Posts by Alfie
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Hard News: Judicial caprice is no way to…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Here’s another example of inequity in sentencing.
While Kelly van Gaalen is spending two years in jail for growing a few plants, this character has a history of drugs and violence including a nine year stretch for kidnapping someone and conducting a serious and prolonged assault over drug debts.
Police raided his home looking for a stolen vehicle, which they found, along with a meth lab and a loaded pistol under the bed. A child living in the house tested positive for meth residue.
Sentence… one year on home D and 100 hours of community work.
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The Lancet/Johns Hopkins study has inspired more informed conversation on NZ's approach to drugs.
Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne has this morning reiterated the Government's commitment to review drug policy and make sure drug offending is primarily seen as a health matter.
It's starting to feel like common sense may finally be about to prevail. Hopefully.
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How is the "Taxpayer’s Union" still a thing? Apart from being exposed as a part of the Nat's attack team in Dirty Politics, I've yet to see any sort of investigation into the group, if indeed it is a group and not just a single frontman and a couple of his shadowy mates.
So here's a challenge to journalists. Is this group anything more than a front for team Key? Can they really claim to represent taxpayers, and if so, how widespread is their membership? Who provides their funding? And why should they ever be quoted as a MSM source when their grasp of basic mathemetics is so poor?
There's a good investigative piece just waiting to be written.
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Polity: Let the big lies flow, in reply to Nick Russell,
Don’t blame the media for that. They don’t have the resources to do independent analysis a lot of the time, so they will regurgitate anything that sounds plausible.
Sorry but I have to take issue with that comment Nick. I've worked with a lot of journos over the years and most of them have inquiring minds. If I could calculate in a few seconds that Farrar's inflated $38b cost relied on every working age New Zealander quitting their jobs, it must surely have occurred to some journalists as well. It's hardly brain surgery.
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The Herald don’t need no stinkin literacy – justive for all.
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Polity: Home-spun non-truths, in reply to Sacha,
Herald editorial opposes this socialist plot.
Blithely accepting Farrar's erroneous figures as fact. Is there nobody in the Herald editorial team with the ability to apply some basic common sense to this discussion?
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There's more kerfuffle on the so called "loophole" which allows the import of legally prescribed medicinal cannabis. And there's still some confusion over the way Customs will choose to interpret the current law.
That story quotes Peter Dunne as saying "he believed the legalisation of medicinal cannabis was likely within two years and would make the loophole redundant."
With the UNGASS meeting coming up next month, a commission of medical experts convened by The Lancet and Johns Hopkins University is calling for global drug decriminalisation and an end to the war on drugs.
We live in interesting times.
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Well well... the so-called Taxpayers Union has come up with a "study" showing UBI would require a tax rate of more than 50% and push NZ into recession. Grant Robertson responds.
We are following the debate on UBI with interest, but we do not regard the Taxpayers' Union as either credible or independent commentators on this matter or many others."
After this group (was there ever more than one member?) was exposed in Dirty Politics, it's disappointing to see Jordan Williams' poor maths skills being taken seriously by the MSM.
The more credible Bernard Hickey thinks the concept is worthy of further investigation.
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Steve Braunias -- Secret Diary of John Key following the flag referendum.
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A former business partner who invented the possum belts talks about Kerr cheating him and stealing his ideas.
