Posts by webweaver
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Sacha,
I agree - this has all the hallmarks of a deal struck between the govt and all the insurance companies - which means that none of the rest of us can switch policies to a better insurer because they're all behaving in the same appalling manner. Bastards.
It's like a bloody cartel. Aren't there laws against those?
Don’t we call that collusion?
from what Nades heard tonight, that would definitely seem to be the case:
Went to the community briefing here this evening and the insurance rep there confirmed that this would be same/similar for all insurance companies.
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It’s not just Tower. I’m currently on the phone with ASB, with whom I have my home (full replacement) cover. They are saying the exact same thing.
If my home was repairable and the cost of repair was less than the cost of rebuild, EVEN IF I WAS IN A RED ZONE they would only pay for the cost of repair.
When I sarcastically asked if they would pay out for the full cost of replacement once the house had been bulldozed, she went away to ask an expert and came back with the same answer. No.
When I pushed the point and asked how on a practical level it is possible for them to claim that a house can be repaired when the land beneath it is no longer deemed liveable and the whole suburb is being written-off, she told me that it wasn’t the insurance company’s problem – because they don’t insure the land.
Un-fucking-believable.
She thinks it will be the same attitude across the board with all insurance companies.
Anyone else want to get in touch with their insurance company and find out if it is the same with all of them?
David - my heartfelt sympathies to your and your family. I'm hoping that with your connections, this issue can be massively publicised and debated and that insurance companies will be forced to change their approach. They make billions of dollars a year in profits. This is morally indefensible.
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heh. I was thinking about 20,000 people dancing in a field - but feel free to extrapolate outwards to The Future if you so wish... depressing as it may be :)
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to Sacha,
Absolutely! And - you're very welcome.
Being surrounded by thousands of people celebrating madly when you're not feeling the same way can be the loneliest experience in the world. Wandering alone around a large outdoor venue in the dark in the middle of the night looking for your mates can be upsetting and frightening. Breaking up with your boyfriend or girlfriend is an emotional experience at the best of times, and if you're in a strange place when it happens, it can be even more so. Trying drugs for the first time in an environment that's as full-on as TheG can be disorientating and unpleasant (which is why we always told people that wasn't a particularly good plan).
All those situations and many more besides can turn your party into a real bummer experience, and that's a major reason why we had the chill-out zone and the health and welfare crew - not just to help people come down from a bad trip, but, more often, to be a helping hand and a shoulder to cry on if things just got too much to handle, for whatever reason.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yes! I remember that particular pathway! Black ’ash, black ’ash, get yer black ’ash 'ere! – it was exactly like a street market with everyone calling out their wares.
In the early days of my Glasto experiences (early 80s onwards before they brought the police onsite) it was all pretty mellow, but I seem to remember that pathway getting more and more full-on over the years, until I guess it was so overt that the police decided they had to do something about it.
But even then, I remember the first couple of years of police presence (when you could still park your car next to your tent rather than having to park miles away) people would roll out of their tents in the morning, spark up and wave hello to the cops wandering past, who would respond with a cheery grin and carry on their way. Very civilised.
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It also gives the peer group power the ability to actually intervene where that would work. Recognizing people in trouble isn’t something that’s just automatic.
Definitely – and that was something that really struck me about the atmosphere at TheG. Everyone was kind to everyone else. The whole “be nice humans” thing was something that had been established right from the start, before I joined the team, and I focused on it in all my publicity efforts and it became this amazing self-fulfilling prophesy where people actually were the best that they could be up on the hill – because we’d said that they were and we provided the environment where that was actively encouraged.
We saw it in the fact that if you were having a sit-down having some water and getting your breath back, one out of every two people who passed by would stop and make sure you were ok.
We saw it in the fact that people would bring their mates to our chill-out zone if they were having a bad time, and would stay with them while we helped to calm them down (only a very small number needed our help in this way, but it’s important to provide it). We also had an outreach crew on-site – experienced ex-trippers roaming the site who knew what a bad trip looked like and could help anyone who looked like they were having a bad time.
We also saw it in the VERY pragmatic approach of the local police, who told me straight-out that they knew there would be a certain amount of drug-taking up on the hill, but that this was not really an issue for them, because they knew that a) we provided a safe environment and b) the drugs people were on did not precipitate a violent atmosphere in any way. Over New Year’s Eve they were FAR more worried about the alcohol intake of the local yoof down on the beaches and in town, and they were more than happy to leave us to our own devices up on the hill – accessible via RT if we needed them, but otherwise no police presence on-site at all.
Your team’s lovingly detailed attention to creating a safe and supportive environment really impressed me – especially compared with the Big Day Out’s inconsiderate suckiness a mere few weeks later, which put me off their event for good.
Thanks Sacha! It was important for us to provide a safe environment. When you’re organising an event like that, you take the safety of all your “guests” very seriously indeed.
I think the thing that most surprised me about the success of our Harm Reduction approach was the response to the Kim Hill interview I did. We talked about drugs and our approach to them, and I basically said that TheG understood that some people would choose to use, and that rather than sticking our heads in the sand and pretend it wasn’t happening, we actively set out to create a safe environment for everyone.
I said I felt this was a much more responsible approach to the issue than ignoring it and hoping for the best, and that I hoped parents would see that we did everything in our power to keep their teenagers safe at TheG.
For months afterwards I would get comments from parents who told me how reassured they were by my interview, and how they’d decided to let their teenagers go to TheG because of what I’d said. Parents can be pragmatic and realistic too, if you allow them the space to behave that way rather than freaking them out with stories of reefer madness and other drug-related horrors.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to Russell Brown,
Such an important point. The majority of drug users use drugs not because they’re sick with anything, but because it’s fun.
Precisely!
And it’s where, I think, Harm Reduction/Minimisation policies (like we used to have at The Gathering for example) work well – because they neither condone nor condemn drug use – they acknowledge that some people do drugs (and that the majority do it cos it’s fun), and they provide as much eduction as possible into the potential effects of those drugs on people (physical, mental, emotional, legal etc).
Once you have the knowledge, you can make an informed choice as opposed to an uniformed one, which makes a huge difference. An informed choice allows some people to choose to say no and gives them strength to resist peer pressure, and it also allows other people to choose to say yes, and to be fully informed about what they’re letting themselves in for – which can reduce the likelihood of a bad trip.
The other main aspect of Harm Reduction is its provision of safe environments for everyone, whether they are taking drugs, or drinking alcohol or doing it straight or whatever – so that if it does all go pear-shaped, people have someone to turn to and somewhere safe to go where they can come down or sober up in supportive and non-judgemental surroundings.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to stephen walker,
next, “Why do people of various age groups do psychedellic substances?”
(1) daily routine
(2) self-medication
(3) special occasion
(4) relaxation
(5) artistic inspiration
(6) curiosity(7) artistic appreciation (as in, for example, some forms of dance music are much better appreciated when tripping)
(8) adventure
(9) for the pretty patterns
(10) exploration of inner space (your own mind and consciousness)
(11) spirituality - taking psychedelics in order to see God
(12) to stay up all night and dance
(13) because it's fun! -
There’s a fascinating book called Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour in which Kate Fox, an English anthropologist sets out to discover the ‘defining characteristics of Englishness’.
This is what she says about The Rules of Drunkenness:
Our beliefs about the behavioural effects of alcohol are certainly at least partly to blame, as they act as self-fulfilling prophecies. If you firmly believe and expect that alcohol will make you aggressive, then it will do exactly that. But this still leaves the question of why we should hold such strange beliefs. The notion that alcohol is a dangerous disinhibitor is not peculiar to the English: it is shared by a number of other cultures, known to the anthropologists and other social scientists who take an interest in such matters as ‘ambivalent’, ‘dry’, ‘Nordic’ or ‘temperance’ cultures – cultures with an ambivalent, morally charged, love/hate, forbidden-fruit relationship with alcohol, usually the result of a history of temperance movements. These are contrasted with ‘integrated’, ‘wet’, ‘Mediterranean’ or ‘non-temperance’ cultures – those for whom alcohol is simply a normal, integral, taken-for-granted, morally neutral part of everyday life; generally cultures that have been fortunate enough to escape the attentions of temperance campaigners. ‘Integrated’ drinking-cultures, despite usually having much higher levels of per-capita alcohol consumption, experience few of the ‘alcoholrelated’ social and psychiatric problems that afflict ‘ambivalent’ cultures.
Japan is another of those ‘temperance’ cultures, like England and also, I think, like NZ. Not sure about China :)
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to Lilith __,
The internet and twitter offer great new ways to connect with fans you already have, but unless you are very lucky and go viral*, you can put your brilliant work out there and no one will ever find it.
I think Amanda Fucking Palmer is an absolutely perfect example of this new breed of self-promoters - as anyone who saw her presentation(s) at Webstock this year will attest.
Try, for example, Googling "amanda palmer" - every single result on pages 1-8 are for AfuckingP. That's pretty impressive.
Amanda Palmer Says Twitter ‘Completely Changed My Career’ - watch the video - it's exactly what we're talking about.
Amanda Palmer talks new music paradigm, blogging, Twitter and life - Webstock presentation