War on Drugs killing more people than the drugs

The assassination and mutilation of 12 Federal Police in Mexico by a Jesus-worshipping drug cartel continues the spiralling violence which is this generation's version of the gangster wars that broke out in the US under prohibition of alcohol. Read about the violence in Time Magazine.

While profits from prohibited drugs enable La Familia Michoacana to pay their members ten times the average Mexican wage, there seems little hope of moralistic messages and government military action curbing the problem. Ironically the drugs are mostly consumed in the US, origin of the War on Drugs.

Meanwhile cannabis (the main stock-in-trade of the cartels along with cocaine ) has never killed anyone.

The Australian media have been reporting this Mexican horror but never mention the mammoth in the room, prohibition. I'll single out the ABC and The Sydney Morning Herald as they constitute most of my traditional media diet. It's a great example of how 'objective' reporting can be deeply misleading by limiting itself to a narrow frame of reference or mindset.

It's the same with the 'bikie wars' in Sydney. The media never admit that prohibition creates the fertile ground in which such criminal problems always flourish. But they do report politicians getting hairy-chested as they promise to get tough on the bikies, reinforcing the mindset that the answer to the failure of prohibition is always more prohibition.

Pictured are bodies beheaded by another Mexican drug cartel, Zeta. I wonder if prohibitionists would be happy to fund research into the impact of such murders on the victim's families -- to balance the money they are spending on researching the impact of drugs on families as they try to demonise personal drug use. They won't, because prohibitionist politics is essentially dishonest. Nor will prohibitionists take any responsibility for the carnage in Mexico. After all, it's not white people dying for this western cause, is it?

PS Actually, white people are dying too. Here's video of US Police killing a guy who was trying to swallow a small bag of white powder. They didn't break his neck, only fractured his hyoid bone.

Said the Chief Deputy in defense of his officer: "He wasn't trying to choke him, he was trying to stop him from swallowing evidence which could potentially kill him." Hmmn.

Pubs bite the dust as nanny Clover cracks the whip

There was no need for Clover Moore to concoct rubbery research to support the notion that pubs had reached saturation point in Kings Cross. As a DINK (double income no kids) who still can't afford the high-flying cocktail circuit, I have been pointing out for some years that there must be a limit to how many venues can spend millions on renovations and then rely on the top end of the nightclub set to pay a fortune for drinks in return for the questionable benefit of being seen in the 'right' places.

Yesterday's Daily Telegraph documents the fall of several pub empires, telling how the beer barons bought, borrowed and renovated at the top of the market only to be hit by the recession and a new raft of expensive regulations starting with the smoking ban and continued by anti-alcohol campaigners.

But it's not even a recent phenomenon. First to fall in Kings Cross was the $9 million conversion of the raunchy Bourbon and Beefsteak to the beige-and-pebblecrete Bourbon. The Bourbon began as a top-end venue, proudly refusing even to advertise. All these places flourish for some months or until the next flashy joint finishes ITS renovation, and all the social butterflies flit off to whatever place is in the social pages with pictures of off-duty footie stars and other minor celebs.

Soon enough, The Bourbon started dropping its prices, with $10 steaks on the slow days. Then it hit the financial wall and was, I am variously told, bought out by ING or Woolworths. Now it offers $10 steaks every day along with $3 beer, wines and basic spirits from 6pm-9pm. At that price even I now patronise the place -- the position of its outdoor seating in front of the Fountain is world-class and the acoustics inside are better damped, less shrill than other venues such as The Sugarmill and the Kings Cross Hotel. And the steak is consistently better than most.

Some say it's a price war aimed at wiping out the opposition. If so, it's working. The Bourbon remains pretty full, with a lot of local support, while opposition such as the stunning Madame DeBiers (formerly the Commonwealth Bank) has now closed, never having clicked with the fashionistas. I hear The Kings Cross Hotel is also on the ropes. Springfields, now The Elk, owned by the owners of the Empire, never filled up and the more publike Elk seems also to be struggling. The Vegas, after its own renovation, then bought The Mansions just when its poker machine income dived from first in NSW to somewhere deep down the league table. That pub group has now hit the wall.

My local bottleshop, which has two outlets in Kings Cross and several in other Sydney suburbs, reports that sales are plummeting -- not only from the public but from several local clubs they supply. They have been laying off shifts for some time now.

The Chifley is closed for three months while developer Australand remedies a pandemic of building defects.

But anti-pub fundamentalists bang on as if world war three was being played out in the streets of the Cross each night, creating the spectre of 'out-of-control violence' and other hyperbole, while Clover Moore and credulous Councillors accept their ravings as fact and respond with ever-tougher regulation.

I have little sympathy with pub owners, who have shown themselves on the whole to be shallow and stupid.

But my heart breaks to see Kings Cross bashed into a mere shadow of what it could be, making Sydney all the poorer and duller.

Pictured is the ever-decreasingly patronised Sugarmill outdoor area, subject to an organised resident campaign bringing tough new restrictions that threaten to make it, too unviable. Then watch residents' chortles of triumph turn to screams as the junkies return...

Does anything happen in Pymble?

I think I've created a meme.

Adam Spencer on ABC 702 Radio just now read a letter in the SMH from Adrian Bartels about Council's crackdown on the outdoor seating at the Sugarmill Hotel -- pulling it back from midnight to 9pm and, I have been told, making them take all the furniture in (somewhere) every night.

Mr Bartels (pictured) refers in his letter to one of our community meetings in which a resident, shocked and dismayed that Kings Cross is a noisy late-night destination, said "This wouldn't happen in Pymble". The letter points out that this is because nothing ever happens in Pymble.

Adam Spencer asked Pymble listeners to phone in and challenge this claim. One guy had been to a guinea-pig breeders' expo at Pymble Town Hall. Another remembered a disaffected client of a local brothel chasing one of the sex workers down the street firing his gun at her – 45 years ago. Another described it as "The corridor of boredom".

I'm going to take some credit for this thought -- I've been banging on in print for years with the idea that if some KX residents don't like it here, they are perfectly free to move to Pymble. I chose Pymble because it IS deathly boring but also because the name perfectly conjures an image of maiden aunts discussing croquet over high tea -- the opposite of Kings Cross.

The argument has caught on and I've heard others using the analogy, sometimes substituting 'North Shore'. Today's amplification will strengthen the meme greatly.

One caller, Chris from Potts Point, pointed out correctly that the Sugarmill outdoor area was a bonus because it displaced the antisocial behaviour that Springfield Avenue residents have been complaining about for years.

I think Council's decision is a disaster and the residents will live to regret their stupidity. Several are even unhappy at Council's ruling because they want the seating removed altogether. That would indeed return the area to the "rich porridge of piss, vomit and rubbish" that used to occupy the area (Adrian Bartels' words again).

Gentrification is not driven by reason but by a blind middleclass conviction that they are 'normal' and everyone else must be 'normalised'.

These were the exact words used last night at another community meeting where a council officer, eagerly fawning to his boss Clover Moore, announced the Harris Farm outlet that will be on the ground floor of the new Era building, also on Springfield Avenue.

"It's better than another nightclub," he said playing to the NIMBY crowd. "At least you will be able to buy food -- it's a step towards normalising the area."

What a pratt. The very definition of Kings Cross is that it's NOT normal. It's the last refuge of we who are not normal. "Normalising" = averaging = gentrification. But the middleclass mind does not see its drive to gentrification for what it really is -- a blind desire to cast the world in its own image. Clover repeated the oxymoron that her crackdowns on nightlife were aimed at quietening the area while maintaining its vibrancy.

Clover, if 9pm is the new Kings Cross bedtime, the vibrancy is gone.

I left the meeting deeply depressed.

Picture: Adrian Bartels, President of the Potts Point and Kings Cross Partnership, in the upstairs bar at the Sugarmill Hotel.

PS Of course the temperance union replied to Mr Bartels' letter with the usual bleating. Sacha Blumen, President of the 2011 Residents' Association, said:

I know no one opposed to licensed premises and late-night trading in Kings Cross. What people oppose is the impact on residential amenity, and the violence and other problems associated with the availability of alcohol.

What nonsense. He and his allies oppose every single alcohol-related Development Application in the Cross. And if you are against the impacts of late night entertainment and also oppose it, you ARE against late-night trading in Kings Cross. None of which addresses Mr Bartels' point: if you want somewhere quiet to live, there's always Pymble or any other suburb in around 4,900 square km of Sydney. So why choose to live in and squelch the only area of Sydney that has any life?

Nor does Sue Hanley's following letter, while clever, address the point. She asks which venues are associated with organised crime. Sue, have you missed the world headlines about the Ibrahim brothers shootings, and their supposed associations with and bikie gangs? Any dunce would know that's what Mr Bartels was talking about -- and because he says a place is not associated with organised crime does not necessarily mean he knows of others which are.

Micro-control #2: Stop treating me like an infant

I am getting more and more offended at being treated like a child because of micro-regulation. My partner lately wears stylish little cloche hats quite often. Nope. At the Gaslight Hotel, on our second drink, she was told by a huge bouncer less than half her age to take it off. Why? 'It's against the rules'.

Some friends at the Kings Cross Hotel on St Patrick's Day, after having booked the top bar and spent about $500, were told by security to stop singing songs. I mean, come on!

The Bourbon has a good happy hour every evening. I went with my partner and her son, sat them down and went to the bar only to be told I could order only two drinks -- I had to get someone from my table to buy the third. Apparently the police want this rule applied during happy hour in case any of the Bourbon patrons get violent between 6 and 9pm.

In each of these incidents someone could have or did get angry. The regulations do as much to create problems as solve them. But Big Nanny seemingly won't stop until every aspect of our lives is regulated and enforced. Even then the bitch won't be happy.

It's insulting, humiliating and intolerable. It's a symptom of an immature culture and the increasing regulation just prevents it from growing up.

Micro-control of behaviour tightens its noose around this dead town

The micro-control of Sydneysiders' behaviour has cranked up two more notches with a new set of draconian anti-pub rules and, less seriously but symptomatic, a ban on personal screensavers for the already highly regimented public servants at Town Hall.

The new 'safety rating' for pubs decrees that eight assaults on the premises in a year will result in sanctions and 19 will result in the 2am lockout package being applied. Already the new regime means the 48 pubs currently under the 2am rules will grow to 100. Apparently The Mean Fiddler in Rouse Hill has lost its 'worst pub' title to Penrith Panthers which had 48 reported assaults in the past year.

Neither venue is in a concentrated entertainment precinct so it's another dent in the saturation-point theory that Clover Moore and local NIMBYs prosecute. As I keep saying, the problem is the concentration of bogans, not venues. That's why the violence rate around here is in fact 20% below the state average according Clover Moore's own figures. But logic never gets in the way of a good moral panic.

Meanwhile at Town Hall Clover Moore is backing senior management who removed, en masse, staff screensavers -- typically the spouse, the kids, the dog or a nice view -- and replaced them with the fictional 'City of Villages' logo. Apparently it's to stop 'inappropriate' screensavers, as if that could not have been dealt with on a case basis. The reactions of staff are typically not recorded. The Diary quotes Cr Shayne Mallard objecting. Again, the so-called lefties make the Liberal guy look good.

The pub with no plonk

Bizarre things do happen. I dropped in to the Vegas Hotel yesterday evening for a drink with some local friends and as usual ordered a wine, white in this case.

At 'Pie O'Clock' as Bill calls it -- when the pub lays on a nice selection of party pies and sausage rolls -- I returned to the bar for a second wine to wash down the food, thinking this a reasonable desire in a place that serves little but pies, 'piss' and pokies. After all that's why I was there.

But they had only enough white for about an inch in the glass. The barmaid asked someone to get some more and said I could have the splash of wine in the meantime, no charge.

After a while I went back, to be told there was no white. I thought about it and decided I'd simply switch to red. Different bar person, same problem -- an inch of red in my glass was all they had left and nor was any going to arrive. Bemused and needing to wash down a pie, I asked could I have the quarter-glass of wine.

No, I was told, you have to pay for it. OK, I replied, how much for that?

Full price.

Taken aback, I checked -- you mean I have to pay full price for a quarter-glass of wine?

Yes.

I refused this kind offer, thinking the wine would have to be tossed down the sink. But no, the bar person got a small funnel and poured it back into the bottle!

For a moment I felt trapped in a Kafka-esque parallel reality.

Aghast at yet another demonstration of poor Sydney hospitality, I left the pub and went home.

There I cooked a delicious dinner washed down with a decent white followed by some Wolf Blas port and a nice cigar (no inhaling!) to the strains of John Eliot Gardiner’s gorgeous recordings of Beethoven 5 and 6.

It was an oasis of cocooned culture in this still struggling city.

Cannabis link to mental illness questioned by university study

Even as prohibitionists like DFA claim we are about to experience a 'tsunami' of mental illness because of cannabis use, another large scale study indicating the opposite has come to light.

The Keele University study, which looked at 600,000 people per year, found that schizophrenia and psychosis had not increased after cannabis use soared between 1976 and 1996. Read the abstract here. Commentary from UKCIA here.

It seems the government knew about this study when it ignored the advice of its own experts and reclassified cannabis as a Class B drug from its previous Class C (less serious) status. UKCIA are calling this new prohibition Reefer Madness VII, a fair enough title.

UN drugs policy further out on a bending limb

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has aroused widespread criticism by stubbornly championing continuing prohibition in its latest annual report.

Its executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, is however finding it difficult to maintain his arguments in the face of growing opposition. His commentary shows it, falling into self-contradiction laced with evidence-free assertions.

"Illicit drugs pose a danger to health. That's why drugs are, and must remain, controlled," he says.

Well they are in fact a much worse danger to health under prohibition but Costa's assertion that drugs are controlled is ludicrous. Who is controlling, for example, the heroin that flows through Kings Cross each day? Not the police, health authorities or the tax department. Who, Mr Costa?

The fact that drug supply has soared thousands of percent since the War on Drugs started is dismissed with the frequently repeated statement that drug use has "stabilised", evidence that prohibition is working.

This could equally be seen another way -- that prohibited drugs are so freely available that pretty much everyone in the world who wants to use them is already doing so. Thus, demand has stabilised. It would also rebut Costa's assertion that legal, controlled availability would "unleash a drug epidemic". Costa presents no evidence for that -- it just would, he says.

Costa's nonsense is up against some powerful new voices though. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) now includes over 13,000 ex cops, judges and the like and adds a new gravitas to the debate.

There's a succinct commentary on this from Greg Barns in the Mercury, which I have drawn from here. He urges Australian police, politicians and courts to study LEAP's position and end the nonsense that is filling our jails to no good effect.

More on Costa later!

Prohibition's House of Cards

A virtual deck of playing cards showing hypocritical politicians who have used drugs but still support prohibition is the latest chapter in the 'Nice people take drugs' campaign from UK charity Release. While George Bush is the joker, our local MP Malcolm Turnbull, and Tony Abbott, get a mention. The best quote comes from US hardline conservative Newt Gingrich who reportedly said:

When I smoked pot it was illegal but not immoral. Now it is illegal and immoral. The law didn't change, only the morality. That's why you get to go to jail and I don't.

Just goes to show people can rationalise anything.

The other side of politics is included as well, with Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the deck.

Viewers can nominate their own hypocrites to add to the deck.

Big guns fire blanks at Kings Cross

Clover Moore has teamed up with the politically desperate Premier Nathan Rees to solve the problem of Kings Cross, reports the SMH today. Chk Chk Boom.

They want to freeze the number of liquor licenses in Kings Cross, Oxford St and parts of George St.

Makes you wonder -- if they just freeze the licences, won't things stay about the same? And if these areas are already oversaturated as Clover claims, where would any new ones have gone anyway and who would drink in them? Already several of the existing over-renovated and indebted venues are going broke (see post below). The horse has bolted, Clover!

And if they freeze licences, what of Clover's small bars push? Easy, says Clover -- just put them anywhere but Kings Cross and Oxford St and parts of George St. But hang on, doesn't this even further freeze our entertainment precincts into their present profile while spreading drinking fallout into other precincts?

Existing venues must be happy at the move as it will protect their turf.

And another thing: Clover's specially commissioned research explicitly says that the only way to reduce the amount of alcohol consumption is to reduce licenses of all kinds. It doesn't say "except for Melbourne-style small bars". Seems Clover just wants to cherrypick the bits that suit the Queen's agenda.

But moral panics are never logical.

Big pubs going broke

The Sydney renovation disease seems to be catching up with some big pubs including the Vegas and The Mansions in Kings Cross. They spend millions on renos and then go broke, it seems, while we still pay premium prices for a drink and long for a real pub.

They are blaming the 2am lockout as reported in the SMH today: "The Oxford Hotel was turning away about 150 patrons after 2am on a Saturday night, the Vegas was turning away about 140."

No doubt this would hurt but so would the cost of renovating the Vegas, whose owners then bought the Mansions and don't seem to have done much with that boring under-patronised watering hole. Nor is the Mansions affected by the 2am lockout.

Rumours abound of other pubs in trouble -- the recently rebuilt Kings Cross Hotel for one, and the Chifley has closed down for several months while serious building faults stemming from its recent renovation are rectified by owner Australand.

The Bourbon seems to be working well thanks to having the best happy hour in town and a very good $10 steak -- a long way from their AA-list premium position they attempted to take after its $9 million beige-and-pebblecrete reno. It's been obvious for some time that all the pubs couldn't successfully cater exclusively to the top price bracket.

And the Taylor Sq hotel has been sold with all existing planning approvals for $5.5m but free of the restrictions on the previous owner.

My point about 'over-saturation' seems to be coming true -- when the market is over-saturated, venues will go broke. Ham-fisted bureaucrats or teetotalling NIMBYs trying to manage it is the last thing we need.

Media Watch roasts Herald's pot rot

I had been looking for the time and energy to roast the Sydney Morning Herald's so-called medical reporter Kate Benson for uncritically publishing nonsense about drugs, but Media Watch has done it for me.

Benson on June 17 wrote about Cannabis addiction, a problematic concept that at worst refers to psychological addiction rather than the far more severe physical addiction suffered by frequent cigarette smokers or heroin users. The two conditions bear little similarity so using the same word for them is misleading.

I have seen many regular pot smokers simply give it up, with no side effects.

But the fiction of 'cannabis addiction' has unfortunately taken hold of the AOD sector since prohibitionist governments started throwing money at cannabis addiction programs, providing many in the sector a whole new career path. These people are not going to question the concept as their careers depend on it. Jan Copeland and NCPIC are prime examples, although they have retreated from their early alarmist nonsense since professional communicator Paul Dillon joined them.

But back to Kate Benson, not only does she mindlessly propagate a misconception of cannabis addiction but she totally screws up the statistics, claiming that one in six Australians were addicted when the Household Survey she quoted actually says that one in thirty smoke it daily.

Cool, Kate. Several of the comments on the Media Watch site ask what Kate was smoking when she wrote the story?

I meet a Dr Who companion

Having watched Dr Who religiously since about 1963 I was thrilled to find I had met a real live Dr Who companion, one of those attractive and plucky girls always a focus of my frustrated adolescent sexuality.

"Jo" was Jon Pertwee's Dr Who companion in the very early 1970s and later in real life married Barry Crocker, Sydney entertainer, singer & movie star.

I have met Barry a couple of times at local jazz gigs and we have been exchanging photos -- he gets a great shot, too. He travels with a look-twice blonde who I had not spoken to until the other night at Jazz@Joes. She was slightly interested in my attempts to get some art shots of raindrops on a car roof (one of those drunken inspirations that don't work out!).

I gathered they were married and her name was Katy but now I'm told she is THE Katy Manning from Dr Who! I did some Googling and sure enough -- they are one and the same person.

I know, I know -- it's beneath this blog to descend to celeb goss but hey... it's Jo from Dr Who!

Hi there Katy -- hope you don't mind my enthusiasm!

Pictured above are Barry and Katy with Edwin Duff. (There's something Dr Who-like about the shot, come to think of it.) Below are some BBC stills of Jo and Jon in the days. Check the uniforms of the soldiers in the first pic -- and Jo's trendy stripy top, groovy belt and tights in a lower shot. And last of all -- the unattainable delights of of my teenage angst!

Cameras roll for re-run of Jazz@Joes

Jazz@Joes earlier this month was such a success that an ABC documentary crew are paying the band to do a rerun for the cameras as part of a doco they are shooting about the Abe Saffron days of Kings Cross.

Seats are limited to make room for the cameras in the small venue so if you want to be a part of Kings Cross History, book now!

Edwin Duff will again lead the David Smith Trio plus there will be a special recording of Edwin's song Heartbeat of Sydney. Despite winning competitions and being written by a local, the song has always played second fiddle to My City of Sydney (which, desperate for a rhyme, talks about non-existent church steeples in Woolloomooloo).

It's $30 which gets you a three-course dinner. BYO @ $2.00 corkage per bottle -- there's a good bottleshop a few doors away. Bookings via John Redmond on 0420 711 273 or at the Café on 9368 1188. Starts at 7.30pm, Monday 22 June. It's at 190 Victoria Street Kings Cross.

Picture: Edwin at the last show with Bob Gillespie on drum in the background

Steve Fielding's intelligence in doubt

True, you only weaken your case if you mock the opposition but Senator Steve Fielding's trip to the US to find out about climate change puts his intelligence in acute doubt. It seems he went for his information to The Heartland Institute which is paid by the tobacco industry to deny that cigarettes cause cancer and by fossil fuel industries to deny climate change.

His 'news' that solar flares were the cause of global warming has been discredited for years, as he could have learned from five minutes of Google search.

Matthew England, joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, clarifies Senator Fielding's misconceptions in The SMH today:

The cosmic ray effect was shown to be negligible several years ago, while solar forcing declined over the last quarter of the 20th century at a time when temperatures shot up rapidly.

We are also seeing winters warm more rapidly than summers, and nights warm more rapidly than days, the opposite of what would be the case if the sun were driving the change.

A bunch of letters hit the papers defending our Steve, but they all talked about the Heartland Institute's other sources of funding and similarly tangential distractions. None addressed the faulty science he was peddling.

Dumb and dumber

Not to be fazed by all this logic being thrown at him, Fielding retreated to the fallback position of the factually bereft and came out with the next line of the denial script, saying that anyway, even if the science is right, it would be suicidal for Australia to "Go it alone". Er, Steve, do a bit of basic reading about what other countries are doing and the targets they are setting. We are already a decade behind.

Climate change sceptics get busted over and again peddling trash, indicating that they have no valid arguments. Meanwhile the new coal loader at Newcastle is being built several metres above sea level. How ironic -- and hypocritical.

Prohibitionists demolished in Dutch tribunal

Prohibitionists currently cite the recent bans on cannabis coffeshops in Amsterdam as evidence that liberal pot policies have failed. The truth is that the Christian Democratic Party (CDA), elected on an  anti-immigration platform, are simply cracking down on them in accordance with their ideology.

A coalition of reformers organised an independent tribunal to debate the policies. The Cannabis and Hemp Museum stumped up 200,000 Euros reward to any political party which could convince the tribunal that the ban had more positive effects than negative.

The CDA accepted the challenge and a key debate took place between a CDA MP and Hans van Duijn, former president of the Dutch Police Association and a member of LEAP (Law enforcement against Prohibition).  The court could not find any argument against the plea for legalisation of the cannabis market proposed by van Duijn.

The organisers had difficulties in finding people in favour of the ban: 

“There is no doctor in the Netherlands who is willing to maintain that cannabis is a major public health danger and a ban has any positive effect at all.”

Crime Commission says drugs more popular than ever

“In 2007–08 the number of cocaine detections at the Australian border increased by 71 per cent, and the number of cocaine seizures was the highest on record,” says the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) on the release of its Illicit Drug Data Report 2007–2008.

Cannabis and ecstasy use remain high and heroin is on the increase following a rise in production in Burma. There were a whopping 52,465 cannabis arrests in 2007–08. Some 86% of these arrests snared users, not dealers. 

Most illegal importation into Australia is via the post.

So much for the facts. It's the spin accompanying them that's interesting. 

One might conclude from the above that prohibition isn't working. But no, the Sydney Morning Herald gushes about Australia's "cocaine binge" and the ACC talks about "the scourge of illicit drugs" even as it admits that other indicators such as hospital admissions have not risen.

If the drugs were such a scourge, you'd wonder why so many people were taking them. No, Virginia, it's not because of addiction -- ecstasy and pot are not physically addictive and by far the majority of coke users are strictly recreational. 

Of course the bikie wars had to be dragged in. See if you can spot the fallacy in this Herald quote from the ACC's chief executive, John Lawler:

Mr Lawler said recent violence in the Sydney underworld was linked to illegal drugs.

"Drugs are in large part what is driving it - competition for market share, people trying to muscle in on market share and other ructions within the outlaw motorcycle and organised crime groups," he said.

No, Mr Lawler, prohibition is driving it as that's what creates the link between drugs and criminals.

But you wouldn't expect a crime executive to push a line that might put him out of a high-paying job, would you? 

Why sniffer dogs are so inaccurate

Barry Cooper, a very senior US drug dog operator and trainer, started developing a conscience as he approached his 800th drug bust. He eventually realised he was locking up the wrong people for the wrong reasons and has produced a video available online titled never get busted.

It also seems US dog handlers often instruct their animals to make false alerts so they can search people in contravention of their Constitutional rights.

Cooper now works for the other side and has been targeted by an unsuccessful DEA dirty-tricks campaign attempting to damage his credibility. In this article he explains the ins and outs of drug dog operations including how best to transport drugs without being sniffed.

Picture: Barry Cooper and dog in his former life with some of the loot that drives the drug industry, courtesy of prohibition

Hot doc 'Night' captures the magic of Kings Cross

While the purse-mouthed complain that "people come to Kings Cross to just party on the streets" (Police community meeting last week), a hot doc on SBS last night showed fabulous footage of lovers, laughers and live-wires on the night streets of Kings Cross. In gorgeously honest interviews people revealed why they need night life to release their inner poet, to let go, to be themselves -- therapy for the constrictions of work, daily life and the suburbs.

Night presented an alternative and more realistic media view of Kings Cross than the usual footage of fights, syringes and shootings of the Ibrahim siblings. This is what the majority of people experience.

Night further crystallised for me why I live here, why I need to bathe in the river of international life that flows through this place and why I defend it against the squelchers who enjoy keeping logbooks of noise events more than getting a life.

About 25% of the doc was shot within a few hundred metres of my house. I had a small epiphany as a woman described her dreams of flying over the city at night, circling the Centrepoint tower. As she spoke, an aerial camera circled the tower while, watching TV in bed, I could see the real thing out my window . I fancied briefly that I could see her flying in the night sky outside. The camera then flew up William Street across the big Westfield neons which I could see out the other window. It was as if my walls had dissolved and I was airborne myself, shades of childhood novels like The Wishing Chair but also of the Leunig cartoon in which people watch a sunset on TV while the real thing is happening outside!

The doc is a worthy companion to The Glittering Mile shot in 1964. I need to get a copy! Congratulations to Lawrence Johnston and SBS.

From the SBS TV guide:

10.00  Night

Hot Docs - A stunning and cinematic documentary which celebrates Australia at night. From director Lawrence Johnston who made the internationally award winning documentary Eternity, this film shows society in all its forms, people and places, urban and rural, and explores the universal nature of night and how we experience night. It is brought together by people from all walks of life telling their stories of what the night means to them, the pleasure and the pain, in reality and fantasy, work and leisure, past and present. It shows people from all cultures going about their daily lives under the darkness of the wondrous nature of night and juxtaposes the amazing differences in our varied existence between dusk and the dawn of a new day(Commissioned by SBS, in English) 

Dismantling media myths

STOP PRESS! Since I posted the report below, I have learned that the Release ad campaign pictured has been pulled, according to The Guardian. Prohibitionists cannot tolerate open debate, because their arguments do not withstand the clear light of day. Please fight the censors and spread this link far and wide!

Original post: 

More people in the UK smoke pot than voted for the Labour Party at the last election. Most of them are perfectly nice, constructive, sane members of society . Yet the establishment continues to demonise this very large minority by constant association with crime, violence and mental illness. "What about cannabis-induced psychosis?", you may ask. Well, yes, there is a tiny link even though 99.99875% of UK cannabis users DON'T suffer it.

UK drug law reform charity Release has begun an advertising campaign challenging the stereotypes with the simple but clever line "Nice people take drugs". Their aim is to put the drugs debate on a realistic footing and into the public domain.

I have long made the observation that drug warriors should spend a few minutes watching people walking by on the footpath and meditate on the fact that around one in three of the perfectly nice, functional people they see use illicit drugs. It would be difficult to reconcile such level-headed observation with the moral panic these people generate (although most would not let reality change their views).

Sweeping sunshine off the roof

A New York Times article graphically describes the rising carnage being wrought in America’s midwest by a growing supply of illegal heroin from Mexico.

It clearly illustrates how the economic divide between poor Mexico and rich US drives people to the massive profits from drug supply which are made possible by prohibition. People are simply so desperate that legal sanctions do not deter them.

For once, a truthful statement from those pushers of prohibition, the DEA:

The authorities say that local arrests rarely make a difference. New dealers pop up within weeks. “It’s like sweeping sunshine off the roof,” Mr. Marotta of the D.E.A. said.

So prohibitionists who advocate tougher prohibition are really just urging us to sweep harder at that sunshine on the roof.  What we really need is a new broom of reform.

Great online archive of Kings Cross History

Those sensitive residents who keep complaining that Kings Cross "is getting worse" would do well to check this great ABC archive of downloadable footage and sound from the past.

Particularly note the footage and audio in "The Dirty Half-Mile". Listen to the background noise in the street interviews. It sounds just like nowadays on a big night.

See the gorgeous young swingers dancing at the Whisky A Go-Go which, incidentally, was way outside of the current ultra-concentrated Entertainment Precinct, as were many other clubs.

There are interviews with Juanita Neilsen, Bea Miles, Robin Dalton (nee Eakin, daughter of the famous "Gun doctor"), Larry Writer (author of Razor which tells the tales of the past gangland violence of 'Razorhurst') and much more.

The stories are about drinking, dancing, drugs, gambling, prostitution -- all the same stuff certain types complain about now. The same sort  were complaining about it then, too, as shown at length in the docco The Glittering Mile, not available on this archive. Do what you like with the Cross, these people will always complain, and it's always "getting worse".

Picture: Kings Cross in 1961. Nowadays the local NIMBYs are outraged because Bayswater Road becomes "impassable" sometimes on a big night. So what? Enjoy it like the evident majority does and did!

Jazz @ Joe’s on Wednesday

Here's a rare chance to experience the magic of old-style stagecraft and superb musicianship in an atmospheric new venue. Edwin Duff and the Dave Smith Trio will kick off a regular "Jazz @ Joe's" season at the intimate Joe's Deluxe Café on Wednesday June 3, 190 Victoria St, Potts Point, 2011.
Edwin Duff, the cranky Queen of Kings Cross, is a world-class jazz vocalist who will present the Harold Arlen songbook in 3 sets between 8.30pm and his 81st Birthday at midnight, accompanied by the redoubtable David Smith on guitar, Jim Mitchell on double bass and Bob Gillespie on drums. These guys really know their chops and the way they work with a singer showcases the fluidity and improvisational skill of true jazz musicians.


The venue is very small and intimate so bookings are advisable. It's $45 for a three-course dinner & show. BYO @ $2.00 corkage per bottle -- there's a good bottleshop a few doors away.
Bookings via John Redmond on 0420 711 273 or at the Café on (02) 9368 1188.
We'll be putting on more performers at Joe's in coming months, so keep your eyes peeled.

Pictured: Top, David Smith (who has studied and worked with renowned guitarist Joe Pass). Right, Edwin in bling.

Another cannonball lobs into Oxford Street

The small retail tenants of lower Oxford St, much of which is owned by Council but untenanted, are again kicking up a stink at their treatment. Seems Council tenants are being hit with an unexpected Land Tax, undisclosed by Council during lease negotiations, on top of their more general woes.

Council denies this, saying it's between the State Government and the tenants as Councils are exempt from the unpopular and regressive tax.

Retailers say the street is degenerating into a vomit-stained night-only economy. Council's strategy of bashing licensed premises might make the lawyers rich but it fails to address the underlying causes of the problem. Gay culture is changing and moving west so venues are being promoted more to suburbans, bringing more of the problems of Kings Cross to Oxford St.

The street at peak hours remains a six-lane freeway serving Eastern Suburbs car drivers. 

Council can't do much about that RTA-inspired disaster but it could, as promised for years, renovate and tenant their vast upstairs office and hotel spaces. If this put an extra hundred people in the street every day, and each spent say $20 a day, it would be a small but real and sustainable move in the right direction. 

The locals have launched a website asking for suggestions. Any other ideas, you?

Picture: The Hyde Park cannon commemorating the sinking of the Sydney takes aim at Oxford Street.

Temperance union strikes back

A letter in this week's City News responding to my opinion pieces exposes the tiresome poverty of argument and evidence offered by the anti-alcohol activists in Kings Cross.

The letter, from Ms Sue Hanley, totally ignores every point in my original articles and effectively just restates her dislike of the area she lives in.

"…all of us need assured levels of peace and quiet," she writes, postulating a silent-night world in which red light/party precincts don't exist. Kings Cross is about 250 metres of part-time party precinct in around 4,900 square km of Sydney. My point remains that Ms Hanley is perfectly free to live somewhere else. What about the tens of thousands of tourists on holiday and the partygoers who come here? Don't they need a place to let their hair down as much as we locals need sleep. Just one little precinct in the whole of Sydney? Too much for Ms Hanley.

Ms Hanley quotes lots of research "proving" the relationship between venue concentration and crime. But she simply ignores the fact that crime in Kings Cross has steadily fallen at the same time as the capacity of venues increased by some 3,300 people. She was told this point-blank by the Kings Cross Police Superintendent at a community meeting. Ms Hanley was trying to draw a link between the proliferation of new venues around the Coke sign area and a cluster diagram showing lots of crime incidents in the same area. 

"You'll get no joy out of that," said the Super, "because the crime is decreasing."

Yet Ms Hanley's letter makes much of "objectivity". 

She also ignores information in the research report which shows Manly and Coogee have higher rates of alcohol-related violence but fewer and less concentrated venues than Kings Cross. Inconvenient truths, Ms Hanley. None of the top 20 "worst" pubs in Sydney are in Kings Cross or Darlinghurst according to Police data. While I have shown this data itself to be extremely dodgy, the trend is clear. The problem is the concentration of bogans, not venues.

"We are nostalgic for the days of naughty but nice – within the limits of the law and without significant risks to our personal well being and safety," writes Ms Hanley, conveniently creating a fictitious past. 

Sorry, Sue, but the Kings Cross of previous decades was far more unpleasant and dangerous than today's Cross -- Just read a few books like Frank Black's Kings Cross Double Cross (available at The Cross Art + Books in lower Roslyn St) or check my photo/video collection showing the streets of the Cross packed and impassable in 1945, 1961, 1964, 1978 etc etc. In those days when licensed venues were heavily restricted, the industry simply went underground, speakeasy-style. There are currently two unapproved venues that I know about operating in the area. Perhaps Ms Hanley simply wants more of these?

But in the end it's the futility of Council's and Ms Hanley's campaign that saddens me. Instead of supporting a million positive ideas that could make the Cross a far better place, she joins Council in good old-fashioned squelching. And what if they succeed in the litany of court cases they are preparing for? Even if they reduced licensed venues by, say, 20% it would make little difference to the noise and mayhem. The emptier venues would simply fill up, and maybe some of the action would spread to non-entertainment precincts, inflicting the fallout on those who intelligently choose to live in an area that better suits their temperament and age.

It's the wrong strategy for the wrong objective.

Meanwhile the lawyers will have a field day, squandering ratepayer's money on the same Quixotic campaign middleclass councillors have been fruitlessly waging for decades.

Hate crimes stain our streets

There appears to be regular assault of transvestite sex workers by young suburban guys coming in to town for the purpose, before having their night out. I was 'lucky' enough to witness one of these vicious assaults and was able to intervene and stop it. 

Unfortunately this does not seems to have been an isolated incident. I have reported this in The City News, here and here. Personally I am offended by the amount of police resources dedicated to dragging people out of pubs or off the street and searching them because a sniffer dog may have detected some cannabis or ecstasy, while there seems little protection from the really serious violent crime like these assaults, and the shootings and muggings that regularly put Kings Cross in the news.

Council's anti-alcohol policy up for comment

Council has spent a fortune commissioning two studies in an attempt to manufacture "evidence" for their belief that Kings Cross and Oxford St have reached a "saturation point" of licensed venues which has in turn produced an explosion of "alcohol-fuelled violence".

Unfortunately for Council, crime and assault has reduced steadily over the past year even as new venues with a capacity of 3,300 people have opened. Their studies use data from 2001-2006 and ignore the three years since.

Even so, the actual research is still very ambivalent. It notes that "saturation point" is not an objective thing but a matter of opinion. One of the studies is therefore an opinion survey which interviewed 190 residents of Kings Cross (excluding those in pubs, interestingly). While Council cherrypicks bits of the data to support its agenda of blocking approvals for licensed venues, lots of the data shows the opposite trend. In Kings Cross, only 19% (36.1 people) wanted to “restrict opening hours/alcohol outlets”, while the same number wanted more small bars. Oxford Street data was similar. This is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Council’s anti-pub position.

Councils and the surveys ignore the wishes or the needs of the tens of thousands of visitors and tourists who come weekly to Kings Cross in party mode, a massive social force. Against that they can show 36.1 people who agree with them and who apparently believe they have the right to suppress  Sydney's only destination precincts because they moved into them. It's just like someone who moves next door to a motorway and then campaigns to have it closed.

Even a Land and Environment Court  magistrate suggested  that residents who can't stand living around a party precinct should simply move elsewhere. This outraged local anti-alcohol campaigner Andrew Woodhouse who called for the resignation of the magistrate. Mr Woodhouse maintains that people have a right to quiet and good order no matter where they choose to live, and says that people can't move because they are "shackled to their mortgages".

As property prices have continued to rise around here, one would think these people could sell up and buy elsewhere if they hate it so much. Just a thought.

The high-profile violence around here is not alcohol-related in any case. Transvestite sex workers are regularly and systematically bashed, thugs bring guns out and shoot people, and a policewoman was recently bashed in the head with a brick and robbed. This is serious and should be the focus of public policy, not a vain attempt to shut down the only 250 metres of party precinct in around 4,900 square kilometres of Sydney. 

However the old squelchers will eventually learn the same lesson as previous generations of temperance activists who have tried to "rescue" Kings Cross. Like all prohibitions of popular culture, the best they can do is create a ‘balloon effect’. What you squeeze in one area simply pops out in another. The good people of other suburbs need to beware of Council's latest campaign.

For a fuller analysis see my City News reports here and here.

The City's research and policy is on exhibition and up for comment until July 31 here.

The serial complainers always flood Council with their view, but the majority are too busy getting on with their life to be 'Council nerds'. I urge you to have a look, make up your own mind, and email a comment to tbruckshaw@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au.

Just keep it short and make a clear for or against statement, followed by a few points. One of these might be that concentration of venues into an entertainment precinct has many advantages, which Council and the research ignores. I've listed some in my City News analysis.

How to make illicit drugs boring

Here is a very succinct essay (by Alex Coolman, a San Francisco-based attorney working primarily on criminal appeals) on how to remove the glamour factor from illicit drugs. 

Dramatic anti-drugs ads signally fail to reduce use. On the other hand, Tylenol packaging is really boring. While it's possibly cool and adventurous to get your drugs from a condom someone has smuggled inside their intestines, a bottle with a childproof lid, obtained on prescription, is not glamorous.

If drug dealers had to spend their time minimising their tax instead of dodging bullets, how much glamour would they project?

The psychology is simple -- it's just the same as when Fred Nile lambasts a movie and calls for its prohibition. Everyone immediately wants to see it. As explained beautifully in the book Madame Joy, nothing increases demand like prohibition.

KX shooting vid goes viral

Apparently this news clip from Channel Nine has gone viral and is so popular it's being remixed on Youtube. (233,420 views by 26 May).

Check Clare Werbeloff talking about the "wogs", one fat and one thin, who argued about sleeping with one's cousin before one shot the other last Saturday night. 

Check the police numbers! While the local NIMBYS are using this as 'proof' that venues need to be shut down, we don't know that alcohol was involved. But we do know that the perp brought a gun with him on his night out. I'd say that's the fundamental problem, and punishing whatever venue these guys were at will do nothing to solve it. 

PS 25 May: The SMH reports this morning that Clare Werbeloff's eyewitness account, described above, was a fake.

"We have interviewed her and she has not witnessed the shooting," said acting Kings Cross Police crime manager, Detective Inspector Matt McQueen. " She has admitted to making it all up and has not witnessed the shooting."

IMO that makes the whole saga even better! It's live theatre of the highest order, impro from the party precinct. Alcohol-fuelled creativity! "You slept with my cousin" is the new millennium equivalent of Didn't you kill my bruvver? (by Ian Drury & the Blockheads?). Fully sick.

Council destroys more public art

The Kings Cross community was horrified last week when Council contractors removed four life-sized photographic portraits installed by Channel Ten’s Guerrilla Gardens team seven weeks earlier on the corner of Ward Avenue and Roslyn Street.

The work was on a private wall with full co-operation of the owners, the 'Sisters on the corner,' Catholic nuns who have worked in the area for over 20 years.

I've written a full report in The City News.

Truly, the City of Villages would better be known as The City of Pillages. 

By contrast, when Guerrilla Gardens created an installation near the Balmain Tigers Club, Greens Mayor of Leichhardt Jamie Parker wrote to them advising that some of the plants would not survive the sunlight they were exposed to. The team responded and replaced the plants with more suitable varieties.  Result: Balmain richer, Kings Cross poorer. Thanks Clover.

Above: KX busker Cathie O’Brien posing in front of her portrait, part of the original installation. Below, today's blank walls courtesy of Clover Moore, with the disappointed 'Sisters on the corner' who had been thrilled to have the work on their wall.

PS 30 May: Council has apologised for the removal of the art and has issued the following statement:

“Unfortunately the mural was removed after a complaint was received from a member of the public about offensive graffiti on the mural. Rather than remove the graffiti only, City graffiti removal contractors took down the mural. The City supports the work of the Guerrilla Gardeners, providing there are no safety issues and we apologise for this error. The City is now investigating what options there are for reinstating the mural on the site.”

Prohibition debate shifting ground

The prohibition debate in Sydney seems to be shifting ground, with The SMH today kindly publishing another of my letters, this one called Prohibition doesn't work. I was responding to an Elizabeth Farrelly piece lamenting the burglary of her house by junkies and pinning the syndrome on the true cause: prohibition and junkies.

Another letter from a Redfern resident concurs. It seems living in the epicentre of street drug fallout and having to deal with it daily clarifies the mind (conservatives excepted of course -- they just carry on with their fallacious dogma).

In the past I have had little success getting letters on this topic published. Let's hope it signals a new framework for sensible public debate.

PS Dr Andrew Byrne from the Redfern Clinic has written in more detail how Portugal's systems work.

PPS 25 May: One reply to the letters above from  prohibitionist Matt Kwan was published on Saturday. My letter is described as "illogical" but see if you can pick the multiple fallacies in the following:

"Money will still matter

Michael Gormly and Thea Gumbert (Letters, May 22) believe legalisation of drugs such as heroin will result in less crime, as addicts will no longer have to steal to support their habits. This is illogical. Many illicit drugs are highly addictive. Sooner or later, dependence will outstrip addicts' capacity to pay, regardless of where they buy drugs. Stealing will continue under prohibition or legalisation, as both require money to be exchanged for drugs.

Matt Kwan Sydney"

I replied (see below) and wasn't published. But Stuart Cranston from Coogee nailed it better than I did with this letter published today:

Cigarette ban is no answer

Matt Kwan (Letters, May 23-24), when have you ever heard of a cigarette smoker, someone who is hooked on the most addictive drug in the world, committing a crime to pay for a packet? I guarantee that your answer would be never and the reason is that tobacco is legal and as a result the prices are kept low and within reason.

If, however, tobacco was criminalised, the price would skyrocket and the supply and distribution would be controlled and managed by organised criminal gangs. That is why the argument for prohibition fails dismally in this context.

Stuart Cranston Coogee

An elegant reply, Stuart! Two letters preceding his also rebut prohibitionist dogma as preached by Miranda Devine.

My unpublished reply to Matt Kwan follows:

It is Matt Kwan who is illogical about drug addiction (Letters 23 May). He thinks addiction has no upper limit to its consumption and therefore addicts would return to crime even if drugs were legal and regulated.

It ain’t necessarily so. Supply by prescription would imply not only built-in health management but also the ability of doctors to prescribe to the needs of the addict. Meanwhile the wheels would fall off the illegal supply chain, both from plummeting demand and ‘unfair’ price pressure from the regulated product. Yes, some addicts would try to operate outside the system but, faced with a choice of a long and possibly fruitless search on the streets or the certainty of a quality product at a much lower price, the desperate addict would overwhelmingly favour the latter, leaving us with far safer homes and more pleasant public spaces. 

Michael Gormly Woolloomooloo

Seriously, would you buy dodgy illegal product at $50 a hit when you could get a quality legal product around ten times cheaper? If addiction did drive users to more and more product, wouldn't their $5 hit still be better value than the $50 option? And if they did steal to get their $5, wouldn't that still imply a ten-times reduction in crime by addicts?

International drug cartels reportedly factor in a 50% loss of their product in transit, and still make exorbitant profits because there is no legal alternative to their product. Legal supply of drugs would send such a highly leveraged business to the wall quick smart. Imagine a legitimate business like GMH losing half the vehicles they export and having to double their RRP to compensate. Not viable.

Another thing Matt Kwan doesn't get is that most addicts keep their tolerance at a fairly steady level, many holding down jobs. It seems Matt believes the myths peddled by prohibitionists, which is understandable if he has little first-hand knowledge of the street drug scene.

Balancing the risks and benefits of cannabis

While the prohibitionists and most media keep demonising recreational drugs, amplifying every possible negative finding about them, a more balanced and factual body of data is slowly accumulating.

Much is made of the link between cannabis and schizophrenia, and piles of research is being funded to prove the link. However a Melbourne AOD researcher recently posted the following on the ANCD's Drugtalk email discussion group: 

Using the Lancet meta-analysis we can see that of 6.2 million cannabis smokers in the UK, 800 experienced schizophrenia. Thus 0.00125% of cannabis smokers experience schizophrenia. Or, 99.99875% of cannabis smokers do not.

So prohibitionists who use the mental illness argument to support their position are happy to persecute the 99.99875% who are not affected in a vain attempt to save the remainder, who it seems have contracted the disease anyway, despite prohibition. The stupidity is remarkable. The dishonesty of beating up this problem while obscuring the context of these tiny numbers is unforgivable.

Also The Beckley Foundation is about to research the link between cannabis and creativity. One day adults might be able to balance risk against benefit using credible information, like we can for most activities.

Meanwhile The Wall Street Journal has run a long piece interviewing Barak Obama’s new ‘Drugs Czar’ and it seems change is at least in the air. The report begins:

The Obama administration's new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.

In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation's drug issues.

"Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he said. "We're not at war with people in this country."

Climate sceptic’s new book refuted

I don’t quite understand why certain people seem hard-wired to believe that human activity has no effect on climate, and will believe any old crock that supports their view even after the claims have been disproved ad nauseam. Adelaide’s Professor Ian Plimer has published just such a book, his academic rank giving superficial credibility to his claims. However he is  a geologist with no previous work on climate science published, let alone peer-reviewed.

To its credit The Australian, which frequently publishes material from climate sceptics, has run a review shredding Plimer’s book, showing that it re-runs a litany of discredited furphies. Some of these beggar belief -- for instance according to Scienceblog, Plimer blindly accepts Khilyuk and Chilingar, the guys who compared human CO2 emissions with natural CO2 emissions over the entire history of the planet and concluded that human emissions were insignificant. These guys sound scientific, but they were comparing billions of years with hundreds. Be careful what you believe (including anything on this blog!). Always question authority.

Shock, horror! Old people outraged at young partygoers

The local NIMBYs have taken councillors on a night tour of Kings Cross to demonstrate the horror of lots of young people partying, reports The Herald. Despite the fact that real estate prices have held up well in the area, these ageing serial local whingers are apparently unable to sell up and move out. No, Kings Cross has to be suppressed back to some arbitrary level -- decided by Councillors no doubt -- where the fallout from partygoers is "acceptable".

It's almost funny that the very Council which has used regulation to concentrate Kings Cross into The Strip is now concerned about over-concentration. The solution? More regulation.

The old whingers trotted out their usual litany that the Cross was "much worse than it used to be". Yet Frank Black's book Kings Cross Double Cross is filled with incidents from the past that make even my hair stand on end... like a trucker who drove his prime mover down the stairs into a strip club because the receptionist had ripped him off in change, and a detective raping a rape victim with a bottle.

It's true that Sydney has far too many nasty, violent idiots who seem to have swallowed rap gangsta style and ethics whole , as I witnessed last week when I stopped two of them who were savagely beating a transvestite sex worker -- not drunk, just full of hate. But putting the screws on Kings Cross cannot make this go away, only shift the violence somewhere else. Your suburb perhaps? The NIMBYs need to think long and hard about their own ethics.

More high-visibility policing would do the most to mitigate problems, and my senior police sources say there is no lack of police because they just bring them in from other areas. Of course, sniffer dog squads at 4pm and troops of invisible undercover cops looking for drug action do nothing to help the main problem...

Half the problems the councillors were so horrified about were the result of existing regulation, like smokers on footpaths. All the unique but slightly dodgy small bars that used to dot the back streets have been forcibly closed by Council so now all the action is concentrated into the strip with a less-and-less diverse suburban crowd. But of course straight bourgeois people like our Councillors and NIMBYs can only see one way forward... more regulation. 

Psst... it won't work! 

Interestingly, all the 'problems' the councillors saw were on the uncontrolled streets but they are going to target the venues which are a controlled environment, even as the Herald story described revellers drinking from winecask bladders in the street (there's an empty one outside my front door right now!)

Picture: KX at 4am on Friday night. I dragged myself out of bed to get a shot of stranded revellers to illustrate the lack of public transport at that time -- only to find the place literally crawling with vacant cabs! Oh well.

Council manufactures ammunition for its War on Kings Cross

Crime in Kings Cross in nearly all categories has steadily fallen over the past year, even as more big new licensed venues than ever have opened. Any evidence-based approach would have to consider the strong possibility that Council's mantra of "More licensed premises = more crime so let's restrict the premises" is flawed.

But no, Council has gone ahead and manufactured a junk study using data from 2001–2006 that 'proves' their hypothesis, even though only 14% of 190 local respondents to a face-to-face survey agreed with it.

The Sydney Morning Herald has swallowed the spin whole, not only taking the study seriously (a serious failure of critical thinking by Urban Affairs reporter Paul Bibby) but quoting police out of context (according to police I have spoken to since).

If the hypothesis had any legs, why is it that crime has fallen significantly over the past year even as huge venues have opened including The Trademark, Piano Bar, Kings Cross Hotel, Madame deBiers, the Sugarmill and Elk. A number of licensed restaurant/bars have also opened. 

And why, when Councillors were apprised of those facts last night by Kings Cross Partnership chairman Adrian Bartels, was he aggressively questioned by Councillor Harris (Greens) as if he was some sort of idiot for not understanding the clear data in the Council study.  Cr Harris then turned to Police for clarification only to have Mr Bartels’ statements verified. 

Cr Mallard (Liberal) asked Cr Harris if he was going to apologise but it was not to be, and nor did any of the other Councillors let the facts get in the way of a good bit of temperance union dogma as they voted in support of the study, which will soon go on exhibition on Council’s website for public comment. 

Just one example of the nonsense in the research is the way it handled the fact that Manly and Coogee have fewer licensed premises than Kings Cross yet more crime -- it waffled on about the size of venues and said this reflected "evidence that a small number of hotels are often associated with a large proportion of crime." Huh? Doesn't that contradict their whole approach? And could the higher crime rate simply reflect the higher proportion of moronic thugs that inhabit those places? (Ask any late-night taxi driver about the demographics of Coogee and Manly). But such subtle possibilities were not examined in the research.

This is my take on the problem - that we have a suburban yob problem, not a venue problem. If anything the pubs are over-managed as they scramble to comply with the existing plethora of regulations that just put up the price of a drink for the rest of us.

Punishing the venues won't make the yobs disappear. At best they will go somewhere else to make their mischief. And that's the real agenda -- good old-fashioned NIMBYism. 

Council’s report and junk studies are already available below.

The agenda item summary is here:

 

The "Late Night Trading: Community Perceptions" report by Urbis, dated 30 June 2008, is here. 

And finally, the "cumulative impact study", a report from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre for the City of Sydney entitled "Alcohol-related crime in city of sydney LGA", is here:

PS: I have previously taken apart the police data linking venues to violence, and it's all over the place like a mad person's breakfast -- no credibility whatsoever. I analysed it in a City News editorial.  Anyone using it as a basis for further research also seriously compromises their work. Interestingly, no response to my piece was forthcoming.

Prisoners wanted

The Sydney Morning Herald kindly printed one of my letters last week, calling it…

"Wanted: prisoners"

The threatened NSW "jail sale" has implicit dangers seemingly not yet aired ("Union leaders threaten to thwart Labor's prison privatisation plot", April 28). Just as the Government guaranteed private road tunnel operators a certain amount of traffic to guarantee their revenue, it is likely to promise private incarcerators a certain number of prisoners.

This would create a chilling conflict of interest, with the Government facing compensation payouts to jail operators if it reduced crime or liberalised laws.

The justice system should be driven by justice, not by fear of fiscal pain, and it should remain in public hands.

Michael Gormly Woolloomooloo