The Asker Trilogy, Highway America, The New Zealand Tour Commentary, The Life and Times of Freddie Fuddpucker
Friday, August 10, 2012
Thursday, August 9, 2012
HIGHWAY HANK GOOD
The frustrations
of interstate trucking
of interstate trucking
Highway Hank Good's HG 2 |
“Here I sit for another
night, in the back of the Petro shop, waiting for a new turbo, oh and now it
looks like the APU has totally quit too. It won't stay running, just like the alternator.
It went out also,” says Highway Hank Good on Facebook from somewhere in Pennsylvania.
Hank is a popular and
well-known veteran of US trucking who takes great pride in his rigs. But as any
old hand will tell you it doesn’t matter how thorough the maintenance is, you
can still get caught out and sometimes it’s just a pile of things one on top of
another.
Cheers, Hank. Before you
know it you’ll be cruising the interstates again and doing what you love.
I hope Hank has some good reading material to help pass the time
Print books: http://www.gypsybooks.co.nz
Books for E-readers: https://www.smashwords.com/books/
Books for E-readers: https://www.smashwords.com/books/
BEAUTIFUL SWITZERLAND
Why
Swiss steam is back
on the
rails
By Anthony Lambert
5:00 PM Tuesday Jul 24, 2012 New Zealand Herald
Anthony Lambert takes a trip on a lovingly-restored cogwheel steam
locomotive route through the Swiss Alps.
A
steam locomotive negotiates the Steinstafelviadukt on the picturesque Dampfbahn
Furka-Bergstrecke in Switzerland. Photo / Creative Commons image by Wikimedia
user David Gubler
Tran Dinh Hung travelled
8850 kilometres because of his childhood dream. He came to Switzerland from his
native Vietnam to work on the steam locomotives his father drove before the
Vietnam War.
"Every day I saw
him on a steam locomotive and heard the beautiful sound from the locomotive. So
I wanted to follow him when I grew up."
But, after the war, the
railway into the mountains at Da Lat remained closed and the Swiss-built
engines languished in a jungle embrace.
Then in 1990 Hung was
given the job by Vietnam Railways of helping a dozen Swiss volunteers move the
derelict locos 120km to Ho Chi Minh City for shipment to Hamburg and, finally,
Switzerland, as part of the revival of a remarkable line between Realp and
Oberwald. Now retired, he was on his third visit to work on the railway when I
met him last August.
Until 1982, this section
of line was one of the highlights - and highest point - of the Glacier Express
line between St Moritz and Zermatt. Then a 14.5km "base tunnel", cut
through the foot of the mountain, opened which permits year-round operation.
Previously, the threat
of avalanches forced closure from October to late May. Indeed, one bridge had
to be dismantled every autumn to prevent it being swept away.
Ordinarily, once the
new, faster, year-round route opened, the old line would have been forgotten.
But a group of Swiss railway buffs thought this section was too impressive to
lose.
It offered the
experience of climbing to the Furka Tunnel at 2160 metres and seeing the Rhone
Glacier across the valley. So they set up a body in 1983 to save it.
The practical and
financial challenges were so great most dismissed the idea but, section by
section, the Dampfbahn Furka-Bergstrecke (DFB)
was rebuilt.
The DFB reopened last
month for its short season, with daily trains until mid-August followed by
Friday and weekend services into October.
The Rhone Glacier itself
has been admired since the start of Swiss tourism. In 1836, the poet Henry
Longfellow described the great tongue of ice that spawned the Rhone River as
"lying like a glove with its palm downwards, and the fingers crooked and
closed - a gauntlet of ice which centuries ago winter threw down in defiance of
the Sun".
Visitors back then came
by horse-drawn postbus to the hamlet of Gletsch, lost among the mountains, to
walk to the glacier.
Later in the 19th
century, two hotels were built overlooking the glacier; the now-closed
Belvedere which featured in the 1964 James Bond filmGoldfinger,
and the huge Glacier du Rhone Hotel of 1860, which the 1895
Baedeker travel guide book described as "first class but not quite
satisfactory in some respects".
Some might say the same
today, chiefly because there are no en-suite bathrooms - but I found it a
delightful step back in time.
The hotel's livelihood
was threatened when the railway arrived in 1914, but the savvy owner insisted
that in return for giving his land for the railway, midday trains would stop
for lunch and evening trains would stay the night. So, a cavernous dining hall
with brass chandeliers was built to augment the more intimate dining-room. It
still fills up with the cyclists, bikers and motorists who converge on Gletsch
from the Goms Valley and the Furka and Grimsel passes, as well as the DFB's
passengers.
The DFB stations at
Realp and Oberwald are a few steps from the stations of the Matterhorn Gotthard
Bahn, which operates trains over the western part of the Glacier Express route
between Zermatt and Disentis.
A converted coach forms
the cafe at Realp where most passengers take a coffee or hot chocolate before
boarding the period-style carriages. First-class passengers sink into
upholstered seats while, in traditional manner, second-class passengers sit on
wooden slatted seats, but they are perfectly contoured for comfort.
The journey begins with
a blast on a pea whistle from Gerhard Bissinger, who had come from Hamburg to
act as a volunteer guard for a fortnight. The climb up the Furkareuss Valley
resembles a Scottish glen in its heather-clad slopes. Waterfalls and occasional
cows crop the hardy grasses. Huge boulders in the river hint of the perils of
spring melt and a rock the size of a tipper truck forms one wall of a cow barn.
Such gradients can be
climbed only with the help of a central rack rail, engaged by a cog on the
engine which lets it claw its way up the mountain. Having to maintain the rack
rail to a tolerance of one-12th of an inch is just one of the many
complications facing the DFB. Another is the 1.6km-long summit tunnel and the
expense of repairing the effect of freeze and thaw on the tunnel lining.
The western exit from
the tunnel is breathtaking, with roads that zig-zag up the mountain slopes to
the Furka and Grimsel passes, the distant buildings of Gletsch in the valley
and the lip of the Rhone Glacier. The pause at Gletsch is a chance to admire the
immaculate locomotive. Nearly all of them are centenarians, painted in blue or
black livery with plenty of brightly burnished steel and brass.
The final descent from
Gletsch to Oberwald begins in a spiral tunnel to allow the railway to corkscrew
down the mountain. It emerges to cross the Rhone and edge along the valley
slope in a forest of larch and firs, with campanula and saxifrage among them.
The risk of sparks
igniting the undergrowth prompted the DFB to install 84 trackside sprinklers
which are automatically set spinning by ascending trains.
As the train approaches
Oberwald, a view opens up along the broad Goms Valley, birthplace of the
"king of hoteliers", César Ritz.
The steam loco whispers
to a halt at Oberwald station where trains head west to Brig or east through
the Base Tunnel to Realp and on to Andermatt, taking just 21 minutes rather
than the 130 minutes of the old route.
Slow travel - but Tran
Dinh Hung and thousands every year savour every minute.
For the pleasure of great reading
PO Box 110, Ngatea 3541, New Zealand
Print books: http://www.gypsybooks.co.nz
Books for E-readers: https://www.smashwords.com/books/search
Books for E-readers: https://www.smashwords.com/books/search
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
VENOMOUS SPIDERS
White-tailed spiders and
Daddy Long Legs: An urban myth
White-tailed spiders are vagrant hunters who seek out prey rather than spinning a web to capture it. Their preferred prey is other spiders and they are equipped with venom for hunting.
They are known to bite humans and effects may include local pain, a red mark, local swelling and itchiness; rarely nausea, vomiting, malaise or headache may occur. Ulcers and necrosis have been attributed to the bites, but a scientific study by Isbister and Gray (2003) showed these were probably caused by something else, as the study of 130 white-tailed spider bites found no necrotic ulcers or confirmed infections.[2]
Fact: That is a full-fledged Urban Legend, with no basis in fact whatever. This legend is so widespread that many people believe it who should really know better, including some teachers and TV documentary producers.
Three different unrelated groups are called "daddy-longlegs." Harvestmen (below left) have no venom of any kind. None at all! Same with crane flies (below right). Pholcid spiders (below center) have venom (like almost all spiders) but there's nothing special about it; in fact, a recent study showed that pholcid venom is unusually weak in its effect on insects. This myth is debunked at greater length on Rick Vetter's web site.
Daddy Long Legs: An urban myth
Today I spent
most of the day at a First Aid course as well as a couple of hours driving a
school bus, so not many new posts on the blog today. Sorry about that, readers.
A Daddy Long Legs spider |
During
discussions at the First Aid course the subjects of poisons came up and in
particular the Australian White-tailed spider which can give a nasty bite. For
many years it has been claimed that the White-tailed spider is venomous because
it eats Daddy Long Leg spiders and the Daddy Long Legs is actually the world’s
most venomous spider, but with fangs not powerful enough to penetrate human
skin. This claim was also mentioned today.
When I suggested
that the connection between the White-tail and the Daddy Long Legs may just
another urban myth, the tutor replied that it was a definite known fact that
the White-tail is only venomous because it eats the world’s most venomous
spider, the Daddy Long Legs.
So when I got
home I went on the internet and did the research. Here is part of what I found.
White-tailed spider
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
White-tailed spiders are medium-sized spiders
native to southern and eastern Australia, and so named
because of the whitish tips at the end of their abdomens.
Common species are Lampona cylindrata and Lampona murina. Both
these species have been introduced to New
Zealand.[1]A White-tailed spider |
White-tailed spiders are vagrant hunters who seek out prey rather than spinning a web to capture it. Their preferred prey is other spiders and they are equipped with venom for hunting.
They are known to bite humans and effects may include local pain, a red mark, local swelling and itchiness; rarely nausea, vomiting, malaise or headache may occur. Ulcers and necrosis have been attributed to the bites, but a scientific study by Isbister and Gray (2003) showed these were probably caused by something else, as the study of 130 white-tailed spider bites found no necrotic ulcers or confirmed infections.[2]
AND from the Straight Dope Science
Advisory Board
Is a Daddy Long Legs the most
poisonous spider?
Possible envenomation
Is there any truth to this oft-repeated
tale?
Daddy-longlegs
(Opiliones) - these
arachnids make their living by eating decomposing vegetative and animal matter
although are opportunist predators if they can get away with it. They do not
have venom glands, fangs or any other mechanism for chemically subduing their
food. Therefore, they do not have poison and, by the powers of logic, cannot be
poisonous from venom. Some have defensive secretions that might be poisonous to
small animals if ingested. So, for these daddy-long-legs, the tale is clearly
false.
Continued below . . . . .
Daddy-longlegs spiders (Pholcidae) - Here, the myth is incorrect at least in making claims that have no basis in known facts. There is no reference to any pholcid spider biting a human and causing any detrimental reaction. If these spiders were indeed deadly poisonous but couldn't bite humans, then the only way we would know that they are poisonous is by milking them and injecting the venom into humans. For a variety of reasons including Amnesty International and a humanitarian code of ethics, this research has never been done. Furthermore, there are no toxicological studies testing the lethality of pholcid venom on any mammalian system (this is usually done with mice). Therefore, no information is available on the likely toxic effects of their venom in humans, so the part of the myth about their being especially poisonous is just that: a myth. There is no scientific basis for the supposition that they are deadly poisonous and there is no reason to assume that it is true.
Continued below . . . . .
Available now from Smashwords
HAPPY READING
Daddy-longlegs spiders (Pholcidae) - Here, the myth is incorrect at least in making claims that have no basis in known facts. There is no reference to any pholcid spider biting a human and causing any detrimental reaction. If these spiders were indeed deadly poisonous but couldn't bite humans, then the only way we would know that they are poisonous is by milking them and injecting the venom into humans. For a variety of reasons including Amnesty International and a humanitarian code of ethics, this research has never been done. Furthermore, there are no toxicological studies testing the lethality of pholcid venom on any mammalian system (this is usually done with mice). Therefore, no information is available on the likely toxic effects of their venom in humans, so the part of the myth about their being especially poisonous is just that: a myth. There is no scientific basis for the supposition that they are deadly poisonous and there is no reason to assume that it is true.
What about
their fangs being too short to penetrate human skin? Pholcids do indeed have
short fangs, which in arachnological terms is called "uncate" because
they have a secondary tooth which meets the fang like the way the two grabbing
parts of a pair of tongs come together. Brown recluse spiders similarly have
uncate fang structure and they obviously are able to bite humans. There may be
a difference in the musculature that houses the fang such that recluses have
stronger muscles for penetration because they are hunting spiders needing to
subdue prey whereas pholcid spiders are able to wrap their prey and don't need
as strong a musculature. So, again, the myth states as fact something about
which there is no scientific basis.
In summary
For true
daddy-long-legs, the opilionids, the myth is certainly false, and for the
daddy-long-legs spiders it is certainly not based on known facts.
And then from
Burkemuseum.org
Myth: The daddy-longlegs
has the world's most powerful venom, but fortunately its jaws (fangs) are so
small that it can't bite you.Fact: That is a full-fledged Urban Legend, with no basis in fact whatever. This legend is so widespread that many people believe it who should really know better, including some teachers and TV documentary producers.
Three different unrelated groups are called "daddy-longlegs." Harvestmen (below left) have no venom of any kind. None at all! Same with crane flies (below right). Pholcid spiders (below center) have venom (like almost all spiders) but there's nothing special about it; in fact, a recent study showed that pholcid venom is unusually weak in its effect on insects. This myth is debunked at greater length on Rick Vetter's web site.
So getting rid
of Daddy Long Legs spiders from your house is not the way to get rid of the
White-tails. It would be better to use a recommended insect repellent in all
the dark corners of the house including inside the roof.
PAKISTANI POLITICS
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
THE TRUTH ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate Change: It has been around
longer than humans
The chart below shows how average earth temperatures have changed over the last 2 billion years. It can be seen at a glance that the world has been recovering from an ‘Ice House’ period since just before humans inhabited the planet.
There are smaller cycles too (not shown in the chart) and a significant one was the Little Ice Age from 1400-1850 AD when average temperatures started rising again.
The chart also shows how several Ice Ages occurred with an average earth temperature of 10 degrees C. It is important to realize that in an ice age, ice does not usually cover the entire earth’s surface, but is more an encroachment of the polar caps into temperate zones.
On the high side average temperatures have reached 25-27 degrees C and since we are dealing with averages, maximums will have have been far higher than anything recorded by modern day meteorologists.
As world average temperatures continue to rise (naturally) the arid areas like central Australia and the Sahara will not become drier, as is predicted by alarmists, but will have a warmer moister climate. Other areas at present too cold for agriculture will be brought into production. In short, as the climate warms, the world will be capable of producing more food, not less as predicted by the alarmists.
The chart above shows more than 2 billion years of completely natural climate change.
WARNING!
Climate change alarmists will have
you worried into an early grave
for no good reason
RELAX WITH A GOOD BOOK
Monday, August 6, 2012
MALAYSIAN CENSORSHIP
'Un-Islamic' book
trial opens in Malaysia
|
Bookstore raids raise
concerns about the rule of law in the southeast Asian state.
|
Since 1971, 1,517 books and other
publications have been banned in Malaysia [AP]
|
It was a quiet
Wednesday evening towards the end of May when Malaysia's religious
authorities paid a surprise visit to the Borders bookshop in one of Kuala
Lumpur's more upscale shopping malls.
The three officers
from the Federal Territories Islamic Affairs Department, better known by its
Malay language acronym JAWI, were courteous but brought with them 20 other
men. They milled around the shop, browsing the shelves and taking pictures on
their mobile phones. The officers asked the employees whether the shop was selling
Allah, Liberty and Love, the newly released book by New York-based
Canadian academic Irshad Manji.
Understandably, the
staff, dealing with a raid by the religious authorities for the first time,
was nervous. They lead the men to the shelf where the offending book was on
display. After confiscating a couple of copies, the officials asked for the
manager.
Stephen Fung, a
Malaysian Chinese and non-Muslim, who buys the books and distributes them to
the six Borders branches in and around the capital, was the first to speak to
the men. But then they asked to see the most senior Muslim member of staff.
The store manager, Nik Raina Nik Abdul Aziz, a 36-year-old Malay woman
planning for her wedding and in the midst of a marriage course at her local
mosque, happened to be on shift.
Accusations
"They singled out
the Malay women and asked them if they were married," Borders Books'
Chief Operating Officer Yau Su Peng told Al Jazeera. "Those who said
they were single were then accused of being a lesbian. Some were in
tears."
Nik Raina and Fung
were then ordered to appear at JAWI's offices the next day. When they did so,
Nik Raina's lawyer was turned away, denying her a right to counsel that's
enshrined in Malaysia's constitution.
All this happened even
though at the time, on May 23, Allah, Liberty and Love wasn't
actually banned.
Some groups had
expressed disquiet about the book and Borders had been forced to cancel a
"meet-the-author" session with Manji earlier in the month following
threats of violence, but no fatwa had been issued. Borders said it had been
given no indication that there was a problem with selling the book. Indeed,
it was on sale at other shops in the same shopping complex.
With its Muslim Malay
majority and large communities of non-Muslim Chinese, Indian and indigenous
people, Malaysia has long prided itself on its ethnic diversity and religious
tolerance. For decades, Shariah courts, with jurisdiction over the personal
lives of the country's Muslims, have operated alongside the civil system with
the Federal Constitution as the country's supreme legal document. But as
Islam has become increasingly politicized and the religious authorities more
assertive, the system has come under increasing strain.
Religious authorities
'emboldened'
The case "is
symptomatic of an alarming trend in which religious authorities have become
increasing emboldened by the lack of proper oversight and a secular
'leash'", Azrul Mohd Khalib, who writes a column for the online
newspaper the Malaysian Insider and works on HIV/AIDS
issues, told Al Jazeera.
Nik Raina is charged
with distributing a book that's offensive to Islam, even though her job
doesn't involve choosing the books for the store or stacking the shelves. Due
in court on Tuesday, she faces not only the prospect of a 3,000 ringgit fine
($1,000) and a two-year jail term, but a criminal record. "There was no
fatwa, no communication, not even so much as a phone call," Yau said.
"Nik Raina is being persecuted because she's a Muslim."
The Borders raid took
place nearly three weeks before the Home Ministry's Publication and Quranic
Text Control Division published the ban, declaring the book "prejudicial
to morality and public order". JAWI, which ultimately reports to
the Prime Minister's Office, says it doesn't need a court order to raid a
bookshop like Borders if it suspects it's selling "un-Islamic"
material. It's a view that's echoed by Jamil Khir Baharom, Minister in the
Prime Minister's Department and the man responsible for Islamic affairs in
the government.
Lawyers acknowledge
that laws governing the religious authorities in individual states are quite
broad. But there is skepticism about the charges that have been brought.
"It seems the
religious authorities have had to find someone who is a Muslim within the
Borders organization to be charged," said lawyer Andrew Khoo, the
co-chair of the Malaysian Bar Council's Human Rights Committee. "The
question is whether the appropriate person has been charged or whether she's
the unwitting scapegoat of people trying to enforce the unenforceable."
As a company Borders can't be charged, and neither can Fung. JAWI's officers
admitted as much as they handed Fung a summons.
After Nik Raina had
been charged and a date set for the Shariah hearing, Borders learned it had
secured a judicial review to challenge the raid in the civil court. The
hearing was set for a couple of weeks before the Shariah case. But then JAWI
asked to have its hearing brought forward, a move it said was in the public
interest. JAWI did not respond to emails or phone calls requesting comment on
the raid and its aftermath.
Book seizures
It's not only Borders,
a company controlled by ethnic Chinese business tycoon Vincent Tan, which has
turned to the civil courts. The publisher of the Malay language edition of
the book, ZI Publications and its owner/director Ezra Zaid, also sought a
judicial review. As with Borders, at least 20 people turned up at ZI's offices
looking to seize the book. "The concern for me, and especially for my
staff, was the legal jurisdiction in which they were operating," he
said.
Raman Krishna has run
Silverfish Books in a Kuala Lumpur suburb since 1999. It's a small operation specializing
in Malaysian books and the kind of writing that isn't on the bestseller
lists. JAWI visited Silverfish on June 1. While the two officers were polite
and showed Raman the gazette of the soon-to-be published ban when he asked to
see it, they warned him that if he had any Muslim staff on the payroll they
would be at risk of prosecution if the book were discovered.
"The other part
of this is censorship by harassment," Raman said in an interview at his
shop. "We have a name for it, 'budaya samseng' - a culture of
gangsterism. It's absurd. No civilized society would tolerate this. I don't
understand why Malaysians do."
After JAWI's visit,
Borders wrote to the appropriate ministers to express their concern over the
circumstances of the raid and the continued prosecution of Nik Raina. It's
not just Nik they're concerned about.
The company, which
bought the rights to the Borders' name when the US parent company folded,
employs 150 people, 77 per cent of them Muslim. It has yet to receive any
response, although the consequence of Nik Raina being found guilty could have
serious implications for all Malays simply trying to earn a living; whether
an ethnic Malay crew member serving wine to a non-Muslim passenger on a
Malaysia Airlines flight or a waiter serving food to non-Muslim Malaysians
during Ramadan fasting hours.
"We have the
government rhetoric of Malaysia being a progressive democracy and a center
for moderate Islam, but then you have the political action on the ground, the
lack of political will to tackle issues like this and a backsliding into
medieval times," said Imtiaz Malik Sarwar, a constitutional expert and
lawyer who's representing ZI Publications and Ezra. "It's very
worrying."
Change in focus
Borders' attempt to
delay Tuesday's proceedings in the Shariah Court until the completion of the
judicial review was unsuccessful. Citing the Constitution, High Court Judge
Rohana Yusuf said the civil courts didn't have the authority to intervene in
a Shariah case. But she also noted a seeming "lack of good faith" on
the part of JAWI and said she was confident the Shariah Court itself would
grant a stay of proceedings.
A delay would help
ease some of the unease surrounding the case and show the kind of legal
co-operation that lawyers such as Khoo say is necessary for a dual system to
work effectively. But the question of jurisdiction remains a difficult one.
Where other countries have found a dual system unworkable, Malaysia has
persevered, often by steering away from difficult debates over where
jurisdiction ultimately lies.
A couple of decisions
at the end of July, one of them backing an earlier ruling to lift a ban on a
book about women and Islamic law, have raised hopes that the civil courts are
becoming more assertive. What started off as a surprise raid by the religious
authorities on an unsuspecting bookshop may finally force a discussion few
have been willing to risk.
There "needs to
be some acknowledgement of how the rule of law works in this country",
said Ezra. "There's a lawlessness in which they are operating. All we
want to know is where our civil liberties end and where they begin. And, if
I'm a Muslim, where does Shariah intercede. This really is a litmus test of
the veracity of our legal system."
Irshad Manji is not
the only writer to find her works banned in Malaysia. Lebanese-American poet
Khalil Gibran, Booker Prize-winning novelist Salman Rushdie, polemicist
Christopher Hitchens and Peter Mayle, a British writer best known for his
tales of expatriate life in France, have all had books banned in the past
four decades.
Since 1971, some 1,517
books and other publications have been added to Malaysia's banned list. Along
with magazines and newspapers, books are also monitored for content. Pictures
are sometimes blackened out with marker pen or pages removed altogether.
Operating under the
Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984, the Publication and Quranic Text
Control Division is in charge of the process. It decides which publications
are allowed to be sold and which are deemed too dangerous for the Malaysian
public to see. As Malaysia battled a Communist insurgency, early bans focused
on Communism and politics. In the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the predictable
bans on adult magazines, kung fu caught the censors' attention. These days,
sex and religion are the most sensitive subjects.
Peter’s Comment
Malaysia’s claim to
star status as a model of democracy and racial and religious tolerance seems
to be fading.
When I visited
Malaysia briefly in the nineties I believed the propaganda. To me country and
people appeared friendly to tourists and the diverse cultures seemed to be
co-existing in harmony. Everywhere I went I found smiling faces.
However, since the
nineties I have come to realize that all may not be as it seems in Malaysia.
I can recall a political trial that went through the courts a few years ago
that, to the rest of the world, was a farce that was stage-managed to
eliminate a political threat. In a true democracy the courts are totally
independent of politics.
Now as I read of this
latest witch-hunt by religious zealots, I am reminded of another vital facet
of democracy; the state must be completely free of any kind of religious
dominance. A religion dominated state cannot be a democratic state.
It would seem that
Malaysia must be about the last country in the world to discover the real
effect of banning books; a ban will only serve to guarantee more sales all
around the world and even more sales to Malaysians.
This blog is sponsored by Gypsy Books
Will our books now be banned in Malaysia
for speaking out?
PO Box 110, Ngatea 3541, New Zealand
Print books: http://www.gypsybooks.co.nz
For E-readers: https://www.smashwords.com/books/search
|
NEW ZEALAND GREEN
Jailed
New Zealand dope grower vows to sell again
By Mike Dinsdale
10:32 AM Monday Aug 6,
2012
Photo / Thinkstock |
A man who walked into
Whangarei police station with a number of cannabis seedlings he had been
cultivating has vowed to continue defying the country's drug laws when he is
released from prison.
But police said they
will continue to take action against anybody growing drugs and the man can
expect to be arrested if caught.
Brian Borland, 56, has
been sentenced to six months' jail after pleading guilty to one charge of
cultivating cannabis and one of breaching special release conditions after he
went into Whangarei Police Station with up to 39 cannabis seedlings on June 1.
It was initially
reported that Borland went to the police station to hand himself in on
outstanding warrants and as he had nowhere to live took the plants with him,
asking police if they could look after them for him. The plants were destroyed
and he was charged with their cultivation.
He appeared in Kaikohe
District Court on July 17 where he pleaded guilty to the charges and was sent
to Ngawha Prison for six months. He will be released before the end of this
month due to the time he had already spent in custody.
But an unrepentant Borland
said he would continue to defy the country's marijuana laws when he was
released.
"When I experienced
the joys of cannabis for the first time in 1973 it wasn't illegal ... it was
banned the following year in 1974," he said.
"I could not see
any reason why it should be banned, 38 years later I still feel the same
way."
Borland said dope
prohibition had only made many thousands of ordinary Kiwis criminals, and
claimed there were up to 700,000 people in the country who smoked the drug
regularly.
However, relieving
Whangarei police area commander Inspector Tracy Phillips said officers had a
responsibility to enforce the law, and that includes illicit drug cultivation,
dealing and manufacturing.
"Cannabis is
prolific in Northland and has negative impacts on our communities, particularly
our young people," Mr Phillips said.
"It is also
associated with other criminal activities such as burglary and violence. If
anyone is caught growing or dealing in this or other drugs then we will take
action."
Northland is the cannabis
capital of the country, with a third of the marijuana plants seized and
destroyed by police in six-month long, nationwide operations targeting drug
growers and dealers grown in the region.
Peter’s Comment
Borland, who police must regard as a bit of a bore, may have
a point about whether or not the law should change.
But breaking the law is not the way to seek change. Borland
should think about becoming the local Member of Parliament, but then some would
say that Parliament already has an over-supply of bores.
So perhaps the best course of action for Mr Borland will be
to demonstrate that he can behave rationally while partaking of the weed. From
all accounts, he hasn’t done that yet.
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BEYOND THE SEAS
This is my latest historical novel Beyond the Seas When twelve-year-old orphan Nathaniel Asker is shipped from the back alleys of London to...
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This is my latest historical novel Beyond the Seas When twelve-year-old orphan Nathaniel Asker is shipped from the back alleys of London to...
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