John Key wants your DNA

potshots · Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 1:17 pm

Just read this on Teletext.
Cannabis users take note!

National wants more DNA samples
Announcing the party's new law and order policy, leader John Key says National wants DNA samples taken from everyone arrested for any crime that carries a possible prison sentence.

Tony · Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 1:51 pm

By the time he gets the chance to effect it potshots we will have won the battle , simple possession , cultivation and use of cannabis will no longer be a jail able offense .

For the first time in 4 yrs I can actually see a few cracks appearing , I have had more feed back that makes me see more than a glimmer of hope in the last 24 hrs than anytime..

I have seen 4 draft letters from very substantial sources that are about to be sent to the appropriate people in support of the NZDF call for revisiting cannabis , in particular medpot .. but calling for a recreational reconsideration as well.

tony

mfinest · Heavy User Joined: Jun 20, 2006 Posts: 220 Location: NZ

Won't any law change be out of the question while the confidence and supply agreement with Labour and the Jim and Peter pumpkin eater are in effect ?

Or do you think that they will cave to public pressure?

Tony · Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 5:23 pm

paula · Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 8:34 pm

Talking about fiddling while rome burns, it sure doesn't look like DNA samples stop these UK prisoners from anything much.
I wonder how young John would handle it . . .

Revealed: how drugs trade took hold of British prisons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jun/08/drugsandalcohol.prisonsandprobation

The government says it's under control but a devastating new report reveals that a sophisticated new drugs trade is flooding British prisons with record levels of cocaine, cannabis and even heroin. In many cases it's aided and abetted by corrupt prison guards.
Jamie Doward
The Observer,
June 08 2008 on p22 Focus section

Hussain Djemil knows better than most people about the toxic relationship between drugs and prison. Born in Britain to a Turkish Cypriot family, he grew up in Stoke Newington, north London, where as a teenager he drifted into drugs. By the mid-1980s, Djemil was spending between £100 and £150 a day on crack and heroin. At the age of 22 and close to despair after being an addict for seven years, he sought help. After 23 months in intensive rehabilitation, he kicked his habit. But several of his friends lost their lives to addiction.

Djemil put his experiences to good use, working with addicts in Oxfordshire. In 2002, after being clean for 16 years, he was given the job of drugs strategy co-ordinator for London's seven prisons, a radical attempt to turn a poacher into a gamekeeper. Last year Djemil was appointed head of drug treatment policy at the National Offender Management Service, but resigned only weeks afterwards, dismayed at the organisation's chaotic structure and what he claims is its limited ability to tackle the illicit and little reported trade plaguing prisons.

Tomorrow Djemil, after months of silence, issues a devastating 36-page pamphlet, published by the influential Centre for Policy Studies thinktank, that highlights a worrying gap in the government's attempts to tackle the drugs threat to Britain's jails.

'Drugs are widespread in British prisons, undermining any attempt to clean up prisoners from pre-existing addictions, greatly increasing the chances of recidivism and corrupting staff,' Djemil writes in an informed manner that will make for alarming reading at the Ministry of Justice, which insists it is winning the drugs battle in Britain's prisons.

Djemil attacks the government for simply trying to manage the problem, rather than attempting to eradicate it - an approach, he believes, that has yielded little success. 'Today there are probably more drugs in prison than ever before,' he says.

It is not just Djemil who is concerned that Britain's prisons are becoming infested with drugs. Those working daily with prisoners report that drugs are rife in most jails. Indeed, the problem has become so acute that prisoners are going into Britain's jails clean, only to come out with an addiction. In some prisons the vast majority of inmates now have an addiction.

Neil McKeganey, professor of drug misuse research at the University of Glasgow, told a Conservative party conference last month that 'our prisons are being overrun by our drug problem. There have been occasions when approaching 100 per cent of the prisoners in Cornton Vale [a women's prison in Stirling] have a drug problem.'

Given that about 55 per cent of people have a serious drug problem when entering prison, it is perhaps unsurprising that even so-called 'drug-free wings' - where prisoners are supposed to find refuge from the illegal trade - are now plagued by dealing.

Stung by criticism that it is not doing enough to combat the problem, the government has commissioned a report from David Blakey, a former inspector of constabulary. Presented to the director-general of the prison service, Phil Wheatley, at the end of last month, it is unlikely to make happy reading for the Ministry of Justice, which appears in no hurry to publish it.

Djemil hopes the Blakey report will kick-start a national debate on how to tackle a problem that has huge ramifications: studies show that addicted prisoners will go on to commit further crimes to fuel their habits, which in turn fuels reoffending rates and leads to offenders being recycled through the system, costing the taxpayer billions of pounds.

There are worrying signs, too, that organised crime is now starting to enjoy lucrative returns from targeting prisons. In a survey of 20 category B and C prisons conducted for The Observer last week, the probation union, Napo, was told that inmates belonging to organised gangs were controlling the distribution of drugs both inside and outside their jails. The Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) estimates that about 30 major drug dealers continue to control distribution networks across the UK from within the confines of their cells.

With the new-found desire to control the drugs trade in Britain's prisons come fears that weapons are being smuggled in to mete out punishments to those who can't pay their drug debts. Last Christmas the segregation cells at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire were full as prisoners sought refuge from dealers to whom they owed money.

Drugs, chiefly cannabis, are also used to 'pay' inmates to carry out attacks on other prisoners who have drug debts, according to a probation officer at a category B prison in the Midlands who, like all those interviewed for the Napo survey, asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job.

Djemil estimates the drugs trade in UK prisons is worth at least £59m, but admits the figure is probably much higher as prices in prison are usually at a premium. The returns from dealing in prison are becoming so attractive that dealers have even broken into prisons to deal drugs.

But experts say that there are much easier ways of smuggling drugs into jails. One of the most popular methods is for an inmate to arrange for drugs to be thrown over the jail wall, where they are then 'fished up' by fellow prisoners while the guards are distracted. Drops are arranged via mobile phones smuggled into the jails or even via the prison phone system, which is not always monitored.

Probation staff working at a category B prison in the North East said that drugs were 'regularly thrown over the wall in socks or containers. They are gathered up by the gardeners and distributed throughout the jail.'

Another common method is hiding drugs in the incoming post, which is not always checked by staff or sniffer dogs. Personal visits allow the surreptitious passing of contraband and there is evidence that drugs are sewn into the lining of clothes taken into prison.

The picture that emerges from the Napo survey borders on farce. Probation staff working with released prisoners at a hostel in London say offenders regularly asked to be returned to Wandsworth prison if they breach their parole conditions 'because they can get any drug they want there'.

For prison staff, resisting the drugs tide sweeping into jails is proving a constant and exhausting battle, and one not helped by corruption within their ranks.Two years ago, police estimated that as many as 1,000 of the 35,000 prison officers working in Britain's jails were corrupt. At a time when morale in the service is falling amid anger over the below-inflation pay deal offered by the government, the number is unlikely to have fallen.

According to Djemil, even a few corrupt officers can pollute an entire jail. 'One or two corrupt officers can bring in an awful lot of drugs in a short space of time,' he said. 'They can have a disproportionate impact. Drug dealing in the prison system is not a DIY operation; it is becoming much more organised.'

Criminal gangs have proved astute in establishing which prison officers have debt problems, making them amenable to monetary bungs in return for turning a blind eye to drugs and mobile phone smuggling.

Alarmed at the spiralling nature of the problem, the Metropolitan Police last month quietly launched a specialist 'ghost' squad to target prison officers. 'We can confirm the Prison Service and Metropolitan Police service are working together on a new unit to investigate corruption within London prisons,' a spokeswoman for the Met said. 'The unit is examining and assessing intelligence and will be jointly staffed from the Prison Service and the Met's specialist and economic crime command.'

Tackling corruption may restrict supply but it will not eradicate the problem, according to experts like Djemil. They believe there should be a fundamental shift in evaluating the scale and nature of drug dealing in Britain's jails to allow prison officers and police to better target the supply and distribution. The problem, though, is that the government is cautious about sharing information that would provide a clearer picture of the problem.

Djemil is critical of the government's reluctance to publish figures showing the number of offenders who are shown to be positive for drugs in voluntary tests (which carry no punishment and are taken if a prisoner wants to earn a privilege or take a job within the jail, such as a cleaner, to earn extra cash). These figures, he says, show that many more prisoners are on drugs than are revealed by the published mandatory tests, which are predictable and allow inmates to detox before a test or even swap urine samples.

A more damning allegation, however, is that the use of mandatory drug testing is actually encouraging greater use of class A drugs in prison. This is because prisoners being treated for heroin addiction on a detoxification programme using either methadone or its more expensive alternative, Subutex, can blame any positive result on the substitute drug.

Even the government admits that there are profound flaws with the use of mandatory drug testing. In 2005 the Home Office published a little-noticed report, 'Tackling Prison Drug Markets', which stated: 'Prisoners have learnt a number of procedural and legal ways in which a positive test can be avoided, including refusing to do the test or ensuring they are being prescribed opiate-based medication through healthcare (to cover illicit opiate use).'

The statistics corroborate the concerns. In 1997 just under 14,000 prisoners were on detoxification programmes. Today the number is over 51,000. Allied to this is the burgeoning use in jails of heroin substitutes as 'recreational' drugs. According to the magazine Druglink, in some jails one in five prisoners now takes Subutex because it is easy to smuggle in. Outside prison, the drug sells for £5 a tablet; inside, it goes for £40.

Nor do the problems end if a prisoner leaves jail clean. A lack of support can often see a former addict quickly rekindle a doomed love affair with drugs. Labour MP Paul Flynn recently told Parliament: 'The tragedy that continues these days is that people who go in as users and come out clean, who are put down as successes for the prison system, often die very quickly. Two of my constituents came out of prison drug-free: one lived a week, another lived a day.'

Experts say that the government must admit the scale of the problem if it is to stand any chance of tackling it. 'There is an urgent need for the development of a comprehensive harm reduction strategy in prisons,' said Harry Fletcher, spokesman for Napo. 'There has got to be an acknowledgement by the prison hierarchy that drugs are freely available.'

Djemil, however, is not optimistic that the government has a clear vision for turning prisons into drug-free zones. 'We've got a lot of drugs in prison and we're not sure how we're going to deal with it,' he said.

His claims prompted a ferocious response from the Ministry of Justice. 'This report is astonishingly ill-informed for someone who has worked in the prison system,' a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said. 'All evidence points towards a huge reduction of drug use in prison and offenders switching to far less harmful behaviour when in custody. Independent research concluded that random mandatory drug testing provides a reliable and statistically valid way of measuring patterns and trends of drug misuse in prisons at national and regional level.'

But Colin Moses, chairman of the Prison Officers Association, said drugs in Britain's jails were reaching 'epidemic proportions'. Moses said: 'Sometimes it feels like it's snowing drugs because of the amount coming in over the walls.'
Drugs in prison: the numbers

7,500 Drug treatment programmes completed in Britain's jails in 2006-2007

64% Fall in the number of people testing positive in mandatory drug tests since 1997

14 Staff suspended at Pentonville prison in 2006 amid claims of drug and mobile phone smuggling

£5 Street price of a Subutex (heroin substitute) tablet

£40 Price of a Subutex tablet in prison

£59m Minimum estimated value of the drugs trade in Britain's jails

68 Staff suspended from the prison service in 2006

1,000 Prison staff suspected of corruption

22,000 Estimated weight in kilos of drugs smuggled into British prisons in a year

36 Number of hours that opiates remain in the body

55 Percentage of those entering prison who have a serious drug problem

3,393 Number of visitors suspected of smuggling drugs into jails last year

XLH · Heavy User Joined: Apr 30, 2006 Posts: 172 Location: NZ

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2008/2290721.htm
Apes, legal personhood and the plight of Nim Chimpsky
5 July 2008

Mr John Key and the Nat DNA brigade should read this though I have my doubts any of them would comprehend my point [hmmmph . . . mutter . . . politicians]

XLH · Heavy User Joined: Apr 30, 2006 Posts: 172 Location: NZ

Damn this is a good expose

How National's spin doctors operate
By RUTH LAUGESEN - Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 06 July 2008
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4609464a6160.html

The poster message looks as though it has been scrawled in lipstick. "How would you feel if a bloke on early release attacked your daughter?"

In another, the blonde, sensible-looking teacher looks accusingly at the camera. There is extensive bruising around her eye and a cut to her lip. "Under Labour it's not just pupils that get bad marks," reads the message.

These are the dark maestros of modern political campaigning, Australians Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor, in full flight during the 2005 UK elections. Modern parliamentary campaigning doesn't get much more raw, emotional and negative than this. Now Crosby/Textor are working for John Key too. So just how might they shape National's campaigning style in 2008?

It appears to be an extraordinarily touchy subject for National. Following the Star-Times report last weekend on Crosby/Textor's hiring, Key refused to confirm or deny the company is working for him, despite intense questioning by media over several days. Key declined a request for an interview with the Star-Times, saying through a spokesman that National's would be a positive campaign.

While Crosby/Textor are known for stirring up deep feelings through their advertising, they are also known for the more mundane but equally essential political art of ensuring discipline within a party. They emphasise restricting messages from the party to a few key lines repeated with monotonous regularity.

There are already signs of a clear focus at work within National. Most strikingly, it is rare to see any other National MP on television apart from Key. Since late last year he has fronted all policy announcements, to the extent there have been any. Senior National MPs, once regular visitors to the Press Gallery with their press releases, have all but disappeared from doing the rounds to promote themselves.

Radio New Zealand has had problems making a programme on National's shadow cabinet because National MPs have refused to be interviewed on their portfolios, saying they have been told they cannot.

And on some rare occasions when senior National MPs do front for comment, the focus still remains on John Key, even bizarrely so. In a June 22 appearance on TVNZ's Agenda programme, National's justice spokesman, Simon Power, managed to introduce John Key into the conversation nine times, with comments such as "as John has said", "as John talked about earlier this year" and "John has said on occasions". The result has been a transformation in Key's mana and mystique. Last year, many of the public felt they did not know John Key. Now he has been built up so that he rivals Helen Clark in stature.

Whether Crosby/Textor, National's own strategists, or Key himself, are responsible for overseeing the disciplined internal campaign that has brought about that change is not yet known. Some have attacked investigative journalist Nicky Hager for raising the Crosby/Textor issue in the Star-Times, saying pungent campaigning is simply the nature of politics.

But Auckland University political studies senior lecturer Jennifer Lees-Marshment, who was in the UK for the 2005 campaign, believes the company is a special case. She says Crosby/Textor have the potential to put a strong, and potentially divisive, imprint on National's election campaign in the next four or five months. "They use a technique called insights marketing, where communication is developed in response to understanding people's deepest values and fears," says Lees-Marshment. "They are playing on people's real underlying feelings, the feelings they don't articulate in public."

The technique is imported from commercial marketing, where insights marketing may, for example, be used to drum up fear in order to sell burglar alarms. Crosby/Textor's 2005 campaign for the Conservatives, under the catchline "Are you thinking what we're thinking", included advertising highlighting concerns over immigration and crime.

But such techniques are not always successful. Crosby/Textor may have helped Australian Liberal leader John Howard win a string of victories, but the Tories lost in Britain in 2005. And negative campaigning that is too strong can trigger a backlash.

Lees-Marshment questions whether an intensely negative campaign that plays on New Zealanders' fears will be necessary for National, when it is already regularly registering at 50% in the polls. She says a positive and upbeat campaign makes perfect sense at this stage for National. "Crosby/Textor's history doesn't mean they're going to repeat that approach this time in New Zealand," she says. However if National does plan to develop attack themes in its campaign, her pick would be that Crosby/Textor will be looking at probing and then exploiting people's fears about the economy. "They may say, you could lose your house, or you could lose your job. They may say milk has gone up by this amount, meat has gone up by this much."

But aren't these perfectly legitimate political messages to run?

Up to a point, says Lees-Marshment. Where she takes issue with Crosby/Textor is that its advertising can be so simple, and so powerful, that it can stir up fears without offering any solutions. Do too much of that, she says, and you are well on the way to stirring up political disillusionment and disengagement.

There have been leaks to journalists, presumably from National, emphasising that Crosby/Textor have been used by not just Key and former leader Don Brash, but also former National leaders Jenny Shipley and Jim Bolger. The suggestion is that with such a long pedigree with the National Party, Crosby/Textor have been part of the New Zealand political landscape for many years already.

Former Bolger press secretary Richard Griffin confirms Crosby/Textor have been used by National for many years. But he says they were not an important part of National's campaigning, in part because their ideas were seen as too extreme. He says in 1996, they wanted to mount personality-based attacks on National's opponents, despite the fact that was the first MMP election, and National was preparing for the possibility of governing with some of its former political opponents. "Jim Bolger gave me the impression that he wasn't comfortable with them and they left me with the impression they thought we were all a bit wet behind the ears," says Griffin. "They were brash, and they were more aggressive than I was used to, and they were more personality-focussed. I was very uncomfortable with the fact they were targeting others in the race that we might well have to talk to after the election, particularly Helen Clark and Winston Peters."

Griffin says Bolger turned down some radio advertisements Crosby/Textor proposed that would have personally attacked Clark and Peters. "Jim Bolger was continually reminding them, and me, that don't forget this is a new era, and we're going to have to talk to people after the election," says Griffin. "They didn't quite seem to understand the New Zealand psyche."

And he says that if National is now contemplating using any of Crosby/Textor's more extreme campaigning options, they should think again. `I think Key's personality will probably win them the election, and they'd be foolish to go past that."

Tony · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 12:11 am

Lynton and Mark and their band of merry men and women are not only one of the prime strategist advisers to the Nats inner circle but also do the deed for some of the major contributors to the labour Party and others. And since they are rather good at what they do their going to play a major part in the coming election.. and have been for some time..
The boundaries that have been set on what shadow minister and and the back bencher's can say on any topic is very restricted and much of it covered by actual written directive..They are so paranoid even a slight slip up and all hell breaks loose .. Its getting to some of them to the point they are only quoting their name rank and serial number when a wife asks them a question these days .

Thats politics.. the dirty tricks, the skilled spin doctors and tit for tat ..

Trouble is one topic they are all ( everyone except the minority party prohibitionists ) being told to refrain from any comment on is cannabis..Leaving Jim , Peter and NZF to have open slather without opposition if the matter gets any exposure . There has been a number of reasons lately why the media have gone to Ministers or spokespeople with questions relating to cannabis matters , but have been unable to get any comments..Even Jim has held back from even negative stuff.

I understand we may see some well orchestrated fear generating cannabis propaganda as part of the pre election bullshit.. with little chance of it being challenged unless the media get interested..
Its going to be LTE, ALCP activity , NORML and the like that just might upset their plans..

tony

Paul13 · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 3:44 am

paula · Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 10:43 pm

Key meets with wealthy Tory tycoon
01 Sep 2008 6:31p.m.
TV3 probably Duncan Garner

Another New Zealand politician has secretly met with a wealthy businessman who is a generous political donor. Except this time the politician is not Winston Peters, it is John Key. The private jet of British billionaire businessman Lord Michael Ashcroft left New Zealand today at the end of a visit very few people knew about; a trip in which he paid a personal visit to the home of the National Party Leader.

Key was initially evasive when 3 News asked if anyone in his party had met with Lord Ashcroft. "Yes, I think they have."

Did he personally meet with Lord Ashcroft? "Yes, I have. I met him at my home."

Ashcroft is the wealthy Briton who put up the $200,000 reward for the return of the stolen medals from the Army Museum in Waiouru. But his generosity is more usually associated with right wing politics. He is the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in Britain. The BBC describe him as the "Tories' troublesome tycoon", saying he has amassed an "immense personal fortune built up through ruthless deal making which has often shocked and unsettled the city of London". He has also been a generous political donor, and gave almost 2.6 billion pounds to the Conservatives since 2003.

So did he offer National and Key money to help this election? "No," says Key.

Lord Ashcroft's generosity has come south before though. In 2004 he gave John Howard's Liberal Party "an Aussie gift" of $1 million.

So we pushed Key further on Lord Ashcroft's personal visit. Did he ask if the National Party was short of money? "No," says Key, "But I don't discuss donations anyway. But it wouldn't be possible for him to give anyway - he's an offshore entity."

Whatever the purpose of Lord Ashcroft's visit, he was not very keen to be filmed by 3 News as he left yesterday. An aviation security vehicle even parked to block 3 News' shot of him.

Key says he was just doing what he was told to. "I just follow what was in my diary."

click to see 3 News Video

charmnsharman · Newbie Joined: Sep 05, 2008 Posts: 12 Location: newzealand

time some one flew focker freindship in to the behive and fuck all their days up.
i would have a better futer in this country if i gave up smoking pot and took up kidy fukeing.
these fuckers are milking us like cows and you fuckers are all so afraid of the truth you will protect the lie,s at any cost!
you live the lie and teach your kids to do the same, and depending on what sort of asshole you are you will set your kid up to succeed or fail.
winners and losers all will be used to justify the system of lies.
if any thing the losers are more valuable to the system than the winners and the balance must be maintained at any cost.
and the price is children, lots of kids set up to fail and be scape goated to motivate the voters with a bullshit ideal of justice .
if you have voted for any party in this country you must support billions spent on jails and neglecting the children that will fill them as soon as they old enough!
fuck u all you dumb brain wasted mother fuckers!

MrNiceGuyNZ · Forum Moderator Joined: Sep 18, 2005 Posts: 2805

homegrown · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 4:57 pm

Ok did I miss some thing??

What the hell are you on about?
So not voting and doing nothing is your way of making a difference? I doubt any one here Is a believer in the system mate. It shits on us on a daily basis. But doing nothing to change it is moronic.

Protecting there lies?!? On this website???? Wtf

You must be confused

May I sugest rolling a fat joint and either changing your attitude or as "MrNiceGuyNZ" sugests

Paul13 · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

charmnsharman · Newbie Joined: Sep 05, 2008 Posts: 12 Location: newzealand

do any thing?
why the fuck would i do any thing about it?
you dont tell the sheep why the grass grows you just shear them and have a chuckel on the way to the bank.


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