Inner city drinking bans solve nothing

Wellington City Council intends to impose a 24 hour ban on drinking in public in the central city. Apparently Wellington is the only main centre that has not implemented this knee jerk good for nothing measure. What a shame they feel the need to follow suit.

The WCC and the police claim they need to ban everyone from consuming alcohol in order to deal with a small handful of 'drunk vagrants'. But there is a much more appropriate charge already on the statue books - its called drunk and disorderly. The mere fact the WCC and the police are asking for greater powers suggests said vagrants are not being disorderly enough in order to be charged. So the real crime committed by the vagrants appears to be their existence.

Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast and local business claim the vagrants put Wellington's position as a 'tourist destination' at risk. Yet places like London and Rome get many more tourists than Wellington - they also have many more visible 'vagrants' (I say this partly in jest)

Apparently the measure has been pushed by inner city businesses and bar owners, who do seem to have a habit of assuming public spaces ought really to controlled like their own private spaces. The major winner out of an inner city drinking ban are bar owners. Why do I suspect such a ban will lead to higher drink prices in said establishments?

A couple of friends of my brother were caught by a similar alcohol ban in Christchurch. They were forced to go through diversion for the crime of sharing a single can of beer while they went outside for some fresh air. They also faced a night in 'the cells'. Stupid, ridiculous and disproportionate.

A few years ago I heard there was a real shortage of short term emergency accommodation for men in Wellington. I can't imagine there has been a significant improvement in this problem. For what reasons are these 'vagrants' on the streets? Sadly it appears asking questions like this would be far too much like dealing with the real issue for the WCC. Cheap and nasty political expedience wins the day.

Good on Iona Pannett for being the sole councillor to oppose this silly ban.

Shame on Ray Ahipene-Mercer, Ngaire Best, Stephanie Cook, Jo Coughlan, Andy Foster, Leonie Gill, Rob Goulden, Ian McKinnon, John Morrison, Bryan Pepperall, Celia Wade-Brown, Hayley Wain. Lets hope some of these councillors come off the bandwagon moonshine and come to their senses.

Information on how to make a submission on the proposed bylaw is here. Submissions close 8th May 2008.

New year new city for me

Apologies for lack of transmission over the traditional winter solstice period, I have been busy moving cities. I moved to Auckland over the weekend.

But never fear cantabs - I will attempt to keep an eye on the news down south as the blogsphere is certainly overrepresented by the obsessions of the north. I promise not to make a sudden conversion to supporting the Auckland rugby team, largely because I don't care a great deal about the Canterbury or any other rugby team for that matter. So long as they beat Auckland (joke).

I find it interesting that Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin people say Christchurch is a hard place to navigate as it is too flat. Really its easy - just look at where the port hills are and you have a clear marker of direction. But take a cantab away from those hills and they end up in many a U-turn as they lose their sense of direction. I have taken many many wrong turns in my first few days here.

I am currently staying in Avondale and it certainly has its quirks. I went looking for a pub to get a bite to eat and watch the cricket and none could be found. I enjoyed the irony of finding lots of churches instead. All these institutions aiming to save my soul and all I wanted was the demon drink! I must add I am not a big drinker at all, and this probably coloured my perceptions - I didn't feel the need to feel guilty about looking for a pub. The next day I attempted to buy a bottle of wine with the groceries only to be told the wine needed to be paid for seperately, at another counter - what is it with this suburb and the occasional drink in moderation??

I later found out this is a legacy of Mt Roskill being a 'dry' area for years and years. With this in mind I found myself quitely appreciating Helen Clark for voting against the stupid bill to raise the drinking age last year - given the area she must have had a lot of knee jerk social conservatives to deal with. Good on her for siding with sanity and effective policy over "appearance" medicine.

PS: Happy new year

Raising the drinking age will only raise the hyprocrisy

So the media told us on Friday about a parliamentary select committee who had given the go ahead for a bill to raise the drinking age back to 20. Yet if you look at the membership of the Law and Order Select Committee, and the way these MPs voted on the first reading of the Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill, this is not really news at all.

Martin Gallagher (Chair)
Sponsor of the bill (now that Matt Robson is no longer in Parliament)
Voted Yes on first reading.

Luamanuvao Winne Laban
Yes on first reading

Ron Mark -
Yes on first reading. Voted against lowering the age in 1999

Jill Petis
Yes on first reading. Voted against lowering the age in 1999

Simon Power
Voted Yes on first reading.

Chester Burrows
Not in parliament when Bill was first read but his other views indicate he is an arch conservative.

Kate Wilkinson
Not in parliament when Bill was first read but is likely to be a conservative on this issue

So the bill was heard by a group of MP likely to have made up their minds before the committee sat down for its first meeting. One wonders if the select committee's consideration of the bill may have been more valuable if its membership had included at least one declared opponent of the bill. Perhaps I am being too generous when I say that.

So its not really "news" the law and order committee recommends that the Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill pass with the amendments shown.

I well remember 13 and 14 year olds roving around town with alcohol many years before Parliament lowered the age in 1999. Raising the drinking age back to 20 will do nothing to curb youth drinking - in fact it is likely more young people with gather on the curb because they are no longer allowed in the pub. More importantly it will do nothing to improve New Zealand's drinking culture, particularly as those over 20 will continue to set a bad example. Raising the drinking age will only raise the hyprocrisy.

The bill appeals to a certain section of the electorate who like to hear simplistic solutions to complex problems*. Certain sections of the electorate who will not be affected by this bill. John Stuart Mill warned how liberty could come under threat from the tyranny of the majority.

So no Matt Robson, it will not be "either a stupid or brave Parliament that says we are not going to do anything about this" - only MPs who have a soft spot for stupidity will vote for the bill. And your opponents are not saying we should do nothing about New Zealand's drinking culture - we just happen to think your proposed "answer" is stupid ineffective bollocks.

Good points made on this issue by DPF and NoRightTurn.

* eg. like those who want to lock people up instead of dealing with the causes of crime.

PS: I had planned to do some more posts over the weekend, but blogger was playing up :(

Question Time #2: Matt Robson's week in Parliament

Yesterday Matt Robson congratulated "Malcolm Campbell" on his win in the US Open.

Today Matt attempted to ask a supplementary question, only to repeat the previous supplementary question again, word for word. There was much hilarity.

With gaffes like that perhaps he should amend his already reactionary bill to provide for a drinking age of 56, as he may be in need of a hangover remedy. Setting the purchasing age at 20 is arbitary in any case - if he believed his own arguments, why not raise the age further?

Jim Anderton decides everything for Matt anyway, so why should he not leave it to his elder (as Jim constantly reminds him) to decide when Matt should take an early night or make a personal prohibition pledge. Oh and someone needs to ask Jim as Associate Minister of Health the reasons why he does not support complete prohibition - the answers could be useful.

Random Historical Interlude #1 Pissed pollys along the ages

As a new feature on this blog I thought I would start an infrequent series of 'random historical interludes' - incidents that may have happened long ago but have pertinant and/or amusing relevance for current events. Being somewhat of a history nut myself I often think a historical perspective is often entirely missed by a mainstream media obsessed with today at the expense of forgetting yesterday.
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#1 Pissed Polly's Along the Ages
In one of my favorite episodes of 'Yes, Minister' the Right Honourable Jim Hacker thinks of a cunning way to get through a long state function in Kumran where there is no alcohol. "You mean, Islamic law?"..."Five hours, without a single drinkie?"

He instructs Humphrey to set up an 'special communications room' and fill it cases of booze bought in from the British embassy to "liven up the orange juice". During the reception he receives a number of urgent 'messages' from the communications room, from notable lumanaries such as Mr Haig and John Walker (from the Scotch office). "The Soviet embassy is on the line Sir Humphrey, a Mr Smirnoff".

It was with some amusement I found a remarkably similiar incident described in Rob Muldoon's 1974 autobiography 'The Rise and Fall of a Young Turk'. Labour MP Mabel Howard told Muldoon that Walter Nash had a jug of orange juice on the table at state functions - laced with gin. Muldoon also recalls a reception where he went to take a glass of orange juice from a tray only to be told by the Scottish head waitress, 'Oh no, Mr Muldoon, that's for Mr Nash, that's the one with the gin in it'.

Having a couple of drinkies at a function or reception is one thing, but making decisions on behalf of the country while drunk is quite another. Ten years after the publication of 'Young Turk' Muldoon would call a snap election while chemically inconvenienced, in the full glare of TV cameras to capture his glaze.

During the National/NZ First coalition it was widely rumoured that Jim Bolger and Winston Peters ran the country over a whisky bottle.

If politicians feel the need to pontificate about the dangers of mind altering substances, perhaps there needs to be an audit of how much booze there is in certain parliamentary offices. In the day and age of EFTPOS and credit card transactions it would be relatively simple to add up how much each MP spent in 3.2 in a year. When MPs are conducting important state business, in or out of the house, should they be as dry as Kumran?

With attention on the contents of their own drug cabinets, perhaps MPs would suddenly lose interest in shallow politically motivated campaigns to raise the drinking age, especially as the problems associated with NZ drinking culture predated the lowering of the age to 18, demonstrating any causal link to be a sideshow at best.