Posts by Katharine Moody
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to BenWilson,
two of the world’s most dangerous nations
At first I read your concluding sentence and thought, yes, scary, isn’t it – and then I thought, hang on, do I (and others) now see these two countries as such? Hmm.
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Local political worthies offer their $0.02 on Corbyn, c. November 2015. No Little or Turei, though Shaw gives it a surprisingly decent shot. Dunne manages to banish any doubt that he sees things in any other terms than self-serving careerism.
Impressive approach from Jacinda Ardern - she's got politics in her blood.
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Britain is one seriously age-polarised society.
And that is a very sad and telling present reality - something the ptb (whomever they are at the highest echelons of power) need to think very hard about.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/09/davos-wakes-up-to-the-trump-new-world-order.html
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The usefulness of voluntary agreements to effect the degree of change needed to actually reverse degradation is questionable anyway. In NZ, for example, the Clean Streams Accord (2003) to my mind became a highly effective mechanism to delay action on binding regulatory measures that would halt and reverse freshwater degradation.
The gradual improvements made in exclusion and planting were offset in greater measure by the concurrent promotion of urban and agricultural intensification. So things got worse, not better.
The Paris Agreement to me represented a cop out of the Kyoto Protocol mechanism by those that had previously signed up (e.g., NZ, Canada, etc) - a disingenuous move from binding regulation to voluntary accord as a means to "manufacture consent" with the citizenry whilst carrying on with business-as-usual.
Paris was a vote for change in public relations not in human practice.
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And then there's schoolboy rugby :-).
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Hard News: Drugs and why Dunne did it, in reply to Russell Brown,
was only a sop to the nutbars in his caucus
Dunne has a caucus? "Nutbars", such a cute expression.
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Hard News: Drugs and why Dunne did it, in reply to Russell Brown,
but on a formal level, diversion and pre-charge warnings only work for people with a clean slate.
Does that also mean earlier (non-drug related) offences, such as vehicle related offences (unpaid fines, driving without a licence, etc.) disqualifies someone for that clean slate consideration?
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Hard News: Drugs and why Dunne did it, in reply to Ross Bell,
positive noises
Yes, but I'm a bit more impatient than that :-). Not that I'm a pot smoker but I think it just criminal that we might put anyone up in front of the courts for minor possession for personal consumption. How many future job/employment prospects have we ruined today by recording a marijuana conviction against someones individual record? How many people have we virtually grounded from overseas travel because they were found with a joint or a plant in their back garden? And how many people turned to the synthetic product today, so that they could pee in a bottle and not be pulled up at work tomorrow? How many people visited the premises of a criminal agent in order to obtain supply, and in doing so, how many were 'sold up' to a more harmful substance?
Maybe I'm overly dramatic - maybe we don't prosecute all that many people for possession anymore - and maybe people don't turn to the synthetic shit for those reasons, or accept the criminals advances with respect to P and/or other shit...but the point is - one more life ruined is too much for me. The war on pot needs to end to my mind - no ifs, buts, or halfway measures.
Give me a stoner over a drunk anyday.
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Hard News: Budget 2017: How do we get…, in reply to Paul Conway,
it is up to all of us – workers, management, policymakers and their advisors – to do what it takes to “get us out of here”!
I disagree – it really is far more dependent on the right governance settings. I work in planning and with every amendment made to the RMA there are productivity losses. ‘Simplifying and Streamlining’ (as the government coined it) did nothing of the sort – in many cases quite the opposite. Planners have never been less efficient as a result of the additional onerous requirements – every time you add another issue of national importance or something else that must be given regard to – a whole bunch of additional considerations which have scant value in terms of environmental outcomes, but significant costs to a) investigate and b) implement through planning instruments.
If government through legislative change and targeted work at the core (i.e., within the Ministry) had improved planning productivity over the course of the last nine years, then our second generation plans would be far, far, far less verbose and the number of overlays reduced considerably.
There has never been any modicum of understanding – just a focus on speeding up processes that have actually been further complicated in leaps and bounds by central government "ideas" regarding improvement!
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I wondered whether the timing of Dunne's announcement was in part in response to TOP announcing a candidate running in Ohariu;
And of course here's their cannabis policy;
Also to legalise and regulate.
