Posts by Russell Brown
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Thank you, Hilary. I’ve dwelt on this over the years. It’s quite likely that in another era, we would have been urged to give up one or both of boys in this way.
Troublingly, even though the institutional model is gone, I’m not sure if the mindset is. We were pressured by a GSE caseworker to place our younger boy in a residential school in West Auckland. It was awful, awful advice that would have greatly harmed our son had we not rejected it out of hand. I still worry about parents who might have taken that dreadful woman’s advice because they didn’t know better.
There’s a recent two-part BBC documentary called Disowned and Disabled about institutionalised kids. Part 2, the disability one, is in full on YouTube:
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Ross Bell,
Russell is also writing about this for our magazine.
I can’t wait for that story to be published, so I can use the full interview I did with the founders of Erowid.
One of the interesting things about that story is what Stuart Mills, co-ordinator of the police's drug intelligence bureau, had to say about TripMe et al. The police read those sites, but not for investigative purposes. DI Mills told me he regards them as basically educational.
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So Morning Report continues with the Jones story via commentary from Damien O'Connor, Clayton Cosgrove, John Tamihere, Chris Trotter ... and Michael Bassett.
I think I need a lie-down.
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Bryce Edwards' roundup of responses.
I'm only linking to it because he recommends my "nuanced and thoughtful analysis" of the issues ;-)
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Hard News: Jones: The contender leaves, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I don’t think some sort of “roving ambassador” post counts.
Me neither. It's a made-up job title that happens to include the word "ambassador", not a diplomatic post.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Shulgin,
Huffman himself says better to legalise cannabis and ban the synthetics.
Which solves the cannabis niche, but not the next lot of party pills.
It’s interesting that if you read the Erowid vault on Cannbinoid Receptor Agonists, most of the psychonauts there are consuming them not as a mock-cannabis product, but as powders. We could have had JWH 018 pills.
In the long run, some form of manufacturing standard seems to me to be a good way around the risks of so-called "E" and "LSD" containing unknown substances in unknown concentrations.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to debunk,
Well you don’t know because there’s no consistent analysis of product content!
Yes. There. Is.
The Code of Manufacturing Practice specified in the Act came into force in January. It also mandates audits of manufacturing premises and physical inspections at any time. Certificates of analysis are required for every product as a condition of approval.
If any manufacturer breaches the conditions for approval, they’re up for a $500,000 fine and three months’ imprisonment.
The aim of the law is precisely to address the problems cited in that Guardian story.
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I'm inclined to go with Paddy Gower's assessment: it has McCully's pawprints all over it. I would not be surprised if the timing was McCully's.
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Hard News: Jones: The contender leaves, in reply to Emma Hart,
No, it’s not. Theoretically, sure, but when the guy is someone you know, someone inside your community? The first thing many people will do – “even” white middle-class well-educated people – is make excuses for him. Stress. Drink. Things she did.
And that was why Davis putting the onus on men who commit the violence was so notable.
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Hard News: Jones: The contender leaves, in reply to SHG,
Shane Jones was not and had never been an Electorate MP. A List MP is of no use to Dotcom.
Yeah, we know that ...