­ter to cross a Min­is­ters palm with sil­ver to get results.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

For­mer Prin­ci­pal Bruce Lead­bet­ter has found his spine and hit back at DBP and also at Cullen.

---

For­mer Bay­field High School head Bruce Lead­bet­ter last night reaf­firmed that he had told Mr Benson-Pope about a com­plaint over him enter­ing the female bath­room, where two girls were show­er­ing, and a girls dor­mi­tory, where girls were dress­ing, at a school camp in 1997. 

---

DBP con­tin­ues to deny he did any­thing wrong…..and he doesn’t recall the incident.

Well let me tell you as some­one who has been sub­ject to an inves­ti­ga­tion into ones actions, you don’t fuck­ing for­get it.

I still remem­ber the inquiry, the embar­ras­ment, the feel­ing of hope­less­ness of the sit­u­a­tion. Even­tu­ally when you are cleared as I was you still feel put through the ringer, and let me tell you, I remem­ber every detail of it like it was yesterday…..and yes Prime min­is­ter I can remem­ber it (with amaz­ing clar­ity) even though it was 8 years ago.

Just so the innu­endo and ques­tions do not build about me, I was accused of kick­ing a 14 year old Scout on the back­side at a Scout Jam­boree. I was reported by a third party, still unknown to me who was more than 100 metres from the “inci­dent” and despite the sup­port of sev­eral other lead­ers and scouts who were within  10m I was still put through the ringer.

Fair enough, appear­ances are every­thing and I put myself in what appeared to be an inap­pro­pri­ate sit­u­a­tion, but the point I make is that you don’t for­get, not ever. Fur­ther my sit­u­a­tion pales into insignif­i­cance com­pared to DBP’s long list of proven and alleged crimes of assault, bul­ly­ing and lying. Fur­ther I know of one other blog­ger who can tes­tify to the abil­ity to remem­ber past inves­ti­ga­tions that occured some­time into the past about inap­pro­pri­ate behaviour.

Any­way back to Mr Lead­bet­ter and whether he was “con­fused” as alleged by Cullen, who by all accounts is becom­ing increas­ingly con­fused him­self arouns th halls of parliament.

---

How­ever, Mr Lead­bet­ter said he raised the actual com­plaint, not just “pol­icy issues”, with Mr Benson-Pope and added there was no pos­si­bil­ity he was con­fused about what happened. 

---

And what about his so-called apol­ogy. Since when can you say sorry but believe that you did no wrong and also acknowl­edge “gen­uinely” held concerns.

Either they were con­cerns or not con­cerns, these in the min­is­ters own words were “gen­uinely” held con­cerns, there­fore they occured and they were gen­uine and there­fore he acted inappropriately.

But ulti­mately he should be held accou­tnable not for what he did then, but rather how he has acted since. How he has acted and reacted is the most telling. He has acted like a bully, malign­ing those who accuse. He has acted like a liar, spin­ning and obfus­cat­ing his way ineptly around the issue. He lied to the Par­rlia­ment. He con­tin­ues to fess up and admit the inap­pro­pri­ate­ness of his con­duct then and now.

This man is not fit to be a Min­is­ter of the Crown and i would argue he is not fit to be an MP.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Looks like they are going to tough it out. They have even rolled out the Poo­dle to help.

Inves­ti­gate mag­a­zine has lit­tle choice now but to pub­lish more, or as the Prime Min­is­ter put it “put up or shut up”

Well looks like the “put up” option is going to be taken with rev­e­la­tions that David Benson-Pope kneed a boy in the groin.

Inves­ti­gate has also sug­gested pos­si­ble Crimes Act breaches DBP and his supporters. 

---

S107. Con­tra­ven­tion of Statute, which car­ries a pos­si­ble one year jail term. It is alleged Benson-Pope is liable under this sec­tion because in smack­ing a girl’s thigh with a ruler, he breached s139A of the Edu­ca­tion Act 1989, which banned cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in schools.

S195. Cru­elty to child, which car­ries a pos­si­ble jail term of five years for “any­one who – hav­ing cus­tody, con­trol or charge of a child under 16 wil­fully ill-treats…or will­fully causes or per­mits the child to be ill-treated, in a man­ner likely to cause him unnec­es­sary suf­fer­ing, actual bod­ily harm, injury to health, or any men­tal dis­or­der or dis­abil­ity”.
Inves­ti­gate alleges this clause would cover both the direct phys­i­cal assault on a school­girl, but poten­tially any phys­i­cal or men­tal harm caused to other stu­dents by David Benson-Pope as well.

S196. Com­mon Assault. Every­one is liable to impris­on­ment for a term not exceed­ing one year who assaults any other person.

S209. Kid­nap­ping. This sec­tion was con­sid­ered applic­a­ble in the ear­lier inves­ti­ga­tion of David Benson-Pope, because it doesn’t just cover abduc­tion, but also detain­ing a per­son with­out her con­sent or with con­sent obtained by duress. In the case of girls trapped in the show­ers because Benson-Pope was allegedly stand­ing right out­side their cubi­cles, the kid­nap­ping sec­tion could apply although the scale of offend­ing would be at the low­est end of a pun­ish­ment scale of up to 14 years’ jail.

The statute of lim­i­ta­tions on these recent offences does not expire until 2007.

Addi­tion­ally, for­mer and cur­rent Bay­field High School teach­ers who made false state­ments to police that there had been no com­plaints against David Benson-Pope could be pros­e­cuted under:

S111. False State­ments or dec­la­ra­tions. This sec­tion car­ries a jail term of up to three years for any­one who makes a state­ment to any offi­cer of the law which would equate to per­jury if made on oath in a judi­cial proceeding.

S116. Con­spir­ing to defeat jus­tice. If police could estab­lish that there was an agree­ment by two or more teach­ers not to tell police about the com­plaints, the con­spir­acy sec­tions of the Crimes Act could deliver a jail term of up to seven years for the teach­ers involved.

---

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]