Hard News: Drugs, testing and workplaces
115 Responses
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David Hood, in reply to
The rate of positive tests for beneficiaries is relevant only to the beneficiary population. What about the positives for non-beneficiary applicants and also those beneficiaries and non beneficiaries who avoid jobs where they know they will be tested?
This imaginary pool of independently wealthy (because they are not on benefits) drug taking people applying for pretty menial jobs- I could see how if hordes of them existed they could distort the figures. Not to mention the magical ability of these hypothetical drug taking beneficiaries to be able to avoid applying for jobs and stay on a benefit.
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Slightly off topic, but welcome support for a rational approach?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-01/dear-president-trump-if-you-want-cut-healthcare-costs-stem-opiate-death-spiral-legal -
Farmer Green, in reply to
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He’s still at it:
"Drug use is common in New Zealand"
Perhaps he saw the poll?
Maybe he hasn’t been keeping up with the news?
"In some communities now, we’re starting to get a bit more concern about P again and its prevalence,"
Newshub last weekend:
Government figures show the number of Kiwis using amphetamines has stayed roughly the same over the past five years – 34,000 in the 2015/16 year.
No mention of immigrant workers, but…
In October 2016, nearly $15 million was announced to be spent on anti-drug initiatives, including a pilot prison treatment programme.
[…]
According to the 2016 New Zealand Drug Harm Index, there were an estimated 388,000 drug users in the country,
$38 per user.
Glad that someone's taking this seriously.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
From your link:-
"....... there is widespread, or there is a reasonable amount of, drug use among young people, apparently," he said .
Well! Duh!!
Looks like backpedalling/damage control to me.
WTF is a reasonable amount of drug use? -
mark taslov, in reply to
OSH
There’s some votes tied up with that, ripe for the picking.
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What The Herald just revealed from an OIA request.
More proof Bill English is a liar. All along he has known that the immigration settings were competing with young Kiwis for jobs. It implies to me that foreign students turned residents with Level 5 qualifications are taking up work that NZ students straight from secondary with Level 2-3 qualifications might otherwise have filled.
Why would a government purposefully do this to its young population - and then lie about why their unemployment stats are so high? Disgusting.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
It would be interesting to see someone argue that we don't need any immigration at all : that we are perfectly capable of producing whatever level of population is considered optimal for this country, and educating them to the required standard.
It does seem that NZers in general place great value on wide open and clean spaces, so why the push to create a bigger population at the expense of the space that we have left?
Is it politically incorrect to suggest that we should not just fill up the country, and end up like the rest of the world? -
mark taslov, in reply to
I guess one could make the argument that ecologically it might be best that most of us left these islands in the hands of a few esteemed and noble custodians ;)
As much as immigration is lined up to become a key election issue, it’s but a symptom of poor governance. 4.5 million people is nowhere near capacity. Globally there are 46 cities with a higher population than New Zealand. We’ve got a housing crisis in cities while elsewhere in the regions people are struggling to sell homes for 80k. Hamish McDouall has the right idea.
Where you say “wide open and clean spaces”, one could also describe what we have here as hundreds of thousands of hectares of recklessly deforested land, substantial portions of it now drought prone as a result, being farmed unsustainably and inefficiently.
Lack of jobs, housing shortage, stretched infrastructure and services, too many people? All symptoms of a lack of aptitude for development.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Michael Reddell, an economist who has done a lot of commentary/analyses on immigration on his blog, suggested this today:
I’m still tantalised by the idea of only giving residency to people with a job paying more than $150K per annum (plus the refugee quota). It isn’t ideal, and probably skews choices away from relatively young people, but it goes in the direction of saying we want really/able productive people. At that sort of threshold we would probably bring in fewer people, but it would be clearer that they were ones making a signif econoinc/fiscal contribution. Perhaps it needs to be a bit age-related: start at $75K per annum for the under 30s, and move up by 25K for each five year age range thereafter, so that by 55 we’d only offer residence (and the prospect of state health care/NZS) to someone earning $200K pa.
It would also make for a cleaner market test of our universities and PTEs – they’d have to sell themselves on the educational value-add.
And of course given those lower numbers we could really up our refugee quota with UNHCR and try and make a much bigger difference from a humanitarian perspective.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
That does not quite address my question ; why can it not be successfully argued that we can develop all these needed skills using both our own reproductive capacity and educational facilities?
Are both of those things beyond us? -
Farmer Green, in reply to
a lack of aptitude for development.
Appropriate development , surely?
We produce protein to satisfy the needs of 20 million people, and we sell it on the world market so that we can import items considered to be essential for our continued existence.
Mate, $80k will get you a mansion in Eketahuna.
Almost everywhere in Godzone the land is crying out for more people, whilst in the ghettoes that are our cities the people are crying out for more land." recklessly deforested land, substantial portions of it now drought prone as a result, being farmed unsustainably and inefficiently."
All reversible for very little effort in an " irreducibly pluvial" climate, without despoiling the waters. There is just no public will to do that ; the public wants enclaves , infrastructure, cafes, movie theatres, motor racing, new cars , trinkets etc.
We have the governments that we want and by and large they pander to our interests in order to remain electable. Ergo we have what we asked for ; why the bitching about housing crises, infrastructure deficiency, lack of jobs etc?
There is no shortage of work to be done, right?Who will help me eat this bread ? :-)
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linger, in reply to
a cleaner market test of our universities and PTEs – they’d have to sell themselves on the educational value-add
Only under a far-too-narrow definition of educational “value added” as “increased income potential”, as if that were the only reason for education. Sometimes I despair of (most) economists.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
happiness is a swarm gun...
Who will help me eat this bread ?
I, said the locus,,
at any locus....;- )
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Farmer Green, in reply to
The days when one attended university in order to read a subject are long gone for all but the most privileged, among whom I should count myself.
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Shocking news this morning at 5 a.m.
Apparently the waters that Forest and Bird et al want most to be cleaned up , will never be "swimmable" because they are under the ground.
You wouldn't read about it.
And I see Joyless Mike still repeating his nonsense about the Manawatu River being one of the most polluted in the world. Apparently this idiot is a lecturer in Ecology at a university. That says quite a bit about the state of education in Godzone. -
Farmer Green, in reply to
" Here, the challenge is that the concentrations of nitrates are quite low, so we need to be able to know that it can pick up those small amounts."
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mark taslov, in reply to
All reversible for very little effort in an ” irreducibly pluvial” climate, without despoiling the waters. There is just no public will to do that
2040? Meanwhile on the ground.
On topic:
"It’s a combination of factors, I wouldn’t say it’s all about drugs, I think it’s alcohol also… I’ve heard some stories, which would suggest to me that alcohol is probably more of a problem than illicit drugs."
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andin, in reply to
; the public wants enclaves , infrastructure, cafes, movie theatres, motor racing, new cars , trinkets etc.
A lot of presumption in that statement, and you taking a dim view of humanity. If anyone or anything is to blame it is the dead end direction we have been set on for the last few decades. I 'm beginning not to care what caused it , just that it needs to be changed and soon.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
taking a dim view of humanity.
Not really. We the people have been intentionally duped into a condition resembling narcolepsy. We wake up slowly , and one at a time . . . . at first.
"it needs to be changed and soon."
Mother Nature will sort it out if we don't.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Some enlightenment there :-
""This is a problem we've had to deal with for many years... it's not marijuana that's the problem, it's really P, "
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Farmer Green, in reply to
What is in your 2040 link?
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mark taslov, in reply to
Sorry, it was just a link to the Government’s ambitious $2b plan to make some waterways swimmable by 2040 – highlighting a disconnect.
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mark taslov, in reply to
“value added”
Reminds me of the $130,000 required to settle the $50,000 borrowed to attend uni.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
OMG. Are you overseas? Something needs to be done about that - it's preventing many good Kiwi's from coming home, I suspect.
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