Posts by Tom Semmens
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As for the profit motive, you do know cannabis is a plant, and that it's really easy to grow, right?
Home brewing is easy to and New Zealand is one of the few places where owning a still isn't illegal, but drinkers hardly lay seige to DIY home brewing suppliers to make their own. Don't under estimate the power of convvenience and advertising.
I suggest Tom that the group you identify are a small proportion of all pot smokers
I have to disagree with you here. Sure, the Gen X crew in the leafy 'burbs might enjoy a spliff in the manner an Edwardian mght take a good cigar affter dinner. But generally speaking, pot is a heavily abused substance - something I put down to its illegal status. Nothing like illegality to encourage irresponsible and uneducated use. Legalising, educating,regulating and profi making is the way forward.
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Maybe Big Booze and Big Pharma can't stand competition?
I don't have much time for pot smokers - far to many of them are tediously addled losers from abusing the stuff and/or tend to make it the topic of their conversation at every opportunity.
But I consider keeping the stuff illegal an affront to common sense and my particular bug bear is the massive public health win that would occur should we legalise pot then encourage people to get nailed via some sort of THC beer instead of smoking unfiltered marijuana (often mixed with unfiltered loose tobacco) and getting lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. We have a massive cultural bias against taking our drugs in any form other than in liquid form anyway, so why not drink it?
I am of a view that legalising drugs is not going to be possible unless you propose to let someone make a profit out of it. Letting Lion-Nathan and Dominion Breweries make a product they can score a nice little earner from and you can buy at your local hole in the wall liquor store is the best way to get the booze barons smiling benignly upon the efforts of their political servants to legalise pot.
Similarly, going to a government chemist to get your bikkies under the disapproving baleful glare of a white middle aged pharmacist is neither fun for the buyer or seller and with no profit motive everyone seems rather not want to bother, and instead seek the status and thrill of being well hooked up with their man.
I have always thought that if a fraction of the treasure expended trying to prove that MDMA gives you Parkinsons/manic depression/Altzhiemers/holes in your brain had been spent on making it a safer legal substance the world would be a better place for it. If Pfizer could make big dollars from MDM brand x being fun and harmless, wouldn't they push for it's legalisation??
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And since it's a day with a Y in it, cue the predictably vile and clueless Michael Laws column.
ACT is dead, but nature abhors a vacuum, so whither the angry talkback Taliban vote go?
If the scuttlebutt of a Peters/Laws re-launch of NZ First (already on 4-4.5% of the party vote) has any truth at all, then Mr. Law's sympathetic column could be seen as manoeuvering to hose up the "hang 'em high" ACT vote that would carry NZ First over the 5% line...
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Discovering via the lifting of the order that Garrett has experienced mental illness takes the fun out of the meme a bit.
Cameron Slater, now David Garrett...
Who would have thought so many of our local heroes of the right would turn out to be lot less Stahlgewittern and a lot more Sturm und Drang? -
So what we would need instead to address the problem you've identified is some direct way for voters to influence parties' list rankings.
One other reform I am of a mind to like is to change the currently derisory 500 member requirement to register as a political party to contest the party lists to something much, much more robust - say 10,000 or 15,000 paid up, signed up, bone fide members.
In a much smaller population, Labour and National once boasted of memberships of 80-100,000 between them. Surely, it isn't to much to ask a party that presumes to rule the country to have a decent party membership?
Such a reform would FORCE our current arrogant elite cadre parties to - *gasp* - recruit amongst the great unwashed, and listen to them lest they drop below the membership threshold...
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I think the current limits on their tenure are called elections.
Except with MMP's party lists it isn't. I would like to see as an essential MMP reform an absolute limit on how long you can serve in the house of representatives, maybe nine or twelve years. My view is if you can't achieve anything in that amount of time then get out, parliament isn't a soft option for time servers on a good salary. Such a time limit would also automatically see off the grossly entitled Chris Carter's of this world, and ensure a decent turnover of people in parliament.
And wages? I would like to see MP's wages pegged to something in real New Zealand, like, say, the minimum wage - start with the PM's salary fixed at six times the minimum wage (still a respectable $156,000 a year plus expenses) and work back from that. MP's want a pay rise? Put up the minimum wage.
At the moment we've got a grossly overpaid and out of touch beltway political elite, something that has taken some considerable effort on their part to achieve in a country of only 4.3 millions.
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OK, do I believe for a moment that Jerry Brownlee and Trevor Mallard are in the Beehive basement with a can of petrol as we speak?
But "believe" is not a basis for good democracy. Especially when you have as supercilious fool as Gerry Brownlee in charge. I don't actually think much will come of this; all sorts of winking & nodding - the usual Tory old boys corruption that greases the wheels of business in New Zealand - will be safely done behind closed doors, and much will be done to ensure all the "right" people and families will make money from the rebuilding of Christchurch.
But like I said, it is most alarming how quickly our self-serving political elites toss democracy out the window when it suits their purpose, and something done once can quickly become something done habitually.
The answer is to clean out our entire, rotten, political class and get representatives that are not all just arrogant insiders and authoritarian careerists.
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Also, note that my promise began "If anything even remotely dodgy is done under this law...", I can also hope that nothing does.
You think you'll be allowed to vote in Gitmo, you terrorist troublemaker?
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You don't need to be paranoid about Gerry Brownlee's secret Idi Amin fantasies...
You clearly haven't seen this morning's order in council, or you would call him by his correct title - Field Marshal Gerry Brownlee, V.C.
More to the point this legislation is a direct demonstration - yet again - of the dangers of the instinctive authoritarianism of our entitled and entrenched political elites.
The sooner we bring in limits on the pay and tenure of our elected representatives the better.
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For the disorganised, may I suggest Stephen Wilce? he organised the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and he is free just now.