Noelle McCarthy did a couple of great interviews on Tuesday's Wire on 95bFM on the matter of the Restaurant Association's plan to introduce drug-testing for hospitality industry workers. First up was Alistair Duncan of the Union of Food Handlers, who was incredulous at the plan, and then there was the Restaurant Association's Neville Waldren, who just dug himself into a deeper hole every time he opened his mouth.
By the end of the interview he was declaring that the association's new "zero tolerance" policy could and would encompass the hospo worker who had a quiet joint after work. The policy is silly on any number of fronts: it ignores the fact that the major drug of abuse in the industry is still alcohol; that the testing idea is capricious and prone to vexatious dobbing-in; and, not least, that if you're going to ask every waiter and kitchen hand to pee in a bottle you're going to run out of staff pretty quickly.
Yes, kitchens can occasionally be dangerous places, and P - smoked methamphetamine - can represent a special case, but these people aren't airline pilots, they're hospo workers. It's not really the most delicately-behaved industry (read Kitchen Confidential), and its proprietors are hardly likely to make the changes to pay and conditions that will alter that. The other problem, of course, is that P is one of the less likely drugs to actually be picked up in a piss-test. Unlike dear old marijuana, it will probably clear the body in under 48 hours. Unless restaurant and bar owners really plan on conducting their own tests, on premises - and that's a very fraught path - it's not going to do the job it's meant to.
The thing, of course, is that this is all driven by an ESR study which found that 40% of the New Zealand workforce had used illicit drugs in the past 12 months.
But ESR is hardly an honest broker in these matters. Workplace drug-testing equates to revenue for ESR and for years it has, at every opportunity, steadfastly declared a grave problem that can only be solved by - ta da! - workplace drug-testing. Be wary of the hype.
In a similar vein, Simon Pound interviewed Nandor Tanczos about the Greens' interesting new drug policy, and later considered its chances. (He also has a comprehensive post on the Progressive Review's study of Iraq war costs.)
Hey! Just to show that Maxim doesn't have all the money, you can contribute some dollars (and if you wish, your name) to a forthcoming newspaper ad in support of the Civil Union Bill. Donate with credit card at a secure page here.
I had other business and missed most of the vice-presidential debate, but the little I saw was much more interesting than the first presidential debate. Edwards looked lively - but would the voting public take that for cheek? And Cheney, whose performance emphasised the fact the he is clearly a good deal more intelligent than his boss, did seem to tire towards the end.
I did see what might have been a key moment, when Cheney attacked the younger man's voting record in the Senate. Edwards winced for a microsecond, then shot straight back with a list of votes - including a vote against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela - that Cheney would rather not have talked about. Newsday's Jimmy Breslin analysed that passage.
But another part of Cheney's attack on Edwards may prove more embarrassing. In seeking to depict Edwards as a lazy senator, Cheney (who has oversight of the Senate) claimed never to have met Edwards before that night's debate. Whoops. Apparently they've met three times - and within minutes of the debate concluding, the Dems were circulating this photograph of the two men together, at a prayer breakfast. (America politicians - always with the prayer breakfasts!)
Edwards presumably knew damn well that he'd met Cheney before, and either made a snap decision to let a minor but obvious falsehood lie - or actually had a strategy of letting Cheney's false claims sit there on the record, without being softened by qualification or explanation. As one of Josh Marshall's readers pointed out, this is what trial lawyers sometimes do to witnesses.
Cheney did say a number of things that went beyond the usual fact-massaging in which both sides participate, but perhaps his funniest moment was the invitation to viewers to go and verify what he's said at factcheck.com. Anyone who did go there found themselves at - huh? - a website run by notable Bush opponent George Soros. Kevin Drum has the skinny on exactly what happened. Cheney, of course, should have said factcheck.org, but given the headlines on its homepage, he probably didn't really want people going there either.
Although some of these utterances may well play out to Cheney's disadvantage in the next day or two (on the other hand, it's hard to think of anything Edwards said that could be used in the same way) what I saw of the actual debate looked basically like a draw, which is how the Christian Science Monitor and Time, but the way some people saw it as a slam-dunk either way is fascinating. Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan declared Cheney to have been road-kill, got a torrent of angry and abusive responses, and explained his view more fully in a column for The New Republic.
The flurry around the debate was as interesting as anything else. The Bush campaign had its civilian footsoldiers primed to declare Cheney the victor before the thing had even begun. Meanwhile, Democratic Underground was directing its readers to vote in every instant online poll it could find. I kept thinking that one day they'd just cut to the chase and make a proper reality TV show out of it. Except that on current showings, the one to be voted off the island would be the President.
Meanwhile, WorldNet Daily eagerly picks up on Drudge's slightly desperate claim that Kerry took an illicit "cheat-sheet" out of his pocket before the presidential debate (frankly, the video doesn't show shit), and a new site, Is Bush Wired? , is devoted to the theory that the president is coached through his earpiece.
PS: This just in: you can chat live with Trevor Mallard at 4pm today - and, according the email, "tell us what your friends and workmates have got to say about some very topical issues - powhiri at school functions, standards in education, and more!" Sign up here. Might be interesting …