September 2009

One of the few benefits of MMP is that you do tend to get genuine representation of all sorts in the parliament. A case in point is Hone Harawira, a man not blessed in the brains department but big in the heart.

Bloody good on Hone having a view even if he misses the point entirely. It’s nice to have a MP that doesn’t equivocate.

Mr Harawira said he wanted to put the tobacco companies under the spotlight “finally”.

“To be brutally frank I’d like to lynch these bastards.

“This is a war against people who kill New Zealanders … I don’t particularly give a shit about what they say [in their defence].”

The inquiry wanted to increase public pressure for a ban on the sale of tobacco. Eighty per cent of smokers wanted to quit, Mr Harawira said.

The problem I have with Hone’s warped thinking is several fold. Firstly the product is legal and taxed at extortionate rates that supposedly is designed to deter people from smoking  and yet they still do, especially Maori who are smoking in increasing numbers.

We have had literally billions poured into advertising campaigns, laws designed to hide tobacco from legitimate customers, laws raising the ae of purchasing to that above alcohol, more advertising campaigns and still people smoke. You would have to be either dumber than a sack of hammers to start smoking in the first place or you wilfully choose to ignore the billions spent to educate you on the perils of smoking and CHOOOSE to smoke.

Of course once you start smoking it is highly addictive but first YOU have to start. However Coca-cola and other caffeine related drinks and beverages including coffee and tea are addictive as well but there aren’t howls of outrage against those.

One point I would like to make is that smokers are actually doing us all a favour by dying early. They generally pay way above the average person in taxes then die before they can even extract a miniscule amount of benefit from paying all those taxes. Even with their health problems they generally die pretty quickly and therefore do not need any of the big ticket health items like cardio-vascular surgery (they don’t qualify) or hip and knee replacements. They simply die before they use up any of the state vast resources that were gouged from them in the form of tobacco taxes in the first place. That also includes superannuation.

A case could be made that smoking is actually sacrificing yourself for the benefit of the nation so rather than cursing smokers we should be patting them on the back for their sacrifice through their own CHOICE to start smoking in the first pace.

Hone makes the point that 80% of smokers want to give it up. This is simply nonsense you can give up anytime you want. I have friends who have literally given up smoking hundreds of times.

Lastly as they say in the gun industry if guns kill people then pencils cause spelling mistakes, Same goes for smoking. It comes down to the personal choice of the smoker to continue or to stop, bottom line.

An inquiry is a waste of time, we all know what smokingdoes, it ish been done to death so to speak the only decision that needs to be made is whether or not the state wishes to give up its coercive taxation of addicted people and abolish tobacco altogether or to continue, end of story.

It seems every day some government department or other is calling for tenders for completely useless shit. Tonights Tenderwatch email really takes the cake.

1. A tender for the Ministry of Education on how the market is to engage with suppliers of Records Management Systems! WTF, a tender to write how to respond to a tender!
2. A tender to write an”industry briefing” for NZDF Contract for Clothing Supply Chain Management. WTF is that supposed to mean? There are about 5 clothing suppliers to the NZDF, that hardly constitutes and industry, the NZDF orders shit and shit gets delivered then stored, then never issued to the troops in the field who need it then sold 20 years later as surplus. Oh and all the “clothing” has to be strong, and funny coloured. I think this is yet another hundy going to a patsy contractor.
3. This one really takes the cake. The Bay of Plenty DHB, the Health ministers patch is issuing a Tender for a Contract Management Solution. How the f**k do they manage their contracts now? This will be a multi-million rort by some software supplier who has already written the specifications for the tender for which only they can succeed. I’ve seen enough of these to know a rort when I see one. Some fool mid-level wanker will have dreamed up that the DHB needs a contract management solution and is good mates with a mate who just happened to suggest the same over a beer.

There is literally millions of dollars in tenders and “services” being pissed away by bureaucrats and it is making me madder than a cut snake. Just wait till I get my teeth into the rorts surround the provision of stop smoking programmes for Maori, which incidentally aren’t working because they are the ONLY demographic where smoking rates are going up.

Right. So the bludgers that own bars in Auckland are having the same whinge that those in the socialist republic of Christchurch are having. They reckon that they have the “right” to stay open to all hours to make a profit, while not incurring the true cost of doing so.

As mentioned in a previous post, down in the socialist republic there is something like a war zone every Friday and Saturday night when drunken morons take to the streets after midnight.The rest of us pay a massive cost, having to pay for the cost of about 40-50 coppers who should be waking up fresh as daisies on Saturday and Sunday ready to go out nicking proper crims, not drunken morons. We have to pay for the clean up of the streets every Saturday and Sunday morning. And our health system is full of morons with alcohol related injuries.

Same thing happens here, but without the socialist republics lumpen proletariat who have a real penchant for fight, chundering and wrecking things, there is not the damage done. Still there is damage done, and good on well known WASP (except he’s an Indian) and right wing councillor Aaron Bhatnagar for taking a principled stand and at least discussing that these bar owners should stop sticking their hands out and start paying for some of the costs. The simple principle of user pays is going to make the world of difference to keeping control of rates and ensuring that Aortic Len’s mob don’t take control of the super city.

Whats also got me completely fucked is how ‘being an international city’ means encouraging bogans to get pissed, bash each other and vomiting everywhere in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday morning. I really can’t remember ever hearing this being part of the “international city” culture of places like Paris, Rome, New York or London.

I’m all for pubs staying open as long as they like. But make the bastards pay for the privilege and maybe Banksie can knock a few dollars off my first supercity rates bill. And all you the liberal elite who keep talking about lack of representation on the council should look closely. Last time I saw Aaron he was quite brown, had an Indian name and was definitely not a paid up member of the white liberal elite who like telling the rest of us how to live our lives while working out how to make the rest of us pay for Brian Rudman’s theatre.

When you see headlines like this they just make me want to throw up.

Pah! Time for Change

Snapped getting ready for Boobs on Bikes today.

Don't mess with the Whale

Clayton “sure it’s real hair” Cosgrove has spewed forth again and again he gets his balls kicked by Judith Collins. I think he enjoys a good ball kicking more than David Benson-Pope ever did.

Yesterday Judith Collins highlighted that prison numbers continue to grow and the urgent need to get more prison beds is also growing.

This of course isn’t a result of increased lawlessness tolerated by Labour but rather some sort of conspiracy to spike Corrections Officers negotiations according to Clayton “it really is my hair” Cosgrove. Of course it won’t have escaped the notice of asute readers that the Corrections Officers union boss is lobbying hard to stand for Labour in Tukituki and indeed has been seen spying out good locations for his office.

The other conspiracy theiry is that “Crusher” Collins is softening us all up to let prisoners out early as some sort of flip-flop on National’s get though on crime policy. If iPredict took ods on that supposition I’d bet a small fortune that Judith Collins wouldn’t ever contemplate that sort of namby-pamby policy making on the hoof. If necessary I’m sure whe wold look at triple bunking if it keeps crims in prison and off our streets.

Frankly if they are locked up 24/7 and stab each other with sharpened spoons the vast majority of Kiwis couldn’t care less. A prisoner dying rates somewhere about the level of Mrs Miggins cat being stuck up a tree in the news.

Cactus must have missed a score last night because she has fired off 3 decent shots.

She takes a shot at Steve Crow, Mai Chen and Don Brash.

Steve Crow will be laughing like hell after that interview and the silliness of Lisa Lewis for providing him with nationwide free primetime advertising for the Boobs on Bikes parade today.

Mai Chen is probably having a cry into her Kornies that Cactus has so savagely exposed her.

Given Cactus Kate’s experience with the other side of affairs Don Brash may do well to listen to Cactus’ advice on his supposed reconciliation with Je Lan. I’m with Cactus though, speaking with Pork Chop was a massive error of judgment not only that it was probably expensive the interview being conducted at some smorgasbord restaurant somewhere.

Cactus really needs to get laid more otherwise her acerbic posts will just get worse.

I’ve been thinking all day about suppression orders. I think we need a real re-think on these. While Simon power is wasting time and energy on looking at repealing the defence of provocation, something that on thought I have come to disagree with he should really be looking at our suppression laws.

In terms of protecting children I have no problem with permanent suppression orders, in some respects also in cases involving horriffic sexual crimes the suppression orders protecting the victim are warranted in but in several cases recently there have been suppression orders in place for no real reason other than to protect a person’s vanity.

Suppression orders should really only be temporary and perhaps for 48 hours at most so that family members can be told. Other than that they should be used sparingly rather than frequently as is becoming the norm.

You can read about someone killed in a car crash in the paper but for some reason a judge deems it necessary to suppress the details of the person charged with the car crash causing the death. It’s a facetious argument I know but it has happened.

Now take the case before the courts today where a former MP is charged along with numerous other people pf allegedly committing frauds involving gaming moneys. All day I have fielded calls from all sorts of people asking if i know who it is or isn’t. I have even had MP’s and former MP’s ringing me asking me. Suppression orders in this case are actually blighting the good names of many ex-MPs and the names of some not so good ex-MPs and all for what? There is no real reason to suppress these details other than for vanity. it is a good case to high-light the difference between wasting resources repealing a valid legal defence of provocation and the real waste of time and resources with suppression.

Now I am no lawyer, but I fucked a few up in my time, and so am not really qualified to comment on whether or not to remove the defence of provocation but other have looked at it and Madeleine Flannagan has a good post on why it should stay.

As for suppression order, I say this is more important than removing a legitimate defence just because a couple of fools unsuccessfully tried to use it to justify their heinous crimes.

In light of all that I leave you with this.

From the Herald this morning we have a list of distractions and the statistics associated with those distractions in motor vehicles. A couple of things stand out for me. We are banning the use of hand held cellphones but for some reason we aren’t banning the driving of a vehicle towards the sun or some other source of dazzling light  which is 5 times more fatal. Distractions on the road.

Last year’s statistics on road crashes show 40 people died as a result of diverted attention. Reading is not listed. So one can presume that map books will still be sold, navigation devices but we can’t use a cellphone unless it is handsfree.

We are banning the use of handheld cellphones but looking at the scenery is just as lethal and in fact more likely to cause injury. Perhaps blinkers should be fitted to drivers positions so they concentrate on the road in front.

As for passengers….well you are 8 times more likely from killing yourself by having passengers in the car than talking on a cellphone. I think we could sue the car manufacturers here for putting pesky things like passenger seats in the cars in the first place.

Despite the nazi-like policing of roadside signs by Transit NZ there were zero fatalities and only 4 non-fatalities. A whole department of transit can be disbanded just based on those figures alone.

Other isn’t broken out but I suspect a dropped hot pie in the lap or a apilt coffee would a significant causes there. Perhaps service stations and food outlets should have mandatory inspections to ensure that pies arnd the like which may be consumed with motor vehicles are at a safe cold temperature.

Reasons for distraction:

• Cigarette, radio, glove box etc – 223 non-fatal accidents, 6 fatal.
• Cellphone or communication device: 116 non-fatal, 1 fatal.
• Driver dazzled: 205 non-fatal accidents, 5 fatal.
• Advertising sign: 4 non-fatal accidents, 0 fatal.
• Emotionally upset – 92 non-fatal accidents, 7 fatal.
• Animal or insect in car – 24 non-fatal accidents, 0 fatal.
• Passengers – 146 non-fatal accidents, 8 fatal.
• Scenery or people outside vehicle – 145 non-fatal, 1 fatal.
• Trying to find house or intersection – 42 non-fatal, 0 fatal.
• Other – 154 non-fatal 9 fatal

A little birdy tells me that a repeater from TV3 has contacted a “very well known blogger” to ask what the contact phone number for the Bloggers Union is because they couldn’t find it in the Whitepages and did he/she know how to get in contact.

Bwahahahahahaha That is so funny. For the purposes of educating TV3 the Blogger’s Union is a compulsory union for anyone who a) blogs, b) comments on blogs c) reads blogs, kind of like the ridiculous situation where people who happen to enrol in a course at a tertiary institution have to join a Student Union.

It is compulsory to belong and the Blogger’s Union Chief Executive is Clint Heine, whereabouts usually London but at this time of year probably Munich, shit-faced and face down in either a woman or a pile of vomit.

I doubt you will get a sane comment from him about the poor blogger currently being hounded by the Immigration Nazi’s.

It is only the extreme loyalty to the TV3 repeater of the afore-mentioned “very well known blogger” that prevents me naming the  stupid TV3 repeater. Because if I knew the name I would out you for your stupidity.