Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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Also, a bit unclear what the Queen actually does think...
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I don't know about the Norwegians, but the Danes think that the absolute best kind of practical joke is the one where the butt of the joke never finds out about it, ever.
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Access: Fighting seclusion with…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
It's good to hear the seclusion expert is visiting. I would have thought that a complaint to the UN Commission on Human Rights would be an option. Ashley may not be able to take a case under the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, but why not a simple case under the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights?
(Article 7: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 10.1 All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.)Presumably it is with an eye to such a case that the Human Rights Commission are bringing in the seclusion expert?
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Shouldn't the title be "Labour and Greens up a tree"? Or is that one of those regional difference things?
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Why bother convincing NZers we need one first? Why not just decide to have a referendum on it, hold some poorly attended meetings round the country, then get NZers to send it their drafts for what they think should be in the constitution, and have a group of marketing experts (rather than lawyers) choose three versions of the one they think would be best, plus a terrible one to pretend there's some other choice, and hold a referendum on it? I mean yes, it would cost money that could be spent on something more useful, but never mind.
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My received (unreliable) understanding is that the initial test used is a cheap(er) yes/no test. If the test comes back with “yes”, the next step is the more expensive test which tests the level of contamination; the type of remediation required depends on the contamination level.
I don’t know at what point the eviction kicks in (or rather, kicks out...) – whether it’s after the “yes”, or whether it’s after the level test, or whether it’s above a certain level of contamination.
I don’t think it should occur anywhere. And it’s even more disturbing to hear that tenants are being evicted on the basis of a positive test when there’s no way of showing whether it was the current tenant who was responsible. Quite apart from drug policy, that’s not even natural justice.
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It’s an interesting analogy, Bart (I am well acquainted with the prostate testing question; it’s used to teach medical students about the risks of screening). And I’m also well up with sensitivity and specificity. My original post was going to include a long-winded explanation, using coeliac as an example. The short version of that was, if you test 1000 people, you’ll get maybe one false negative, about 11 true positives, about 30 false positives, and the rest are true negatives. So if you test negative you’re probably not coeliac, but if you test positive there’s still a 74% chance you’re not coeliac either. The true diagnostic test is a small bowel biopsy.
Thinking about it, I think a better analogy would be somewhere in between prostate screening and coeliac tests. A false coeliac diagnosis is worrying, but not terrifying. It doesn’t have the ‘C’ word in it. It can be life shortening, and increase the risk of ‘C’ words, but it’s not as immediately scary. A false positive for meth contamination, is not potentially terminal, but it would be pretty scary for a tenant who knew they were at risk of losing their affordable home, and potentially becoming homeless, because of it.
And that was my point about a basic meth test not being diagnostic. If no action is taken on the basis of the first test – if it’s just saying “more investigation necessary” or “no more investigation necessary”, and if everyone knows it’s not proof of anything much more than that, then perhaps it’s OK.
Because the difference between prostate screening and meth screening is that the alternative to prostate screening is the finger, whereas the alternative to meth screening is putting another tenant in with children who get sick from the lab/heavy use residue. There is no other back-up test.
But I see your point about the harm being done being greater than the benefit, and would also be very unimpressed if the false positive rate is unknown.
And regardless of any of that, evicting is in no way the solution.
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On the meth contamination question, oye, I hardly know where to start. The testing business is unregulated, but if it were regulated it would be even more expensive. I think having a "cheap" test that's indicative but includes a relatively high chance of false positives is OK so long as it's not considered diagnostic.
However, one of the more popular companies says that 40% of the properties it tests are positive for meth. Now it's true that people will generally only test if they think there's a risk, so it's not a random sample. But that still seems very high considering only 0.9% of the population admit to having used meth. Surely at some point you've got to start questioning the accuracy of the test rather than calling it "irrefutable evidence" of "how significant the risk is"?
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In relation to CareBnB (great name there!), it seems to me a similar sort of question to that of people in the UK wanting to offer rooms or homes to refugees, as reported on here.
Based on that story, it looks like the most obvious first step would be to contact existing charitable social housing providers, e.g. in Auckland, Monte Cecilia Housing Trust, and in general, any of the church social services organisations.
If anyone knows of non-church-based charitable housing providers, do please share!
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The thing that's been bothering me in both Bennett and Key's comments on the housing crisis is their "oh, there have always been people with these problems". The language they use (surely deliberately) echoes the "The poor you will always have with you..." line. Of course, the second half of that phrase is "...but you will not always have me." I can only hope that's a promise.
They are of course almost right. There have always been people with poor housing, even in the halcyon days of state housing. Certainly our housing has been cold for a long time, and at least on that front we're hopefully slowly improving in the battle between improvement and degeneration. But affordability has been getting worser and worser. And just because a crisis has built up slowly doesn't mean there's not a crisis.