The Problem of Votes Based Government, Rather than Rights Based Governance – Organ Donation & Euthanasia – Lecretia Seales on Sunday.

The problem with a votes based system, rather than a rights based one, is opportunist MP’s - and that’s all of them - get to cherry pick our rights for us, based on what they see as their best chance of being re-elected:

Is it time to veto a family’s right to overturn organ donation wishes? (2:08) http://t.co/63Jg2UzVNp

— Peter Dunne (@PeterDunneMP) May 12, 2015

@PeterDunneMP Yes. And also, as importantly, time to give individuals right of #euthanasia despite beliefs of others.

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 12, 2015

@PeterDunneMP Noting in both cases it's the same principle: ownership of one's body and personal volition.

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 12, 2015

Same principle Mr Dunne: yes, an organ donor’s right to volunteer organs must be made sacrosanct despite the wishes of their family – why isn’t that obvious now? But on the same principle, so must my right for euthanasia be sacrosanct, despite what the busy bodies and Stone Age Faithers believe. Their opinion in the manner of my death is as irrelevant as my family’s beliefs in relation to organ donation.

Mr Dunne’s tweet was on the back of a TV piece last week about organ donation. Well this Sunday night there was a piece on Lecretia Seale’s High Court case for her right to die with dignity: I’ll take any opportunist chance I get. Watch it, Peter, then lets legislate the individual right of euthanasia; there might even be votes in it for you, but even better, grace, for finally a compassionate Act - might even help balance the ledger from your earlier attempt to cruelly test animals for what equated to human recreation. Indeed I entreat every politician to listen to Lecretia and husband, Matt, and then tell me why you have any right to deny her, or anyone in similar circumstances, the choice of dying with dignity. Because what business is her life and death, of yours? And what business do you have overriding her wishes?

I was going to end this post by saying if nothing else, can’t you gutless politicians even start talking about euthanasia within the walls of the Fortress of Legislation? Let’s pretend you’re grown-ups like the rest of us, because NZ has been discussing this for a very long time now, and we demand euthanasia law. But what’s the point - Mr Dunne’s first tweet after Sunday aired? To retweet a traffic warning:

WGTN TRAFFIC: SH1 J'ville offramp northbound and SH2 Petone offramp northbound - closed from 10pm - 5:30am due to roadworks.

— RadioLIVE Newsroom (@LIVENewsDesk) May 17, 2015

Dunne either doesn't personally hold with euthanasia, flying in the face of his thoughts on organ donation, or he simply doesn't care enough and has decided there's no votes in it. Our system is broken. There needs to be a revolution demanding rights based governance, and get these current arseholes out of our lives. But it's Monday, there's not a single MSM outlet running a Seale story from last night, nor a MP opining on it. This morning the idiot-buzz is about a two year property sales tax bright-line test - whippity doo ... albeit if you can get your head out of that petty partisan political party bullshit to something that is important, why not read Lecretia's wonderful post published to go out with her Sunday piece last night, then follow her action link at the end; sign the petition and write to our politicians who are to a last one all cowardly missing in action on this issue.

To Lecretia Seale, who I've stated before can have nothing to do with this particular hothead, best of luck, as unfortunately you're going to need luck, that's how bad our legislature has become (and - no disrespect - our judiciary). You deserve to win your case and have the choice to die with dignity. We all do.


Related Reading:

Why This Government Urgently Needs to Pick Up Maryan Street's Euthanasia Bill.

David Seymour and ACT's Continuing Desertion of Classical Liberalism: Exposition of Cowardice and Cruelty from Seymour, Key and Little.

Lecretia Seales Fight for Right to Die With Dignity - RNZ Interview.

Lecretia Seales Takes Her Fight to Die with Dignity to High Court: MIA - Our Politicians.

Lecretia Seales: What's Worrying Me About Her High Court Case.

Everything Is Tax Avoidance Now; And Everything Is Illegal – Totalitaria is Here.

Though not my most read post, I still believe one of my most important was on how our Commonwealth (classical liberal) Westminster Principle in taxation has been destroyed over modern times in New Zealand by a philosophically bereft, airhead judiciary which has no regard for property rights and thus liberty. That post started out on the importance of classical liberalism as the foundation of a Free West:

… it is worth remembering our birth right in the West, paid for by blood, was classical liberalism; that philosophy of limited government and liberty of individuals: freedom of speech, markets, religion, assembly, of thought and intellect, and a free press (free to criticise and oppose, without fear of retribution) - the state as servant of the individual, protecting their person and property, not the state as tyrannical master, plunderer by force of property and liberty.

It was this ideal that the ANZACs were fighting for, and died for: men and women. And incalculable more men and women have died trying to escape the state tyrannies they were born in, be it the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, North Korea, et al, to be perhaps capable of the chance of living free lives.

The post then explained the Westminster Principle, the importance of it as regards a classical liberal ethic, and why it has been destroyed:

Within this philosophy the very notion of a compulsory taxation does not sit well, frankly, although if we must have such compulsion forced on us by the state, voted for by a mobocracy looking for the illusory free lunch, then Commonwealth countries have had in legal precedent since the 1930’s a landmark classical liberal principle, referred to as the Westminster Principle, that gave the individual some small degree of liberty from the all-powerful state in its taxing operations, which is the operation of the authoritarian surveillance state:

Every man is entitled if he can to arrange his affairs so that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it otherwise would be. If he succeeds in ordering them so as to secure that result, then, however unappreciative the Commissioners of Inland Revenue or his fellow taxpayers may be of his ingenuity, he cannot be compelled to pay an increased tax. (IRC v Duke of Westminster [ 1936 ] AC1 (HL)).

That is, the individual can arrange their affairs vis a vis structuring, estate planning, et al, according to their own rational self-interest - so long as 'artificial' (non-commercial, non-market) steps are not taken to 'avoid' tax - and not pursuant to supplying the maximum revenue, necessarily, for the coffers of the redistributive larceny conducted from the Fortress of Legislation: the individual ascendant, not the state.

It is a disgrace that in New Zealand even this principle has over the last decade been destroyed, and destroyed utterly, in the very courts that were meant to be the individual’s buffer against the tyranny of state. I’ve explained why on this post: the minds of our children have been captured in the classroom, generation after generation, and immured on the treacherous reef of belief in a statist theocracy; 95% of our secondary school teachers belong to that hard Left union, the PPTA, with a similar percentage of primary school teachers signed up the NZEI. These teachers preach the forced sacrifice of the individual’s liberty on that's tyrant's call, the bloodied altar of the common good, and the state as redistributor of private property in a morality turned on its head. Our School Curriculum Document imposes this Soviet ethic into the basis of our very curriculum.

And so this week the logical conclusion whereby the almighty authoritarian state in New Zealand reaches that point where it has, per my previous post, fraudulently legislated itself outside the rule of law, able to rule over us unhindered and unfettered. Compare the civilising effect of the Westminster Principle, with its proper positioning of the individual over the state, to this comment from last week’s KPMG Taxmail newsletter, regarding yet another public draft from IRD on what it considers tax avoidance; the specific cases are unimportant, the conclusions are enough – (my highlighting):

Briefly, the Commissioner considers these are tax avoidance arrangements because there are alternatives which create taxable income. The Commissioner’s analysis is that the avoidance of these alternative tax liabilities was not contemplated by Parliament. 

The Commissioner’s analysis raises a fundamental issue. The basic proposition is that a taxpayer can no longer have due regard to the tax consequences of their actions when determining what to do. In fact, it suggests taxpayers must take the course of action which results in the highest tax payable. That is the most concerning feature of the draft QWBA as it is a significant change in approach.

There is an opportunity to provide comment on the draft QWBA. It should be taken in a real effort to persuade the Commissioner that her conclusions are invalid. Otherwise urgent law changes will be required to allow these transactions to proceed.

Regarding that last paragraph, I surmise, as submitters on the dreadful implementation of the US surveillance program known as FATCA found out, that making a submission will be pointless. Can any accountant reading this remember the last time IRD had to back away from such a position? I can’t, and why would they when they have had compliant, statist-worshipping Ministers of Revenue over the last fifteen years, from Peter Dunne to the current Minister McClay, whom both believe an individual’s income belongs to the state – the horrifying aspect being the first minister only last week was tweeting he was a classical liberal – you moronic buffoon Peter – and the second represents the political party that supposedly represents small government – (insert maniacal laughter here).

And so in New Zealand every business and estate structuring and transaction that doesn’t involve paying the maximum amount of tax is tax avoidance, no matter you may be trying to achieve ends that have nothing to do with the tax take. It’s that point where the pragmatism of IRD bureaucrats mindlessly pursuing their job descriptions, plus judges and politicians who don’t believe in property rights or the Free West anymore, as George Orwell wrote at the end of his nightmare novel 1984, becomes like a boot kicking the face of our liberty forever.

Over the course of writing the above piece, an apt quotation has been posted on Café Hayek, from Bertrand de Jouvenel’s 1951 The Ethics of Redistribution:

The role played by the state in transferring incomes evidently entailed some increase in the volume of public encashings and payments, but this volume has grown out of all proportion to the needs of this function.  Such growth has encountered only the weakest opposition; my argument is that a change of mind toward public expenditure has been induced by redistributionist policies, the greatest gainer from which is not the lower-income class as against the higher but the State as against the citizen.

 What we once almost achieved as that wonderful peak of human cooperation and innovation, the classical liberal, capitalist Free West, where the state was our servant, is no more: there has been a war of ideas, and those totalitarian ideas have won, yet again. Because for there to be the ruling ethic that every transaction is tax avoidance if deemed so by the state, then it must be true that, as John Stossel shows so ably in the below clip, it’s the world where everything is illegal, if deemed so by the state; thus individuals can be corralled and controlled in everything they do like livestock. A few minutes into this clip a man states in such a world ‘show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime’; well IRD can do that also, of late often retrospectively against law once known and followed in good faith, but deemed in this age of authoritarianism avoidance by dint of not taking the highest tax route: that particular evil dripping darkness descends on us from the Soviet Unions, the North Koreas and the Cubas, of the world, not from what millions of men and women fought the last world war for: an individual’s freedom, and particularly freedom from a command state acting beyond the same rule of law its citizens are subject to. Shame.

Legal Heroin Ban: PSA and the Evil of Politics.

I wish I had more time to write this post.

Search this blog for the Psychoactive Substances Bill, animal welfare, or animal testing, and you'll see around the time that 119 of New Zealand's 120 members of Parliament were enacting infamy, their egos driving them for a world first, I was warning them of the inhumanity they were about to force on us. Although now that the results of legalising synthetic, toxic poison - on the heinous principle of animal testing for our human recreation- has been in place for less than a year, even I am left breathless at the devastation and misery that has been caused.

This is what the 119 that I declared a philosophical war upon, have done. They legalised a line of hardcore addictive drugs in the league of P or heroin, nothing similar to the non-toxic, non-addictive, medicinal cannabis that many other countries are sensibly legalising, and then by keeping cannabis criminalised they successfully addicted possibly thousands of mainly young Kiwis to the equivalent of heroin, because by taking the legal heroin they would not face the force of the law, or lose their jobs, unlike smoking cannabis for which they would be convicted in the government war on drugs. So government policy addicted them to heroin, and I'll keep making this point, heroin, which is what I'm calling it from now on, because that's what this drek is: these MP's have been hiding behind the euphemisms legal high and synthetic cannabis for too long. They legalised a hardcore, psychosis forming, addictive drug while keeping the harmless option criminalised.

And then much worse. Because it's election year, and Campbell Live has been exposing the ruined lives that have been addicted to legal heroin, Labour decided it would be a vote catcher to announce a policy of banning it. Not to be outdone, merely minutes before Labour announcing its ban yesterday, the instigator of legal heroin, Peter Dunne, whose son, remember, is the foremost legal representative to the legal heroin industry, in a knee-jerk political action announced his own ban of all 41 legal brands of heroin currently on sale, from two weeks hence.

Now, hands up those who understand addiction, who believe that these new government created addicts are going to miraculously stop taking their heroin fix in two weeks? Of course they're not: they can't. No what Dunne has done with the ill-thought out ban, as the solution to his incompetent, ill-thought out legislation, is deliver a brand new customer base to organised crime; the violent gangs whom will happily take up supply at some magnitude of the current price, meaning a burglary crime wave is also headed our way. (Perhaps young James Dunne better line up his legal aide application.)

Has there been a better example of the evil transacted by government in New Zealand in our recent history? Noting an important point made by one tweeter that opposition to the Psychoactive Substances Act, is still consistent with the belief I hold that prohibition does not work: it's just that in this case government policy actually forced users to take the most harmful of drugs, by keeping harmless cannabis criminalised. As I write in too many of my posts; you can't make this stuff up. Thousands of lives ruined chasing world first law-making - that is, one man's ego - which is a disaster, and yet still, despite the evidence world-wide, including the states in the US seemingly experiencing no problems with cannabis legalisation, not a single MP in New Zealand talking of legalising non-toxic, non-addictive cannabis, to perhaps keep some of these new heroin addicts out of the clutches of the gangs while the ban is on. (Or forget the PSA, at the very least, to look at putting cannabis into hospitals to help manage the side-affects of cancer treatments, and many other of the medicinal uses cannabis has.)

I revise my former oft used epigraph by saying we're something a lot worse than a kindy of a country.

There are some questions I will quickly recite to end, but first another principled point. This post is all about ethics, but the MSM and majority of the political blogs will cynically write this up as part of the political game: who announced the ban first, how will it affect election chances et al. Most, other than John Campbell – and good on you John - will forget the addicts. This blog is probably considered by most as a political blog, which is ironic, as I hate politics, and politicians who are taking us all at pace from the free, civilised society, to their brave new world of politick,  which is a slave pit where the masses are kept chilled with legal heroin. Aldous Huxley got it right. Was Peter Dunne concerned with the addicts here? Hell no, his reply to Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway on that party’s proposed bill:

@IainLG @caffeine_addict @manstaneditor and do you really think the government would have given you a victory on this?
— Peter Dunne (@PeterDunneMP) April 27, 2014

There’s no victory here Peter, we’re all losers. If there is one bit of justice out of this it will be your disappearance after this year’s general election.

Questions for the 119 MPs:

Dunne has stated all current 41 heroins will be banned until they pass the test of 'low or no risk': however as the legal heroin industry pointed out last night in a tweet, there are still no guidelines set out by our inept law makers as to what constitutes low or no risk. So what is this criteria? And after that, show factually why the plant cannabis does not comply, because I'm willing to bet it does, and you won't need to test a single animal for that, just look at cannabis use by humans over the last 6,000 years, with not one recorded death from toxicity.

I originally wrote on this Act when in bill form from the point of view of the cruel animal testing it proposed, which via a series of nationwide protests, Kiwis thankfully showed themselves to be implacably against, to the extent that to this stage no animals have been tortured for our recreation under the Psychoactive Substances Act. However in the last tweet from Mojo Mathers to myself, she stated that the expert advisory panel set up to look at the testing of this heroin was still stuck on - the barbarity - of using animals for reproductive testing, thus animal testing is still on the laboratory table.

I suspect there will now be huge pressure to use animal testing as a way to get one of these heroin brands back into the shops, and the economics of this has been changed. Formerly the cost of testing was prohibitive, however that cost is now tempered by the carrot of getting a single heroin to market, and so a legal monopoly.

Will every one of the infamous 119 MP’s who voted for this monstrosity, please put on record if you are going to allow a single animal to be harmed under the Psychoactive Substances Act. Don't you worry responding Peter Dunne: I've realised via this you’re a vainglorious, ego driven man who couldn't care less about an animal's welfare (or a human's as it has ended up.)

Signing off in my usual disgust.

Our MP’s Childishness around Suicide, Euthanasia, Cannabis – Self-censoring MP’s Threat to Free Speech & Basic Freedoms.

 

We are so badly served by every current MP in the New Zealand Fortress of Legislation. This post links directly to my last, because when MP’s choose to self-censor themselves, then issues that are important cannot be debated in the only place were law-making can be enacted around the discussion. And that means such issues, in this case, our basic freedoms, are forbidden us.

 

I’ll start this post by going back a few months to when I told MP Peter Dunne, infamous instigator of one of the most heinous Acts I’ve seen – after every tax act – that I would never let up hounding him over the Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA) which has legalised psychosis forming, artificial, toxic crud, and created the barbaric principle that animals can be tested – tortured – for what amounts to only our recreation, when a harmless, medicinal even, alternative exists in cannabis which remains criminalised; (and I note there still looks to be animal testing under the PSA coming out of the special committee overseeing the public protest against that). Not once has Dunne ever responded to me; as happened again this morning:

 

I have asked MOH to do this, in line with provisions of new law: Doctors enlisted to ban legal highs http://t.co/cLGm0bRgUJ
— Peter Dunne (@PeterDunneMP) April 12, 2014

 

@PeterDunneMP Answer just once y u legalise psychosis forming poison while criminalising non-toxic, medicinal #cannabis 1/2
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) April 12, 2014

 

@PeterDunneMP And what are results from special committee on animal testing under PSA? Re Mojo still looking likely.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) April 12, 2014

 

Response? Nothing. And this now all begs a more ominous phenomenon coming out of the Fortress of Legislation, confirming not only Labour MP Maryann Street’s statement to this blogger that MP’s weren’t adult enough to discuss euthanasia in an election year, but they’re too immature to discuss issues that provide our basic freedoms at all. Our MP’s remain experts only on legislation that takes those freedoms away from us – proof? Read this blog.

One of biggest impediments regarding NZ's #suicide problem has been the official, childish policy of silence. This has shut down debate 1/x
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) April 12, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 Over my dealings with MP's on PSA not only have none reasoned y they will not look at legalising non-toxic #Cannabis 2/x
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) April 12, 2014

@MarkHubbard33 Not a single MP has been able to bring themselves to even write the word 'cannabis'. Join the dots #KindyOfACountry 3/3
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) April 12, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 I've just come from a week in Denver. Very civil after legalization. Locals happy. Crime (anecdotally) down. NZ must follow
— Greig McGill (@greigmcgill) April 12, 2014

 

@greigmcgill Unfortunately there r apparently no adults in Fortress of Legislation up to debating such a grown up issue. Same #euthanasia
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) April 12, 2014

 

In his reply to me, Minister Todd McClay, current minister overseeing the toxic PSA, studiously avoided mentioning or referring to all of my logical points in favour of cannabis over the PSA, childishly answering my post by trying to ignore every reference to this, and concentrating only of the fluff stuff, and animal testing concerns.

 

For the MP’s, don’t panic: uttering the word ‘suicide’ isn’t magic or mystical, people won’t rush to the act because you’ve spoken it. In a movement starting with the Enlightenment, we use reason now. Same with cannabis and euthanasia. Indeed nothing beats open, un-censored adult discussion of all problems, real and perceived, and those basic freedoms such as the three dealt with in this post, which despite being no purview of the Fortress in a free land, we must prostrate ourselves sycophantically in front of our masters to be allowed.

 

I note a series of MSM and blog posts against monarchy this morning, given Kate and William’s current tour: afraid I just can’t get excited about that when a bunch of power enabled babies are running my life from Wellington.

From our institutions up, there needs to be a Western Spring: let’s start by paring the size of government back to the civilising Westminster Principle.

 

 

PSA and Animal Testing – We’ve Been Sold a Mutilated Pup, Again.

Many would think my libertarianism doesn’t sit well with my animal welfare posts: I couldn’t care less. Animal welfare comes first, albeit I could say the minarchist, voluntary society will only exist where humans have inculcated a humane treatment of animals … join the dots as you wish, I've written enough in here for you to do so.

 

If you search this blog for PSA (Psychoactive Substances Act), or look at some of the animal welfare links on my right-hand menu, you’ll see I’ve written post after post against the 119 members of the Fortress of Legislation who voted for this Act and its barbaric principle that it is acceptable to cruelly test animals so that teenagers can get stoned Friday night on toxic, synthetic cannabinoids (when simply legalising cannabis, which I support, would have achieved the same results safely - cannabis isn’t toxic - and without a single animal being harmed.) It was heartening that for once, when the PSA was still in bill form, Kiwis rose up and took to the streets in protest against its animal testing component, the result of which we were told by Minister McClay there would be a special commission of experts set up to ensure no animal would be tested under this ludicrous legislation. At least that's what we thought we'd been told, so the protest stopped.

 

Well I think it better start again. It appears Minister McClay was only trying to placate us, hoping we would forget. Back to a central theme of this blog, never trust politicians.

 

From the below Twitter exchange, just this last Friday, with Green member Mojo Mathers  -and despite her party’s luddite economics of the slave state, I like Mojo for the work she is doing for animals, and despite still being one of the 119 infamous bastards voting for this pointless Act, (never trust politicians) - I am one hundred percent convinced there will indeed be animals tortured, before they are killed, for what amounts only to our human recreation, smoking this dreadful, synthetic crud legal under the Act, while harmless cannabis remains criminalised.

 

Given Minister McClay is Mr Invisible, can any MP give an update on where we're at with animal testing and the PSA? @mojomathers
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 14, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 good AT experts on advisory committee, still working through the tests required. Sticking point reproductive tests
— Mojo Mathers (@mojomathers) February 14, 2014

 

@mojomathers thanks Mojo. I assume no testing done yet under Act?
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 14, 2014

 

@mojomathers Hang on, you're saying no matter what, there is definitely going to be animal testing under the PSA? Not deal we were sold.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 14, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 don't know yet, MOH originally weren't going to require reproductive testing so still under discussion
— Mojo Mathers (@mojomathers) February 14, 2014

 

@mojomathers Gutted. We could've legalised #cannabis with not 1 animal harmed, but looking like there will be animal cruelty. @PeterDunneMP
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 14, 2014

 

If animal testing 4 human recreation results from this, then your career  @PeterDunneMP has been a travesty. #cruelBastard
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 14, 2014

 

 

Note two things from Mojo’s posts:

 

Firstly, I read her replies to mean there will definitely be animal toxicity testing:

 

 

 

… we just don’t know if this will include reproductive testing. Perhaps Mojo can dissuade me of that one if false.

 

Secondly, reproductive testing is also definitely on the table. If you don’t know what that is, it’s this:

 

Reproductive toxicity includes the toxic effects of a substance on the reproductive ability of an organism and the development of its offspring … Animal tests include evaluating the effects of prenatal exposure on pregnant animals and their offspring [OECD Test Guideline (TG) 414]. … The test substance is administered orally, the pregnant animals are killed just prior to delivery, and the fetuses are examined for toxic effects. … [In] Reproductive/Developmental Toxicity Screening Assay) … the test substance [is] administered orally for 4-9 weeks. Pathological effects are determined by daily observation, necropsy, and microscopic histopathology. … Offspring are evaluated for neurotoxic effects including "gross neurologic and behavioural abnormalities, and the evaluation of brain weights and neuropathology during postnatal development and adulthood."

 

As for the instigator of this obscene Act, which I don’t see as having achieved anything of value, the conflicted and contradictory PeterDunne, he does not deserve to be given his seat again this election.

                  

I know there are more than two readers who follow my animal welfare posts: please link this and spread the word. And when you get a moment perhaps it might be a good idea to drop Minister McClay, aka, Minister Invisible, a line letting him know nothing has changed for the many opponents of this Act, and that we are still here watching: start your email or letter with any form of animal testing for human recreation is unacceptable, especially legislation legalising a toxic synthetic slugde, when a harmless cannabis is kept criminalised. Finally, in a properly functioning democracy, the results of the Advisory Committee would be known by this year's election, so Kiwis can hold the minister responsible in the voting booth for any animal testing under the PSA. Politicians need to understand the PSA will be as toxic to them, as it's going to be to those animals put to torture, then death, by it.

 

Dunne & Lees-Galloway: Further Boot in the Gullet of Rural Hospitality.

Let’s put aside the philosophical argument for a minute and get practical:

Again, Can I still drink handle, & 1/2 bottle wine over hour lunch & be under wowser limit? @IainLG @PeterDunneMP @DavidCunliffeMP
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) October 1, 2013

@IainLG @PeterDunneMP @DavidCunliffeMP Something like 50 rural based hospitality meals around Sth Canty and Marlborough wineries in balance.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) October 1, 2013

And why am I unsurprised to find Labour have the vote they now need to pass the 40% lower blood alcohol limit for driving because, per network news last night, Peter Dunne, flogging himself in a special interview, of course, says he will be backing it.

Across the last two governments, Peter has done more to destroy my rights and liberty than any minister I can think of. Every day he has gone about his job, he has been only about destroying the fabric of the free, classical liberal Western society.

First he muddied the sacrifice of the ANZACs by presiding over the destruction of the Westminster Principle.

Then he designed legislation that - when passed - MPs understood entailed the torture of animals in laboratory tests so teenagers could get stoned in the weekend on toxic syns; and this when a healthy natural alternative in the form of cannabis was kept criminalised. Cannabis does not have the harmful effects of synthetic substitutes, and has been used by humans for at least 6,000 years with no recorded deaths. You can’t even overdose on it – unlike alcohol.  

Then his single vote ensured a grab-all total surveillance of every New Zealand citizen under the dreadful GCSB Bill.

And now his single vote will likely take even my wine away with lunch. Can someone answer the question in my opening tweet? On TV 1 news last night I’m sure they said the lower limit allows merely three ‘standard’ drinks (thimbles) across three hours for a male. Well that’s me criminalised. Or, rather, we stay at home. Ignoring the meals we have out with friends, just counting Mrs H and I, that’s something like 50 meals in South Canterbury and the Marlborough winery restaurants per annum gone.

The 40% lower limit to 0.05 from 0.08 will deny responsible drinkers such as myself the ability to dine out, while not affecting one jot those already driving above the existing level. It is pointless, but will be perhaps a final nail in the coffin of many in the rural hospitality trade. In the same clip Peter Dunne pontificated his need for the further narrowing of my life, Judith Collins gave the figure of an extra 70,000 honest, responsible Kiwis per annum, between the current limit and Lees-Galloway’s wowser one, who will be criminalised by the state for victimless crimes. To John Key, there better be no free electoral ride in Ohariu-Belmont in 2014.

For the record, given Maryan Street's non-denial twice of my accusation David Cunliffe made her drop her euthanasia bill for fear of scaring the voters, I wonder if he knows how the numbers within the electorates stack up for this nanny-state bill of Lees-Galloway.

Finally, in case you’re wondering: a meal out without a wine is not a meal, it’s a takeaway. Not interested.


Update 1:

I was not aware when I wrote the above that the first time Labour put this legislation on the bar, Peter Dunne and United Future voted against it. So what has changed? Call me cynical, but in the absence of any new science favouring the lower level, then I assume it can only be political expediency. Namely, Peter is thinking of a ministry under a Labour government in 2014?

That or this change of position gets him a TV interview and some time in the lime light for his party.

Either way, horse-trading our lives for power. And more contradictions in the political career of Peter Dunne.