blogging it real

Tonight: Bulldogs v Roosters
Telstra Stadium

Bennyasena and Jessup Bulldogs

Saturday:
Rabbitohs v Panthers
Aussie Stadium
7.30pm

Bennyasena and Jessup Panthers (NRL.coms tip of the week is for the bunnies to win by 12 and under)

Cowboys v Wests Tigers
Dairy Farmers Stadium

Bennyasena and Jessup: Cowboys

Storm v Eels
Olympic Park

Bennyasena and Jessup Storm

Sunday: Knights v Warriors
Energy Stadium Australia

Bennyasena and Jessup Warriors

Dragons v Broncos
WIN Stadium

Bennyasena Broncos Jessup Dragons

Sea Eagles v Raiders
Brookvale Oval

Jessup Sea Eagles Bennyasena Raiders

Last week we both scored three.

After five rounds Jessup the NZ Herald's league reporter and tipster is sitting on 17/35 and Bennyasena is on 21/35.

Still we're beating these muppets, interesting to see the Sydney Morning Herald's two most prominent reporters are sitting on 16/35 and 14/35...cheer up Yamis.

The Warriors ($2) desperately need to roll the Knights ($1.75) this weekend and perhaps having Monty Betham suspended for six weeeks will give the team a wake up call.

I've kindly been fowarded some of Hugh de Lacy's articles from the NBR covering the Berryman scandal.

Here are some extracts:

January 21, 2005

[Then Minister of Defence Max] Bradford told the National Business Review this week that the first he heard of the Butcher Report was when he read about it in the paper last month.
He said he had called for an investigation into the Berryman case in 1998, at about the same time as Parliament's social services select committee was hearing submissions on a 2000-signature petition by the Berrymans for compensation for their losses.
"There have been a number of investigations but I was surprised by the revelations [about the Butcher Report] late last year," Bradford said this week.
"It was absolutely never brought to my attention, and whether the army just didn't know what the state of their own records were or whether they were deliberately lying to both Parliament and the government of the day, I wouldn't want to speculate on. But it certainly puts a different complexion on things," Bradford said.
The army had told the inquest: "There was nothing in the entire construction of the bridge that contributed to the accident."

Shit it must be an important issue if the Herald is now onto it. Maybe it just takes a press release?

From this week's NBR:

...Two months ago, Dr Moodie said he would release the Butcher report if an earlier discovery order he had obtained from Associate Judge David Gendall in the High Court was successfully challenged by the army.
Last month, Judge John Wild granted the army leave to seek a judicial review of Judge Gendall's decision, to which Dr Moodie responded by discontinuing the Berrymans' court action seeking a new inquest.
The ball is now back in the army's court and Dr Moodie said he expected it to seek an injunction against publication by TVNZ "to protect the many highly-braided arses that are in the fire, both within and without the army."
"The army is desperate - absolutely desperate - to ensure that nobody outside the army ever reads the Butcher report because it contains such damning implications for the integrity of the high command," he said.
The secret report was produced by the then commandant of the Engineering Corps, Colonel George Butcher, to a court of inquiry into the bridge collapse that the Army held within six months of the accident.
That inquiry's report, obtained by NBR under the Official Information Act in 2002, noted the army's use of rot-prone Oregon timber to build the bridge and criticised some aspects of the design.
But missing were Colonel Butcher's 12 pages of evidence that the bridge was a hazard from the day it was built, because of serious design and construction faults that led to the failure of two of the load-bearing transoms as beekeeper Kenneth Richards crossed it in a utility in 1994.
At the inquest in 1997, the Army failed to tell the coroner of its own findings.

In 1997 the Coroner found that the Berrymans' either knew or should have known that bridge was faulty and therefore the responsibility/guilt forRichard's death lay with them.

Interesting that people who knew about their bridge being faulty would drive over it themselves ever single day isn't it?

I'll suggest that if the treatment of the Berrymans by the New Zealand government doesn't fuck you off, nothing ever will.