DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Jellyfish and broken arses

Libz leader Dr Richard McGrath ransacks the newspapers for stories and headlines on issues affecting our freedom.

      This week:  Jellyfish and broken arses

• NZ HERALD: “Plan opens ACC to private insurers” – Accident Compensation Corporation Minister Nick Smith confirms his decision “in principle” to allow competition in the workplace insurance market…

THE DOCTOR SAYS: Talk about spineless! If Nick Smith believed privatizing the Accident Compensation Corporation was right “in principle,” surely he would just do it rather than pussyfooting about seeking a “mandate” from voters. Either the man believes privatisation is the right thing to do, or he doesn’t. Simple as that.
    This blue-green invertebrate had six months to consider a “stocktake” on the ACC which recommended it exit the market for workplace insurance. And still he rejected doing it!
    Let’s face it, Nick Smith is a blue socialist, a supporter of big government, and any downsizing of the state will only happen over his dead body. That’s why you should NOT waste your vote on the BlueLabour Party, and instead consider voting for a party that has unflinchingly supported the privatisation of workplace insurance because it is the moral thing to do.
    This piss-weak effort from tree-hugger Smith is just further confirmation that BlueLabour are too scared to act on principle in case someone, somewhere might take offence.
    For the record, a Libertarianz government would not postpone decisions until after the next election. It would carry out its pledges according to its principles of individual sovereignty, private property rights, limited government and capitalism (essentially the same thing expressed in four ways).
    ACC could be gone by lunchtime, with employers and workers given the choice of whether they wanted to insure themselves or to carry their accident liability risk themselves.
    If Nick Smith and BlueLabour really believed privatizing ACC was the right thing to do, they would have done it early last year. Don’t waste your vote again on these jellyfish. Next year is election year. Turn over a new leaf and vote according to your core beliefs. If you believe in the justice of the free market, and in getting government out of your life, there is only one party that fits the bill – LIBERTARIANZ.
    After all, are you any better off now than you were under Helen Clark?    

• NEW STATESMAN: “Former Labour minister calls for drugs legalization” – Bob Ainsworth, former [UK]Labour drugs minister, has called for the legalization of ALL drugs…

THE DOCTOR SAYS: What a breath of fresh air! At last, someone from a mainstream political party in the Western hemisphere who recognises drug prohibition is a failure and decriminalisation is the answer.  
    Bob Ainsworth gives the reasons why the government should leave adults alone to make their own decisions about self-medication: “Prohibition fails to reduce the harm that drugs cause in the UK, fuelling burglaries, gifting the trade to gangsters and increasing HIV infections. The war on drugs creates the conditions that perpetuate the illegal trade.”
    Ainsworth envisages a system of regulated sales of drugs via doctors and pharmacies. I see this as a transitional policy until people become used to the idea that drugs can be accessed legally and safely. Eventually, adults should have access to low-cost, high-quality medication – and the best way to deliver that is via a free and open market.
    Only thing is – why didn’t Mr Ainsworth say all this during the thirteen years his party was in government? Already, Labour party leader Ed the Red Miliband has shown himself incapable of abstract thought by his whining copout: “What about the children?”
    The children, Mr Miliband, are the responsibility of their parents who hold their rights in trust until the children are old enough to assume these rights themselves. No sensible person is advocating making drugs available to minors without the express permission and supervision of their parents.
    Anyway, parents administer potentially fatal drugs to their children every day – for example, paracetamol – with very low rates of overdose or other problems.
    Conservative Party deputy leader Peter Lilley is sympathetic to Mr Ainsworth’s sentiments, even if he makes the rather artificial distinction between “soft” and “hard” drugs.
    However, Tory crime prevention minister James Brokenshire disagrees, saying legalization “fails to address the reasons people misuse drugs in the first place, or the misery, cost and lost opportunities that dependence causes individuals, families and the wider community.”
    Bah, humbug. Perhaps Minister Broken-arse should consider the misery, cost and lost opportunities that decades of socialism (and, more recently, the Islamisation of large parts of the UK) has caused tens of millions of British people.
    The libertarian solution to the man-made problem of drug prohibition is to hand back to people dominion over their own bodies, and make the challenge of medicational misuse a health issue and not a criminal one.
    Let adults decide for themselves what they put into their bodies, but hold them responsible for the consequences of their actions at all times.

And with that sage advice I bid you goodbye for 2010.
Enjoy the Festive Season, and I look forward to seeing you back in the New Year.
Cheers!                
Doc McGrath