Island Life: Driving around Mt Eden, looking for a bed.
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Crusher Collins should think about a move to the environment ministry. By taking police cars off the streets she's shown she's the only Nat with a plan to cut emissions.
I think containers are too costly. Can't we put the prisoners on a boat and set them adrift? Let God find a home for them.
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Let's combine those ideas Scott. How about 10 to a container, then load them all on a boat? We could do like the Europeans and dump our refuse off the coast of Somalia. They'll appreciate the extra hands for their burgeoning piracy industry.
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Let's combine those ideas Scott.
No, on reflection, I think both our ideas are too costly.
We should be making money from these people. My motto is always act as the Romans would.
We've now got a great big new public space on the Auckland waterfront. Send them there. Put up a some temporary seats and sell tickets to the spectacle. We can hire the lions from the Zoo for the day.
A slightly more controversial, and less popular, suggestion would be to not imprison so many people, but hey, what kind of PC-socialist loony would you have to be to go for that? And where's the entertainment value?
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In Owhiro Bay in Wellington, there's a house clinging to the side of Happy Valley made of three containers stacked vertically. I've always been fascinated by it.
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Ridiculous idea.
I mean, it's quite clear from that new telecom ad with Lucy Lawless that these things are as easy as pie to escape from, even when they're drifting in the middle of the ocean.
We should be keeping these scum off our streets. And seas. Not leaving them to roam and swim free.
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new telecom ad with Lucy Lawless
You mean Zoe Bell?
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Finally I understand why the police let us onto the harbour bridge.
And here I thought the police knew it was bikes
that were the problem or at least the crims mode of transport. -
not in my universe...
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Maybe we should be turning all the confiscated boy-racer machines and surplus police vehicles into prisoner accommodation.
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I really hate finding myself agrreeing with Collins about anything, but this isn't such a dumb idea. Simple efficient modular architecture. According to Nat Radio this a.m. they'd all have windows, toilets, and be insulated, proper floors etc.
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Would be an interesting site (sight) when there are maybe 500 or 1,000 containers placed umm just over there in those empty sections in Helensville. Suppose there would need to be a fence or two and guard towers and bright lights to stop the homeless tryingto get in.
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Would be an interesting site (sight) when there are maybe 500 or 1,000 containers placed umm just over there
in the ocean, on stilts like giant birdhouses! Cook Strait should be rough enough to discourage escape. Alcatraz on stilts.
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And, what's more, they could hop on their bike machines and pedal furiously to supply their own power if they want anything as sophisticated as lights. In fact, if they all pedal together, they could run some windmills or wave turbines and supply more power for the rest of us. Talk about efficient.
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Dear sir.
I have never heard such utter rubbish, criminals in containers, pah!. Do these politicians not understand that we are in a recession? Containers are not cheap[ and we need them to import the goods we need to spend our way out of the economic downturn.
It would be far more cost effective to use old 45 gallon drums. You should be able to fit two prisoners in each drum, more if you mulch them first, then we could make them into a raft and float it on the harbour, party central.
Flatulently yours,
Fed up of Freemans Bay. -
The Fish has another take on it.
I've seen studio apartments made from containers, such as at Container Wharf in East London, and they can actually be wonderful places to live. The problem with this proposal is not that it would be cruel, but that to bring them up to minimum standards would require skills far beyond a bit of DIY, so the concept of "crims building their own cells" is meaningless.
Not having had a chance to read beyond the one-note headlines yet, I'm not sure just how serious or detailed a plan is actually being considered. But if using containers as the starting point for modular cell units ends up being feasible and cheaper than building them from scratch, then why not?
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Containers are not cheap[ and we need them to import the goods we need to spend our way out of the economic downturn.
I've heard that containers are unusually cheap in NZ, for the rather sad reason that we import more containerised goods than we export, so it's not economic to ship them back to their origins.
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Do you mean use them as slaves?:)
You may very well think that, Steven, i couldn't possibly comment :-)
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Not having had a chance to read beyond the one-note headlines yet, I'm not sure just how serious or detailed a plan is actually being considered. But if using containers as the starting point for modular cell units ends up being feasible and cheaper than building them from scratch, then why not?
It saddens me to have to point this out, but containers are built for a purpose. To then rebuild them, for another purpose, makes very little sense.
It would make a lot more sense to build them for purpose 2 in the first place. If you want to build modular prison cells, do a decent job and design it properly and build it from raw materials without the intervening step of turning it into a container and putting it on a ship with a pile of stuff in it numerous times.
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The thing everyone seems to be forgetting is that prisoners are real people.
That's right - think of the nutrient potential if we converted these living organisms into fertiliser for our crops.
Isn't that the ultimate in giving back to society?
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Sir,
It has been suggested by a Mr Crawford of Wellington, that we could render these crims into fertiliser. I would like to say that this will not be a good idea, has he not considered runoff?
Prisoners running off is one of the biggest problems society faces today.
Yours,
Tumescent of Torbay. -
There is nothing new in this idea.
"Private companies owned and operated the hulks holding prisoners bound for penal transportation."With the closure of the American Penal Colonies many of Privately owned ships were used as prisons. Then eventually those that could sail went to the Australia penal colonies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_shipsThis is very Oliver Twist.
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Corrections and Clarifications.
It has been brought to our attention that we mistakenly referred to a Mr Crawford of Wellington as having an idea. This of course was incorrect.
We apologise unreservedly for any discomfort this may have caused.
Ed (Mr) -
Here's a thought.
Let's export our prisoners to some of the Pacific Islands to stimulate their ecomonies and increase guilty pleas if a PI prison was confirmed. 3months to 3yrs on a Tropical Island couldn't be too bad? :p -
It would make a lot more sense to build them for purpose 2 in the first place. If you want to build modular prison cells, do a decent job and design it properly and build it from raw materials without the intervening step of turning it into a container and putting it on a ship with a pile of stuff in it numerous times.
Except that there is already a huge, well-established industry in place for making shipping containers, with all the economies of scale that that implies, not to mention the fact that in NZ we get them well below cost (as I said earlier). It would indeed be great to have an industry that makes cost-effective modular housing for a range of needs, but at the moment a bit of creative up-cycling is a good option.
Shipping containers are loaded with symbolic meaning.
As opposed to, say, prisons?
I don't see any problem as using them for housing in general, let alone prisons. As I said, I've seen container houses that looked more liveable than many of the London flats I had lived in at the time, and just as good as what seem to me to be very reasonable apartments in NZ.
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Yes that my point. New Zealand prisons have symbolic meaning, that is entirely different to industrial equipment, such as trains ships and storage yards.
To me, typical NZ prisons (as opposed to Olde Worlde Mt Eden style), with their scattering of low-rise sheds surrounded by fences, have a lot in common with stock yards, in keeping with our agricultural past. Combine with the word "muster" and you get an image that's at least as disturbing as ships and trains.
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