You really do wonder don’t you?
In a country with the huge alcoholism problem we do, we will pause the work of Parliament to ram through under urgency law to keep the bars open so we can get drunk during the Rugby World Cup.
This is as self interested as the Health and Safety laws. Here we are changing law for the booze and hospitality industry, in the Health and Safety legislation, National are changing it to keep the Farming and Dairy Industry happy.
Once upon a time changing laws for big business would have been seen as disgraceful, now John Key just has to mispronounce some vowels, shrug a bit and NZers don’t even blink.
The Greens are painted as ‘killjoys’ for demanding a higher standard for Parliament and we have a Government who want to be seen as the cool parent with a selfish and demanding teenage child by giving into that childs demand for booze at their party.
Let’s just hope the All Blacks win so we don’t get the spike in domestic violence that happens when they lose.
What really turned me off from the booze culture, some years back, was a few nights out in Courtney Place, Wellington, on Friday nights, where you could not move without tripping over the wall-to-wall drunks.
Is it really ‘essential’ for people to be boozing while watching sport? Don’t answer that, I know the answer!
Ditto. I’ve witnessed the same thing; fighting drunks; some boozed halfwit smashing a ATM with a rubbish bin; staff at 24 hour convenience stores being abused/threatened by drunks; women being groped by drunks…
Anything after 2am and it’s a zoo.
Name one person who won’t be down at Courtney Place, at 5am, cleaning up the drunks and their spew? David Seymour.
@ Frank – agree with you.
And it’s all going to happen as children are going off to school, workers going to work, when the game’s over and the bars close!
Great way to start off the learning day for young people, seeing inebriated men and women, monopolizing the streets, shouting, swearing, fighting, vomiting, peeing, defacating and God knows what else! Then there will be the traffic ……!
The streets will be stinking cesspits of squalor and filth!
I have nothing against people consuming alcohol in their own homes. What’s wrong with that and enjoying a game of rugby on TV at the same time? It’s reasonably safe and the general public aren’t threatened. The bars don’t need to be open to all hours to cater for the RWC.
Extending the opening hours for bars is going to create huge problems that haven’t even been anticipated yet! And I ask the question, will the extended hours become the norm after the RWC has finished? Somehow I think it will!
Welcome to NZ, the whorehouse hell hole of the South Pacific, courtesy of John Key and Co!
The Bay if Islands used to be the biggest brothel and hell hole in the South Pacific when the white man first settled in NZ, this provided recreational services to the British seamen and whaling fleets. Maybe we are reverting back to the good old days of our colonial heritage.
This government is a slave to the liquor industry. When they talk about how manufacturing is doing so well in this country they must be talking about booze manufacturing. Booze is the only “product of NZ” label that is easy to find nowadays.
The legislation from 3 years ago, allowed licensed premises to apply for special licensing for games or events such as the World Cup (and the America’s Cup if it had eventuated here).
Pubs and bars were either too indolent, too illiterate or too pissed to apply, so they got their right-wing lackey mates to change the law. I totally agree with Mary_A
“Extending the opening hours for bars is going to create huge problems that haven’t even been anticipated yet! And I ask the question, will the extended hours become the norm after the RWC has finished? Somehow I think it will!
Welcome to NZ, the whorehouse hell hole of the South Pacific, courtesy of John Key and Co!”
Once the pissed and half-pissed genie is out of the bottle, it’ll be impossible to put the cork back in, or twist the bottle cap back on.
And the booze companies are major sponsors of National & ACT Parties, go figure?
Getting the PISS organised for the World Cup was the most important thing to go through Parliament this week.
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