There’s no molly-coddling when Indonesians get their hands on a drug trafficker

 

This looks like a sure way of ensuring against repeat offending.

None of us should be too surprised to hear Prime Minister John Key say he can’t  intervene in the case of a Kiwi feller facing the death penalty in Indonesia for alleged drug smuggling.

The plight of Tony de Malmanche, 52, has been well publicised.

He was was on his first trip out of New Zealand when he was arrested in Indonesia last month, accused of trying to smuggle 1.7kg of methamphetamine into the country.

Alf hasn’t followed the case closely.

But he does know that being caught with drugs in that country – and many other parts of South-east Asia – is best avoided.

De Malmanche could be executed.

The best thing that can be said is that a death penalty would be carried out by firing squad, which seems much preferable to being strapped down – as happens in the US – to be executed with a lethal dose of drugs. Sometimes this can be botched, which can result in a long and painful death, although the nature of the crimes committed by the scoundrel who is being put to death means not too much sympathy for his suffering is aroused except among do-gooders.

The Brits have figured out how to expand their economy – with drugs and sex – but France says non

An easy way to give GDP a leg-up…

Alf is keen to get back to Parliament where he will explain to Craig Foss his fiendish plan for lifting the country’s GDP.

Foss is our Minister of Statistics and the fiendish plan involves expanding the GDP data set.

It can be done by following the Brits, as we learn from this report in The Telegraph.

Britain has overtaken France to become the world’s fifth largest economy, new analysis shows.

A shake-up of the national accounts this summer, which showed the UK’s downturn during the Great Recession was shorter and shallower than previously thought, helped Britain overtake the Gallic economy by a whisker this year.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said Britain’s acceleration was also boosted by the inclusion of sex and drugs to UK growth.

It’s just like Saudi Arabia – you can get stoned legally, so long as you over the age of 18

But how how can you tell if a Southlander is stoned...or is just another Southlander?

Alf has been alerted to another product that is being peddled to sad bastards who want to get stoned.

His personal advice to such people is to head for a country like Saudi Arabia, commit adultery, and be legally stoned.

But it seems you can get legally stoned in this country by smoking Kronic.

An Invercargill mother is complaining that her teenage son came home showing all the signs of being stoned out of his brain after smoking the stuff.

Mind you, in Southland they breed people who look like they are stoned out of their brains pretty well all of the time, although they have consumed nothing more potent than mutton birds, oysters, swedes and Speights.

Our labour laws have gone to pot – or why we must do things by the book when sacking a drug supplier

Come in Kate Wilkinson. There’s work to be done in your labour portfolio.

Urgently.

The Employment Relations Authority needs dismantling, our employment law needs rewriting and common sense needs restoring to a boss’s right to fire staff.

But don’t sack the buggers at the authority before we have put new arrangements in place. Otherwise they are apt to take legal action under a system with which they have become all too familiar, and will try to screw the taxpayer for big bucks.

Alf tenders this advice on learning that a small business has been ordered to pay an employee $12,000 – including $6000 compensation for distress – after he was sacked for supplying cannabis to a workmate.

No more, please, no more

Down here in Eketahuna we are profoundly indifferent to Sunday newspaper reports that

Millie Elder has been arrested again and is facing new drugs charges, as well as an allegation of shoplifting.

Broadcaster Paul Holmes’ estranged daughter is now facing charges before three courts and a possible jail term.

Alf looks forward to the glorious but improbable day when he learns (this would be news) that this pathetic creature has not been arrested and is not facing charges, and moreover that she has found God, and become a missionary in the Congo.

All going well, the Millie meter (a measure of the column centimetres consumed in any one edition by stories of her antics) would register zero a week after her departure from these shores. Bliss.

Ban the blokes

Blokes who don’t know where to go to find a harlot in Manukau have been given some useful guidance today by the burghers (and burgheresses) of that troubled city, who earnestly tell us they intend setting up a working party to formulate a plan to address street prostitution.

The council’s Policy and Activities Committee has resolved that the aim of the plan is to make Manukau free of street prostitution.

It sounds as achievable as Helen Clark’s ambition to make New Zealand carbon-neutral.

It’s tempting to tell these busy-bodies where to go. But Alf observes that the busy-bodies have told the street-walkers’ prospective customers from out of town where to go.