Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
Specifically referring to regulation of dietary supplements.
I would much rather have compounds that are sold to the public purporting to improve health be regulated by someone. At the moment the only regulatory standard available to us is the one developed by the Australians. It is all very well to suggest (rightly or wrongly) that local regulation could do a better job but until such time as local regulations are in place I believe it is appropriate to have some regulations in place.
My understanding of Ms Kedgely's stance is that until such time as we develop our own policy we should leave them unregulated. I am pretty certain I have heard her say that on the news (I may be remembering incorrectly). Or in your words, laissez faire for now until we get around to developing regulations of our own.
That stance does not seem consistent with a desire to protect the health of New Zealander's.
And yes I read what James quoted, but not the entire Green party policy. I'm not yet tempted to read it - I will when the public announcements of the Green MPs stop including what I believe is non-science. That said I do very much agree with many of the Green party policies.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to James Butler,
That's my fear - so much of the policy hangs on the definitions of words like "restrictive", "safe" and "effective".
If those definitions are made by scientifically significant evidence then great.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Even if the Greens were to rigorously purge the policy of anything that hadn’t been signed off for evidence-basedness by a committee of five PhDs and a Nobel laureate, we’d still be told that they were a bunch of tree huggers who believe in homeopathy.
This is the party that argued that "natural" remedies didn't need to be safety tested or have any kind of labeling, because like nature is so friendly and beautiful how could it be dangerous to eat random plants but the GE foods need to have fluoro warning labels and alarms bells just in case someone accidentally ate them?
Sorry but yes they do need to inject evidence based policy into their manifesto before I will vote for them.
Which is a pity because much of what they stand for is stuff I strongly support.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Danielle,
the public likes Key
I am so bamboozled by this obvious fact that I have no suggestions for Labour.
But that's the problem. The way we choose to vote is to select the person we like the most instead of voting for the bastard who will best manage the country.
So long as we treat voting as a popularity contest we will continue to get popular useless leaders. Instead of competent capable worthwhile leaders.
And that is a state of mind on the part of the voters.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Che Tibby,
but you’re familiar with how voting works, aren’t you. ;)
ayup. But there is a marked difference between staging voting as
"vote for me I smile and wave better than him/her"
and staging it as
"vote for this party and they will enact these policies according to these principles"One is simply a popularity contest, much like those we saw in intermediate school, the other is about selecting those who will manage your money.
Of course we could just switch to benevolent dictatorship.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Carol Stewart,
What have we done to deserve such all round awfulness?
I actually think there are serious answers to this question.
My personal guess is that by making elections popularity contests we (the public) have promoted an environment in the political parties that is totally focussed on personal popularity.
Policy is only relevant if, and only if, it will raise the popularity of the faces on the billboards.
How you create an environment where the consequences of policy is more important than personal popularity becomes the difficult question.
Labour appears to be paralyzed because they haven't got a popular person to promote (Goff) and have no idea to do anything else eg promote policy.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I’m sure this will be dismissed as concern-trolling, but I’d rather like to have a serious Labour Party back again.
Nope not a troll. You are exactly right.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to A C Young,
seems like Labour wants to lose the next election
Actually I don’t F’ing care what they want. It’s their responsibility as representatives of a portion of the population of NZ to try and represent those people. That portion of the population desperately wants the National government removed, the job of the Labour party is to try and do that even if the subsequent job is difficult .
When you represent people what you want matters less than the people you represent. FFS it’s in the damn job title!
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Up Front: First, Come to Your Conclusion, in reply to Emma Hart,
Ms Tanqueray
Sadly an unfortunate experience with her at age 14 has meant I can't take her solace. However the nice folks at Ata Rangi have offered to step up to the plate.
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Up Front: First, Come to Your Conclusion, in reply to Andre Alessi,
Some of those gaps are disturbingly filled now.
I have seen gaps filled in ways I never dreamed possible.
I think we may need to send Emma a therapy bill