Elizabeth Pisani: The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS: New York: WW Norton: 2008. New Zealanders can pride ourselves on taking a sober, serious stance toward HIV/AIDS prevention over the last quarter-century, but what about elsewhere in the world? Pisani’s book is especially interesting because she spent some time working alongside waria (transgender) sex workers in urban Jakarta. Unlike their rural sisters, who play religious and ceremonial roles in the countryside, urban waria have to deal with earning a living, and many turn to sex work to support themselves. Sex work? But isn’t Indonesia the world’s largest Muslim-majority ...

And in a mixed bag this morning, there are events aplenty in Canada, as federal Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper prepares for a general election which his party may not even win, after only a single term of office. It is uncertain what this will mean for Onsite, the recovery and detoxification facility that is part of the controversial Vancouver Insite safe injecting facility for IV drug users in Vancouver’s impoverished Downtown Eastside. Giving the lie to Harper administration rhetoric about attention to drug abstinence and recovery programmes, the Toronto Globe and Mail notes that in British Columbia, and Canada as ...

Adding insult to injury, as one of my fellow commuters put it succinctly, Fullers ferries is having another season of engine breakdowns, shoddy service and a general Winter of discontent among its customers. It doesn't seem to be enough for them to announce extraordinary inflated price rises, but to reduce the service to a slow trickle akin to water torture.Last night the hordes waiting for the 6.30pm had a sinking feeling all was not well, what with the Jet Raider already out of action for over a week, and now the Discoverer laid up with engine trouble too. It was ...