Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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I already said I don't disagree with banning it in buildings...but on the street, that I don't like.
I would like it very much. So would my husband and my son and my daughter. Why is what you like more important than what we like?
That's a tough one. It certainly is the law for boats over a certain size. But I wouldn't really think it should be necessary for someone fishing off a dingy near the shore, or some kid sailing their P-class off a beach. The main thing about boats, unlike smoking, is that you can easily kill other people with them. Rather like cars. That's why cars require licenses to drive, but pushbikes don't (even though it is very easy to kill yourself on a pushbike).
As George has stated, the government controls things in proportion to their harm. Most boat users do not die from driving a boat, let alone from having regularly driven boats 10 years ago but never since then. The same is true for cars.
[Not Ben...] Some of this effect [smokers in the street] is no doubt a consequence of legislation that restricts smoking indoors around workplaces, but it's a side effect that's not been addressed in any way.
I raised this issue at a recent epidemiological conference presentation on government anti-tobacco measures. The speaker's response was that it was unfortunate, but hopefully temporary while smoking rates reduced. Apart from the smell (which I object to in the same way that people living near sewage treatment plants rightfully object when the treatment isn't working properly and their suburb stinks), I have real concerns about the fact that smoking in the street makes smoking much more visible to children than it was previously. I am concerned this may make children think it's more "normal" than it is. I don't see this as a reason to allow smokers back inside, but I do see it as a reason to ban smoking in public places.
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It would be hard to pick up more smokers in Indonesia - close to 80% of all males smoke...
Um. Only if all Indonesians were male. Also, 2006 figures put adult male smoking prevalence in Indonesia at 61.7% and female at 5%.
Seems like plenty of scope to pick up more smokers to me.Know what's dangerous? Skydiving. Mountain climbing. Flying light aircraft. Adventure tourism. Walking down stairs. Wet floors. Ice.
Noone pretends those things aren't dangerous. What's the difference? They're not addictive. Also, in the more common of the examples you've given (walking down stairs, wet floors) noone's making money off them. Furthermore, ALL causes of injury accounted for about 4500 deaths each year in 2005 and 2006 (from my reading of mortality data - I'm one of those 'health researchers') which is still less than deaths attributable to tobacco use.
...their international strategy is to say that every measure that hurts tobacco companies will benefit the illicit tobacco trade, which is basically organised crime, which is basically terrorism.
This is particularly rude given the multiple lawsuits taken against big tobacco for enabling the illicit tobacco trade (it's easier to make profits from selling tobacco if you don't have to pay tax on their sale). But then in my personal opinion big tobacco is organised crime - they're just so organised they manage to avoid having what they do counted as criminal under the law.
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my takeaway from the story was that there is no monitoring of perinatal harms apart from death of mother or baby. So birth injury that results in severe and lifelong disability isn't counted. This is not good enough.
//Past tense. From the story:
outcomes like Charley’s, caused by oxygen deprivation at birth, will be included from next year in the Perinatal and Maternal Mortality Committee’s annual report.
Inclusion in the PMMC annual report is important, but doesn't necessarily solve the monitoring problem, as the PMMC won't necessarily analyse annual outcomes for longer term trends. The "data mart" mentioned in the story will be far more important for being able to measure changes in outcomes and what factors might make a difference.
Of course, it will be difficult to determine whether or not changes to the maternity care system have been adverse to outcomes - as someone upthread pointed out, there have been numerous changes in birth practices (and used the example of caesareans, forceps and venteuse). There's also the difficulty that people are presumably more likely to have an obstetrician if the birth has been previously identified as risky (and therefore more likely to have adverse outcomes).
I do think it is bordering on negligent to introduce a major change to healthcare practices without any ability to monitor and evaluate that change. Apart from anything else, if such monitoring had been introduced to start with, College of Midwives would have statistics to back up its assertions about the superiority of midwife care - and if those statistics didn't back up its assertions, would presumably be able to improve its practices by looking at the circumstances in which outcomes were poor.
...Ironically she goes on about doctors doing unnecessary internal exams just for training - I had double the usual exams at my last delivery thanks to kindly agreeing to give the student midwife a learning opportunity. Was not fun. The only upside was that they explained exactly what they were looking for.
Yes, but there's a vast difference between agreeing to give a midwife a learning opportunity, and having the exams conducted without request or consent - effectively treating you as a piece of meat. I have also heard dark rumours of medical students at Wellington Hospital having once upont a time been taught how to do internal exams on women anaesthetised for surgery, without the women's knowledge, let alone consent.
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I recall some years back (too long ago to be able to recall what or where) reading a piece related to what I presume is behind Flavell's "frustrated" call for condemnation of suicide-committers. It quoted some youth overhead at a tangi saying something like "wow, this is awesome, I wish I could hear everyone saying such nice stuff about me at my tangi". It seemed to me, however, that the solution was not to stop holding tangi for suicides, but to introduce some new tradition which allowed youth to hear the sentiments expressed at tangi while they were still alive - i.e. that the solution was not to remove glorification of the dead, but also to glorify the living.
Such an event should be held early - 14 or 15, for example - and should be a celebration of the youth's life and potential (rather than a celebration of alcohol, and therefore not like a 21st). If time and/or cost were an issue, it might be possible to hold these celebrations in cohorts of youth, so long as sufficient time were dedicated to each individual. -
I'm just so seriously relieved to see a party - any party - releasing some actual pre-election policy statements, so that there's a faint chance the election might actually be fought on policy rather than (or at least as much as, I'm not that hopeful) personality. Perhaps Labour finally figured out Goff wasn't going to win it on personality.
The envy tax narrative would I think get more traction if Labour were just increasing the top tax rate, but it's a bit easier to debunk in relation to CGT. Capital gains are not due to value added by aspiration and betterment, they're mostly just a combination of luck and economic cycles. And buying bulk quantities of Resene Half Tea [*shudder*]. -
As far as genre(s) go(es), surely we're really talking about a sort of modern Western? A combination of a whole bunch of sub-genres of Western - "Doctor and Preacher" (to include the dog collar); "Manateepunk" (surely a sub-branch of Cowpunk); "Land Rush" (thanks to Gerry, with plenty of scope for "Prospecting" as well); "Romance" (unavoidably); and "Parody" (well, obviously). Now if we can just work in some "Revenge" and "Mormon"...
Here's Wikipedia's discription of the Western genre:
"Westerns often portray how desolate and hard life was for American frontier families. These families are faced with change that would severely alter their way of life. This may be depicted by showing conflict between natives and settlers or U.S. Cavalry or between cattle ranchers and farmers ("sodbusters"), or by showing ranchers being threatened by the onset of the Industrial Revolution."
Apart from the time and place, it sounds pretty applicable to me.
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Speaker: John and Phil meet Bob, in reply to Kracklite,
I'm here today to say that I think that I abhor every word you have ever said in your entire worthless lives from the very first 'Gaaaah, boo-boo' you uttered as babies...
Is it completely bright-eyed and bushy-tailed of me to think that there might be some in the audience who are there because someone from their church/playgroup/whatever invited them along, and they have a family, and a forum for families sounds like a nice thing to be part of, who up to that point might have been thinking, in an artless kind of way "well, I'm not sure I want to agree with that, although it all sounds like it makes sense ... I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong with it ... but it's very persuasive ... and everyone else here seems to agree with it, so there must be something to it really ... ", and then someone on stage just sort of sensibly says "well, I understand that's how you think about it, but I (and many of the people I represent) think this way instead". And then this artless soul can see that it is okay to not think in the same way as Family Fist. They probably won't go home and say Family First should have stakes driven through their chests, but nor will they have been sucked into it all.
In contrast, a response along the lines suggested by Kracklite would be more likely to antagonise, and make Artless sympathise with FF.
I'm not quite bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enough to think that that possibility is what really took Goff there, but I like to hope it might be at least a small part of it. 'Course, unless someone tells me what he actually said (rather than just reporting John Key's comments - as if his lack of commitment to any actual position is any kind of surprise) I can't tell whether he was taking that line anyway.
[Unfortunately the 3news video doesn't seem to want to load for me, so if there's any Goff in it I'm none the wiser].
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Hard News: A Capital Idea?, in reply to Sacha,
In purely economic terms I guess basic shelter is productive in that it better supports human capital.
Indeed. And from that point of view, the "family home" is more productive than rental property, because home ownership generally improves tenure security/reduces residential mobility; and both tenure security and reduced residential mobility are associated with improved social outcomes.
(I can go away and find a reference if you like, but that would be a lot like work, whereas reading and posting here are work avoidance activities...).
'Course, it is true that the social return does not increase as the value of the asset increases (after inflation), but that just means that the return on investment is lower, not that it's not productive at all.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Fooman,
even if Land = zero
And further, I doubt the land value would be zero. I'm currently in England, and regularly see plots of land sold as "holding investments" or other marketing fluff, despite the fact the land cannot currently be built on, due to zoning, but which have a value on the basis of some possibility that at some distant time in the future they might be rezoned. There's no suggestion this rezoning will happen soon, or even at all, but the mere fact it theoretically might is enough to give the land value based on location rather than farming use.
In this case the govt talk is that the land will, rather than might, be available to build on again at some time in the future, so the land market value is definitely not going to be zero. How much it is worth is another matter, of course, but there's probably some economics person who can figure it out - bearing in mind that the council would be pretty unreasonable to charge anything like normal rates for it given the lack of services. -
Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Rubbish.
It would be more helpful (as I was trying to be) if you could specify which bit you thought was rubbish. Or were you drawing attention to the fact that any holdouts would probably also have to organise their own regular rubbish disposal? If so, good point.
Especially as the Council is abdicating all responsibility for the welfare of those affected.
Agreed (thus my support for civil disobedience), but that doesn't mean they'll stop demanding consents be issued for any work that doesn't comply with the district plan.
"Standard available wind generators" no such animal.
Okay, (*cough, Mr Pedantic, cough*) "commercially available wind generators" then. And probably homemade ones too. The problem is that to get good wind you want the thing stuck high up in the air, with good wires to hold it down. And up in the air is likely to mean resource consent.
Let's see said council standing in the way of one of these babies a snip, I may say, at $999.
They look lovely. It would be the 6m pole that would be the challenge
AND... who could deny anyone having These cuties strapped to your new roof.
Again, they may be fine. But if strapping a solar hot water panel to your roof requires building consent (which it does) then presumably so does photovoltaic. Note I'm not saying that it should, only that it probably does. If you can provide evidence otherwise, I'd be very pleased to hear it. Saying "rubbish" and pointing to attractive products does not constitute evidence. If you could, instead, say "no, it's okay because section bla bla of the CCC district plan allows for xyz," or "my mate wrote to the council before she put in her new 6m high turbine, and they wrote back and said it was sweet, no consent necessary" , that would be rather more useful.