Media Release

8 October 1999

CRACKING DOWN ON PUBLIC SPITTING

Northland MP, Brian Donnelly, is calling for a crackdown on public spitting in order to reduce the horror health statistics of Northland.

“Certain groups of people in Northland have forgotten that spitting anywhere you like is a health hazard. We need to re-establish an anti-spitting climate.

“Northland Health should have spent some of its $3.3 million surplus this year spearheading such a campaign. Instead, health officials have sat back and watched TB and meningitis statistics explode.

“It is not only poverty, but also behaviour which is causing the appalling health record of Northland. This unhealthy behaviour can be controlled through education and the public simply not accepting it,” said Mr Donnelly.

“What we are facing is a poverty of understanding. We should be treating the causes before they lead to the problems. That capacity is available, it is just not being used”.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>