Window Dressing for Dummies

For a party professing one law for all, the National Party has a problem on its hands with its Health & Safety legislation.

It could be just coincidence that the really big avoidable tragedies have all been under a National government. Erebus was an orchestrated litany of lies under Muldoon. Cave Creek was systemic failure under Bolger. No one has been held accountable for the CTV building collapse and the Pike River entombment under Key.

The legislation before Parliament was a direct consequence of the Pike River disaster. Something had to be done. This is it. The public reaction so far ranges from worm farm Dune jokes and mini golf ridicule on Twitter, to secondary school principals freaking out about getting sued or thrown into jail.

Pat Walsh wasn't kidding on Morning Report when he said that schools would be looking closely at whether school camps and playgrounds were viable any longer. Too risky. Many school swimming pools are as dead as dinosaurs, yet NZers continue to drown.

Minister Woodhouse's reaction so far has been limited to passing a random greasy ball to local councils by sort-of-but-not-quite opening up Easter Sunday for trading. He's burdened local government with more things to be accountable for without funding. Calling it passing the buck would be too charitable.

I haven't read the legislation, but the biggest injustice appears to be the large Gerry-mandered hole excempting anyone with connections to the National party. You could drive a tractor through without it touching the sides. Maybe even a swamp kauri log, as long as it was longly. A rolling quad bike would have no problem.

Woodhouse is just the stunt muppet fronting it. The back office already knows what it wants. Same recipe as the Tax Property Register. The public are outraged. Nick some relevant patch from the Opposition. Water it down to homeopathic levels of utility. Add loopholes and lawyers. Done.

Hanging Out with Beck, Whodini and Queen Camilla

Please pardon my break from blogging. Although I've been following the headlines, watching the gossip on Twitter, and occasionally popping into the House to witness some absurd theatre, I've really been preferring the company of chickens.

Kapiti Gothic; Beck and Queen Camilla. Whodini AWOL, as usual.

Sartre was wrong about a lot, but not Hell being other people. If the Psychoactive Substances donut wasn't bad enough, here's a sample of righteous puritanism from today's headlines alone:

One (vanilla) farmer gets fined $7500 for gross animal cruelty, while another farmer (with a Maori name) gets fined $15,000 for stubbornly refusing to wear a quad bike helmet on his land. Don't quibble the obiter, the law is still an ass. Actual harm > potential harm.

The coronial inquest into the Masterton balloon tragedy continues, with cannabis still being the whipping boy for the mess. Never mind an almost identical accident occurring in the US (wind changes, balloon hits power lines). Never mind testimony saying there's no evidence cannabis played any role in the balloon failure, the government is welcoming drug testing in the tourism industry.

NZ I love you but you still really piss me off.

Trainspotting

Steven Joyce's elves at Worksafe have closed down a popular tourist attraction at the start of its busiest season.

They may have been AWOL at Pike River Mine, they couldn't stop the Interislander ferry's propellor from falling off, but they can make damned sure there's no mayhem and carnage caused by the Kapiti Miniature Railway & Model Engineering Society.

I had the good fortune to get invited over for Xmas drinkies with the neighbours, who happen to be donkey deep defending against this great train snobbery. The courts are on glide time, and the soonest the train nerds might get the attraction running again is mid-January. By then, school holidays will be over.

Something smells about this whole affair, and I have offered my powers of beligerence to help their cause in any way. I have no particular love of trains, but I don't like seeing bureaucrats pick on trainspotters for no good reason.

Kiwi Killjoys; 5 Fun Criminal Acts That Weren't Illegal in NZ When I Was Born

1) Drinking on Wellington's Waterfront at 3am. In the parlance of The Wire, on a hot summer night, the corner is the poor man's lounge. There are few things more memorable than getting drunk in the small hours with a beautiful woman on Wellington's waterfront, the best lounge in the world (weather permitting).

Unfortunately, an unholy alliance between local government busy bodies and national government police goons have produced liquor-free zones that would make alcohol prohibitionist Kate Sheppard proud. Soon, every part of NZ will be highchair-friendly 24/7 , and no-one will witness those Yayoi Kusama-like infinity moments on the Wellington harbour again. Not without a private patch of Oriental Bay real estate, at least.

2) Dancing til dawn at an NZ nightclub. The party may never end at John Key's house, but due to new alcohol laws which came into force this week, all bars must now close at 4am. It's like a puritan mash-up of 6 o'clock closing and daylight saving. Patricia Bartlett must be genuflecting in her grave. Her vision of a bland NZ mindset has come true.

David Farrar points out the empty vessels of youth binge drinking hysteria. Lest we forget, NZ is out-drunk by 48 other countries.

3) Cycling without a helmet, another National party crime. Jim Bolger's car-happy used car salesmen constituents got a fuel injection in the 1990's. Not only was a new line in cheap Jap imports flooding in after import restrictions were lifted, cycling was actively discouraged as an alternative form of transport by making it illegal to cycle without wearing a polystyrene tit on one's head.

Even rotan-happy Singapore, which cruelly and unusally punishes people for smoking, long hair and chewing gum (among many many other fickle deviances) has no laws mandating bike helmets. New news everyone, legally required bike helmets may cause more harm than good.

4) Smoking in an adult environment (i.e. bar). One of the great joys I used to look forward to after a hard day of dealing with other people was sitting down at the local bar with a pint of ale, a blank pad of paper, a pen, and a pack of cigarettes. Alas, this is now considered a crime against humanity. This just in, a longitudinal study has shown that second-hand smoke cancer does not fucking exist .

5) Cannabis. First grown in NZ by a nun, popularised by visiting US soldiers during WWII, blamed by the vanilla people for the Bassett Road murders. The Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 gave police increasing powers, to the point where dope fiends are now treated more harshly than murderers and fraudsters. Persecution on this level hasn't been seen since the Anglicans tried to wipe out the Catholics.

Raindrops Keep Falling on my Shed

Had to switch off NatRad earlier than usual
The host was whipping Joe Bennett for his
Defence of the pursuit of happiness
In the future we will all die of boredom

Rain on corrogated iron
A superior form of white noise
Filtered through red wine
Squeezed into something new

The random hits the sine wave
Chaos and order clash with wild harmony
Much more tolerance for deviation
In nature than nurture

Lament for the Bike Curious

A Wellington Coroner wants hi-vis flouro vests compulsory for all cyclists, as noted in his ruling on the cause of death of road safety cop Steve Fitzgerald.

It's not the drug-ignorant Gerry Evans who's making nutty claims this time, but Ian Smith. But Coroners' Logic is presented in its standard position of being arse-backwards and upside down.

NZ Transport policy has long dictated that people in cars and trucks are more equal than any other people. NZ Cultural Policy has reinforced this bias by blaming the most vulnerable when things go wrong. In this light, Coroners' Logic seems quite reasonable. In the normal light of reality however, it boils down to "screw the walkers and cyclists".

Cars causing bicycle mayhem and roadkill? Put a polystyrene tit on the bikers' heads. Trucks totalling safety cops? Make the cyclists wear a twat jacket. Yeah, that'll stop the truck.

When will someone blame the road design? Why not go Dutch and separate the traffic flows adequately? Or, just for novelty's sake, put the blame on the  inattentive wheel jockeys behind the Steel Death Machines? Go Dutch and put the onus on driver liability.

While we're at it, I've always pondered why bus and taxi drivers are licenced to buggery if they transport members of the public around, but any mad cow on a general licence can pilot a God Mover packed to the rafters. Maybe you wouldn't get so much street pizza if you made a separate licence for that class of Steel Death Machine.

Bye bye buckyballs

It looks like I'll never get the tactile pleasure of playing with buckyballs. NZ has banned the import and sale of the rare earth magnet adult toy after too many orally-fixated hormunculi have mistaken them for M&Ms and gobbled them.

The ban follows a similar one in the vexatiously litigious USA last year, which compelled geeks to wonder what would be banned next. Geeks here are not amused either.

One wonders how we are to snap out of this economic rut when anything novel or slightly risky is banned if it's shown to be unsafe in kindergartens. The idea of progress and the reality seem poles apart.

At war with the non-laws

About the only way you'd get my interest during the Olympics is if they made swearing a competitive sport. Alas, it will only be non-professional level curses on Wellington's sports fields and in its parks if anyone tries to tell me that Wellington City Council has banned smoking there.

In truth, this do-gooding bylaw has no power. One can't be fined or punished in any way for breaching it. No court in the land would uphold its constitutionality if it was ever tested. It is just one of those vacuous "sending a message" laws from the Department of Something Must Be Done.

However, if some safety nazi wants to help me limber up my offensive lingo by tut-tutting the next time I fug past them while smelling the roses, be warned. The air will not be blue because of the smoke.

Plain packaged bullshit

Only the Maori Party has the misguided thickery to impose a tax increase on half of its constituency. But their plan to plain package tobacco products has set a new record in flogging a dead horse.

I got fed up with the montage of government health warnings on the packaging a long time ago. Here's my tobacco wallet, complete with Maryjane the Cannabus sticker:

I know the risks of my hobby, and the last thing I need is a stomach stapled diabetic to preach to me about lifestyle choices.

Safety Nazis uber alles

# Palmy City Councillors considering new rules to ensure canine phobic children are protected from canines!

# Schools get the right to search all students for drugs, even if there has been no drug problem at the school. Privacy is for terrorists!

# Lest one's child learns responsibility or self-confidence without the loud wopping sound from the helicopter soccer mums and control freak dads, track and trace your child with software!

# Sean Plunket looks at the rules of engagement in the contemporary school playground!

# While the children are treated like infants, the adults are getting infantilised too. Tariana Turia wants to restrict tobacco packaging fonts and colours because, as every smoker knows, we judge a pouch by its cover.

# Auckland Safety Nazis think they can ban smoking in regional parks. Attempts at enforcing this edict is not recommended as being told to fuck off might offend.

BONY reading

My picks for Best of New Year's reading:

# Part eulogy, part allegory, Crampton points to a piece by Robin Maconie on Christchurch, NZ university politics and the passing of Denis Dutton.

# John Drinnan rounds up the media year with a scathing look at John Key's corporate welfare. Apart from the Hobbit swindle, there was the Fay dynasty picking up NZ on Air funding:

Taxpayers gave Annabel Fay's record company a $50,000 subsidy while her dad, Sir Michael, put up thousands of dollars to helicopter in commercial radio DJs and a public servant funding executive to their Great Mercury Island hideaway for a promotional gig.

Something is surely wrong when the Government attacks financially strapped public radio as wasteful, but gives subsidies for pop pap to people who can afford to pay their own way.

 # Pablo at KiwiPolitico expands on Idiot Savant's discovery that many of the Urewera 18 will no longer be eligible for a jury trial. Justice delayed is bad enough, but changing the rules in between arrest and trial on this matter is contemptable.

# The DPB and beneficiaries might get Lindsay Mitchell annoyed, but behold her wrath of freedoms curtailed.

# Karl du Fresne takes a break from propping up the monarchy to write about the passing of Wellingtonian Duncan Barry McFarlane:

In any event, a big service was arranged in Newson’s honour and the Wellington underworld, having declared a temporary cessation of hostilities, turned out en masse. I covered the ceremony for the Evening Post , and what was very apparent that day was that a life of crime hadn’t been kind to most of those present. They looked prematurely old, were shabbily dressed and drove old dungers. But that couldn’t be said of McFarlane, who by all accounts lived very well. At the time, his address was a luxury yacht in the Chaffers Marina. No one seemed to know how he made his money but it’s fair to assume it wasn’t from designing Hallmark greeting cards. 

 # The Proceeds of Crimes Act, which allows the state to confiscate property willy-nilly, has taken a knock back in the courts. Fair go too. No need to punish the missus for the crimes of the husband when it comes to matrimonial property.

Beware of safety

The ACC has churned out another safety alert, this time on the dangers of accidents in the home. 12 NZers a week die from accidents at home!, screams the NZ Harold. NatRad's Checkpoint covered the story with extra vim, including the sounds of Homers in Peril (falling in the shower, down stairs, off ladders, and plunging through glass chattels).

I would normally turn a deaf ear to such melodrama, maybe noting that the corporation should not be pronounced Eh-See-See, but Ack. A choking sound would be more on message, eh.

But the near the end of the NatRad story is some safety fairy warning against the dangers of child scalding, saying that tap water should be no hotter than 55 degrees Celsius. They neglect to mention that tap water should also not be cooler than 55 degrees either. This is why:

The optimal temperature for Legionella proliferation in water varies between 32°C and 35°C, but it can easily proliferate at temperatures of up to 45°C. Usually, there is no growth above 55°C, and a temperature of over 60°C has a bactericidal effect.

Ideally, I'd recommend a hot water cylinder thermostat be set at 60 degrees and boil any Legionnaire's Disease out. Knowing NZ's water pipes as I do, that would allow a 5 degree loss of heat on the way to the tap, which is fair go considering this wintry climate at the moment.

There is the worry that people might tune their cylinders too low, causing more hassles than the marginal risk of scalding. A one percent chance of scalding is not equal to a 100 percent chance of poisoning. Sometimes, the cost benefit analysis can get lost in the Safetykrieg.

Jam

I never knew jam poisoning was such a big deal in NZ, but the safety nazis have struck again on the home-made preserves racket. Radio NZ reports that the Kapiti district council is clamping down on unlicensed kitchen condiments:

The council's manager for assets and services, Gary Simpson, says all others must have registered kitchens, no matter what their size. This, he says, is to guard against outbreaks of illness. But the market's convenor Sherryl Gray, who describes the new decree as a kick in the guts, says the cost of setting up a commercial kitchen is prohibitive. She says the cooks are furious because their food, such as cakes and preserves, has never generated a complaint. She also says the market has given $63,000 to community causes since 1996.

This is just nutty red tape. I take stuff like this pretty personally. It's crap like this that keeps rooting my business ideas. Last time it was Labour's school tuck shop ideas that ran over my cunning plan before fruition. Now it's the bloody cake and jam banners.
 
The rigours of setting up a commercial kitchen to match the high standards of the certifiable cardy clipboard carriers puts a few start-ups right off. We can't all be like Cookie Time, who started off lucky enough to borrow some else's commercial kitchen on the downtime. Or maybe that's a new use for off-peak restaurants. It has happened before, after all. Wishbone keeps fluking it too.

But there really should be an exclusion for advertised home-sellers, such as at markets or stalls. Maybe insist home-bakers stamp their goods with a big green "U" for unlicensed to give due notice that it's buyer beware. None of this "charity cooking only business" either.

You want to kick start the economy on the cheap, here's an idea. Short lease out all those CBD For Lease gaps on the street to the home-cookers. I'd be keen to start some kind of Mexican food joint myself, serving nachos to the suits for lunch; just a fridge, sink and stove for basic kit. But oh, no. There'd have to be much more gleaming stainless steel and sealed linoleum before the boxed are all ticked.



Speaking of jam of another kind, here's the story behind the YouTube caching clusterfuck at TelstraClear. Two thumbs up to Geekzone for the information, as TC weren't exactly updating their customers on the obvious problem. I've had a gutsful for six months, YouTube vids taking three times longer to load than the length of the clip.

Between Telecom and TelstraClear, it's like choosing between the last two girls on the dance floor at closing time. Both lonely and sad and a bit desperate, but at least getting rooted by TelstraClear is still not as painful as the Telecom *.

Hide Bites Dog [owners]

Oh lordy. Rodney Hide, the leader of the freedom and responsibility party Act, has come out in favour of dog owner licencing:

Mr Hide says a review will look at dog laws and question whether local councils are best placed to administer them. Both the SPCA and the Kennel Club say they are better equipped to administer laws than local councils which each interpret laws differently.

Notice the ropes of drool from potential gatekeepers there? And are there any vertabrae in that alleged spine that Act campaigned on last year that haven't turned to jelly?

Mind you, as Bryce @liberation has been showing, they're all as bad as each other. It's not professionalism, Mr Farrar. Bryce said professionalisation. There's a difference.

Morepork Chaser: Johann Hari at The Independent sits down with Gore Vidal, the last smart man in the USA.

Safety Nazis out in force

A Kerikeri hospice is going to lose up to $15,000 a year from selling jam because the jam maker doesn't have a licence.

Auckland CitiRat councillor Aaron Bhatnagar is seeking to do unto the hospitality sector what John Banks did to the sex trade; try to regulate it out of existence. Suggested outcomes include mandatory CCTVs, bouncers at fine dining restaurants and pumpkin o'clock enforcement. Licences depending on garrymandered favoured property sites and cap in hand pleading with the rubber stampers.

Bhatnager has more dollars than sense. Thank Dagg I'm a Wellingtonian!

Finally, tobacco.

It was a great night at the Backbencher last night. I had been down the hill for the launch of The Republican Handbook (which I'll write up after a read. In the meantime, join the Republican Movement and get the book for free!) Saw many old faces and met some new ones too at the Grand Hall launch.

I planned to go straight to the supermarket afterwards, but was sidetracked to the Backbencher. Didn't plan to stay too long, but I did. It was a most excellent night with wit, gossip and crowd watching. One of the most festive crowds I've ever been there for too.

Hone Harawira had successfully gatecrashed the Backbenchers show talking passionately about his detestation for tobacco companies. All that talk of tobacco had me craving a cigarette out the front door. I all but missed Hone's Cunliffe line, but the audience loved it.

I also caught Ian Lees-Galloway out back later on arguing about the alleged evils of dairy tobacco walls; Power Walls, he calls them. Fair go for him trying to sell it to the ring of smokers out the arse end of the building. He's pushing a private member's bill to that end, after all.

But he's pissing in a Southerly if he thinks one more ban will make a blind bit of difference. In spite of killing sponsorship, print and web advertising, and attempting to kill smokers through hypothermia outside public bars, tobacco use shows very strong resilience.

While Hone Harawira can act as born again non-smoker all he likes, you will find that a good percentage of humans will always smoke. I quite enjoy the rite. Smokers are humans with inalienable rights. We have a right to food, shelter and warmth too. Stop sticking us in the gulag.

Safety Nazi headlines

Calls for seatbelts on tractors
Calls for helmets on skateboarders
Drinking beer can cause blindness

UPDATE: Joe Bennett is injured in the name of safety.

Pope admits he is Catholic

Land Transport Minister admits bike helmets may put people off cycling.

The power of the shower

A team led by neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis has developed the formula for the perfect shower. The formula has seven variables: water pressure, environmental conditions, privacy factor, time length of shower, temperature of shower in degrees Celsius, fixture type and spray pattern.

“Creating the optimum shower is no easy feat, but a worthwhile endeavour. It offers psychological benefits; by varying the temperature of the water and the power of the jets, relaxation or stimulation can be aided. Endorphins are then released in the brain to make our mood more positive and feel energized. Also, because our skin contains a thousand nerve endings per square inch, creating the perfect shower to stand under is crucial in creating intense and extremely pleasurable physical sensations. As an added bonus, showers generate negative ions that also have an uplifting effect on mood, so help to further reduce stress, wash away frustrations and dissolve muscle tension.”

Exact details haven't been released yet, but there's a good likelihood that 6 litres per minute water pressure could lead to psychological impairment and unwarranted levels of stress. Who knows, maybe low pressure showers might even be a form of child abuse!

They're all nuts in here anyway

While the peanuts have survived in Karori school, even though the risk of death from "nut oil that could be spread on to communal surfaces" remains, spare a thought for the Welsh kids of Ceredigion Council. The council has banned Marmite from school breakfast clubs due to a high level of salt.

TVNZ is lactose intolerant

Earlier today, I was having a chortle at British expense reading about this new CD featuring old songs that the BBC has banned. Not included is Split Enz's Six Months in a Leaky Boat, which was banned during the Falklands War. Thank Dagg we live in liberal old NZ. OK, the old control freaks at the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation were something else, but times have changed:

As a junior employee in the record purchasing section at the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation in Wellington, my first job was to gouge a nail across the tracks of the B-side of the Ray Charles single "Hit the road. Jack". Censorship and concepts of "safe" records were an over­ riding pre-occupation of the establishment back then, although it has to be said the "The Danger Zone", the B side was less threatening than "Hit the road, Jack".

Or rather, times haven't changed, they have twisted. Steven at Spare Room points out that TVNZ have banned a music video by soul band Hot Grits. No sex, violence, nudity or dry humping. Just a bunch of kids drinking milk:



On the subject of child censorship, it may be a good time to highlight that almost half of UK kids are banned from climbing trees as parents think it is too dangerous:

Play England, which says it promotes free play opportunities, insists that parents "constantly wrapping children in cotton wool" can harm the children's development. The poll found showed 51% of children aged 7-12 were not allowed to climb a tree without adult supervision, with 49% stopped from climbing trees altogether because it was considered too dangerous

...It found children's experiences of adventure are confined to designated areas such as playgrounds (56%), their homes (48%) or theme parks (44%).

Little wonder the little buggers are bored. There are calls over in Blighty for parents to please neglect their kids, leaving them to make their own fun.