Posts by Russell Brown
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At a glance, this doesn't quite seem the smoking gun either.
What O'Connor waived was the English-language requirement. He still made it clear Liu had to pass the character test. And he pointedly stepped back when there was some weirdness with the incorrect photo being supplied.
The real story here may well be the fact that wealthy would-be immigrants can hire experienced and persistent agents -- a former National minister, in this case -- to pursue their applications. And that's still a story.
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Ah. My Matters of Substance story is online now (still minus the sidebar), and includes this passage:
Chris Fowlie, co-owner of the Hemp Store and an expert witness in cannabis cases, says the value of Erowid is not only for drug users.
“It’s a very good site for spotting trends – things that are happening in other countries that we need to be aware of here, trends in drug use and consumption patterns – sometimes years before that information comes from official sources.”
Fowlie says Erowid’s moderation weeds out one major problem with forums such as Bluelight: information posted with a commercial motive – up to and including the offer of free samples of new drug products, sometimes in return for favourable “reviews” from forum users.
“Erowid does have credibility amongst professionals.”
It’s also of use to the Police, says Detective Inspector Stuart Mills of New Zealand’s National Drug Intelligence Bureau. He says his team “keep an eye” on sites like Erowid and Bluelight “so we have an understanding of what’s going on in the drug market. We read those sites and observe what people are saying. If there’s something new on the market, they’re another independent source to say something’s happening. We can see people warning each other what’s good and bad. Which pills are good and which are dangerous.”
He notes one practical example: when Hamilton schoolgirls became ill after taking so-called “red rocket” pills from a mother’s handbag, the police needed to know quickly what the medical implications were.
He does, he says, look at the local equivalent, TripMe.
“It’s not used by us as an investigative tool,” he emphasises. “It’s an intelligence tool. We see it as promoting harm prevention – and that’s a key focus of drug policy. If people are going to use these products, then hopefully it’s reducing the risk for them.”
(Shlugin, if you’re reading this, I know you have an issue with DI Mills, but you’ve aired it repeatedly in these forums and I’d ask you not to relitigate it again.)
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to Bart Janssen,
To be completely anal, we don’t want a representative sample of the population but only of the population that will actually vote on the day.
True, but there’s a complication in that different polling firms handle the likely-voter issue differently. Some push further towards saying “Okay, if you were going to vote, what would that vote be?”
Andrew will be able to explain what Colmar Brunton’s practice is there.
Given that, I’d argue they should be banned.
Andrew will doubtless be suggesting that you and he retire to the carpark to sort this out like men :-)
But he does have a point (which he expressed on the show) that polls also play a hugely valuable role in establishing what the public really thinks on controversial issues. His example is the marriage equality bill debate, which saw a huge text-in response to Campbell Live which was very much anti, while proper polls consistently showed the public in favour. We’ve seen similar situations right back to homosexual law reform, where the single scientific poll (by a VUW researcher) showed the public was way ahead of Parliament on the issue.
Otoh … the death penalty and smacking. The polls on those are usually quite scary, although it would be interesting to see a properly-phrased poll on the latter now.
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to James Littlewood*,
While not the same thing statistically, you have to be undecided before you swing.
As the actress said to the bishop.
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Hard News: Good news for self-powered travellers, in reply to BenWilson,
Also, it would be the path of least ascent into the city for people coming off the Northwestern Cycleway. But that would require something better on Newton Rd than contesting an extremely busy on-ramp. It’s not the route I usually take, preferring to climb to upper Queen St via the two ascents and descents, just because the cycleway is still safer.
It certainly is. That Newton Road intersection is a shocker. Shame they haven't done it properly and found a way to run the cycleway under Newton Road.
But I'll quite often approach K Road along Great North Road -- coming up either at Bond Street (from the path along the Arch Hill side of the motorway) or even just riding up Chinaman's Hill, which somehow seems less irksome than that short, irritating climb to New Road from the main cycleway and then the second climb to Upper Queen Street.
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to Thomas Lumley,
That’s one possibility, but we simply don’t know – at least, not based on the published polls. It could be that all the net new undecideds will go back to voting Labour (in which case the increase in National’s vote will disappear) or it could be that they will not vote (in which case the increase won’t disappear) or it could be that they will vote for someone else when it comes to it. Or any mixture.
Including that they might drift over the the Greens or Internet-Mana, which would fit a picture of part of the Left vote now weighing up multiple choices while the Right remains largely and firmly with National.
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Hard News: Fire and Earth Erowid: Drug…, in reply to Shulgin,
stop with hill billy interview questions…
They were questions I needed to ask for the story I was writing, no more or less.
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Hard News: Fire and Earth Erowid: Drug…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I’d venture a guess that those amongst the readers of Erowid that use drugs are much less likely to have a “problem” doing so – having both the expectation as to the psychological effects and an understanding of what is likely to cause physical harm.
By their own admission, some of Erowid's Experience Vault reporters are problematic drug users -- just read them. But that doesn't matter so much in this context. They've reported their own experiences with some structure and frankness, which is the important thing.
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Speaker: How is Government evaluating…, in reply to Marc C,
Quote from the post above: "(NB: Since this post was submitted the ministry has published its “first internal actuarial report produced in relation to the forward liabilities of the welfare system.”)"
I guess it is this:
http://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/evaluation/investment-approach/key-findings.htmlSo was this due to someone at MSD working on Sundays, or did you (the author) submit this "post" in draft form to them, before publication today?
Yep, that's the one -- it's linked in the text. And yes, I got Michael's text and then a later email pointing to the report, and added the link to the report when I published the post yesterday.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Big Day Out, Out, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Which means they need a big chunk of the potential market to turn up, leading to a situation where it’s always going to be hard to make money and unlike say Glastonbury, which attracts a good percentage of reasonably on to it music fans, BDO has to rely on attracting a large munter contingent to make up the numbers.
I’ve wound up going to all the Big Days Out, and this is not my experience at all. Apart perhaps from the first couple of years, the crowd at the Big Day Out is very largely fun and good-humoured.
What made some sort of VIP/crew/sponsor/bFM-type refuge attractive was really the harshness of the Mt Smart environment. There really weren’t many places to chill there, if any. The Western Springs site, otoh, has nice, grassy slopes and even trees to sit under. The problem there was bars and toilets, but that’s fixable.