Save the Humans

UK Bans Visits by Some Lunatics

I was amused to note that a couple of anti-gay preachers were denied entry to the UK recently. It could be seen as part of a disturbing trend, a sort of censorship mechanism. Normally, people like this would be allowed in and the BBC could be relied upon to broadcast the politically correct and sanitised version of events to make everyone happy again. Maybe with all the global warming stories, the BBC has lost some of its credibility.

Luckily the Home Office is there to step in.

Given the information reported by the BBC, it is hard to see the Phelps having much of an influence on public debate. They are out there with the environmentalists in their grasp of reality.

For this reason and others I think it is very worrying that the British government has decided to ban their entry. This smacks of the sort of thing one might expect from Iran, not the UK. Bad Britain, bad.

Nia: Pack it In

[This is the last topic in the world I want to write about, but I have to say something]

The poor little thing probably didn't even know what hit her. No I haven't read the story and neither should you.

I don't mind a bit of blood and guts but I am finding the Nia story really hard to take. Violence and crime is bad enough but child abuse so bad that it results in death is beyond my tolerance level. It makes me feel physically sick. I have not read a single story about the case, nor watched a TV segment, but I have been unable to avoid seeing headlines over the past few weeks. They have been lurid enough.

So here is a plea from me and all the other wimps out there who weren't brought up in an abusive environment and managed to survive our childhoods: please keep the details in the story. A headline of 'More Nia Stuff' is enough to warn us away.

Don't think by this that I have any time for child abusers. But in my view much of the problem is created by people having children they don't really want, and that comes back to welfare (DBP et al).

For mothers and fathers: children should not routinely be exposed to strangers - the new boyfriend should at least be on probation for a while before he gets to be alone with the kids. Even your own children can drive you nuts at times - think what they might do to someone who doesn't really care about them that much. This is an issue of parental responsibility, which goes beyond who the latest boyfriend / girlfriend happens to be. It is no excuse to say 'I didn't know s/he would abuse my children'. It is your job to know. Maybe you haven't been out with the girls for 6 months and the new boyfriend seems lovely and offers to babysit. Give it another month. None of this relates directly to the Nia case, but let's face it, there are plenty of other cases.

Worse than private failure is that government policies create an environment where abuse thrives. We try to find out about it at the hospitals, with the result that parents bringing children in with common injuries are subjected to the third degree. Far better to look at welfare policies which encourage people to have unwanted children.

And finally, I don''t like sarcasm, but cheers, Sue Bradford. Your 'child abuse' law has been magic.

Why Teens Can't Vote

From the environmentalists...is it just me or are they getting loonier before polling day? Perhaps it is because they are excited at winning all those seats. Or perhaps they are just giving us a taste of what is to come when we get to meet the 'candidates' further down their list than Sue Bradford.

I've often thought what might happen if teens could vote. Luckily I wonder no longer after watching this monument to our indoctrination / education system.

Congratulations to all the teachers and curriculum writers who have made this ad possible.

As someone pointed out in the comments, the ideal of children disowning their parents is not new. Communist China got there already.

Many children were also pressured to criticize and disown their parents. In an account of
a girl grew up in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, it was told that she disowned her
father completely after being told by her teacher that her fathers was a Rightist. She
wrote her father a letter to denounce him and did not even write a salutation at the top
of the letter as she did not feel that an enemy of the people was fit to be her father.

But then, these children would know more about global warming than communism, no doubt.

I wonder when all this madness is going to stop and whether environmentalism will be able to top communism's record of 100 million dead.

[updated to fix an error and spelling]

Environmentalists Indoctrinate Children

What would this little 8 year old know about environmentalism that she hasn't been told by adults around her. How could she form her own opinions or think critically about these matters? She isn't even old enough to vote.

Yet the environmentalists say:

The young face of the Green Party election campaign is Aila, the
eight-year old girl who is asking you to make your Party Vote Green
this election. You can find out more about her by watching this TVNZ news story.

This says a lot more about the environmentalists' indoctrination tactics in schools than it does about Aila. The poor wee darling has our transport policy nutted out already:

I think we should go on our bikes because bikes are just the same as cars but they have no petrol.

I suspect she might change her mind after a trip to the supermarket on her trike. And Newton's laws (acceleration and speed) will be a revelation to this girl. She's silent on whether the family has a car, but the kitchen clearly has a gas stove. Isn't gas like petrol, or is that ok because it can be recycled on a beach? Who can say... We will need more in depth interviews of this little star before we can fully nail down the future of human transport, but it is a good start.

And at the end she says:

I vote for Greens!

I rest my case.

Why Naked Men Don't Make the Movies

This little cherub is upset that he saw a naked man at the beach.

A 10-year-old Kapiti Coast boy has launched a petition against nudity on local family beaches.

Kena Kena School pupil Michael Hayward presented his 144-signature petition to Kapiti Coast District Council's regulatory and management committee after a "horrible" sighting of a man sunbathing naked on Paraparaumu Beach.

I hope the school will give him a rap over the knuckles about his mixed case, which is something a 10 year old should be taught by now. We don't get to hear why the sighting was so horrible, but his mother says:

"I was very upset when we saw the man with no clothes lying right where we had to walk past him. It was horrible, I felt embarrassed, I think other children would find it disturbing. It was not something kids should have to put up with."

This is a very precious attitude I think. You have to wonder whether this child has a father. I agree that some people can look dreadful naked, but then quite a lot of people look dreadful even with their clothes on. Some of the sights that blob around town need no undressing to frighten children.

Still, as a responsible parent I may have to ask the kids to stop walking into the bathroom when I am in the shower. I couldn't face a petition of this sort, and the horrible sight is presumably scarring them for life.

Silly Anti-Smacking Law

You have to wonder what contortions of logic would allow our PM to say something like this:

Helen Clark points out the law passed by 113 votes to eight - a huge parliamentary consensus.

Maybe National voted for it perhaps just to appear soft and lovely, I'm not sure. It seemed to take the sting out of National's critics for a while. Certainly National would not have brought this silly law in. Labour also required its MPs to vote for it.

And she says the law is working overwhelmingly as it was intended.

Assuming the intention was to get everyone's backs up, she is right. But what was the real purpose? Helen Clark has never had children and perhaps her lack of understanding of how families work is showing through.

And this:

Clark says violence in the home is the start of violence in the community.

But if the bill was intended to stop child abuse, or even reduce it, it certainly hasn't. That's because the smacking debate has tried to confuse discipline with violence. By suggesting that removing discipline will reduce violence, supporters have misunderstood the relationship between the two. In fact, violence indicates a lack of discipline and to the extent that children now run wild due to this law, violence in society will surely increase.

See Family First for some stories of what the bill has done. CYFS is already a disaster for some families, putting disinterested meddlers in a position of power within families.

If you read 'Brave New World' you will see a future where the state perfectly controls the creation of new citizens, where reproduction is separated from the creation of children. I wonder whether this law is a way of trying to prise children out of supposedly dodgy homes and into state care, where its creators imagine that the children might have a better life. It is a very dangerous road to travel. Children are created by, and belong with families, in all but the most exceptional cases where there is clear abuse or neglect. Even then it isn't clear to me that a disinterested social worker is of any use in repairing the situation - surely there are better equipped organisations who can intervene? Sadly in New Zealand, policies have provided the incentive for people to create a large group of children that they didn't really want. This is probably the root cause of our child abuse pandemic.

The smacking bill continues the meddling, with no clear measure of success. No wonder the bill is unpopular. The referendum should be held with the election - but the outcome of the referendum is anyway not in doubt. Helen Clark's ridiculous assertion that they didn't have time to organise it, while still not deciding on an election date until 7 weeks prior, was self-serving.

The bill deserves to be repealed.

Might we get Decent Tax Cuts?

I'm vaguely hopefuly, but not sure. National's Bill English said today:

National finance spokesman Bill English has reignited speculation the party will offer tax cuts of around $50 a week.

Well that would really help. It would make a noticeable difference to a lot of families' lives.

Labour campaign strategist Pete Hodgson today said he believed National would come up with a $50 a week tax cut, but questioned how it would pay for it.

"The question is what will that do for the things we think should be funded by the government," he said on Radio New Zealand.

The funding of bloated bureaucracy and waste is a big issue, but only for Labour. Perhaps the Ministers can donate their pensions to the cause? I'd rather have my $50 thank you.

Why does Mr Hodgson speak in terms of 'paying' for tax cuts. We 'pay' for the tax. The government doesn't own that money and then pay it back to us in cuts. It simply ceases to take it. If this is the mentality of senior Labour MPs then we are going to have to stop blaming Dr Cullen for the lack of tax cuts: the responsibility may be much wider.

6-year-old Beats Up Dad

Stories don't get much zanier than this:

As Lockley tried to leave the house, he opened kitchen cupboards and emptied the contents on the floor, further angering the six-year-old who followed his father and again laid into him with the pipe, hitting him on the nose and leg.

Good to see the son has picked up the ways of his dad so early. Let's hope he doesn't take the pipe to school.

Lockley told Sunday News he was glad his son stood up to him.

"I think it's cool, mate," he said.

"I don't hold any grudge against him or anything like that.

"He saw something that he didn't think was right and he stood up for what he believed in."

It takes me back to trying to train our toddlers to 'use your words' instead of belting people that won't follow their instructions. Does that Bradford lady have anything to say on this?

It all sounds a bit dodgy to me. Let's hope the mum has a few clues.

Do We Need More Smacking?

Few parents are keen on smacking as a first resort form of punishment, but as a useful threat or for an immediate impact most parents keep it in reserve, especially for younger children.

Smacking has perhaps been banned in New Zealand. I say perhaps because there is widespread opposition to the new law (some 80% against) and therefore the law has little credibility.

Smacking is of course not child abuse. It has its role in discipline as it has for 1000s of years of parenting.

Is it just me or has the number of child abuse cases risen since the law was passed? Criminals and bullies often operate by transferring the blame for their actions to others. Could it be that these child abusers have decided that they are no longer responsible for their children, but can leave the discipline to others? Do they then get frustrated with the child and lash out?

Parenting is not easy, and it requires consistency, calmness, plenty of sleep, sufficient gin, a genuine love of children and everything they do, plus a sense of humour. Mother Theresa would not qualify. Yet many of the child abusers we see are incapable of holding down a job, incapable of organising their human relationships (constantly fighting with girlfriends, friends and family) and functioning in society only in a very limited way.

How do we expect these dropkicks to be good parents? Obviously we can't. The solution may be to accept that fact, and stop tarring the rest of us with the faults of a few. Another idea would be to stop actively funding the underclass where this sort of abuse happens. Fighting child abuse without fighting for stable two-parent families (where the siblings all have the same parents) is silly. Hansel and Gretal taught us that step-parents often care less.

Also, why are very young children or babies suffering so badly? Obviously babies can be very annoying. They get in the way of your lifestyle by waking you up in the middle of the night. Very young babies don't give a lot back, t least until 4 months or so. But do some parents see newborns as 'not real', just a thing that hasn't become a human yet? A candidate for late term abortion? Younger people are not so sentimental about children either.

There is of course no point in smacking a baby, it is just cruel and pointless since babies really have no idea about free will. I can't remember at what point children can have some control over their behaviour (that a parent must influence) but I suppose it is around 2 years of age. So smacking as discipline simply isn't a factor with the recent cases we have seen. No court would agree that smacking a 3 month old is reasonable.

Of course the other explanation for child abuse is that some people are scumbags. Perhaps we should just leave it at that. Child abuse is illegal and immoral. It was illegal and immoral before parliament's recent ideological burp. But if Sue Bradford, who promoted the law, was hoping that an attempt to criminalise smacking would fix the problem,  she has been proven wrong enough times that we should regard all further ideas from that quarter with fullsome suspicion.

The law should be repealed.

Nappy Mine Shrinking Concern

Under the headline 'Nappy Mountain Growing Concern' The Press yesterday talks about someone's concern over disposable nappies in the landfill.

Let's get a few things straight. A pile of nappies in the ground is a mine, not a mountain. It would be a mountain if we dug them out of the ground and piled them up 1000m or so into the sky. This would be an enormous undertaking, but I wouldnt be surprised if environmentalists would try it if they could.

Secondly the article suggests it is a 'growing' concern. However it contradicts this by saying that the use of cloth nappies is increasing, which suggests that whatever problem exists is in fact reducing.

Thirdly it is giving free publicity to a crackpot outfit called New Zealand Nappy Alliance, the head of which (Kate Meads) is a distributor for cloth nappies. This contributes to the bogus 'environment is a disaster' message that environmentalists want us to believe.

Finally it says that 96% of all nappy changes in New Zealand are disposable. Better than throwing out the carpet I'd say. We bought a full set of cloth nappies, buckets, nappy san and everything, and it didn't last a week. I was pretty keen, and tried to encourage my wife to try it, even offering to clean the nappies, etc. But the first liquid black ooze that sprayed out the sides was reason enough to pack that in and my stubbornness evaporated.

Kate Meads (who I'm sure has never had liquid pooh on her carpet) says:

You are talking about a million nappies going into the landfills every day.

So what? Stick a cork up the baby's bum, or live with it! What else are we going to do with rubbish dumps? Rubbish is exactly what our dumps are for.

Dummies

Our 6-year-old has just gone off to bed without a dummy for the first time in her post-baby life.
Not without quite a bit of howling and wailing and gnashing of teeth, mind you.

But just a little note to the two social workers now heading to our house to take the children away forever into secure state care: we have previously tried, really hard, honest. There is a bit of nazism around about bottles, formula, toilet training, dummies and food. The breastapo is alive and well in NZ. So I'd just like to say that we are the parents, we know best, and you all get stuffed. It has taken years of training to be able to cope with this evening and I certainly could not pull it off a year ago (that time we gave up after 3 hours).