The Thorndon Bubble

Photo is from the Dim-Post who took it from Runners World.

You have to say that Governor Palin looks very good for a mother of five. Attractiveness is a factor in politics - Obama’s good looks certainly assisted him, and Palin’s assist her.

There was a study in Germany a while back about attractiveness being a significant factor in electability. Can’t find it now, but this study in Finland found:

Evaluations of beauty explain success in real elections better than evaluations of competence, intelligence, likability, or trustworthiness. The beauty premium is larger for female candidates, in contrast to findings in previous labor-market studies.

They also found that men tend to vote for male and female candidates equally, but women tend to favour female candidates over male candidates. In other words being a woman was an electoral advantage.

Tags: Sarah Palin

So we’ve got a government of incompetents, ideologues, and sloths. At least things are going better in America. The Democrats now have a super-majority in the Senate:

The Republicans are imploding. Their ineffectual anger is getting so ugly they’re turning off anyone sane:

Today's Drinnan covers one of the claims circulated in a release from former Herald on Sunday assistant editor Steve Cook, in advance of the hearing of his Employment Relations Authority complaint against APN yesterday...

Over at the Standard, Marty G posts in praise of Red Alert (the Labour caucus blog). And I have to agree. It's a fantastic tool for connecting MPs with the online and getting them to front up and explain themselves. It's also great for showing us parts of Parliamentary business - such as select committee hearings, written questions and overseas trips - that we don't normally see. And they clearly listen to the feedback - there have been Parliamentary questions asked based on material in the comments. Though sadly, this isn't true in every case.

The Greens have been doing this for ages at Frogblog, and an increasing number of their MPs are posting to it, but its still a party blog rather than the individual voices of their MPs, and it has a different focus - more on the issues, less on the day to day work. And there seems to be less direct feedback between the MPs and the readers (though given the colonisation of Frogblog's comments by hecklers from the sewer, that's hardly surprising).

It's a fantastic experiment in direct communication between a caucus and its political activists, and IMHO a massive success. Every party should have one.

I have a friend who wakes up every morning and wants to vomit. Most of the day he wants to vomit. Food often makes him actually vomit, and he sometimes vomits blood. The doctors have given him some pills for the nausea but they are hard to keep down. There is one very effective inhalant that his specialist has recommended, but he is not allowed to use it.

Another friend is tetraplegic. That's like paraplegic but with all four limbs incapacitated. He lives in constant pain. The doctors gave him morphine and other pain killers, but he won't use them because he becomes like a zombie when he does. He doesn't have much quality of life, as you can imagine, so anything that gives him some is very welcome. He found a herbal remedy that takes the edge off his pain, makes it manageable and gives him some get-up-and-go. Apparently a lot of people with spinal injuries use it, but when my friend grew some the police arrested him and a judge locked him in Mount Eden prison.

The medicine in both these cases is called cannabis. Whatever people think about the recreational use of cannabis, I find it difficult to believe that anyone thinks sick people should suffer needlessly. Yet they are. Many sick people around New Zealand have tried everything the doctors can offer to no effect, and they know for a fact that cannabis is the only thing that works. They are not asking for a Pharmac subsidy. They are just asking us to please stop arresting them.

This week the Parliament was given a chance to vote on a proposal to do that. It would have allowed sick people to use cannabis for specified illnesses, if they had the written support of their doctor or a specialist. Metiria Turei's private member's bill provided for verified medical cannabis users to register with the Medical Officer of Health and police and get a Medical Cannabis Identification Card. This would exempt them from criminal prosecution for cannabis use, so long as they abided by the conditions.

The bill could be tidied up I'm sure. Police would have comments about potential snags and loopholes, doctors might disagree about the list of specific illnesses. That is what the select committees process is for. Unfortunately no one will get a say because Parliament voted overwhelmingly to keep prosecuting sick people for therapeutic use of cannabis.

Its hard to say why. The debate was full of the usual drug hysteria but I know for a fact that most MPs don't believe those old tired lies. I have had too many tell me privately that they agree with allowing medical use, even as they indicated that they would have to vote against it. No matter how necessary, humanitarian and cautious the bill, they don't want to be seen to be “pro-drugs”.

I can't resist commenting that this doesn't prevent them attending drug glamourising events such as the Air New Zealand Wine Awards. Drug samples are handed out with abandon at Beehive functions, and Associate Minster of Health Peter Dunne has even received money from multinational drug dealing company British American Tobacco (I'm sure it wasn't a bribe because it was only 100 pounds and surely no politician could be bought that cheaply).

That's a diversion though, because this particular debate is not about the usual drug hypocrisy. It is simply about the State denying very sick people the right to use their medicine. Double standards frustrate me, but the disinterested and vicious cruelty of New Zealand's MPs this week has angered and disgusted me.

(from my Waikato Times column, 3/7/09)

I have a friend who wakes up every morning and wants to vomit. Most of the day he wants to vomit. Food often makes him actually vomit, and he sometimes vomits blood. The doctors have given him some pills for the nausea but they are hard to keep down. There is one very effective inhalant that his specialist has recommended, but he is not allowed to use it.

Another friend is tetraplegic. That’s like paraplegic but with all four limbs incapacitated. He lives in constant pain. The doctors gave him morphine and other pain killers, but he won’t use them because he becomes like a zombie when he does. He doesn’t have much quality of life, as you can imagine, so anything that gives him some is very welcome. He found a herbal remedy that takes the edge off his pain, makes it manageable and gives him some get-up-and-go. Apparently a lot of people with spinal injuries use it, but when my friend grew some the police arrested him and a judge locked him in Mount Eden prison.

The medicine in both these cases is called cannabis. Whatever people think about the recreational use of cannabis, I find it difficult to believe that anyone thinks sick people should suffer needlessly. Yet they are. Many sick people around New Zealand have tried everything the doctors can offer to no effect, and they know for a fact that cannabis is the only thing that works. They are not asking for a Pharmac subsidy. They are just asking us to please stop arresting them.

This week the Parliament was given a chance to vote on a proposal to do that. It would have allowed sick people to use cannabis for specified illnesses, if they had the written support of their doctor or a specialist. Metiria Turei’s private member’s bill provided for verified medical cannabis users to register with the Medical Officer of Health and police and get a Medical Cannabis Identification Card. This would exempt them from criminal prosecution for cannabis use, so long as they abided by the conditions.

The bill could be tidied up I’m sure. Police would have comments about potential snags and loopholes, doctors might disagree about the list of specific illnesses. That is what the select committees process is for. Unfortunately no one will get a say because Parliament voted overwhelmingly to keep prosecuting sick people for therapeutic use of cannabis.

Its hard to say why. The debate was full of the usual drug hysteria but I know for a fact that most MPs don’t believe those old tired lies. I have had too many tell me privately that they agree with allowing medical use, even as they indicated that they would have to vote against it. No matter how necessary, humanitarian and cautious the bill, they don’t want to be seen to be “pro-drugs”.

I can’t resist commenting that this doesn’t prevent them attending drug glamourising events such as the Air New Zealand Wine Awards. Drug samples are handed out with abandon at Beehive functions, and Associate Minster of Health Peter Dunne has even received money from multinational drug dealing company British American Tobacco (I’m sure it wasn’t a bribe because it was only 100 pounds and surely no politician could be bought that cheaply).

That’s a diversion though, because this particular debate is not about the usual drug hypocrisy. It is simply about the State denying very sick people the right to use their medicine. Double standards frustrate me, but the disinterested and vicious cruelty of New Zealand’s MPs this week has angered and disgusted me.

(from my Waikato Times column, 3/7/09)

Government’s put out this press release:

“Finance Minister Bill English has welcomed news that the Budget operating deficit of $7.2 billion for the 11 months to May 31 is lower than the forecast $8.4 billion…

Most of the $1.2 billion variance was due to higher-than-forecast investment gains by the NZ Superannuation Fund and ACC”

Yup, the NZSF made $1.2 billion in April and May. About 10% in two months. Sure glad they cut those contributions. Don’t want to keep on making huge profits. Lucky to have such financial geniuses running the country.

Courtesy of Scoop's Lyndon Hood:

Unfortunately, it did miss a perfectly good opportunity to ask whether the present King of France is bald. OTOH, the answer to that should probably be which bloody one?

I reckon Red Alert, the Labour MPs’ blog, has been a huge success. It’s great to see MPs unscripted and it’s good for them to get the instant public reaction in the comments.

It’s also a bit of a political risk. When you’re allowing instant, uncensored public reaction you can’t hide from criticism and you will be held to account for your statements. That level of risk is something I could never imagine them allowing even a year ago.

Still, it seems to be working for them. Trevor Mallard, in particular, is a born blogger. His posts reveal he’s got real smarts, which is missed when the media just wants to focus on his (too frequent) outbursts.

Anyway, the point of this post is to point you to this caption contest post where Trev takes the piss out of Chippie (Chris Hipkins). Hilarious.
- Marty G

The Left continues to have luck with the private member’s bill ballot, getting both of the bills drawn today just like a couple of weeks back (well, not so much luck, most of the bills in the ballot are from the Left).

Metiria Turei’s Marine Animals Protection Law Reform Bill was drawn, which while worthy wouldn’t be my top environmental priority if I were putting in a bill with a 10% chance of being drawn. Still, it will be tough for the Right to reflexively vote it down. So it might just get to select committee.

The other Bill is Phil Twyford’s Local Government (Protection of Auckland Assets) Amendment Bill. Quoting NRT, “[it] amends the Local Government Act 2002 to forbid any Auckland local authority (including the Auckland Transitional Authority) from selling or otherwise disposing of scheduled Auckland local body assets such as Watercare, ARTA and Ports of Auckland.” Twyford explains in more on Red Alert.

The idea is to stop the Banks-led cabal of businessmen that National and ACT are trying to gerrymander into power from selling Aucklander’s public assets. It will also set the scene for asset sales to be a major issue at the super-council election next year.

Since it will obviously be voted down by the Right, it won’t achieve the first aim but it should do the second.

I would have liked to see a private member’s bill specifically for a referendum before any Supercity is created. I assume both the Greens and Labour will try to insert it in the bill currently before select committee and maybe Twyford will include it in his bill (I acknowledge National might just use the financial veto on it even though it would only cost a couple of million).