Casting the Nats for Futurama

Fry - John Key. I have a pizza for I.C. Weiner..?
Leela - Paula Bennett. Mutant former DPB Mum turned kung fu conservative.
Bender- Tim Groser. Booze fuelled robot of destruction.
Farnsworth - Maurice "Greatest American Hero was always groovy" Williamson.
Zoidberg - Nick Smith. Wrong planet, dude.
Hermes - Bill English. Spicy beancounter.
Zapp - Steven Joyce. Roads of National Significance against the peaceful poets of Horowhenua.
Kiff - Louise Upston. I can't can't imagine the shit she has to put up with.
Amy Wong - Amy Adams. Of course.
Scruffy- Chester Burrows. Soz the Courts reboot went sideways on you.
Mom - Julie Christie. I know what everyone wants. And I'm prepared to give it to them, for a price.
Morbo - Mike Hosking. I will destroy you! Happy days.
Linda Van Schoonhorn, Morbo's co-host - Heather du Plessis-Allen. Soz, darling. You're soaking in it.
Nibbler - Simon Bridges. Unseeable dimensions not pictured.

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.

Footrot Nats

Casting the National Party for Footrot Flats:

Wal: John Key. The lovable fallible everyman you'd have a beer with.
Cooch: Bill English. Stoic conservative sidekick.
Cheeky Hobson: Paula Bennett. Heir-dresser. 52's a specialty.
Horse, the Cat: Judith Collins. Not feral, merely fearsome.
Pew, the Magpie: Nick Smith. Black and white, red all over.
Old Cecil: Maurice Williamson. Knows where all the skulls are buried.
Murphy's Pigs: Steven Joyce, Gerry Brownlee. Troughers.
Rangi: Hekia Parata. Speaks in tongues in the finest tradition of Parekura Horomia.
Aunt Polly: Murray McCully. Not to be crossed. Knew Wal when he wore nappies.
Prince Charles: Todd McClay. Thick as a haggis.

Dog: Tricky. Simon Power was the big gamble before he parachuted into banking. Simon Bridges is being sexed up as the new Bright Young Thing, but nope. He's no Upton. Last year's voluminous intake of Nats hasn't turned up any bones there either. I see only muppets.

Soz, no punchline. This is where the metaphor collapses entirely. Move along. Nothing to be seen here.

Dirty Wars and Ignored Laws

Toby Manhire pointed out in Friday's NZ Herald that the country seems to have sleep-walked into a war. No-one appears to have noticed a New Zealander getting a collateralised death sentence by US drone. Not the prime minister, who has all but given up the ghost of an independent foreign policy for gimp status that would make Reek flinch with recognition. Not the public, which seems inured against war crimes or seem indifferent as long it doesn't affect their day-to-day grind.

As the Snowden NSA papers come closer to our shores, threatening to wash up all sorts of dirty security laundry, NZ may well have to face their complicity in atrocities. As a thought experiment, imagine John Key appearing before The Hague for aiding and abetting war crimes.

It's not such a mad proposition after reading this transcript from today's The Nation between Paddy Gower and Dirty Wars author Jeremy Scahill. Whether Key & Co know it or not, they're donkey deep in a very dirty war. A morsel (vid here, interview transcript here):

I can’t disclose specifics on this but what I can tell you is that I have seen dozens of top secret documents that the New Zealand Government has been provided by the United States, because of the Five Eyes status of New Zealand, that indicate that New Zealand is extremely aware of the extent to which the United States is engaged in drone strikes around the world and is briefed fully on the infrastructure of that programme. And the fact is that New Zealand through signal intercepts is directly involved with what is effectively an American assassination programme. People can say ‘oh well we are just giving them intelligence on terrorists’. The fact is that the world – most countries of the world – view what the United States is doing as rogue actions.

Never mind the fluff of polls, PR and show ponies, this stuff is important. It goes to the guts of sovereignty and statehood. NZ was one of the founding members of the League of Nations after WWI. It was a founding member of the United Nations after WWII. John Key's government has blithely swept all that precedent away by including NZ materiel and labour in these many crimes against International Law, including the Geneva Conventions.

The Nats have sold our century of pacific soul to Hollywood. Do you feel horribly short-changed yet?

Do Focus Groups Dream of Synthetic People?

April was one of those months. Vanilla skies with no news, followed by a vanilla religious holiday, concluding with a vanilla hailstorm of moral panic complete with pitchforked lightning and a flood of recanting politicians.

The Easter shopping anomaly went to 11 this year, with everything open in Wanaka over the mandated religious period except the pubs. Apparently the town was tipped off that there would be no enforcement of the archaic law against Easter trading (unless you were a pub or an unsuccessful special event applicant, in which case there would be). This fickle absence of enforcement gave Wanaka an excemption reserved in legislation only for Taupo and other listed 'tourist towns'.

Alcohol was still available at the traditionally excempted premises. If you were middle class enough to afford to dine in licensed premises, you could drink booze uninterrupted over Easter. This exclusion is an artifact from before the Sale of Liquor Act 1989, when every Sunday was Easter Sunday and all the pubs were closed. Churches could still serve booze (to minors!) in the Eucharist, Synagogues could still serve booze (to babies!) at circumcisions / genital mutilations. For the secular Gentile others, we had to stockpile booze at home over Easter like a survivalist.

Survivalism sounds like what is increasingly a pastime for the residents of the Flockton sinkhole. The recent rains have washed away more hope from them, with the balance between fight and flight swinging inexorably towards the latter. Winter is coming, and there may be more once-in-a-century floods on their way. There's no sign of help from King Gerry, who has kicked the problem firmly into the city council's realm to deal with.

Not entirely dissimilar to the buck-passing bug in last year's visionary Psychoactive Substances Act, which led to hicksville mayors around NZ landed with responsibility for a new and complex regime they knew absolutely nothing about. The upshot of this led to the government siding with vigilante arsonists in banning legal highs outright last week.

In retrospect, all the signs were there. Nationwide protests that looked like a working class Sensible Sentencing Trust lynch mob took place. Associate Minister of Health (and temporary drug czar while Dunne was in the naughty corner last year) Todd McClay agreed with a Rotorua crowd that legal highs were bad. Labour party shadow drug czar Iain Lees-Galloway appeared in Palmy saying legal highs were bad. Only Peter Dunne was singing the Act's positives until last Sunday night, when Dunne finally capitulated and agreed that legal highs were, as they say, bad.

Blame for this vanilla victory rests firmly with National and Labour. National for under-funding the project to the point of sabotage, and its ignorance of what was at stake beyond "The focus group said no." Labour for the inane local government authority bug they inserted into the Psychoactive Substances Act, demonstrating that they have learned precisely nothing from the local government fallout over the Prostitution Reform Act. Secondly, Labour's populist crusade ran counter to their support for the original bill.

It shows bad faith from both main parties. A lack of imagination from the Nats is to be expected, but Labour's faults are unforgivable. Thank Dagg for MMP and third party software, because there's too much salt sown in the fallow fields of Team Blue and Team Red.

Unforced Errors

Justice Minister Judith Collins gets caught pimping her husband's milk in China during an official visit. Cabinet rules expressly forbid ministers endorsing products for advertorials. Not a good look, what with former National Justice Ministers Jeffries and Graham courting public disdain and all.

David Cunliffe once again proves he is his enemy's best friend by admitting to hidden donations. For someone who spent years planning his ascent to the top of the Labour party, he seems to have spent bugger all time on logistics.

According Labour IT spokesperson Clare Curran, whose office data dumped policy ideas to National's IT Minister Amy Adams, Labour will be going to the election with a range of KKK platforms.

How to articulate the awfulness of it all? Describe the plot lines of these first season episodes of Family Guy only by their titles:

Death Has a Shadow
I Never Met the Dead Man
Chitty Chitty Death Bang

National and Labour's Too-Hard Basket is Full of Pissed Off Voters

Good on Colin Espiner making an eloquent plea for NZ to revisit this futile and destructive War on Drugs.

The National government has ignored the Law Commission's first review of the Misuse of Drugs Act since the law's inception, even with its mild conclusions and Jim Anderton rooting its terms of reference with a conservative reading of the United Nations Conventions. Not altogether unlike National ignoring the recommendations of the Electoral Representation Commission on MMP, which they themselves commissioned.

In fairness, Labour is rooting the hamster on both the War on Drugs and MMP reform as well. Labour MP for Palmy, Iain Lees-Galloway, should have presented his private member's bill on MMP reform with the MMP Commission's findings intact, not cherry-picked to Labour's flavour. The party has learned nothing from their Electoral Finance Act fisting.

Lees-Galloway is also Labour's shadow drug czar, and there's no sign of ceasefire in the War on Drugs from him. He's no different from the general ignorance of current drug czar Todd McClay. Vanilla? Don't get me started on vanilla.

Power before public good, eh. And still the main parties wonder at the rise of the micro parties and the enrolled non-vote. The fish are not apathetic. They're just not going to swallow the same stale bait that these anglers are dangling any more.

State Schools and Free Lunches

The NZ Herald's latest meta-campaign is drawing attention to the high cost of 'voluntary' school fees in Auckland. It's far from the most expensive state school in NZ. Thanks to the National government, that honour belongs to one of NZ's newest state schools, Wanganui Collegiate:

The former private school is asking $10,900 a year for day students and $21,850 for boarders, about 10% more than it charged last year.

The privileged are always first in line for a free lunch at National's buffet. Meanwhile, the Greens have just announced free lunches and a range of welfare measures aimed at the poorest schools.

Cake for the wealthy or bread for the needy. Your choice, NZ.

If You Wish Upon a Pineapple Lump

Felix Na'vi Dad; James Cameron's pet blue Santa. Nicked from here.

The Smiling Assassin has done it again, dividing and conquering his political foes with glamour and a fistful of taxpayer dollars.

Some of Key's most vocal critics this year agree with the Avatar deal announced this week.

Gordon Campbell yums it up, rallying against Treasury as he ponders some mystic economic multiplier effect that they haven't discovered yet. At least he recognises the singular nature of the scheme:

You could call the 25% top rate the Avatar clause, because the conditions seem to have been devised simply to attract and retain the next three Avatar films in this country.

They said that about the LOTR deal back in the day too. See how the sheltered bubble grows? Rod Oram, who has been hard nosed on everything from the Chorus copper to the Tiwai Smelter pay-off this year, gives the scheme a big tick also.

Fortunately, saner voices still exist. Here's Matt Nolan at TVHE looking at the high cost of sexy:

Ok, so who are the people who get all this “pride” from the movies? Generally, middle class New Zealanders. Who is paying, generally wealthier New Zealanders (as they pay most of the tax). What spending is likely to be sacrificed in order to pay for subsides, poor New Zealanders.

Eric Crampton chips in. Patrick Smellie suffers slings and arrows from the Na'vi lovers. Bernard Hickey sums up the bad math:

The Government spent nearly half a billion dollars in seven years and got back NZ$13.6 million in net economic benefits. Not only that, but the extra spending actually reduced the Government's fiscal position by NZ$168 million.

The Labour Party sold out to the luvvies and drama queens ages ago. The best Labour can come up with by way of opposition to the scheme is that it should have been sooner. There's no room for principles in either of the main parties these days.

Here's the conclusion of my father's Maiden Speech to Parliament in 1981. For the purposes of this discussion, replace the farmers with film producers, Timaru with Cameronton/Jacksonville, and wool bales with box office takings:

I do not think people know what happens with supplementary prices. In Timaru, at a sale before Christmas, a station received 620c a kilo for merino wool - a New Zealand record: $5600 for seven bales. Yet tax gathered from the widows, the widowers, and the poor was used to pay that station another $1400 in supplentary minimum prices despite that record price. The reason was that the coarse wool average reduced it below 320c, down to 255c. So to the rich again shall it be given, and from the poor shall it be taken away. There is immorality and injustice in that.

I say to all members on the government benches, and to the farming people who are listening, if they are not aware of it, that privelege and class distinction - long since gone from New Zealand- are raising their heads again under the National government. The poor are refused bread, that the rich may eat cake. Many of our ancestors left England and other countries because of hereditary land rights, and because they could not get a chance. That is happening again to New Zealand.

Peace on earth, except the Na'vi Dad. I hope a pineapple falls on his head while he's holidaying in Hawaii.

Selective Education

Colin James looks fondly at the legacy of retiring National MP Paul Hutchison:

Investing in children pays a dividend in good and productive citizens. That principle has been slow to work into policy. It needs a different economics from the small-state orthodoxy of the past three decades.

A unanimous report yesterday by Parliament's health select committee chaired by Paul Hutchison encapsulates all three principles. It lays down a big challenge, and bigger potential, to this and future governments.

Paul Hutchison is to the Key government what Tim Barnett was to Clark's one; great talent whom for whatever reason was never made minister, in spite of their obvious talent far beyond some who sat in the cabinet.


Contrast this with John Banks' legacy, a string of Jesus freaks and boot camps called charter schools. While every other school is looking at the sex education curriculum in a new light, these soldier plod academies can teach what they like.

I'd rather have a progressive Nat that a regressive prat.

Razing Saddles

Never in my wildest, most unsettlingly cynical dreams might I have imagined that Bill English's Budget would have trampled over a bunch of disabled people and their families.

John Key blithely mounted on Smiling Assassin? Sure. The stone cold Steven Joyce, riding triumphant with Roads of National Significance through Whenua Tapu all the way to Levin? Sure. Judith Collins slapping away with glee on No Consensus? Easily within her modus operandi.

But Bill English and his trusty old high horse, Prisons Are a Moral Failure? Impossible. After all, wasn't this the concerned Christian who attended the Hustle for Autism gig?

Yet here we are, with Andrew Geddis taking Hobbit-like length and attention to detail to describe exactly how National are raping and pillaging Parliamentary procedure and the constitutional Tao de Kiwi. There is Keith Ng cataloguing similar levels of disgust through a Tarantino monologue of misgivings. Even conservative reactionary nana the NZ Herald has woken up with a lucid complaint.

I'm pretty blown away myself. I have little to add except my contempt.

It's just another form of sad omen that this government is done with consulting the people. Don't bother sending in select committee submissions. They won't get read. Don't hope to tweak MMP through the correct channels as you were promised. Watching X Factor is a more productive use of your time (and NZ on Air funding). And don't bother with Judicial Reviews or crawling to the courts on your hands and knees for mercy. In the unlikely event that you can afford a good lawyer, National will just re-write the code like some goddamn script kiddie anyway.

Trust National. They know what they're doing. Here's another confident smiling assassin, featuring Phil Collins:

Hard Power Callisthenics

On the hazardous yet cyclical Grand National racetrack of politics, it looks like it's blinkers on and non-stop whipping of the horses for National from here til the 2014 election finish line.

The last week's running had bad omens all over the track; corpses, dark copses of impenetrable thickets of legal thorns, and rude genuflections and curses from the lead jockeys.

Aaron Gilmore should have be scratched from the race. He was not up to form. Like Colin Espiner, I have watched Gilmore's Maiden and Valedictory Speeches and still none the wiser why the hell he ever got in the game. All I heard was Beaker bait: Me me me me me me me me me.... Little wonder that his ambitions lie dead in the pond. Go to Oz, young idiot, and raise the IQ of both countries.

Speaking of which, John Key's colours are finally revealed as nothing more than a Muldoon in Holyoake's Y-fronts; a dull grey with stains of uncertain origins polka-dotting the garment. Not his fault Gilmore got under the hooves.

The track is heavy from the rain of shit that the Kim Dotcom storm has thrown up. The GCSB thickets have been exposed in the downpour as well, and there's no way their fuck-ups (US or NZ Police-inspired or otherwise) are getting an autopsy. Let's put a blind around that mess and forget it ever happened.

Joyce is flogging away close to Key, maneuvering to give himself enough time to give the lagging Shearer and hopeful Norman the finger. Think you can pull that old nationalisation gambit? I'll show you how to nationalise a gambit. Suck on a 35 year binding PPP contract!

Who cares if he's dosing the horse with too much ginger? Not only is Joyce picking winners, he's insured them against private losses. The first sod for the new National (Party) Convention Centre will be thrown before the 2014 election, and opened before the 2017 one. No wonder John Key keeps harping on about a four year term. Rome wasn't built in three years.

Unbridled power is evident in Judith Collins' form on the MMP review. Listening to her on Morning Report, she's personally absolutely for a bill on MMP reform. But, alas, five parties are content with the status quo. Her party among them. What's a poor Justice Minister to do?

In a few years, all of Simon Power's legislative jockeying will have completely washed away, like beers in rain. Ghosts of the civil dead indeed.

Never mind that Collins is the jockey behind the big push on welfare reform and not Paula Bennett, as confirmed by a reliable little Beltway birdie last week. Never mind she was the brains behind the last deal (as CCA Head honcho) that sealed Sky City's deal with the Clark government, which is being waved around as precedent. Stick it on the incompetent Labour schmucks like a Kick Me sign anyway.

Budget Day tomorrow and I reckon Bill English will be spanking it for all it's worth. Budget surplus is on track for the 2014 election, and if Labour don't get within a length of winning soon, you can pretty much write them off til at least 2020. My advice is to shoot the old nag and go on foot. It'll be quicker in the long run.

Tooth and Nail

Aaron Gilmore has finally learned that if you play with Dionysus, don't complain if the Maenads chase you. Now we can finally focus on more meaty politics stories, and look forward to former Eye to Eye Producer Claudette Hauiti joining the National Caucus. You can almost see the caucus evolving into a more liberal beast before your eyes.

More on Ghost Ships

National continues to sex up the threat of ghost ships with selective leaks:

A classified report has confirmed that the boatload of Sri Lankan asylum seekers who arrived without warning on the West Australian coastline last month had been sailing for New Zealand.

Unsurprisingly, Farrar is taking this bilge seriously.

Let's turn to NASA to point out what a unbelievably stinking crock of crap this threat is, and why NZ is more likely to get boat people from the Galapagos Islands or South America than some Walter Mitty captain putting against the current from Sri Lanka (as seen from the 1 minute mark):


It's one thing to leak from the top of the Beehive. It's quite another thing to tell the public that it's raining.

God's Away on Business

The relatively light-hearted Gilmore shtick couldn't last. Parliament resumes and it's back to the hard grind. The draft GCSB legislation omnibus bill being a case in point.

A quick skim bodes ill, and I'm really hoping some professional help in the form of close air support from the likes of Graeme Edgeler, Andrew Geddis or Steven Price comes into play here. Because the devil's in the details and those clause bait and switches got me nervous as it is.

This grunt will need some some time to gather his wits and tactics. I really wasn't expecting satire to hit so close to the bullseye. I'm off to bake a batch of Afghans. I may be some time:

Caucus and the Cone of Shame

It is pretty clear by now that anyone who recognises the name Aaron Gilmore doesn't think much of it.

Matthew Hooton agrees with the Food and Services Union. A former Maitre D' called the boorish behaviour twattish in the Herald. The only serious defence I've seen raised so far is Michael Laws, and who gives a rat's arse about that pickled gremlin. I could go on, but I'll wait for Bryce Edwards to compile his compendium of Gilmore sneer and loathing in the next edition of Politics Daily.

But oh, to have a loose iPhone in the National party caucus come Tuesday! Parliament has been on a longish break, and resumes this week for a long, hard slog through the winter session. What will Aaron Gilmore's first day back at caucus be like?

Will it be cold stares or nonchalant indifference? Will it be tar and feathers or soap bars in socks? Or perhaps some equally arcane procedure akin to how the National Party List is sliced and diced?

Alas, what goes on in caucus stays in caucus. Whatever happens, caucus can be a very cold place away from the hearth. Cash swaddling doesn't insulate against that kind of frost.

Koru Lounge Justice Squad

Justice is bifurcating into cattle class rack 'em and stack 'em kangaroo courts and Koru Lounge Justice for those with the cash or connections. Three points of order:

1. Robert Lithgow QC does not hold back on former Justice Minister Simon Power in this caustic look at Legal Aid and Crown Law reforms, and this government's propensity to go shopping for Yes Men instead of seeking to defend the public good. Lithgow concludes that Simon Power did to Justice what he also did to Solid Energy. Ouch.

2. Chris Trotter makes a point that has long nagged at me; that we have the first martial Governor General in over 50 years. Prior to his move from the GCSB to Government House, Mateparae had topped the Republican Movement poll for preferred G-G. Be careful what you wish for, eh.

3. Remember last week's moral panic about 13 year old hookers getting pimped by their families on the streets of South Auckland? It was complete bullshit.

SOE Sold Cheap

Another day, another omnishambles in the SOEs. Fran O'Sullivan takes to the National cabinet with a chainsaw today, letting rip at Key, English and Ryall for playing footsies with Rio Tinto:

Key probably finds it hard to compute that his Government is now on the backfoot as it tries to scramble together a short-term subsidy to prop up the energy-hungry smelter for a few more years, all the while as the Treasury floats down 49 per cent of the shares in Meridian Energy (which supplies electricity to the smelter), and other state-owned electricity generators like Mighty River Power and Genesis Energy.

Yet again, the National Roundtable Brains Trust has been caught short on the SOE sales policy. Like the Maori Council water dispute and the 'Mums and Dads Investor Guarantee', the Rio Tinto shakedown shows how little foresight and planning went into National's SOE sell-off policy.

It all makes Rogernomics look clean and fair in comparison. I don't shy away from the SOE model that was introduced by Prebble at the time. It was always a temporary measure, a holding pattern for public float or private sale. This model was supposed to be a temporary thing, not some dead albatross hanging around the taxpayers neck some thirty years later.

Mistakes were made at that time. National not only didn't learn from them, they are compounding the damage without rhyme or reason.

Once they've finished paying off the admen, the investment banks, the Megacorps, the investors who don't flip their shares straight off, and every other interested party with their hand in the pocket or the till, it'll be a wonder that this half-arsed garage sale was worth the hassle.

I hope some gronk names a newly discovered jellyfish after John Key. Rest assured, this thing comes with a hell of a sting.

Ghosts of Budgets Past

"The forecasts also show that this growth will raise real incomes of the average household by about $7,000 over the next four years, and create 170,000 jobs."

- Bill English, Budget Speech 2010, pg. 5.

"The Australian economy has created 676,600 new jobs while the New Zealand economy has lost 22,800 over the past four years."

- Brian Gaynor, NZ Herald 2013.

The abyss between Bill's fantasy and Brian's reality would be considerably worse if it wasn't for all those broken windows in Otautahi that need rebuilding.

Methinks Key's poll popularity is more Muldoon's bluff in the face of a weak opposition than enlightened governance. It's 1977 all over again, but without the novelties of punk and disco to offset the gloom this time around.

The English and the Catholics

With the latest news that Bill English is pushing for drug testing as a condition of social welfare,  what better time to compare the current persecution of cannabis users with the old Penal Laws that the English used to try and crush Irish Catholics? As I understand it, most of the South Island's vanilla ancestors emigrated to avoid this historic abuse. Now the Mainlanders are dominant, can they avoid the same monocultural malice?

Wikipedia has this to say about the Penal Laws:

The term Penal Laws in Ireland (Irish: Na Péindlíthe) were a series of laws imposed in an attempt to force Irish Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters (such as Presbyterians) to accept the reformed Christian faith as defined by the English state established Anglican Church and practised) by members of the Irish state established Church of Ireland.

The Drug Laws in New Zealand, originally designed to minimise harm, have become a multi-million dollar industry for Baptists and Bootleggers alike. Cannabis, MDMA and LSD bad; Booze, Prozac and Coca Cola good. There's big dollars to be made for a savvy few, while everyone else pays the price.

Here's a select few of the Ascendancy Laws of 1691 - 1778, compared with the closest relevant Drug Law of today:

AL: Exclusion of Catholics from most public offices (since 1607), Presbyterians were also barred from public office from 1707. Bar from membership in either the Parliament of Ireland or the Parliament of Great Britain from 1652; rescinded 1662–1691; renewed 1691–1829. Exclusion from the legal professions and the judiciary; repealed (respectively) 1793 and 1829.

DL: Being a dope fiend in public offices today is unheard of. Coming out of that closet is still fatal, no matter who you are. Although there are no obvious witch hunts, it is as effective as blackmail fodder as Alan Turing's sexual orientation was back in the "good old days".

AL: Catholics barred from holding firearms or serving in the armed forces (rescinded by Militia Act of 1793)

DL: Drugs and armies go together like napalm and mornings, yet dope fiend behaviour is a fireable offence. Not only is it a man's army still, it is a drunk man's army.

AL: Disenfranchising Act 1728, exclusion from voting until 1793.

DL: Paul Quinn's Private Member's Bill was picked up by John Key's Posse last term, making any convicted and imprisoned dope fiend lose the right to vote. For those users not imprisoned, John Key's $50 Victim Tax still applies.

AL: Ban on Catholics buying land under a lease of more than 31 years; repealed 1778. Prohibition on Catholics owning a horse valued at over £5.

DL: The Proceeds of Crime Act that the Clark Labour government introduced effectively made every cannabis consumer's home and property liable to be seized by the state. No guilt beyond reasonable doubt needed. Probable dope fiends will do.

AL: Ban on custody of orphans being granted to Catholics on pain of 500 pounds that was to be donated to the Blue Coat hospital in Dublin.

DL: Cannabis use can get your children taken off you by Child Services. And now, social welfare benefits can also be removed from you.

The accoutrements of deviancy have changed from incense and popery to bongs and dopery, but the malice of the vanilla majority goes on.