Posts by Shulgin

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  • Hard News: The perilous birth of the…,

    Good Article RB.

    The larger concern here is the credibility of the public service to actually do things in reasoned way that the public should have confidence in…like review the outdated Misuse of Drugs Act and administer the new Psycho-Active Substances act.

    For example, I can show how the NDIB (Police Unit) did a study of hospital admissions caused “soley” by cannabis (Maxwell report). In rough terms the Police found that cannabis caused around 2000 admissions a year, costing $30 million and involving 60,000 bed nights. The NDIB is a joint operation of Health, Customs and Police. The Maxwell report was delivered up to Police Executive who used it to fund “operations”, that is more budget from the political masters, and a measure of the ”good they do” in preventing cannabis hospital admissions.

    Big problem is that the Police misled everyone because they manipulated public Health data. The Police created a harm that did not exist. That was bad enough, but the Health department who gave the police the data, have a Copyright Notice, that states the data is not to be manipulated and they received a copy but never enquired into how the police arrived at their findings. If the Police are a thin blue line, then our public servants are karitane yellow stain!!

    I have the actual ICD 10 data extract from Health and I also have the manipulated data spreadsheet cooked up by the NZ Police. All of that is bad enough…but it turns out what the Police sought to do with the data was not technically possible in the first place, and yet no one pointed that out at the start…meaning the Maxwell report was always doomed….and should never have been written let alone acted upon by the Police executive.

    In summary we have a Police force making up social harms that do not exist, misleading the Courts, politicians and the tax paying public. I managed to get the Police to reluctantly remove the Maxwell report from their web site and intranet, via a complaint to the three ministers involved…but they will not go public with a proper retraction, nor are there any employment consequences for those public servants cooking the books!

    There are only two possibilities, incompetence….or a Police conspiracy….both are ugly places to be.

    So no, if the Police can fool you all with their “study” Dunne’s quaint Act is doomed!!

    The Police are drinking at the police bar telling themselves what good job “they-done”!!

    NZ • Since May 2011 • 125 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Cannabis: The Experiment is Real,

    http://norml.forumotion.co.nz/t62p210-if-sog-is-lime-and-bitters-then-xmas-is-wella-fraud#1709

    yeah, but no...$800 buck wank fest....

    featuring cake cutting clowns from the NDIB...

    very funny proceedings.... on the first day stop at 4.20..haha rofl...not really..gett'n my glad rags....

    wow... looking forward to my "ticket" so I can "network"....




    PEACE

    NZ • Since May 2011 • 125 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Cannabis: The Experiment is Real,

    Yes, many of the pro-reformers are irritating and undisciplined and , frankly, smoke too much pot. On the other hand, there have been enough wise heads to convince three select committee inquiries and the law Commission of the need for reform. So it’s not like there’s no one patiently presenting evidence. There’s a political blockage at the top.

    mmm….aw…. I dunno…like baiting a snapper on the one hand. What is the limit again?

    So for example, I tried to get the original data extract “cannabis hospital admissions” from “our” ICD 10 database housed by the Ministry of Health. This data was used by NDIB to produce its cornerstone report. Health said they didn’t have it and well….. it might not match what NDIB had because they said NDIB….. may well have manipulated it….. after it was passed to them. Under OIA I asked for a copy of the ICD 10 extract. However, Police said it was “lost” and despite extensive searching it could not be located.

    Now for such important “social research”, tax payer harms $30 million a year, how can you lose the data?

    No data…. no checking possible, unrepeatable! And the Police claimed they had a sole causation between hospital admission and cannabis use.

    Complaint to Ombudsman, six months passes, Police tell the Ombudsman data lost or incorrectly saved therefore under OIA they invoke 18 (e) request declined because document does not exist. They also invoke 18 (g)…the ‘document’ cannot be found therefore does not exist the therefore request declined. Police then go on to say to the Ombudsman they acknowledge that they did in fact “change” the raw ICD10 data….but too bad… document does not exist…..grrrrr!

    So back to Health department, another six months wasted! What obstructive plonkers. Health say in June 2013 the data didn’t exist at their end either. I pointed out to them there were at least three ways to find it. By July 2013 Health had in fact, managed to find the data extract passed to NDIB.

    It took me 5 minutes to see how police had changed the data, hence I could see why the data had been lost and the extraordinary lengths gone to obfuscate its discovery. So that is a waste of 18 months getting a data extract that should have been available when asked for. A terrible waste because 18 months effort to spend 5 minutes to see what had been done! IT IS OUT OF ALL PROPORTION. Didn’t someone write a book called the passionless people? Undisciplined…I think 18 months collecting “evidence” from the state, for 5 minutes of analysis, is out of all proportion to the reality of how stuff should work.

    It’s bloody shocking what they have done…so here we are patiently trying discover evidence from the NZ public service…it’s all I can do to stop myself becoming very irritating and undisciplined, and frankly this is being paid for by our tax dollars…and no one is accountable for it. More fool me, no one pays my time for this wee adventure into the secret realms and workings of the NDIB.

    If anyone wants to argue that manipulating public health data by the NZ Police is a healthy thing, go right ahead, I would be real interested in that form of argument!

    It’s not smoking too much pot, it is the crazy way that the bureaucracy has become politicised and populated by crack pot members of a cargo cult.

    NZ • Since May 2011 • 125 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Cannabis: The Experiment is Real,

    Cannabis, our intelligence assessment---- is real.

    Prof David Nutt is talking in Auckland Dec 6 at the medical school Auckland University. Thant should also be interesting. He is talking about “evidence” based policy, actually being used for drug matters. Novel idea!

    I would like to make a pitch for one of the spots at the conference run by NZDF. I might glean some intelligence on cannabis matters.

    But also would like to share what I have been working on. I have been working, as it happens, on evidence based government policy….well sort of.

    The NDIB National Drug Intelligence Bureau is a joint operation run by the NZ Police, Customs, and Health. NDIB produced the Maxwell Report in 2007, called “New Cannabis: The Cornerstone of Illicit Drug Harm in New Zealand”. Amongst other things the report told citizenry that Cannabis was sending New Zealanders to hospital in record numbers, in even greater numbers than for amphetamines, cocaine and opiates combined. These thousands of hospital admissions were costing tax payers around $30 million a year and involved some 60,000 bed nights. Head of the NDIB was quoted in the Press saying he had found thousands of hospital admissions due solely to cannabis. He also said he now had a tool to show what “good” he was doing when undertaking big busts.

    Well it’s an intelligence unit…so it must be true! (But in all my life I never knew a person who was admitted to hospital as a direct result of cannabis use….I smelled a rat.)

    Remember Operation Lime…the assault on indoor gardening shops….Rob Pope from the NZ Police said the operation would “break the cornerstone of the cannabis industry”. The Police based all the funding they got for “operations” on the Maxwell harm report.

    So after several years investigating, letters, OIA, Ombudsman,…lost data etc. I sent a 60 page letter, plus attachments to the departments pointing out that the cannabis harm did not actually exist, it had been made up after manipulating public health data. I even obtained the actual spreedsheets they used to arrive at their numbers, so it’s not speculation on my part.

    Well I wrote a letter no one could reply to. I had to complain to the Ministers.

    And just a month ago, I was advised that the Maxwell report has been removed from the Police web site and removed from the Police intranet. You won’t find a retraction notice yet, still working on that one. However, I am hoping they will do what is required….before I do it on their behalf.

    Oh yes and not only did the Maxwell report manipulate data it plagiarized. Yes word for word copied and not a reference or quote mark in site! They even changed the footnote numbers they copied from the original so it looked like their referencing work…such attention to detail from the intelligence officers.

    So sadly for the New Zealand Police they once again bring the police (themselves) and the public service into disrepute. Health provided the data, is on the NDIB, but did not check the Maxwell report, so they must be part of the conspiracy.

    This situation oddly seems to give the appearance that the NZ Police are a self-serving gang, manipulating data, making up rules, and medical causation s to suit their operations and defending the indefensible as the nails scrape down the blackboard of the intelligence briefing room. Misleading the politicians, justice system and the public. If my NCEA Level child had delivered up the Maxwell report as an assignment, it would have failed to pass…strange that Maxwell is a document from an intelligence unit underpinning Police and Justice operational matters. I guess we are small country …ripe pickings for intelligence units…and evidence based policy!

    Hope that made some of you tokers smile…and some will be reaching for a stiff gin!

    But it’s not funny for the owners of SOG, who sit in jail as a result of Operation Lime and Bitters….they may well feel very cross and bitter now.

    NZ • Since May 2011 • 125 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: This is Your TV on Drugs,

    TV shows are like...well let's say Aladdin's Cave..are like ....well like a trip to Switched On Gardener...funny how the jury found 2 of 5 guilty, but then again I didn't shit through 9 weeks... opps I mean sit through, of embarrassing tripe from the NZ Police...well done operation Lime and Bitters, and therein lies the sting, telling the gardening store your muther has cancer, can you help me with her... with her pain.....Well done chaps, I biffed the TV, and all that is left is fantasy gardening at SOG...switched on....indeed...what did Plato say about caves? It's all a bit Dutch...

    NZ • Since May 2011 • 125 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Three months after,

    ...with those odds..it's great the church Casino... has braved the odds and opened...rising from the red zone...wow staff intact...hey it is the Monaco GP this weekend...will the germon energy drinks man triumph over the whiskey silver machine...do ya still get a free meal on ya birthday? (Only if you show ID)

    NZ • Since May 2011 • 125 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Three months after,

    In regard to the Red Zone. Actually it’s a metaphor for what was there previously, because it certainly doesn’t exist anymore. The inner city had been in decline for quite sometime. The pressure from Uber mall developments around Chch had sucked the CBD dry. Small population with too much shopping area per head of population. The malls offer the globalised smoke and mirrors of brand/label goods, together with cheap Japanese cars, and all you can eat, it’s deadly. All that was left was to put a bigger louder exhaust on, in the hope you’d be noticed…. by someone. (well Judith did) We are what we consume, generic shops full of goods largely made elsewhere.

    We had some quaint ideas for central city redevelopment. Mr Henderson’s SOL Square and his vision of the Sydenham Village, two tilt slab walls and a large hole, thank goodness the Council stepped-in and banked the Dave Henderson sites/land, I’m sure they will now be useful. Perhaps Bob Parker should dust off the Dave Henderson “Design Briefs”, might save CERA much work and Dave won’t want them back now. I don’t think Dave Henderson skimped on the Architectural Vision. Anyway it “all” got mired down in red ink, a vision but no tax.

    We use to make stuff like shoes and clothes. Even Lane Walker Rudkin stitched it last stitch last year, savage competition from the Orient. What about all that LWR factory land? How will the Receivers market that? It might have a fancy phrase, something like “excellent opportunity for redevelopment”. Actually, it might just be as big as Rolleston, get creative.

    What to do…what to do with acres of wobbly jelly land, how do you make the space productive? As we have cows half way up the Southern Alps, there’s an idea, I’m sure a few more near the coast will not be noticed. Less distance to the milk powder factory, that makes good carbon sense.

    I saw John Key talking on BBC Hardtalk…the quake was mentioned. Actually just the other day Key jokingly said that both EQC and Fletchers were examples of businesses that had grown as a result of the earthquake.

    I called round to a friends house, we swapped quake stories, she showed me the plumbing account…. $900….for “repairs”. Would you look at that, $150 for parts….whoa nice hourly rate for two hours work…..don’t worry I said…it’s just market forces.

    Funny story to end, I was walking home from town one night down Cashel Street. We came upon a man who had driven his car through the front door of the new IRD building. He was sitting in his car inside IRD at 5 in the morning. Glass everywhere, but the driver didn’t have a scratch. Apparently he was an IRD employee proving that the new IRD building was vulnerable to a terrorist act. I think he was probably right…

    I love the irony of how Dave Henderson purchased the one time IRD building, he threw them out, turned it into a hotel…and now he owes IRD tax…. Phew…only in Christchurch---- aye…..

    NZ • Since May 2011 • 125 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Three months after,

    Thanks for the article Russell. Indeed, riding a bike around Ch-ch is the best way to see everything bent-out-of-shape. But I think, you should have worn a hard hat, rather than a black beanie, you may have looked like a looter, in black.

    I have just arrived back after three months to my rented house on the east side, getting it ready for winter, taking some things I need, like some warm clothes. Actually I’d much prefer to be loading the whole lot in a shipping container, but unfortunately don’t have a destination yet, perhaps that is a good thing.

    Some observations, while contemplating my house-lot of goods and starring into a coffee cup. The place is indeed very quiet, no boy racers, not much traffic. At home no bumbling spoodle or family chat, at least they are safe up north. The aftershocks continue, they seem different now, they feel like jelly wobble, I think we are sitting on some water-logged substrates and now it’s winter….not good….

    In the past, my experience of earthquakes, would be perhaps feeling the event. The second part, was the social part, in the smoko room, conversations invariably went “…did ya feel that quake last night?”. So I had formed a view that earthquakes would be an “event”. However, after months and thousands of shakes the whole matter has expanded my breadth and depth of earthquake experience. It’s emotional, fearful,dreadful, it’s all the time deciding fight or flight, organic chemical driven state of mind for nine months. I am now a full time Geonet junkey, I can locate the street of the epicentre on Google earth, make a mental picture of those dots, and then I’m like Ken Ring, just wait till the Greendale fault attains it’s goal and meets up with Banks Peninsula…spectacular!

    part two shortly

    NZ • Since May 2011 • 125 posts Report Reply

  • Southerly: That CERA Rumour,

    Miroir d'Eau...mmm and those granite tiles in the square, cause I'm sure we'd want to recycle them...sure, "grand designs" but as I shiver in the north easterly gale, it's no place to gather, it was enough with my toddler in the gardens back in the day. And as for the other days, the howling westerly will just create waves, there will be no mirror. Sorry it's just too grand, great for it's hemisphere, but not roaring 40's.

    I'm just not sure anyone at the CERA should be putting forward civic "gather" projects, the role is to make decisions, proper economic ones as you say David, and to facilitate matters between Council and Government and Community. I Think Brownlee said after the September quake he didn't want a Top Down Politburo in charge of the repairs....leave it to the market he said. umm...so what is CERA then...skating anyone? Perhaps, it's because under Bob the Council has sunk under it's own spin. Actually in this hemisphere what way does water go round the plug hole?

    So may I ask David, why is your focus on the area you live, do you propose all rivers and streams in Chch be "sured-up"? If so, what is the cost? If there are not enough resources, how would one decide, for example to exclude the Heathcote over a "sure-up" of the Avon? How much shoring-up secures the future of the city? I think as soon as we get specific about location then the glasses become somewhat fogged.

    Oh and..."Easy Steel" is that a Fletcher Company, part of the social fabric? So old school when it comes to monopoly trading in the market.

    NZ • Since May 2011 • 125 posts Report Reply

  • Southerly: That CERA Rumour,

    Rumors can be upsetting, this is true. I heard a rumor once that South Canterbury Finance was the one of the best run companies in the lending game. While the above article makes a case against a rumor and suggests engineering solutions to the whispers and indeed, it's a well argued point of view from a property owning pressure group, who appear to not want to change.

    Christchurch faces many challenges, just exactly what parts ought to be rebuilt and just what the future of the city is, remains unclear. Continued aftershocks, Dr Berryman from GNS said these could go for 30 years and what damage may this cause? But whatever the outcome in the earths crust, the possible rebuild is only made viable by the injection of vast amounts of social cash from all New Zealanders (Govt, Eqc etc).

    Questions of social fairness and equity will need to be carefully considered. It may be desirable to have a home beside a river, or at the top of a cliff as close to edge as you dare, but the moment owners start asking for collective money to sure-up, housing land in questionable locations, then I think we have some deep issues. Will some land become more valuable as a result of "shoring-up" works, while other parts will be abandoned because it is too costly to fix the land?

    In regards to retrofitting new foundations I think the costings are underestimated by the author. In addition these sorts of works will only be viable if there is a new central business area is built. Because otherwise there will be no reason to live there and enjoy the ducks. One of the bigger questions we all face in NZ are the brutal facts of globalisation and just exactly what role a re-bulit Christchurch might play. As we have been warned so many times selling each other expensive housing besides rivers will not earn our way in the world.

    In an bleak first interview on National radio new CERA CEO Roger Sutton mumbled something about his vision for an ice skating rink in the centre of Christchurch, as a focus, it could be a paddling pool in the summer, a place for people to "gather". It's this sort of muddled thinking that makes me think the river bank fissures should just run their course. I'm all for, the newly proposed park land along the Avon, if nothing else, it will shake-up the population and cause them to react with renewed vigor.

    It's time to be forward looking, the heritage beside and along the river was from the coal age. In an age of global warming we should be very careful when we look at the topography and make our social decisions on what was New Zealand's second largest city. That right there, might just be the only heritage fact left to ponder while walking along Avon Park walkway.... near the old site of Christchurch City.

    Sorry for being so grim.

    NZ • Since May 2011 • 125 posts Report Reply

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