Posts by BenWilson
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Up Front: One, in reply to Emma Hart,
And in residential areas, having people drive really slowly through your streets rubber-necking at your house? Is horrible.
Extremely tempting, though. Has anyone at all in Christchurch not been guilty of this behavior?
Lots of streets had signs up saying things like "If you don't live here, go home."
I can understand the feeling, but I guess I'm asking whether it's actually a counterproductive attitude, however understandable. People might follow that message, and go home. Or even just not come in the first place. Is that actually better or worse for the place? Isn't the tourist economy of Christchurch of value? Isn't disaster tourism one of the only possible good outcomes, keeping all the peripheral business cranking?
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OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to Sacha,
Good luck separating those.
Can't be done. You can show people that it's both harmful and addictive. They still have to decide if the harm outweighs whatever the drivers of the addiction are, which aren't just the fear of physical cravings. They're actual pleasure in the use of the substance. Not just the chemical pleasure, but the entire experience. That pleasure can't be discounted in the big picture of anything. Life isn't just about harm avoidance.
The push to attack the use of tobacco in the experience part by making it more and more difficult to find somewhere to take it doesn't strike me as especially praiseworthy. Making pariahs out of smokers doesn't help them. And helping them is surely the point. If you want to help someone, actually help them, rather than "helping" them by making their lives difficult. There's something fucked up about making the lives of people who do no harm to anyone else difficult, I dislike it where ever I see it.
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Up Front: One, in reply to Jackie Clark,
I didn't want to be a "disaster tourist". That felt very wrong to me.
That's a tricky one. It has a nasty ring to it as a phrase, but honestly, I don't think too many of the tourists are going to be anything but profoundly sympathetic and will take back a piece of that with them to wherever they go. If they spend some money down there, that will help too, but really, people taking personalized disaster snaps of Christchurch and meeting locals on the way is all part of bringing the disaster to the world (and the country - most tourists would probably be locals). I doubt it would be as venal as the phrase "disaster tourism" makes it sound.
But feel free, anyone and everyone, to shoot this down. It's not my town, so I don't have quite the same feel.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Sacha,
And, you know, I'm sorry that in the heat of the moment, pressured, I said something that was not able to be delivered.
Heh, I distinctly remember saying something like that to a customer once, when I fucked up her rental car order. She accused me of being "Just like Jim Bolger. Sorry, but not gonna do anything about it". It did undermine her ascendant dudgeon, when I burst out laughing. I got her a car in the end, unlike Bolger.
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Hard News: Just don't call it "Party Central", in reply to Nick Iversen,
LOL. What smooth surfaces they have!
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OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
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.
I'm pretty sure thrill is addictive to some people. Addictive is a difficult word - for most things that aren't illegal, it has a good connotation. Many computer games actively tout being addictive, and are sought out for that. This website could be charged with being addictive.
The problem with tobacco isn't the addictiveness, it's the health harm that it causes. And, as Tussock was quite rightly pointing out, that's in many other things too. I think a better example might have been fatty food, and sugary drinks. There are a very large number of victims of these substances whose lives are substantially shortened, and also suffer a big loss of quality of life, often from quite a young age.
Mind you, I do have a pretty advanced walking down stairs habit. At least 20 a day. One of these days, it might kill me, but I'm prepared to take the risk.
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OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to Sacha,
I have been known to enjoy the odd cigar. I'm just being selfish. But seriously, it's one of the easiest plants to grow. Banning would just set up another war on drugs, for a substance which already has a colossal number of addicts. You're going to make criminals out of a billion people. I think that's crazy.
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OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to tussock,
Don't get between an addict and his poison! :-)
While I think banning smoking indoors is good, I still think the 'orrible stuff should be legal.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
Flourishing Cafe in Avondale.
I've passed it a thousand times and not tried yet. Must be time.
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Hard News: Just don't call it "Party Central", in reply to Rich Lock,
I decided at that point that our toddler was better off back at the playground.
Indeed, although that was hardly what I'd call a safe playground. A raised area surrounded by jagged uneven rocks, and concrete stairways. Sand on the ground, not a forgiving surface, really, and the equipment was all for much older kids. There was no toddler swing, no slide, and the platforms and climbing stuff were all too high for mine. I saw several kids fall off the awkward themed equipment while I watched, one of whom was stunned when their head hit the sand. And I couldn't even bear to watch the girls who were standing on the ends of those metals stalks that were sticking up. One slip and they could have been impaled.
But it looked cool. Pity that for an area likely to attract thousands upon thousands of families, that it was a smaller and less appropriate than the little one at the end of my dead-end street. But it's a step in the right direction, and usage will quickly make plain what kind of resources should be there. That playground, for instance, would be a stupidly obvious place for a coffee kiosk, considering the large number of adults standing around it for lengthy periods. Mr Whippy would have a field day.
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