Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Rape and unreason, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
It was absolutely clear to me, from evidence presented by the victim and witnesses (the accused didn’t testify) that there was no way any reasonable person could believe they had consent after physically overpowering someone and detaining them.
That's quite an astonishing story, especially since the flatmates actually called the police. This isn't even a "his word against hers" story, but one about whether there is a huge sector of the population who really do believe women deserve to get raped if they make certain mistakes.
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What a great doco. Jimmy, as he is.
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Hard News: Another Saturday Night, in reply to Phil Wallington,
“Safer communities Together” is a great slogan but an ideal hard to realise.
I noticed there were no reports of injuries from overly hot pies, so they're making some progress :-)
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A shocking, tragic loss. Thank you for giving us this, Amberleigh. I hope the mystery surrounding his death is resolved for your family, too.
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Hard News: Not so insane, in reply to "chris",
the potential ramifications of being busted for possession of cannabis would seem less attractive than the alternative: losing consciousness, having a psychotic break and inadvertently calling the armed offenders squad to one’s domicile, or far worse.
Yup, the law is that stupid. The safer (but not totally safe) drug that everyone would prefer is less attractive than random barely tested unlabelled chemicals. The consequences of a cannabis prosecution are serious enough that this perverse outcome occurs. I’m sure some people might choose a synthetic high, even if both were legal, as I’ve heard that some of them leave you feeling less lethargic when they wear off than dope, but I’d say that it’s certainly the case that the law causes anyone who would use dope to use synthetic instead, and that’s a LOT of people, in particularly, a LOT of children.*
*ETA: Consider that practically every dairy in the country was selling the stuff a few years back. Talking to the owners, they said the stuff was making them a lot of money.
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Hard News: Another Saturday Night, in reply to Russell Brown,
I know of certain journalists who struggle to frame a coherent idea in 140 characters.
It probably helps that dispatchers have always spoken in short sentences, lots of stock phrases. Rapid communication is the key.
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Hard News: Not so insane, in reply to "chris",
Firstly I guess the real question is did he stop using Kronic after the second incident?
He says so, but I can’t know for sure. Gut feeling is that he would rather just use cannabis, which has never led to the police pulling a gun on him. But then people poison themselves with alcohol all the time, and yet continue to use it. Blackouts, vomiting, unconsciousness, long hangovers, injuries from falls and fights etc. All part of a great night out, for some.
do you imagine that the banning of this new substance would sway him were he able to acquire (quite possibly without the required health warnings, a list of the active ingredients, contact details for the manufacturer or distributor, and the telephone number of the National Poisons Centre for unbanned substances) it on the black market?
No, I’m sure that it wouldn’t*. He was only using it in preference to dope because it was a lot easier to get, and you didn’t have to take precautions carrying it, storing it, etc. If it were illegal it would be in direct competition with a well known drug with many advantages. One of the things that’s also most compelling about dope is that it’s a plant. You can actually look at it to ascertain what you’re buying, and if you know what you’re looking for, you can get an idea of quality visually, and firm that up by sampling it. You quite probably even know the person who makes it, if you’re habitual enough.
Thirdly were it not banned, would he still be likely to purchase and use this product were these negative effects (blackouts/ psychotic breaks) clearly stated on the packaging?
If there were good quality evidence of any kind of the likely effects being mostly negative, I think he’d take that into account whether it is on the packaging or not. But there are so many of these blends, and they’re changing all the time, that the sample sizes are not really good enough to draw strong conclusions except in the most extreme cases. But even if they are, as is the case with alcohol, it’s not clear that it’s a strong enough deterrent to stop people who simply rate harm to themselves far lower and pleasure far higher, than the average person would. Then there’s the chance of addiction, whether physical, psychological, or a bit of both, at which point the decisions aren’t really that rational anyway – smokers happily buy boxes of stuff with pictures of disgusting tumors all over them, and massive warnings, and everyone knows people who have died because of smoking.
ETA: Ooops reading fail. You were asking whether it would sway him to stop? Yes, it certainly would, for the reasons given.
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Hard News: Not so insane, in reply to Russell Brown,
The manager of the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority, Dr Donald Hannah, says the six products were all assessed to pose more than a low risk of harm.
Anecdotally, I'd say this is a good idea. It was one of those 3 that caused a friend of mine to lapse in and out of consciousness 4 times over dinner in a restaurant a few years back. Pretty damned alarming - I thought he was having a heart attack and took him to hospital. This was someone not unaccustomed to getting stoned, and was off a single dose, a few puffs. There was a doctor at the next table who saw him doing it, and was not going to have a bar of him saying he was just a bit sick and needed to lie down. It was not a simple faint - he was talking to me, and then his eyes rolled back, and he fell slowly towards his plate. I caught his head and people either side stopped him falling over, and then his eyes rolled back, and he appeared to have no memory that it had happened at all, wondered what everyone was looking at him for. Then it happened again, and then twice more.
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Russell Brown,
This morning’s Herald reports a very strong poll result for Cunliffe’s Labour.
Greens up too.
It's going to be an exciting year. I think we may finally have reached the tipping point, where Key drum beating that a Labour/Green coalition is Left, rather than Center, might actually be advantageous to Labour. If he manages to strongly project that there is a genuine difference at the political center that isn't just down to the "safe pair of hands" that National has somehow managed to persuade a minority that they have, he could actually energize the apathetic voter.
I think it's also important to note that most calculations of a coalition put the Maori Party on National's side. But they're like Peter Dunne, playing both ways. There really is no guaranteed alliances apart from ACT left for National. The last election really was a structural defeat for the political Right.
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I don't agree with any of that. Worrying about the soft left vote rather than actually having an alternative position has been pretty much what Labour have done for 4.5 years now and it does nothing for them. There are votes to be won in alternative medicine too, you know, and I really doubt that left wing National voters would actually be scared away by something unscientific, considering how long they've tolerated neoliberal dogma. It's not like you go to a National stronghold and find no-one who has ever had acupuncture, or their back cracked. It's small potatoes in the voting scheme, an easy giveaway to the Greens. I don't think there's anything inherently left or right wing about it, really.
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