The police have a tough job to do and, for the most part, they do it and at the same time manage to brush off the constant abuse and personal insults they no doubt receive from those that they lock away and, probably almost as often, those that they’re even trying to protect.

There’s also systems in place for those that specifically have a problem with how the police operate. I’ve never completed this process so I’m not aware of how effective it is. However, this blog post is on behalf of some people that are close to me that for their own reasons, have zero interest in going through what would probably be a lengthy and disruptive complaints procedure.

So with that out of the way, I can now get down to the reason for this blog post. The Christchurch police are failing to protect innocent people and, as you’ll see below, seem to be putting innocent people in more danger than before the police arrived on the scene. What happened to ‘safer communities together’?

The Christchurch Police Mission

The New Zealand Police seeks to be a world-class police service working in partnership with citizens and the community to prevent crime and road trauma, to enhance public safety and to maintain law and order.

The above statement is directly copied from the New Zealand Police website, formatting is my own. I’ve highlighted ‘to enhance public safety’ as there have been some cases recently where the opposite has been true. I strongly believe the Christchurch police need to face up to these issues and provide some answers.

Here are four cases in which the police have directly put innocent people in harm’s way and then left them to face violent criminals on their own. In each of these cases, the innocent party is someone close to me in Christchurch that I can personally vouch for. I won’t mention their names as, unlike the police, I have an interest in their safety.

Case 1: A Domestic Violence Incident

This case occurred within the last month and took place in a western Christchurch suburb. I assume that the offender is awaiting trial.

A friend of mine, let’s call him Joe, lives in a student flat on a shared driveway. His flat is the middle of three and so he walks past the first flat every time he departs or returns to his residence. One evening, Joe witnessed the resident (a man who I’ll call Dick) of the first flat beating a woman who Joe recognised as the resident’s girlfriend. This girl was taking quite a beating from this Dick and so Joe dialled 111 and asked for the police as soon as possible. In the meantime, another man tried to break-up the attack.

15 to 30 minutes later, the police arrived and entered the house. A police officer then entered Joe’s flat to take a full statement from him as Joe was the only one that witnessed the majority of the attack.

After Joe gave his statement, the police officer then entered the first house and proceeded to give Joe’s statement to Dick, the violent offender. This statement included Joe’s full name and the fact that Joe lived in the flat right next door.

Horrified, Joe asked the police officer why he had just given all of his details – as the key witness to the attack – to a man who is clearly a violent criminal and also happens to be Joe’s neighbour. The police officer replied that Joe had nothing to worry about – the police were just a phone call away. This, obviously, didn’t do anything to help calm Joe’s nerves considering that the police had taken up to 30 minutes to respond to the emergency phone call in the first place.

The result? Since the incident, Joe has been staying at a friend’s place. He’s not stupid. Joe has to walk past the offender’s house to get to his own door and the offender is aware that Joe is the guy that ‘ratted him out to the cops’. Do the police care? Apparently not.

Case 2: A Cowardly Attack in Christchurch City Centre

This case occurred a few months ago. The police met with an offender face to face … to return the guy’s cell phone and then leave.

Late one night, some friends – males in their late teens and early twenties – were enjoying a night out in town. They were walking along Cashel Street, right outside Nood Furniture, when they were jumped by a number of people that had been waiting in an alleyway. Two friends were violently knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked and stomped on by some of the offenders. The offenders then ran off, leaving the friends to bleed on the street.

The offenders were completely unknown to the friends and the friends had been walking along, minding their own business and enjoying their evening. Following the incident, one of the victims had to have extensive surgery carried out on his teeth as they had been kicked backwards by one of the perpetrators.

The twist to this story is that, while no one could identify the attackers as it had been so quick and dark, one of the attackers dropped their cell phone. This phone had a full contact list and the photo gallery included photos that he had taken of himself in various gang-sign related poses. The cell phone was handed over to the police with a full statement of what had occurred.

So what did the police do? Using the phone’s contact book, they managed to track down the owner of the phone. They then visited the owner of the phone, handed him back his phone and said good day. Apparently they didn’t have enough evidence to say that this guy had been an attacker and so they completely dropped the case.

The really sad part of this story is that I read in the paper a few weeks later of a number of other disgustingly violent and random attacks had occurred in that exact spot. Luckily, the police had been nearby in one of them and actually caught the guys in the act – but that was quite a chance scenario. Do the police need to witness every attack?

Case 3: An Attack near a Bar in Aranui, Christchurch

This case occurred within the last few months. The police have all the information they need but no action appears to have been taken.

One evening, a friend in his early twenties visited a bar that he hadn’t been to before in Aranui. He spent an hour or two at the bar, having a few beers and minding his own business, playing on the pokies. He managed to hit a jackpot and ended up with a few hundred dollars.

At the time, he was staying with family just a few hundred metres from the bar and so set off along Breezes Road to return home. Part way along the road, two men that he recognised from the bar and he knew the first names of through his own contacts caught up with him and demanded his wallet. They had seen him win the money, finished their drinks and caught up to him.

The two men took the wallet said “Don’t call the cops – we know your name and who you are”, and ran off back towards the bar.

This guy let them get out of sight and then immediately called the police (having tried to flag down a passing police car immediately after the incident and being ignored). The police, to be fair, arrived quite quickly on the scene and questioned the victim at the side of the road.

As they were within a few hundred metres of the bar, the police (quite abruptly) said they were taking the victim back into the bar so that he could point out the offenders. Let’s just look at that concept for what it is – a young man, new to a part of town but known to the two offenders through mutual contacts, has just been attacked by two men who are regulars at the bar and live nearby. The police are suggesting that the victim walks into the middle of this (quite dodgy) bar where, no doubt, the offender’s relatives and friends regularly hang out and in front of all these people, they want the victim to point out two local regulars that have just attacked him and have his full name and details (they stole his wallet which contained his driver’s licence).

Now, surely the police see a lot of violent crime and so you think they would be pretty street-wise. But this suggests otherwise. They’d pretty much be throwing the victim to the wolves in this scenario. As it happened, at the last minute, one of the police officers thought it might be best if the victim waited in the car park while the officers went inside. The offenders hadn’t actually returned to the bar itself and so were nowhere to be found. Of course, everyone inside the bar denied any knowledge of the incident and of the two offenders while trying to catch a glimpse of the victim standing outside.

Following the incident, a friendly local had found the victim’s – now empty – wallet nearby and returned it to a police station. The police station contacted the victim to ask him to pick up his wallet. He arrived at the police station and enquired as to how the case was progressing (like I said, he had known the first names of the offenders and actually knew that they were currently performing community service in that area). To this, the police replied “What case?”. Since then, he’s heard nothing.

Case 4: A Stalker Incident and a Failure of the Court System

This case happened years ago and is one that has always baffled me as to how it was handled. I was the witness in this case and experienced the majority of it first hand. In this case, the police did a pretty good job but were then let down by the courts.

My first flat in Christchurch was on a quiet cul-de-sac in Shirley. My neighbour was a woman in her early 30s with a very young daughter. One evening, while I was at home, I heard a knock on the door. I answered and was greeted by a very nervous man in his early twenties. He fed me a story about his car breaking down and how he needed to get back to his house urgently. Being quite an innocent guy at the time, I offered to give him a lift.

We jumped in the car and turned out of my driveway, at which point a police officer with a police dog on the side of the road shined a torch into the car and onto this guy’s face. Thinking “Hmm. That’s not a good sign”, I drove slowly and asked the guy where his car was – I couldn’t see it on the street. He said “Just round the corner. Just keep driving.”.

As I turned the corner, I could see a long stretch of road with no cars on it at all. I slowed to a total crawl to allow the cops to catch up and tried to appear friendly to this guy – it was at this point that I realised how much bigger he was than me!

Thankfully, a police car quickly appeared behind me and I stopped the car. The guy turned to me with a look of panic and said “What are you gonna say to the cops?”. I said “Er … why?” and stepped out of the car. The police took custody of the guy and then took a statement from me.

It turned out that this guy had been stalking the woman that lived next door to me for a week. She’d called the cops previously and they said they couldn’t do anything. On that night, the guy had decided to be more bold and had walked up her driveway and had been peering through her windows. He had then tapped on the window to get the woman’s attention (her young girl was standing right next to her) and she locked the doors and called the police. The police arrived quickly and the man fled the garden by jumping the fence and knocking on my door. I then, apparently, acted as a get away driver for at least a good 100 metres.

Now to what went wrong. The court date arrived and I and the woman entered a small waiting room at the Christchurch Court to wait for the hearing. We quickly realised that we were the only people in this small room except for the offender himself. This, obviously, made the woman start to panic. What’s worse is that the offender moved to sit next to the woman and told her not to say anything bad about him in the court room as he wasn’t a ‘bad person’. I intervened and suggested to the woman that we wait outside until they called us to the court room. The offender simply followed and continued to harass the victim while I tried to encourage him to clear off.

After waiting and putting up with this for about 4 hours, our hearing was called. What follows was my only first-hand experience of being questioned by a real life lawyer and one that I will never forget. “I put it to you that the accused didn’t say ‘What are you going to say to the cops’. What do you say about that?”. Long pause. “Er … he did”. “Ok, I have no further questions”.

Despite this brilliantly clever line of questioning, the guy was found guilty. What follows is another significant cock-up by the system. The offender was sentenced to community service. This community service was to be carried out at a church – approximately 100 metres from the victim’s house and one that she had to walk past every day with her daughter to get home.

I mean seriously. Are you kidding me?

In this day and age, how can this happen?

In each of the first three cases, the witnesses or victims were young men in their late teens and early twenties. Do the police have a prejudice against young males whether they are offender, victim or witness? Do the police consider them second rate citizens not worthy of attention? Perhaps as they assume they are students and have no standing in the community?

In all of the examples above, if the person calling the police had been a 40 year old woman in a professional career, would they still have been put at risk? Would a 40 year old neighbour be left to fend for herself having had her information and address passed onto a violent wife-beater? Maybe.

Safer Communities Together?

I think the above examples show clear failures on both official police procedures as well as individual police officer’s failure to ‘protect’. It also shows failures on security at the Christchurch Court itself and suggests that the Christchurch police are forgetting the ‘safer’, ‘community’ and ‘together’ of their tagline. Sadly, I’m sure these incidents aren’t unique to Christchurch but these represent just 4 incidents that I have direct knowledge of.

And what does this tell us as innocent citizens? When we witness a crime, do we call the police, give our statement and risk putting ourselves in harm’s way? What about the code of silence that police officers struggle with when trying to get witnesses for important cases – are those people that refuse to act as witnesses doing so because of a negative attitude towards the police and because they’re standing up for their fellow citizen, or is it because they actively fear for their safety as communicating with the police appears to mean handing yourself over to the violent accused? And just now I read a news article on Stuff.co.nz that states only one third of New Zealand crimes are reported.

I think this is a very serious issue that deserves immediate attention. Witnesses are a fundamental aspect of any case against alleged criminals and, as innocent bystanders, they have a right to be respected and protected by the police. And this isn’t happening. Why not?

Next time you see your neighbour – a large and aggressive man – beating his girlfriend, what will you do? If, even for an instant, you question whether you would call the police knowing that you could be pointed out to the attacker and left to fend for yourself, then we are living in sad times indeed.

As I said, these are just four incidents that I have had a personal involvement with or someone close to me has experienced.

Other than these, I have had no experience of the police. What about you? Have you had an involvement with the police? How did it go? Do you agree with the above or was your situation quite different? Or maybe you work for the police? Feel free to post anonymously is you wish but I would love to hear from you.

Are these mainly faults with individual police officers or the system as a whole? Is it standard procedure to give a witnesses’ details to a violent offender?

Flickr image credit: conner395, devcentre, like_the_grand_canyon, southbeachcars, ksuyin, koruru

As a blog writer in New Zealand, I’ve found it tough to compete against large international blogs and websites in Google search results. And Google hasn’t exactly been helping. They’ve been making a few large changes recently that I haven’t always agreed with. In fact, I’ll say it, Google have been pissing me off recently. That’s right. You heard me Google! In fact that’s it, you’re getting your own heading.

Google, Stop Pissing About with Search Results

Like, Google search is all about searching the Internet. If I wanted to search for places, I’d hit the ‘Places’ option. If I wanted to search for videos and images, I’d hit those links. Where is the damn option to search ‘the web’ and ‘the web’ only? And another thing – it used to be that you could Google a company name and see that company’s website followed by a load of interesting websites that have reviews and other feedback about that company written by real people that want to share their stories. Now, if you search for say ‘new zealand automobile association‘ for example, of the 10 results that appear on the first page, the first 7 are all for aa.co.nz, the 8th and 9th are for subsidiaries of the AA and the 10th is a Wikipedia entry about the AA.

FFS Google! Don’t give me every damn page on their website! Return that website ONCE at the top and I’ll click on it if that’s what I want. Otherwise, I might be interested in what people are saying about the AA.

A better example would be a popular restaurant. In the past, you could search for that restaurant and you’d see the restaurant’s website followed by a bunch of blog posts and articles by restaurant critics that have eaten there. Perfect result! Now, you’d get a whole heap of individual results for that same website. Give me a break. Do Google really think that the subject website is so bad that if you were to visit it you wouldn’t be able to navigate through it’s pages by using its own menu??

Google is a search tool for finding websites. It is not a tool for navigating websites.

Oh and another thing, with all the information that Google has about me, Google.co.nz has still decided I live in Auckland (it’s Christchurch but I can’t be bothered changing it) and even with ‘Auckland Central’ glaring at me, I start to type in ‘best shop’ in the search box and not only does Google suggest ‘best shopping in milan’ but Google Instant actually even goes ahead and displays the results for shopping in milan! Before I’ve even clicked on the suggestion? WTF? Way to screw over New Zealand, Google!

I digress

So yeah … what was I saying? Oh right I’ve got a new blogging website. I’ve set this website up to provide a bit of search engine optimisation assistance to the honest New Zealand blogger. Without blogs, large corporations would get away with delivering crap service and shoddy products. You can find out more about what I’m talking about on the About page of the new website.

I hope to use the search engine optimisation knowledge that I have to actively promote the blogs of my fellow New Zealanders with quality reviews and links to their own blogs on terms that I assume they would be keen to rank for. Take a look at the Personal Blogs that I’ve already reviewed as an example.

Obviously in doing this, I would only want to rank quality blogs and for that reason, yes, I will be passing judgement! But then again, that means I’ll only focus on blogs that I think are half decent. I’ll write an honest review of what they are like and won’t be taking bribes. All I’d be keen on receiving back is a blog post on their site about either this one (www.nzraw.co.nz) or NZ Blogs (www.nzblogs.co.nz) to help spread the love! Although that certainly won’t be a requirement for me writing reviews.

PS. This was almost the only blog post I’ve ever written without an image. Almost.

With the Internet being so powerful today, imagine what it would be like in 50 years time. You’ll probably just have to think the word ‘dire’ and you’d have 211,000,000 related thoughts automatically enter your brain in 0.23 seconds, plus a few sponsored thoughts from Facebook and Google (in the future, these are the only two companies that will exist).

Traditionally, the world’s superpowers were counties. Modern world superpowers are individuals.

So we can assume that the two big players in the Internet world; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Eric Schmidt of Google, along with the two people that make the equipment you use to access the Internet, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple, will somehow form a kind of world government that is captained by one of the four.

Either way, they’re all doing it wrong. I mean, surely one of them has enough power by now to just take down the other three and run everything from one company? For that reason, I have compiled this list of who these guys are and what I would do in their place.

1. Bill Gates

Bill Gates. Smug in a can.

We all know who Bill Gates is – he’s the founder of Microsoft and one of the richest people in the multiverse. He’s so rich that he even has his own website dedicated to his own thoughts, The Gates Notes. I mean, ok, I have one as well but that’s because … well I don’t know why but the important thing is that Bill Gates has his own website dedicated to communicating his own thoughts purely because he is sick to death of people asking him stuff.

With his own website, all he has to do when someone asks him a question is say “thegatesnotesdotcom” and he’s done. Hey Bill, what are your thoughts on climate change? thegatesnotesdotcom. Hey Bill, I’m curious, what do you teach in your classroom? thegatesnotesdotcom.

The guy is so fed up of frequent questions that he doesn’t even have a frequently asked questions section. He has an infrequently asked questions section. True story. Don’t look in there, it’s all about “Hey Bill, you’re so wise and like you, I have lots of money. Do you think I should help the poor or should I just spend it all at wall-mart?”.

If I was Bill Gates …

I would start a new computer company called ‘Oranges’ and make it very, very similar to Apple products. Then I’d make a section on my thegatesnotesdotcom website that just says ‘You have to compare Apples with Apples BIATCH!’ and then when people say “Hey Bill, don’t you think your Oranges brand is a bit too similar to Apple’s?” I’d say “thegatesnotesdotcom”.

Secondly, I would find all copies of this photo…

… and pay the people that posted it a million dollars to take it down. That or run them over in my Microhard Tank™.

PS. Follow Bill Gates on Twitter and you will be greeted by the suggestion of:

“Since you followed Bill Gates, you might also want to follow: DalaiLama,  Schwarzenegger”. There is no hope.

2. Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs. Boom.

Steve Jobs is the, in my opinion, slightly less well known arch nemesis of Bill Gates. He’s the ‘Apple’ guy and the guy that takes the credit for (i)Phones/Pods/Pads and stuff. Bill Gates hates Steve Jobs because no matter what Steve Jobs does, everybody loves him because it’s different to Microsoft. No matter what Microsoft does, everyone hates then.

Steve Jobs is the cool, artsy designer guy with his plain black top and trendy glasses, Bill Gates is the 80s nerd lounging suggestively on his desk and flashing his floppy at the camera.

However, Steve Jobs is still doing it wrong in that he doesn’t yet run the world. Only the real Apple fans have heard of him and those fans have also heard of Bill Gates. Most average computer users have heard of Bill Gates but never heard of Steve Jobs. That’s what else is wrong with the world – Internet Explorer 6. Seriously. In fact, while you’re reading this, go to the menu in your Internet browser and click on ‘Help’ and ‘About’ or similar. If you find that you are reading this using Internet Explorer 6 then please stop reading my blog right now. Thanks.

If I was Steve Jobs …

If I was Steve Jobs, I would build an army of white Apple robots like the Eve robot on Wall-E and then I would find out who registered www.stevejobs.com in my name and I would send my white Apple robot army after them and say “No! This is neither what I need, nor when I need it! Die www.stevejobs.com, die! Wait … ok yeah so as Bill Gates I would also hunt down the people that stole billgates.com and I would hunt them down too so then when people asked me “Hey Bill, how can we build satellites out of bamboo?” I could answer “billgatesdotcom” instead of the notes thing.

3. Eric Schmidt

Eric Schmidt. I'm killing you with my mind.

Go on. Who’s Eric Schmidt? You don’t know do you? As the guy who invented the ability to search for things, you think you would have found out who he is by now.

Eric Schmidt is the CEO of Google. If you have a business that is purely on the Internet, Eric can make or break you. In fact, by taking the piss out him, this is probably the last you’ll see of this blog. Just look at his photo. Some guy has clearly just rubbed him the wrong way and Eric is thinking “Right. Just try searching for your own website on Monday morning pal.”

I don’t really know anything about Eric Schmidt so I’m just gonna jump into …

If I was Eric Schmidt …

I would find the guy that made this website, ericschmidt.com, and I would get all medieval on his ass. I mean really. A Yahoo email address? People are gonna die. I own the Internet.  Except for that part that Zuckerberg owns.

4. Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg. Insert funny comment.

If you don’t yet know who Mark Zuckerberg is, you soon will with the release of the Facebook movie, ‘The Social Network’. Soon he will go from ‘that guy whose name you saw somewhere while you were online’ to ‘the guy with the curly hair in that movie’.

Zuckerberg is the guy that everybody loves to hate. Purely because we all wish we’d done what he did and were now billionaires like him. Do you know that more people visit Facebook each week than they visit Google? Eric Schmidt is not happy. Facebook is also trying to get into search with ‘Facebook Questions’ and, in a way, already has the Google Places that Google is raving about in the form of Facebook Pages.

Zuckerberg wants it all for himself. I mean … is that a Facebook laptop that he has in the photo or has he actually taken an Apple laptop and put a Facebook sticker over the Apple logo?

If I was Mark Zuckerberg …

I would shut down the Social Network movie until they promised to removed Jesse Eisenberg as the guy who played me and replaced him with Chuck Norris. I’d then change the Facebook name overnight so it would now be ‘Zuckerbook’. It’s totally in the terms and conditions so I’d be pretty smug while doing it.

Photo credits:
Gates photo from Wikimedia by the ‘World Economic Forum’
Seductive Gates photo from  Flickr account ‘Esparta’
Jobs photo from Flickr account ‘acaben’
Schmidt photo from Flickr account ‘World Economic Forum’
Zuckerberg photo from Flickr account ‘b_d_solis’

I’d say on average at least one a week.

Mostly they tell me that my penis is too small but today I received two emails from one person.

It didn’t take too long to realise that the woman that sent them had set an email ‘signature’ that was actually just a line of text, her name, and her address.

Basically her email signature was something very similar to this:

Please contact me if you have any queries.

Kind Regards,

Jane Smith

An Accountant.
A big accountancy firm.
Accountantsville.

The first email I received from Jane was along the lines of…

Great post on the Auckland Council. You really are attractive. I’m interested in starting a blog.

Please contact me if you have any queries.

Kind Regards,

Jane Smith

So I’m like. Ok. That’s cool. She wants me to contact her to tell her about blogs. I replied to say thanks and told her a bit about WordPress and then received:

Thanks Mark.

Please contact me if you have any queries.

Kind Regards,

Jane Smith

Which is when I realised that her email signature included the above line of text and so, in turn, is quite lame.

Why is it lame? Surely it’s nice to offer to explain things in more detail. To open an opportunity for conversation. Not really. Here are some examples where this line of text doesn’t work:

Email Signature Fail Example 1.

Dear Simon,

I notice that you’ve been taking my lunch. Please don’t do this as my lunch items are clearly labelled with my name.

Please contact me if you have any queries.

Kind Regards,

Jane Smith

Nothing here needs explaining. If everyone took you up on your invite, you’d be forever answering queries.

Email Signature Fail Example 2.

Dear Natalie,

I know you’ve been seeing my husband.

I never want to hear from you again.

Please contact me if you have any queries.

Kind Regards,

Jane Smith

Email Signature Fail Example 3.

Dear Paul,

You’re a dick.

Please contact me if you have any queries.

Kind Regards,

Jane Smith

Email Signature Fail Example 4.

Frank.

I hate you. If my dog had a face like yours, I would shave its butt and teach it to walk backwards. You clearly fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

You **** eating **** **** eunuch **** horse **** **** jack ***.

Please contact me if you have any queries.

Kind Regards,

Jane Smith

The moral of the story; don’t add extra lines of text in your email signature to make it look like you’ve added them to your email body. As you can see, you might find yourself in an awkward situation whereby your friendly throw-away line completely destroys the message of your email.

Please contact me if you have any queries.

Kind Regards,

Mark

As evil as it is, porn is massive all over the world.

It’s big business. Porn is Russia’s largest export after vodka (Note: I made that up).

People search for porn in Google more than they search for cookie recipes. I know. I too was shocked. Porn entrepreneurs (I may have made that up) know that to be successful, they need to be ranked in Google.

Not too long ago, the Google chaps sat down for a cup of tea, or “coffee” as they pronounce it in Americaland, and said “Let’s change stuff”. One major change was that they removed the Pages from New Zealand checkbox from the www.google.co.nz homepage. I’d post an image to show you but hey, it’s not there any more. You’re keeping up right?

So anyway. To get pages from New Zealand you now have to submit a search, get some results and THEN click “pages from New Zealand” to narrow your search. This isn’t tooooo bad as you still get some NZ-specific results without checking the option. Google knows that you’re in New Zealand when you make your first search. Heck, Google knows what you’re having for dinner tonight even if you don’t.

You can narrow your search down even further by only clicking for “images” or “news” etc. That’s where Google seems to have screwed New Zealand’s hard working porn businesses.

Do a search for “porn” in Google. Results are as you’d imagine. Lots of porn. All over the place. One website’s description even says “Porn and free porn videos updated daily. We have porn movies of 100% porn.” Ok mate. We get it. You have porn.

Here’s where it gets interesting – click on “pages from New Zealand”. What do you get? You get this. Unless Google have changed things again, what you’ll see is a heap of listings for NEWS websites. Stuff, NZ Herald, Infonews, Scoop and 3News dominate the results with news stories about porn. It’s like the “Only show me news websites” button is stuck down. Where’d all the Kiwi porn go?

Yup. The actual porn is only on the right in the sponsored links section. And only two sponsored links?? Surely some other porn places need to switch on to this and start advertising there. Maybe that’s what Google intended? Now companies will have to pay for adwords rather than feature in the organic results?

Seems a bit unfair to New Zealand businesses when you happily get a heap of international porn sites without “pages from New Zealand checked.

What ever happened to Google’s slogan; “Don’t Be Evil”?

Note: Boob photo from mylor on Flickr.

This morning, my wife called me to ask me if I’ve moved her car. Questions like this spark immediate concern!

Yes, my wife’s car was stolen last night from right outside our house. Ok it was only a 1992 Nissan Bluebird, registration plate TZ9717, but the thing about a 1992 Nissan Bluebird is that if you own a 1992 Nissan Bluebird it’s generally because you can’t afford anything flasher than a 1992 Nissan Bluebird. So in some ways, losing our Nissan has caused us as much grief as if we’d lost a BMW M3.

Secretly I was also upset as, despite the fact that I have a Hilux 4WD, my wife’s car is the only one with a tow bar and we were planning on using it extensively to help us move into our first home in a couple of weeks.

Anyway. Worse than having a car stolen from you is the underlying feeling that it was stolen from you by someone in the immediate neighbourhood.

Not so long ago, we noticed that someone had been stealing petrol from it. So we put a lockable petrol cap on it. Not long after that, we noticed that someone was stealing mail from our mailbox. So we put a padlock on the mailbox. Not long after that, we noticed that someone was using our wheelie bin for their own refuse disposal. If we had a big enough chain, I swear I’d put a padlock on that too.

I feel like these three absolutely heinous crimes are in someway related. I’d love to think it’s not the older guy two doors from me who quite happily says hello when he sees us in the street … but I did startle him once while he was walking up to our mailbox one day. The way he suddenly realised I was watching him and then did a sharp 180 and hurridly walked off in the opposite direction really made me wonder. He also seems to sit at home all day smoking drugs with random people that turn up at the house so he’s not exactly a first-rate citizen EVEN THOUGH he leant me his hose once.

But hey. At least we have insurance right? And I’m talking the full blown “all the options” insurance from a reputable company like AMI. Although … wait a sec. I was very careful to select “Agreed Value” when we got our car insurance as I’d been stung with “Market Value” before.

Market Value is where you pay a premium each month and when your car gets stolen or someone ploughs into it with his Subaru (thanks Jeremy by the way) the insurance company gets one of their guys to look at your car and say “Yeah .. it’s worth about this much” and they pay you that much minus your excess.

HOWEVER. Here’s the part that sucks. We check our insurance documents and find that AMI have lowered the AGREED value of our car by $200 dollars. What’s that all about AMI? Well it’s because it’s depreciated in value. OK so what’s Market Value all about then?? Well … that’s when we value your car based on how much it’s depreciated in value. OK so what’s AGREED value then??? Well … ok yeah we’re just trying to screw you. Suckers! So you lowered the value of our car. Did you lower the amount we pay each month? No. We put it up. Yeah. We feel bad now … NOT!

So in summary, by the time we’ve paid our excess and received our payment from our insurance company, we’ll have about $1000 and no car. What can we get for $1000? Well … we can a decent battery powered kid’s quad bike. That should do us. I hear that Christchurch will be fitted with NZ’s first charge-point network for recharging electric cars so we’ll be set.

UPDATE!

It’s about an hour since I wrote this post. After publishing it, I went to pick my wife up from the mall where she was having training for her new job (had to pick her up as she had no car … are you following the story?). On the way home, I was casually keeping an eye out for any Bluebirds parked in dodgy alleys.

We’re travelling down Brougham Street towards the Lyttelton tunnel and through the trees I spot a Bluebird parked in a dead-end street. The Bluebird had a small white rectangular sticker in the back window. Hmm … that looks familiar. So I take a few random turnings down side-roads while my wife looks at my with a confused expression. Then we round the final corner and ….

… bam! There’s our car. It was on Vincent Place, Woolston. If you have a car that’s still not been recovered, maybe it’s down there too?

Whoever stole it:

a) was a girl or had a girl with them (there was girl’s deoderant and yeah I thought it was some sniffing drug abuser but then we found some girl’s lip balm as well)

b) used half a tank of petrol and didn’t exactly do the tyres and brakes any favours

c) was probably going to come back for a second go

I assume they were going to come back because they’d actually re-locked the car! They’d forced the ignition but other than that there was no damage to the car at all. Plus they’d left the perfectly-stealable CD player stereo AND they’d even left their own CD in the player.

I’m almost tempted to park it up in the same spot and then do a Lethal Weapon style stake-out. But I really don’t have the patience for that.

So, we called the cops. I told them what brand of deoderant and lip balm was in the car and they instantly knew EXACTLY who the criminal was and said they’ll knock on their door any day now (I hope all car criminals are reading this and know how amazingly efficient the police are)*

The car itself is now parked right outside our front door, which happens to be directly below our bedroom window, plus I have carefully made a few minor adjustments to the vehicle which means that anyone driving away in it will very soon end up in the Avon river.

Now I get to call AMI back and tell them to change my policy.

P.S. My wife and I would like to say thank you to all the people on Twitter who re-tweeted my status update in order to help us find our car or offered words of advice.

@HatchiNZ @daz_bLazem @nzben @simonleslienz @phillipnewmannz @ditzy_m @I_enigma @MiramarMike … you guys rock our socks. Thank you.

*The part about the cops being efficient wasn’t true.

That brings me nicely onto CourierPost.

Assume you’ve purchased something of a significant enough value – let’s say $100 worth of vouchers that have no name on and can be given to anyone. You want that item to delivered directly to yourself. Have a think about what the most important requirements are for your courier company.

Hopefully you’re like me and would say:

• Delivery on the day that I pay for it to be delivered
  so that I know I’ll be there to receive the item
  
• Released only to me and signed by me
  the parcel is effectively $100 cash to anyone
  
• If there are any problems, I would expect an honest and helpful support service

CourierPost have failed these requirements in fantastic style. And not for the first time. If this was the first time, I wouldn’t be bothering to write this blog post.

How CourierPost Failed:

My mother lives in the UK. She wanted to buy my wife a Christmas present online from a supplier in NZ. So she went to the Hoyts.co.nz website and bought her $100 worth of cinema passes. She paid extra for an overnight delivery and had them sent to our home address in Woolston, Christchurch.

Here’s the result of 8 days and 4 phone calls:

You can clearly see on this receipt that the item was picked up on December 11th and was on an overnight service. The 11th is a Friday so the next working day would be Monday the 14th.

We got home late on the 14th and found a card-to-call. My wife assumed they would attempt another delivery so didn’t call on the 15th. When nothing arrived, my wife called and asked for the parcel to be redelivered to her workplace as she wouldn’t be at home to receive it personally. She was told it would be delivered on the morning of the 17th.

On the 17th, at work, she waited all morning and called CourierPost again at  mid-day. The conversation went something like:

Lauren: Hi there, I’m just waiting for my parcel to be delivered. Can you tell me where it is?
CP: It’s still with the courier but that’s really to be expected.
Lauren: How so? I was told it would be here this morning?
CP: Yeah but it’s a busy time of year so there’s nothing you can do.
Lauren: Ok … so when can I expect it?
CP: Hopefully it’ll be there later today.

Lauren waited at work all day then called again when nothing turned up. Again she was told that  it was a busy time of year and so would be redelivered the next day for sure. The 18th.

On the 18th December, surprise surprise, nothing turned up at work. She left for home at 5pm and called CourierPost. This time the conversation ran:

Lauren: Hi I’ve been waiting for a parcel and keep getting told it will be delivered then it doesn’t turn up.
CP: Oh no it was delivered this morning.
Lauren: What? Who to?
CP: Your workplace.
Lauren: Well I’ve been there all day and haven’t received anything.
CP: Oh right. Actually it was delivered at 4:47pm.
Lauren: What? So it’s been delivered just now?
CP: Yup.
Lauren: But it’s supposed to be delivered to me. Who signed for it?
CP: I don’t know.
Lauren: OK well I’ll check myself and call you back.

At the point I stepped in. I checked the CourierPost Track and Trace system and that told me that the parcel hadn’t been delivered at all and was still in transit. If I can look that information up, why couldn’t the guy at CourierPost? OK maybe he’d got the Track and Trace number wrong but even then, he gave two completely different times for delivery and then couldn’t say who had signed for it. And even THEN, the parcel is marked for signature by the specific recipient, my wife, and that hadn’t happened.

So this time I called CourierPost myself.

Mark: Hi there, my wife is expecting a package and has called CourierPost 3 times and been told all sorts of rubbish about its delivery. What’s going on?
Lady at CP: Oh my, I’m so sorry about that. Yes I can see right here that she’s already called a few times. I can see that it’s on the courier van right now and should be with you soon.
Mark: Don’t take this personally but I’m not happy with that as an answer. We’ve been told all sorts of information by CourierPost that has turned out to be false.
Lady at CP: Yes that’s absolutely fair enough. I’ll phone the courier driver now and find out what’s going on ……………….. ok unfortunately they’re not answering but I will ensure that the courier driver phones you tomorrow morning between 8am and 10am and we’ll be having words with this driver.
Mark: Ok get them to call me on my cell phone and also my wife isn’t at work tomorrow so it needs to be delivered to my home address. But get them to call me first to make sure we’re up and we receive the parcel personally because this is getting silly.
Lady at CP: Oh definitely. I’ll make sure that happens.

Saturday the 19th arrives. 10am comes and goes and I’ve received no parcel and no phone call. Just as I’m about to call CourierPost and unleash hell, my wife gets a phone call from her colleague at the retail store where she works. The tatty parcel has turned up there (instead of our home) and delivery has been taken by herself (despite the parcel needing to be signed for by my wife WITH a drivers license if at an alternative address).

According to CourierPost:

What is a signature required upon delivery service?
To provide peace of mind, we offer a signature required upon delivery service option when sending items.

And here’s the signature. Maybe by the person who received the item, maybe by the courier driver themselves:

So here’s my present to you New Zealand:

Do you fancy getting some extra Christmas presents this year? All you have to do is wander around looking for CourierPost’s card-to-call cards – you’ll find them slipped half under doormats in the rain rather than in the mail box right next to it – and then all you have to do is call 0800 COURIER, give them the tracking number, redirect it to your own address and you’re good to go.

Don’t worry, you won’t have to sign for it. Just don’t expect it the next day.

Merry Christmas!

P.S. Last time I courried something to my work address: Name, Company Name, Old Weekly Press Building, 107 Cashel Street. I finally tracked it down at The Press, Worcester Street. It had been signed for and everything. Thanks CourierPost.

… and another thing

Coincidentally, this morning I received a three-pack product that I’d bought from www.1-day.co.nz.

1 x American Crew Shampoo
1 x American Crew Conditioner
1 x choice of molding clay, paste or some other paste-type stuff.

I’m not exactly fussy with my hair but I’m not a fan of hair gel … which was fine because there wasn’t any on the list or in the photo of the products. So I chose the molding clay:

What I actually got was the shampoo and conditioner and one large bottle of styling gel. Great.

And occasionally, just occasionally, that spam makes you laugh.

Here’s an e-mail I just received from support1121@gmail.com (feel free to send them spam).

A DGTFX virus has been detected in your folders. Your email

account has to be upgraded to our new Secured DGTFX anti-virus

2009 version to prevent damages to our webmail log and your

important files. Click your reply tab, Fill the columns below and

send back or your email account will be terminated to avoid spread of the virus.

USERNAME:

PASSWORD:

PHONE NUMBER:

BIRTHDAY:

USER ID:

www.canterbury.ac.nz Director of Web Technical Team.

Note that your password will be encrypted with 1024-bit RSA keys for your password safety

Now, just quickly, if you’re reading this and thinking “Ah yes well I can see how some people would fall for that and reply with their name and password. Understandable.” then please, please, please stop reading my blog. Stop it. Have you left? Ok great, let’s continue.

The guy that wrote this spam e-mail is a muppet.

First off, he put his name as “webmail.canterbury.ac.nz” and yet his e-mail is clearly obvious as being from “support1121@gmail.com” (in the original e-mail – haven’t copied that bit in the above). So the Canterbury Uni webmail is run on gmail is it? I think not.

Secondly, he’s made up a virus name. I mean come on, there’s plenty of viruses out there. You could have chosen any name from millions of viruses and yet you make one up. Google “DGTFX virus” and you’ll immediately get a thousand blog posts around the world (like this one) rubbishing this guy’s scam.

Thirdly, he’s signed the e-mail “www.canterbury.ac.nz Director of Web Technical Team.” Tell me, Mr. www.canterbury.ac.nz, do you find that your name causes a lot of confusion when filling in forms?

Fourthly, well there is no fourthly. I don’t need one. This is the worst spam campaign I’ve seen since someone sent me an e-mail that said if I forward the e-mail to 10 people, Bill Gates will personally give me an iPod. Bill Gates = Microsoft. iPod = Apple. And that’s just one example of why those e-mails are ridiculous.

Incidentally, I did respond to my Director of Web Technical Team friend. I made up an account at gmail called “yeahsuremate@gmail.com” and filled in his wee form:

DGTFX Virus Spam Reply by Gmail