Tell the truth on drugs and get fired

This is exactly what happened to Britain with the Chairman of the Home Office's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Professor David Nutt. He has been followed by Dr Les King also a member of the Advisory Council.

Professor Nutt said that cannabis has had its classification, for legal purposes, "upgraded" to Class B status for political reasons. He was removed because his comments were seen as political and unacceptable.

He claimed alcohol can be more dangerous than cannabis or ecstasy, which of course goes "off message" with the view the government wishes to express - simply that drugs must be worse, hence they are illegal. The truth is more than those who want to ban harmful substances know it is far too difficult and publicly unacceptable to ban alcohol, so demonise those that are banned as being worse.

Of course all drugs, including alcohol, can have serious health effects and affect brain functioning. There can be no doubt of the danger, but it appears that having an honest rational debate about this is beyond the capability of the British government.

Lauren Booth in the Mail on Sunday has a tale of her own life that outlines perhaps why all of this doesn't seem to wash with some of the public, for as a child her parents smoked weed and would drink, the effects were different:

"Because in my home, as in far too many others, the question wasn’t what was legal and what wasn’t, nor what was cool or what was not. It was this: laughing adults, stoned on illegal weed or violent, frightening ones, drunk on legal lager?

She rightfully calls for a more informed debate on why people do become addicted to substances, but this step just takes things backwards".

Food, booze, spiders, breasts, idiots, Chirac, trick or treat and trolley buses

From today's Daily Telegraph:

A chef produces what he claims is the world's healthiest meal, a chicken and blueberry curry with goji berry pilau rice, which given the chef is British-Indian, makes some sense. Now the combination sounds interesting. Each serving contains the nutritional equivalent of 49 helpings of spinach, 23 bunches of grapes or nine portions of broccoli. The recipe is in the article, and given

"Each plateful contains 25,000 'ORAC' units - the scientific measurement of antioxidants in foods.

Foods higher on the ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) scale have been proven to counter the onset of cancer, Alzheimer's, coronary heart disease and diabetes.

Most “healthy” meals like salads have less than 5,000 ORAC units, while traditional curries have fewer still."

it has to be worth a taste.

The French are drinking like the British. Is it true? Well this is Celia Walden simply describing her own observations in France, for what that is worth.

There are 750 million spiders in the UK. Breeding conditions have apparently been favourable, and let's bear in mind that they are fairly harmless.

India Lenon, a student at Oxford writes about the Cambridge female students who chose to pose semi-naked for a student publication called The Tab. She says:

"And if these girls are clever enough to know what they are doing, we might even have to accept that the ones in the national press do to. And then we might have to let go of one of the finest bugbears of modern feminism. But we wouldn’t want that, now would we? So it is far better to assume that the female students of Cambridge University, just like Stacey, 22, in The Sun, are too thick to make their own decisions. That way we can carry on sticking up for them."

Quite, although men aren't apparently allowed to comment on such things.

Newest winners of the title "world's stupidest robbers" are these pair who used marker pens to "disguise their faces". Children can do a far better job.

Jacques Chirac is facing charges of embezzlement from when he was Mayor of Paris, the accusation being he awarded contracts for non-existent work to friends or associates. Gee who'd have thought?

The Vatican joyfully condemns Halloween calling it "a pagan celebration of "terror, fear and death". Given everyone I've known who has done anything with it just regards it as a bit of fun, isn't it being a tad too serious? I don't think Halloween is competition for other religions. Indeed, could not the commemoration of a crucifixion be seen to be about terror, fear and death too?

Poneke will be pleased that trolley buses are likely to return to the UK (with CGI video), in one city at least. Leeds is pursuing a state of the art system, and apparently has most of the funding needed to do it, as it is a fraction of the cost of putting in a tram system. It will have dedicated lanes and is certainly the first city in the English speaking world to build a new system from scratch in many many years. If successful, it could mean the era of expanding tram systems in the UK could come to an end - £20m per mile for a trolleybus line including buses compared to around £45m per mile for light rail (in Edinburgh) means you better have a need for more than double the capacity.

City AM on the US "recovery"

With all the excitement of the "obvious" economic recovery in the US, and the farcical sleight of hand by the Obama Administration claiming it has "created job" by taking from Peter to pay Paul, City AM's Allister Heath has a more measured view...

America’s growth rebound is good news as far as it goes. But the bulk of the third quarter’s growth rate was attributable to car purchases, construction and state spending. I still believe in a global square-root shaped recovery: a growth spurt starting in the third quarter, followed by a lengthy period of stagnation as budget deficits are cut and consumers deleverage. We shall see.

Bearing in mind car purchases were driven in part by subsidies, construction likewise, about the only US state spending that may have a productive spin off is spending on infrastructure that the private sector is crowded out from that is starved (such as roads), but that alone wont offset the net deadweight sunk cost of all of the other state spending.

The Obama and the Bush Administration both gambled that to NOT print money and spend it would make things worse - the question is whether it has simply made it gentler but last much longer, and for the cost to be born not by those who participated in the riskiest activities, but by future generations of taxpayers who gain nothing from current non-capital based government spending.

So despite the hype, a substantial number will not believe the recession is over yet, for right now there may simply be a government (future taxpayer) funded bubble of speculation and demand, that will be spent in the not too distant future.

Socialism rules on water

or so you'd think from the Herald comments section on water privatisation.

Profits are evil, you shouldn't expect a return on money spent on assets, no of course not. I'm sure all those posting would work for a stipend to cover the costs of going to and from work wouldn't they?

Foreign companies are evil, not like New Zealand local government, it would never rip you off would it? Those people who can take your money by force, borrow money and make you pay it back by force. Yep nothing like government to look after you.

Foreign companies will price gouge and milk horrendous profits with privatisation. Even though this would seriously cut demand, and people would find alternatives (not easily mind you, but people can collect rainwater, bathe at pools, beaches or lakes, get watertanks, wash sparingly). Even though many rural water schemes today are falling apart because of gross underinvestment by councils. Blank all that out. Blank out the general public actually buying shares in water companies or even privatisation involving giving shares away. Real public ownership comes from politicians running things doesn't it?

Water is a "human right", which you need to infringe on the rights of others to provide. Funny how food is different. So if there is no water supply is someone having their human rights abused? Another bogus "right", bogus because it demands you force someone else to pay to make it happen - no genuine rights require anyone else to do anything, just let people be free.

Water is free, ignoring that it costs money to treat it, to pump it, to build and maintain pipes to reticulate it, and then to carry away the wastewater and treat it before ejecting it. Blank all that out.

"Electricity was privatised", just blank out the fact that 70% of the electricity market is held by three STATE owned enterprises (but leftwing hysteria is just catching).

The railways were "destroyed" even though a third of all railway lines were closed under state ownership, and when renationalised the railways were carrying record levels of freight on a per tonne km basis. Blank all that out, the myth is that something really valuable was destroyed and bought back for nothing - when in fact it was a business with a lot of sunk assets that needed to be fully depreciated, so it could focus on what it was good at. Another part of leftwing legend.

Finally, not one of the Marxist gits who post even consider that food, petrol, clothing and most housing are privately provided, most regarded as essential to most people, along with umpteen consumables like light bulbs, furniture, appliances etc. All by private companies, many foreign owned.

If you believed this showed what most New Zealanders thought you'd have good reason to understand why the GDP per capita of NZ is so absymal, being full of whinging non-entrepreneurial worshippers of the state, with a malignant view of economic incentives and overwhelming trust in government.

Who inculcates this hysterical hatred of private enterprise, belief business is just out to rip everyone off, overwhelming trust that state ownership makes things better and attitude of near class warfare about the provision of services that quite happily get done privately elsewhere?

Laws is wrong, but

he is expressing the frustration of those who see an underclass of violent, negligent and destructive people breeding, producing children who face a bleak and difficult future.

His solution as described in the Dominion Post is wrong. Damned if taxpayers should reward people for being indolent, otherwise it becomes a career option for the stupid - be sufficiently vile and threaten to breed and get someone else's money for nothing. It has been deliberately misconstrued as "totalitarian", as if people have a right to be appallingly bad parents, when the likes of Cindy Kiro (backed by Sue Bradford) did advocate a totalitarian solution, yet no mainstream media ever picked up on it.

However he has a point. A point that the Child Poverty (in)Action Group misses, because it worships at the altar of "higher benefits" rather than genuinely combating the lack of ambition and the feral behaviour of so many in poverty. Barnadoes Chief Executive Murray Edridge rightfully says any child could become a doctor but he is wrong in saying "as long as there was community support for them", as he implies that good parents are expendable. The truth is that they are not. Sue Bradford even trots out the usual "more resources" nonsense to combat violence.

No, you don't need money to stop killing your kids.

The fundamental problem is twofold.

Firstly, people are paid to breed. Many who are don't abuse their kids, but they inculcate a culture of entitlement. A belief that everyone owes them a living and should pay to raise their kids. However, you can be a murderer, rapist, violent criminal, burglar or fraudster and still be paid by the state to raise kids, and get more money with every child you have.

The first simple thing to do is to prohibit all people convicted of a serious violent or sexual offence from ever being able to claim welfare. That includes anything for raising children.

Oh, but what about the kids? Indeed, the parents should have thought of that. They are responsible for the children, they bear the burden of paying for that. If people want to help, they are free to do so voluntarily. However, taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pay for criminals to breed - simple as that. After that, you might ask whether taxpayers should be forced to pay for anyone to breed.

Secondly, the state needs to be willing to remove children from their parents when they abuse them or become an accessory to abuse of them. The threshold should be high, but effort should be put into intervening when there is clear evidence of criminal behaviour towards the children, or fundamental neglect. Indeed, it should be considered in sentencing whether criminals should be permanently denied custody of their children, if the offending is serious or the children were used as accessories.

Finally, parents who clearly can't look after their kids should surrender them as a last resort, those who say they care about child poverty might actually think about doing something about kids in those situations, rather than complain the government hasn't done it.

There has always been an underclass that neglects and abuses children, what we know now is that it is more publicised, and cases appear to be more frequent. However, the answer to this underclass is to stop feeding the attitudes of dependency, victimhood and blame passing that welfarism promotes, and indeed more than a few on the left promote (the nonsense that capitalism stresses people out so much, they turn on their children).