Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Hard News: Jones: The contender leaves, in reply to Pete George,
Not as rooted as the United Future one, mate.
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Hard News: Jones: The contender leaves, in reply to Idiot Savant,
these people are employees of MFAT
Are you sure? The legislation says they are appointed and dismissed by the G-G. Aren't they like ministers - semi-political appointments at the whim of the government of the day?
(Ministers are"employed" in that they get paid a salary, but there's no accountability as to who gets chosen and no employment protections).
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Hard News: Jones: The contender leaves, in reply to Matthew Poole,
He's going to be a "roving economic ambassador across the Pacific".
Is that a head of mission / head of post?
head of mission means a person who is appointed by the Governor-General to be—
(a)High Commissioner for New Zealand in any Commonwealth country, or in the Cook Islands; or
(aa)High Commissioner for New Zealand in Niue; or
(b)Ambassador of New Zealand to any State that is not a Commonwealth country; or
(c)head of mission for New Zealand at any international organisation; or
(d)head of mission for New Zealand (not being a high commissioner or ambassador) to any Statehead of post means a person who is not a head of mission but is appointed by the Governor-General to be the head of a New Zealand government office in any State
I don't think some sort of "roving ambassador" post counts. The only way they could elevate that role would be to create a special government office on some Pacific island, and even then one could argue that a "post" is the sole NZG diplomatic presence in a state, so could not be in a place where we already have one.
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There's a class of Labour politician who joins the party as a young person, not because they have much of a commitment to social justice, but because all their family and friends are Labour and they could not imagine a career in National (despite that being the place their attitudes would best fit).
They're very popular with the sort of right-wing commentators who'd love a Labour party that could be "trusted" to be National-lite for an occasional term while the real Nats rest and regroup.
The right isn't really burdened with an equivalent. I don't think Helen Clark ever considered joining National because her parents are farmers. Labour would do well not to be, either.
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What's needed is heavy ethanol C2D5OH (or, even better, super-heavy ethanol with C14 and O18, which would be 25% denser than regular ethanol). Though the radioactivity from the C14 might make for worse hangovers [ actually, I'd skip the C14, you'd die. ]
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At 60% alcohol (another patent suggested only 11%), you'd need 18g for a standard drink, so over 100g to get reasonably pissed. That's quite a lot of white powder to smuggle into a game or bar.
And as the best CiF comment in a while suggests, if they don't get the adsorbent to break down into something soluble it's going to be like drinking booze flavoured spunk.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to debunk,
cleaning out bathroom cabinets of drugs and scoffing the lot
You know, for someone who claims to be a post-grad psychopharmacologist there's a slight lack of credibility in your posts.
I suspect anyone who did that on most people's medicine collections would be very ill from paracetamol poisoning, if nothing else. Commonly prescribed cardiac drugs, OTOH, are usually asymptomatic in overdose.
Surely you should know this?
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to BenWilson,
Is there evidence
Unlikely that any research could have been done, given the law has only been in operation for a short while and few statistics will have been released in the time frame.
Is there any evidence that people are more informed?
If all psychoactive substances were illegal (be a bit of a problem for people wanting to buy butane or petrol) then people would have no choice, logically.
With the current law, there is "some" choice and plenty of information (not least on what actual substance one is ingesting, if one chooses to go down the legal route). It's up to the user whether to avail themselves of such information.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to BenWilson,
- Quite a lot of the
bogan riff-raff
not getting additional criminal records for cannabis possession (they of course being the ones who may not get away with it, unlike the middle classes who can keep things discreet).
- Reduced profits for "illegal" drug dealers (a lot of the furore about synthetics is indirectly coming from those with an interest in growing and selling weed).
- People getting an informed choice about what they put in their bodies
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Not surprisingly, ACT doesn't want to increase penalties for financial, passport or electoral fraud.
I think that the latter should attract not only a long jail sentence for the perpetrator, but for all those who acted as an accessory to the offence by voting for them.