via the tipline
John Key was right when he said Wellington was a dying place. It’s only chance of survival is keeping the thousands of bureaucrats ferreting away thinking up new ways to control people’s lives.
How surprised do you think I was when the tip line alerted me to a bunch to do-gooders, no doubt donkey deep in the trough attending a research symposium group hug in Wellington today – all feigning worry about fatties.
We are creating a nation of sooks where very soon w will have to send kids to school wrapped in bubblewrap.
A misguided health and safety culture is threatening to render children’s play meaningless, early childhood providers are to be warned.
The United Kingdom-based founder of Outdoor Play and Learning (Opal), Michael Follett, says a “policy of fear” has reshaped play to the extent that children are losing out on vital learning.
“You are taking away their ability to learn through primary, first-hand experience, which is how children actually learn.
“They need to fall over, they need to cut themselves, have bumps and bruises.
“If you over-protect, they don’t learn resilience.”
Life is full of knocks, bumps, grazes and falls. Best let kids experience that so they learn the ground is hard and corners are sharp.
June’s busybodies want to shield your eyes from bikinis and remind you that they’re not above ripping your garden out (even if you are complying with city codes).
But top dishonors go to the police chief who admitted on camera that his officers had “more important things to do,” but still championed a measure that fines folks for swearing in public.
Presenting Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Month for June 2012: Middleborough, Massachusetts Police Chief Bruce Gates!
Beneficiaries are moaning about being able to get free contraception. Politicians are moaning that the state is meddling in their lives. The easy solution then is for all the meddling to stop…the easiest way for the meddling to stop is to go get a job. There problem solved.
Socialists just don’t get that if the state is the answer to every one of our societies ills then at some point the state will be all powerfula ndstart telling you haow they want you to live. The single best way to avoid this is to minimise the intrusion of the state in your lofe. Get a job.
Simply put, if you want the state to pay for your lifestyle then start expecting the state to start telling you what it expects in return for your indolence.
Some groups representing beneficiaries claim the Government’s offer of free long-term birth control to women on welfare will inevitably involve some degree of state pressure.
The Government rejects this claim. Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says it will be voluntary.
From this year, all women on a benefit and 16- to 19-year-old daughters of beneficiaries will be able to obtain special-needs grants to pay for long-acting, reversible contraception.
The scheme supports the Government’s wider welfare reforms, which include penalties for those who have more children while on a benefit.
The four products available are those funded by Pharmac. They are the contraceptive arm implant Jadelle, the three-monthly injection Depo-provera, and two devices that are inserted into the uterus: the Multiload, which releases small amounts of copper, and the Mirena, which releases a contraceptive drug.
from Boing Boing’s Cory Doctrow.
“Child pornography is great,” the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. “It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites”.
The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title “Sweden — A Safe Haven for Pirates?”. The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry associations, like IFPI and others…
“One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand,” Johan Schlüter said with a grin, his whole being radiating pride and enthusiasm from the podium.
First we the attempt to foist s92a onto us, then we had the Department of Internal Affairs unilaterally decide to implement an Internet Filter to stop people accessing “child porn” and then we had ACTA. How long do you think it will be before this nanny-state government accedes to the Recording Industry demands to filter file-sharing sites?
Unbelieveably Comrade Farrar at the Troll Farm has described the government as having “a nanny state mindset”.
Well knock me down with a feather.
He is right though, with the cellphone ban in cars, the raising of the driving age to 16 and a few more that escape me right at this moment all we need is a nother dodgy report from the great meddler Sir Geoffrey Palmer and his patsy Law Commission. His last report was on name suppression and we all know what I think about that. The latest is on Alcohol.
The Manatee has exclusive details which I will now pinch.
I understand the Palmer Report proposes:
- A massive 50% increase in the excise tax on alcohol. This would result in an extra $500 million of revenue to the Crown at the expense of everyone who drinks.
- Banning the sale of liquor at off licenses after 10 pm. So if you pop into New World at 10.30 pm to do your shopping (which I often do), you won’t be able to buy a bottle of wine.
- Forcing bars and nightclubs to refuse to allow people to enter after 2 am.
- A nationwide closing time for all outlets, probably at 4 am.
- An increase in the purchase age for alcohol from 18 to 20, criminalising 130,000 18 and 19 year olds if they buy alcohol.
I just bet this is FIGJAM‘s wet dream which he wrote down and passed on to Geoff the Goob. Geoffrey Palmer has fucked up everything he has touched. It was his fricken idea to have bill of Rights Act, laudable an idea as it was but only Palmer would have passed the Act so that it sat under all New Zealand law rather than over it. In the now famous description of meaningless documents, acttion and deeds, that was truly “aspirational” and safely ignored.
National has ignored the NZBORA on a few Acts, Labour famously ignored it with the Elecotral Finance Act. Basically our politicians are a bunch of meddling c**ts with nothing better to do than get us to pay cart the sex life around and at the same time place increasing restrictions upon the populace.
Democracy is supposed to be about getting freedoms not restricting them and once again our government has shown it is no better than the meddling bastards we tossed out barely 18 months ago. If only the Libertarianz were a bunch of zealots, they might actually get somewhere. Yes PC, we have had this discussion but you couldn’t see through the purity of your argument. In fact you could say your argument so so pure there was no further need to elucidate it.
Barnsley was right, I was…that word that starts with w and ends in g.
Steven Joyce has gone rogue and is starting to make the She-Beast and the other members of the Heleban look like angels from heaven.
First he banned cellphone use in cars, then he wants zero tolerance for under 20′s driving, even though they can legally buy piss at 18, and now he raised the driving age to 16.
WTF is this a Police State, I’m starting to think that even Bomber and Tim Selwyn are onto something with their ranting.
We elected this government to get the nanny state away, not for more of it. I was with Steven Joyce on the zero tolerance and now I see that Barnsley Bill was right. This is just another impinging of our civil liberties from a party that should know better.
Quite how this matches the vision and values of the National Party is beyond me. How are these law changes compatible with Individual freedom and choice, Personal responsibility and Limited government.
I think that “Smile and Wave” Key and “cardinal Richlieu” Joyce have got this one dead wrong. Way to go guys piss off the entire rural sector plus a few hundred thousand 14 year olds that will be voting soon.
Smack-head Darien Fenton has written a post about child labour that is a travesty of contradictions, so uch so that it is deserving of a fisking as only a right winger can do.
A Bangladeshi boy works in a shipbuilding factory in down town. These factories employ young boys as apprentices without pay for the first few years.
Well done, enterprising lad, getting some hard earned skills in boat building and repair. Perhaps he could come down here after his apprenticeship and show our overpaid buffoons in the trade a thing or two. Not so worried about the no pay, they probably get a shipping container to live in and free food in return.
They work in extreme conditions without safety tools like gloves, goggles, and other protective gear.
There is evidence to suggest that workers without safety gear are actually more careful than workers decked out in all the safety gear under the sun.
In exchange, they learn the skills of the trade. But this costs them loss of health and education.
Hang on a minute. She says the learn skill of the trade in return for their free labour, how does that reconcile with a loss of education? Not everyone can be a university lecturer or a unionist and then go on to be a Labour Party MP, we need trained, skilled workers in industries like boat building. I fail to see the problem here.
We should remember that there’s a whole other world of exploitation and abuse of workers out there.
Now hang on a minute here. There is no evidence to suggest that this young boy is being exploited, did Darien pop her head out of the air conditioned limo to actually ask the chap if he was being exploited or if he was unhappy. I bet she didn’t. The pong of hard working poor people would have been too much for her socialist patricians nose.
I was at the ILO in Geneva in 1998 when the Child Labour Convention was passed. The Global March against child labour travelled over 80,000 kms through 62 countries, with a core group of marchers, rescued from mines, sweatshops and servitude. They carried the message that the time has come to guarantee every child their childhood, that no child should lose their chance to learn and develop to work all day long. The march was led into the UN by 11 year old Basudev Bhattarai, a former domestic servant from Nepal.
Eleven years on, I’m horrified by this picture, but thanks to Labour Start for reminding us that child labour is still a black spot on the face of humanity.
Oh come on, she has just contradicted herself again buy saying that the boy isn’t learning and developing. He most demonstrably is “learning and developing” skills in the boat-building industry. She calls child labour a black spot on the face of humanity yet is was off the backs of child labour in the industrial revolution which many in the third world are yet to experience that saw kids doing fine works as chimney-sweeps and pit-pony drovers and coal mining. Good honest work, an excellent work etthic and keeping them out of trouble and off the streets.
I have had contact with a loyal reader with a story to tell about Genesis Energy. I’ll let his words explain.
My daughter and her asthmatic boyfriend moved out to a new home and advised Genesis that they had moved into xxx Coatesville-Riverhead Highway and would like them to be their energy supplier. Genesis says thanks and sent them out a welcome letter to that address (which they received).
Now this house is one of two on a bit of land, and this is where the problems come in.
The kids can show that their address is xxx Coatesville-Riverhead Highway. – They a have tenancy agreement for that address, have their bond lodged against that address, have receipts for payment at that address. They have NEVER been told that there address is any different, but Genesis in their infinite wisdom refer to their home as xxxA Coatesville-Riverhead Highway – because their system doesn’t allow two meters to be listed on the same address.
So at about 10.30 in the morning of the 9th July Genesis sent a contractor out to their property to disconnect power because they had not made any “application for power”. The home was clearly occupied, and there was music going, windows open and the tenant was in the shower.
The contractor didn’t make efforts to provide warning or more importantly to check if anyone inside relied on power for medical reasons, simply leaving a card on the door (addressed to “the occupier” disconnecting the power and running off (They actually saw him leaving).
Being a country home on tank water (requiring a pump) – they were left with no heating, no running water and no ability to flush the toilet.
We contacted Genesis within 15 mins of the disconnection and continued to contact them during the day, and well into the evening (the last call at 9pm lasting over an hour). During all this time we were told several times that the power had been fixed – each time it hadn’t (Genesis never thought of actually calling back and checking with the customer).
In the evening the home was too cold to remain in so the kids packed up and came to our home to sleep. Because Adam had been sitting in the cold/damp for the entire day waiting for Genesis his asthma started playing up and by the time he arrived at our home he was having trouble breathing. We could not get it better – and he ended up having to go to Northshore hospital to get it under control before it broke into a fully fledged asthma attack.
The next morning we were advised that power was restored – the kids returned to the house and (you guessed it) – there still wasn’t power.
Finally Genesis worked out that they have disconnected what ‘they’ called xxxA.
We were advised that Genesis chose to disconnect as they had it listed as a vacant possession and they do this for safety reasons.
We call bullshit as:
1 – this isn’t actually the address of the house
2 – It is very obvious that the house IS tenanted and that there was someone there at the time – this is all visible from where the card was left.
3 – The card gave a totally different reason – it was addressed to “the occupier” and that the reason was that they had made no application for power (which they had)
Power was finally restored around 1pm the following day.
I spoke to the company over two important points:
1. How can they disconnect power to a property without warning or notice to the person in the house – especially after all the issues with the death of a customer last year – do they not learn anything.
2. Compensation should be forthcoming to the tenants – after all they had been disconnected in error, had been made to wait out there for Genesis for an entire day in the cold, without water or flushing toilets. And there were many, many lost hours on the phone – driving between properties as theirs was unsuitable to sleep in, and the contribution that this made to Adam’s health subsequently requiring him to go to hospital.I spoke to a number of people – finally finishing with Richard Gordon the “Public Affairs Manager”.
His views were interesting. He told me that the contractor has knocked on the door and verified that the house was vacant.
This is obviously untrue for all the reasons I mention above.
Then he told me that they were not entitled to any compensation as “They had told is their address was xxx Coatesville-Riverhead Highway and we don’t call it that – So its their own fault for giving us the wrong address”
I explained that Genesis could call it whatever they wanted but they gave the correct address – he would not be moved, so I told him I was going to lodge a complaint with the disputes tribunal and contact the media – He seemed quite happy or even amused with this – so I have – And that is HIS own fault.
This will in all likelihood now turn into a PR disaster for Genesis Energy. Why do so-called PR people always call people’s bluff when they say they are going to the media? Silly, silly man.
Front up Genesis Energy, admit you made a mistake and do it quick before this turns into another Jetstar.
Last month I announced that as part of our charter commitment to Fair and Balanced reportage I would be running a regular, apolitical series looking at what fuckwits the Labour party harbours. Here’s the August edition.
Labour have had a great deal of trouble finding candidates to put up in electorates around the country.
It’s not a great time to have your name associated with the Labour party, and this was particularly true in the East Coast Bays electorate – no one has ever been particularly willing to go up against the hardworking and conscientious, popular and competent incumbent Murray McCully. And rightly so.
This time round, the ECB LEC really scraped the bottom of barrel and found some loser dumb enough to stand.
They found a frumpy housewife/primary school teacher known to her few remaining friends as Viv Goldsmith. She has a morbidly obese, drain on the health system and whingeing pom for a husband who follows her about on the campaign trail.
So what makes her dumb? In the press release announcing her candidacy, the bint chipped in this throwaway line:
“She pledges to be a representative who will have a presence and an availability not seen currently in the East Coast Bays electorate.”
Let’s unpack that a little. Firstly, she pledges to be available and visible locally if elected. Then she implies that the incumbent is something other than the hard-working and popular local his constituents know him to be.
The second claim is an outrageous slur that can be disproved in a cinch. The first is more contentious.
On her website, Goldsmith admits she lives well beyond the borders of McCully Country in the North Shore electorate. Not exactly a new standard of local advocacy is it?
To be fair, a lot of candidates and some MPs don’t live in the electorates they are standing in. But at least they go to some length to get involved in the local community. Not Goldsmith.
Such is her disdain for the people of East Coast Bays, she refuses to even host her fundraisers locally. In fact, she is hosting what she describes as her one “BIG fund raiser!” in another city about eight hours walk from East Coast Bays. Is that really a new standard of representation? Or is it simply the case that Goldsmith has such disdain for people in East Coast Bays she’s hosting a fundraiser many local people would find it difficult to get to.
Living outside the electorate you want to represent and hosting your “BIG fund raiser[s]!” in Avondalé – a suburb in another city – isn’t a new standard of representation. It’s what I call Dumb Labour.
