Why is this woman so happy? [updated]

She is the face of MMP, and now she's gone.

She said she would save New Zealand's children from their parents and guardians, yet still the murders continue at the rate of ten a year.  And now she has left the building.

She demonised those opposed to her as beaters, as bashers, as hitters of children – smearing good parents while doing nothing at all to protect children from bad ones. And now she’s out of there.

She all but nationalised your children, and having done all she can do there she’s now delivered her last speech in NZ's parliament.

She joined the party that carried an environmental banner – observing it was “ripe for takeover” – never once even giving lip service to the party’s raison d'être.  She used it instead to advance her own back-door agendas, and now she’s off.

“Years spent ‘proletarianising’ herself in the Progressive Youth Movement, the Workers Communist League and the Unemployed Workers Movement” (as Chris Trotter describes) were put to good use infiltrating the mung-bean eaters and effecting the reverse take-over of the Greens by the Alliance.  (More links on some of that here.) And now she’s on to other means by which to advance that same agenda – and that dear reader, is why she’s smiling.

Retired from Parliament because she says the Greens are not red enough for her. That’s enough right there to tell you her aims.

She has been unquestionably the most effective Maoist in NZ politics -- from the backbenches of the Green lists, a woman never voted in by an electorate has changed New Zealand family life for the worse. Because it was never just about smacking, you know.

She has retired from NZ central government politics, but her lust to change others’ lives, with or without their consent, is still undiminished. And I’m sorry to spoil your celebrations, but do you know what and where she has her gimlet eye set on now?

I'll give you a clue: You know the bloated bureaucracy that Rodney Hide is building up in Auckland; the "super-council" that will dominate Auckland; the megalith of power that with his recent U-turn will not be restrained to its core business but instead can range far and wide across whatever landscape it chooses, including yours? That can pick whatever pockets it wants, including yours? Yes, that council.

And guess what? Bradford's got her eye on a job as Auckland Super-City councillor, and the job deputy mayor is being discussed – playing Iago to Len Brown's Othello. 

She’s moving her boxes out of  one power-base, and wants to move them straight into another.

She’s left the front door of politics, and Rodney Hide is delivering her the vehicle to drive straight in again through the back door. He’s offering up the city on a plate, and Sue’s just the woman to eat it.

How does that work for you? Any ratepayers of Auckland care to comment?  Any supporters of the big bureaucracy like to promote it?  Any supporters of Rodney Hide like to explain themselves?

UPDATE:  Why did Sue want to effect a reverse takeover of the Greens?  Same answer to that as it is to the question, “How do you sell a shit sandwich?'”

[Thanks to ‘Blunt’ for the ‘toon.]

Greenwash.  It’ll sell anything, even the hard left.

Bye-bye Bradford [update 3]

How disappointing it is to hear that Sue Bradford is leaving Parliament in October to go “back to the grassroots,” a decision that all New Zealand families should celebrate.

Disappointing?  Hell no. It’s worth celebrating! With both her and Cindy Kiro gone from power, your children are safer now than they were yesterday – unless of course they end up at her Kotare indoctrination centre, which I imagine is the sort of thing she means by “grass roots.” (Here’s part two of Trevor Loudon’s info on the place.)

So shall we try to say something nice about her now she’s going?

Nah.  Every single thing she’s done has been an attack on your freedom. There’s nothing to respect in that.

She joined the Green Party to further her own Maoist agenda, assisting in the “reverse  take-over” of the Greens by the Alliance party’s fellow travellers – the party was was “ripe for taking over” she said (read Phil U.’s account here at Update 3 of Bradford and Catherine Delahunty, fresh from Matt McCarten’s NLP) -- and New Zealand’s electorate was ripe for the Greenwash she and her comrades were able to peddle after that take over.

Her legacy is not just her anti-smacking attack on New Zealand’s parents, but the hijack of environmentalism by the ‘watermelon’ politicians of that party, and their cementing in of that ruse.

Sadly however, her resignation doesn’t denude the Greens of MPs since there’s another loser like her in the wings, a Mr David Clendon, who’s been feeding from the RMA trough all his career -- with a CV which has him morphing from “Resource Consultant” to lecturer in the RMA, ie., from parasite to brainwasher.

Choice, huh.  “What really motivated me” to stand for the luddites said the really unmotivating Clendon at the Greens conference last year, is "the ability the Greens have, and I think it's unique, to be able to identify complex problems and to see solutions." What’s unique about the Greens, of course, is nothing more than their combination of authoritarianism and  ludditery – with a a caucus composed almost entirely of the intellectual remnants of the Socialist Workers’ Party they’re little more than a bunch of  authoritarians with a marketing wing – a problem that Clendon’s CV would indicate won’t be changing with his induction.

So farewell then, Sue Bradford.  Don’t let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.

And if you’re concerned that there’s no-one left in Parliament now to really despise, then don’t forget you’ve still got Keith Locke.  And Nick Smith.

UPDATE 1:  Farrar looks at the personal politics:

“It’s basically because she lost the co-leadership election to Metiria Turei. Things are obviously not that happy in the Green camp. More later. “

UPDATE 2: From Home Paddock:

Kathryn Ryan interviewed RadioNZ National’s  chief reporter Jane Patterson who said the decision was prompted by Bradford’s loss of the contest for co-leadership to Metiria Turei. The interview will be online here soon  is now online here.

UPDATE 3: “Now is the chance to get out the Green broom and sweep the Red dust out of the party,” says a Greens supporter over at the Frog Blog resignation thread.  He’s right, you know.

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Smacking Sue, Tweaking Tuku, & Mocking Michael

Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath takes another irreverent weekly look at some of the past week’s headlines.

1. Bradford: Pro-smackers behind threats – According to Sue Bradford, anyone who opposed the anti-parenting legislation rammed through by the National/Labour socialist grand coalition wants to thrash and maim children. According to Sue, it’s not about parenting – by the way, Sue wants to nationalise parenting, which her Marxist study has taught her will help in dismantling the capitalist system. Sue reckons the resistance to her red plague is coming from people wanting to assault and murder their children. As I have stated previously, what inflamed people (if you would care to listen, Sue) is the fact that you and your ilk want to remove the ability for parents to be able to use physical force to keep their children safe and from doing harm to others, when all attempts to use reason and negotiation have failed.

2. Tukoroirangi Morgan: Maori or Pakeha candidate – who’d get your vote? – The $89 man (remember the boxer shorts?) reckons that not many years ago Maori owned all the land over which Rodney Hide’s Super City Council will preside. That’s stretching it a bit. Before European colonization, land was not owned in the sense that we think of ownership. It was fought over, there was no secure title and thus there was little incentive to improve or develop land as it was likely to be pillaged and looted at the time of the next tribal raid.
    Somehow however Tuku reads in the Treaty of Waitangi a right for ‘indigenous’ people to have special representation on the Super City Council. He laments the fact that the advertising industry seems to feature rich, white people in their promotions. He does have a point in that the Maori ‘brand’ is lumped with negative or controversial extremes. But the answer is not for the government to insult Maori by treating them as powerless victims. It is to empower them by treating them as sovereign individuals, unshackling them from welfare dependency, closing down the violent and increasingly anarchic public schools in which many of them are raised, and allowing them genuine tino rangitiratanga – independence from domination by the state.
    New Zealanders should all be subject to equality under just laws, with no discrimination by race or other accidents of birth. More on this at a later time!

3. Mayor hails first day of gang patch ban – There is now a dress code in W(h)anganui, enforceable by law. Michael Laws has made the River City a laughing stock; unbelievably, Timaru now wants to do the same (no word yet from Otara).
    The ultimate reference for new laws and by-laws should be a Constitution or Bill of Rights. Laws incompatible with this should be struck down. New Zealand has a Bill of Rights of sorts, crafted by Geoffrey Palmer, the man whose face needs punching because of his conspicuous and over-the-top wowserism. Section 14 of Geoffrey’s Bill of Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the right to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind, in any form.” To that section has now beeen added three words: “except in W(h)anganui.”     

See y’all next week!
Doc McGrath

Raising Good Kids [updated]

The sad situation that’s developed in the aftermath of last week’s referendum on smacking is that all debates on raising good kids have now become framed by the issue of how they’re disciplined rather than how they’re raised to become fine adults – and on what other parents are supposedly doing wrong instead of what it means to do right yourself. 

And this is exactly backwards. “Discipline” is just a nice person’s way to say punish.  To take nothing away from your right to raise good kids as you choose (which in their equating of smacking with beating is essentially what the Bradford-Harridan axis wanted to take away) , if you want to raise good kids, the method by which they’re punished is not the first or even most important tool in a parent’s toolbox. 

The issue has become so much framed by the debate over whether or not smacking should be legal or illegal, that people seem to have forgotten that the law in no way offers a guide to what you should do, only what you may not do. Legality is not morality – or even necessarily good parenting. Avoiding sending the wrong messages is a very different thing to making sure you send the right ones.

So let’s see if we can step outside the essentially negative “debate” over whether or not smacking should be legal or illegal, and have a look at what parents ought to be doing if they want to raise good kids, and where they might get some assistance.

First off, let’s recognise that the development of good character in their children is the goal of many, if not most, parents -- but young children aren’t yet able to grasp for themselves such abstract virtues as honesty, responsibility and productivity. (And something similar might be said about many parents, who perhaps never will.).  Fundamentally, children lack yet the ability to project the future into the present in a way that would demonstrate to them the positive long-range consequences of acting well, and in any case they lack the experiences on which to draw that allow them to draw those lessons.

It’s not enough for you to simply draw up a list of rules and tell your child to follow them – to give them a stamp on the hand when they do and a session on the naughty mat when they don’t. What you’re after in the long run is for the child himself to internalise a set of virtues that are necessary for a successful life.  That’s what it means to be good, right?  To have internalised desirable traits and virtues like rationality, justice, responsibility, benevolence, independence, pride and integrity.  It’s those you want to cement in, not a list of do’s and don’ts.

Drawing on the literature in brain research and psychology, Vassar College professor of cognitive science Professor Kenneth Livingston explains how “the growth of virtue can be encouraged, despite the fact that young children lack the capacity to project the consequences of their actions very far into the future.” Prof Livingston argues that the parent's job is be what he calls a 'virtual consequence generator' - to stand in for the future and structure the child's experience of the world in a way that reflects the abstract moral principles involved.

"The parent’s job [he says] is to bring the future into the present for the child, to make it palpable, and to do so in a way that accurately represents the world as it is—but at a level that is accessible to the child."

As he says in ‘Teaching Albert Honesty’, this is a tall order – and he invites you to look more closely at what he identifies as the three components.

• “First, the child needs to be able to experience—immediately—the unpleasantness associated with being dishonest or behaving irresponsibly. And of course he needs to have some way of experiencing, also in the present moment, the joys of acting honestly or responsibly.
• “Second, he has to get information that helps him to build the abstract concept at issue (such as honesty or responsibility), so that what he feels is linked to this more general notion—not merely to the specific situation that provoked the parental response. (Remember, the goal is to internalize a principle, not a list of rules.)
• “Finally, once an immediate connection is made between the concept of the virtue in question and an emotion associated with achieving or failing to achieve this virtue, the child’s time horizon needs to be stretched to introduce the critical element of anticipation.”

So what does this mean in concrete terms any parent can understand? 

Well, obviously the sharing and reading of stories and fables helps to offer the wide range of experiences he might one day encounter in the world, and help demonstrate for him the long-range consequences for him of acting well – not to mention encouraging him to enjoy reading for himself.  But there are obviously lessons to be drawn and demonstrated in day-today life.

Consider little Albert, who lies about a broken vase. “It wasn’t me who done it,” says Albert, despite that fact that you’ve got him cold.  Suggests Livingston:

The parent might begin by immediately withdrawing a privilege based on trust (like choosing a television program and watching it alone). Albert would feel disappointed or unhappy and, with some discussion of the importance of trust and honesty, might begin to build a concept of truth-telling that transcends the immediate situation with the vase. Later, if Albert lied again about something important, earning a more dramatic punishment, our approach would suggest that the punishment ought to be promised but then delayed for a short time, during which Albert would be encouraged to anticipate what is about to happen.

There are many, many things to be said about how to help concretise values, to bring the future into the present for the child, to accurately represent the world as it is—but at a level that is accessible to the child. And there’s just no way to do all that in a short post. (That is, in what was supposed to be just a short post.) In his lecture on Raising Good Kids,  Livingston offers a few points to keep in mind when considering your strategies":

1. Know Your Virtues. You can't raise good kids if you don't have a clear sense of the good yourself.  You need to know that there are right and wrong answers; that there really is  such a thing as moral and immoral; that virtues themselves are a positive thing -- that the very purpose of “the good” is to help you achieve your own happiness and success in the world, not to give you a list of things to avoid or feel guilty about.
       Most of all, you need to know and to hold in mind the concrete principle you're hoping to convey when you're confronted with your child in a particular concrete situation.
   (And you need to know too that not every situation with your child has ethical implications. Most times you should just enjoy them.)
2. Be a Virtual Consequence Generator. A young child may not yet know virtue in the abstract, but he is capable of understanding it in its more concrete particulars IF the parent can help structure his experience in a way that accurately reflects the abstract principle, and that helps him discover it for himself. That's the principle of being the "virtual consequence generator" -- you have to remember that you're "standing in for" the future, and for the much rougher, much less forgiving world in which your child will one day have to function but is not yet able to understand. 
       One of Maria Montessori’s commonly used maxims to keep in mind when helping children was the child is essentially saying: “Help me to do it by myself.”  That’s your job in teaching the virtues.  (It also relates to her idea of the classroom as a "prepared environment,” structured in such a way that the child can discover for himself the leading principles and concepts “revealed” there.) 
3. Show, Don’t Tell.  Remember that whatever else you say or do to a child in guiding or “redirecting” their behaviour from good to bad (and let’s be clear, that redirection is sometimes going to require some force), the very techniques you employ to redirect a child's behaviour themselves convey a message.
       Make a habit of snatching a toy off him that he's just snatched off a smaller child, and you unavoidably demonstrate to a child that might is right -- and whatever lessons you try to convey on each occasion by talking to him about respecting other people's property will be undercut,and quite another lesson will nonetheless be conveyed.
       Start giving your child stars or stamps on the hand to reward him for acting well, and you demonstrate to a child that his primary reward for acting well is the praise or rewards given to him by authority figures, instead of by his own internalised moral compass (and it’s the internalised moral compass which you're actually trying to develop) - and you're teaching him to look outside for his rewards rather than within. 
        Demonstrate inconsistency in your punishments or rewards, with different consequences for the same behaviour, and you teach him the lesson that different consequences can follow from the same actions. 
   Remember, in other words, that it’s not primarily quiet and peaceful short-term consequences you’re after – what you’re looking for is successful long-run consequences.
4. Observe that a child isn't a china doll.  As Livingston says all this can all sound like a very tall order. But don’t beat yourself up when things go wrong; a child is less “breakable” than you might think. They do have free will, and you need to recognise that as well as try to harness it.  Nature and nurture AND the child's own individualistic volition act together in helping the child to develop himself, provided that you "prepare the environment" well to help him do that.

So all that said, it’s still barely scratched the subject’s surface of how you can raise good kids.  So here’s a few books, articles, blogs and lectures to read and listen to that will offer you more guidance suggested mostly by some good friends and colleagues of mine who know much more about most of this than I do, and from most of which I’ve taken what I’ve written here:

• Kenneth R. Livingston: ‘Teaching Albert Honesty’ – online article proposing a way for parents to help children begin to lay the foundations of moral intelligence.
• Kenneth R. Livingston: Raising Good Kids – How to help children develop the traits of character that are required for happiness and success. Drawing on the literature in psychology, Professor Livingston discusses how parents and teachers can encourage the growth of virtue in children, even before children have acquired explicit moral concepts. (Audio cassette)
• Rational Jenn’s posts on rational parenting, and the regular Non-Punitive Discipline Blog Carnival hosted at Kelly Elmore’s Reepicheep’s Coracle blog.
• Adel Faber & Elaine Mazlish: How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk – innovative ways to solve common parenting problems.
• Alfie Kohn: Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason – the way kids learn to make good decisions is by making decisions, says Kohn, not by following directions. Children do best with unconditional love, respect and the opportunity to make their own choices. Kohn questions why parents and parenting literature focus on compliance and quick fixes, and points out that docility and short-term obedience are not what most parents desire of their children in the long run.
• Alfie Kohn: Punished by Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, As, Praise, and Other Bribes – why rewards, including praise, fail to promote lasting behavior change and frequently make things worse.
• Celia Lashlie: He’ll Be OK: Growing Gorgeous Boys Into Good Men – tools for parents who want their sons to become good men.
• Jane M. Healy: Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think & What We Can Do About It – why a TV is not a good babysitter, and how to make your child a genuine life-long learner.
• Lynne Lawrence: Montessori Read and Write: A Parent's Guide to Literacy for Children – how to help chidren learn to read and write, and to enjoy learning.
• Paula Polk Lillard: Montessori Today: A Comprehensive Approach to Education from Birth to Adulthood – a reminder that children need different things at each stage of their development, and a guide to what those stages are.
• Tara Smith: Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist – if you want to “know your virtues,” specifically the seven traits of character required for happiness and success, then Smith’s book of the seven Objectivist virtues (with a clear and easily readable chapter on each) is your ideal menu.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: My friends and colleagues at the Maria Montessori Education Foundation tell me I should let you know about three upcoming public events for parents with two world-class speakers  in Auckland, Tauranga and Wellington.

AUCKLAND: PUBLIC ADDRESS - ‘Good at Doing Things'
Professor of paediatrics and neurology at the University of Minnesota, Steven Hughes appears at AUT’s Northcote Campus on Friday September 18 to to talk about how Montessori education provides children with a lifetime of success, how it parallels what is known about brain development, and how it fosters the development of empathy and leadership.  Dr Hughes, who developed his own interest in Montessori education when he saw the success and happiness of his own children in their Montessori classroom, will show how and why Montessoir kids become ‘good at doing things,’ and why that matters.
This talk -- which he’s given in Amsterdam, Minnesota, Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and now Auckland – is especially good for fathers who may wonder about this “Montessori-thing!”

* * Friday September 18 @ 7-9pm,  $10 per person.
* * AUT Campus, 90 Akoranga Drive, Northcote, Auckland
For ticket information and bookings, email [email protected] or freephone Ana on 0800 336612.

TAURANGA: PUBLIC ADDRESS - 'The Child - A Social Being'
London-based Montessori trainer Cheryl Ferreira talks on Saturday October 10th on how the first step in ‘the child as a social being’ is to help the child develop all his functions as a free individual, which is what fosters that development of personality that actuates social organisation.

* * Saturday October 10th @ 7- 9p.m, $15 payment at the door (includes light refreshments)
* * Historic Village on 17th, Seventeenth Avenue, Tauranga
* * For ticket information and bookings email [email protected] or phone Carol 021 111 4133 by Tues Oct. 6th.

WELLINGTON:  PUBLIC ADDRESS - ‘Children Creating and Developing Language from Birth Onwards' 
London-based Montessori trainer Cheryl Ferreira talks on Saturday October 17th on how children create and develop language from birth onwards
Join us to discuss the factors that impact on the development of spoken language from 0-6 and how this impacts on writing and reading'.

* * Saturday October 17th @ 7-9p.m, $10 payment at the door (includes tea &coffee)
* * Wa Ora Montessori School, 278 Waddington Road, Naenae, Lower Hutt, Wellington*
* * For ticket information and bookings contact [email protected] or phone Anna on (04) 232 3428 by Tues Oct. 13th.

(Horrific) Quote of the Day: The collectivist evil that lives on [update 3]

I’ve been saying all along that all this anti-smacking spin and nonsense is not primarily about child discipline.  It has come about because Sue Bradford and her fellow travellers wanted to use those who cannot tell the difference between a smack and assault to advance the state's control over families.  I’ve been suggesting you should never forget that Sue is still at root a Marxist -- and Marx called explicitly for the nationalisation of children and the abolition of the family.  And along these lines, I’ve reminded you of her support for Cindy Kiro’s surveillance state – her wet dream of for clipboard-wielding Stasis examining every family in the country, an apparatchik in every home.

That is the ultimate goal of the collectivist, as Plato described for them over two-thousand years ago in The Republic  The Laws [see excerpt here at Google Books].  If you want to see horrific, then this is it:

“The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative; neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. But in war and in the midst of peace -- to his leader he shall direct his eye and follow him faithfully. And even in the smallest matter he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals... only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it."  [Hat tip Samizdata]

Feel free to express your revulsion, in any terms you care to use.

UPDATE 1:  Cometh the hour, cometh John Boscawen’s Private Member’s Bill.

UPDATE 2: Cometh the hour-and-a-half and we’ve got Sue Bradford calling Boscawen’s bill to denationalise children “a return to the Dark Ages,” and John Key continuing with his “it’s-working-fine-already” blind denial.

At least it was fun watching Adolf at No Minister wriggling while he waited to be sure what he was supposed to think.

UPDATE 3: SteveW points out that the first line of this quotation has been dropped, suggesting this changes the meaning  -- the first line being. "Now for expeditions of war much consideration and many laws are required; the greatest principle of all is that no one of either sex should be without a commander..."  Now note first of all that to make more readable translations some translators change clauses into sentences, which is what’s probably happened in Samizdata’s translation (which I understand comes from Karl Popper’s book, so it’s him you’d be accusing of selective quotation.)

And note also that the context given here is both “ in war and in the midst of peace,” a context Plato reinforces for the reader by going on to emphasise that “we ought in time of peace from youth onwards to practise this habit of commanding others, and of being commanded… I should add that all dances ought to be performed with view to military excellence…”  In other words, according to Plato, society should be conducted like a military garrison.  And that idea is really the quote’s full context.

It was never just about smacking, you know [update 4]

The primary focus of the anti-smacking brigade is not smacking.  Once you understand that, you will understand their reaction to the weekend’s poll.  The primary focus of the anti-smacking brigade is not smacking, and it was never about child abuse. It was always about control.  They have used reasonable misgivings about smacking and widespread outrage at child abuse to advance an agenda of state control that has been enabled  by politicians too dim to realise they’re being used.

This morning’s cabinet meeting would be a good time for John Boy to realise that.

In case you hadn’t noticed, statists like Cindy Kiro and Sue Bradford want the state to be part of your family. The original intention of Sue Bradford’s private member’s bill: to ban smacking outright, was entirely consistent with her Marxist philosophy of state control in all facets of life – it was the Trojan Horse  by which she and Cindy hoped to get the state into the family. That’s the agenda here, a much wider one than the way you discipline your children – and an important one to realise when “compromise” is on the cards, as it will be again at this morning’s cabinet meeting.

You can see that wider agenda at work in 'Surveillance Cindy’s' plan for clipboard-wielding Stasis examining every family in the country against criteria set by Cindy Kiro and her children's commissariat.  Don’t raise your kids like Cindy tells you, and you’ll feel the wrath of the apparatchiks.

You can see  it in  Sue Bradford’s long-standing support for Stalinist Cindy’s scheme, and in her and Catherine Delahunty’s Marxist training school Kotare – what Delahunty describes in this speech outlining the Kotare School's aims as "a centre for radical and liberating education for social change."  (Part 2 is here.)

You can see it in Sue Bradford’s announcement in the wake of her anti-smacking amendment being passed that "This [was] very much the end of the beginning."

You can see it too in her utter disregard for the effect of the anti-smacking amendment on good parents, and in their lack of interest in those parents who are still killing their kids, which outrages happen each time without a word from primary sponsor of the amendment that was (it was alleged) intended to stop these violent assaults.

But this was never about smacking, not really.  It always has been about control – control not of bad parents but of good ones. The tragedy still is that only one side seems to understand that.

UPDATE 1: MacDoctor takes on the statistical “confusion” about the result exhibited by the control freaks.

UPDATE 2:  Danyl at Dim Post beautifully satirises some of the likely changes to the anti-smacking law, including :

• Alter font of Section 59 amendment from Courier12 to Times New Roman.
• Initiate second non-binding referendum to ask voters if they understood question in previous referendum.
• Key to address Families First meeting, stand at podium with shit-eating grin and demand to know who the fuck else they’re going to vote for.

UPDATE 3:  It’s worth remembering that it wasn’t just John Key who turned tail on his original opposition to Bradford’s Bill, and who emailers, commenters, Twitterers and Facebookers should now be pressuring to reconsider his first instincts.  What about all those National Party turncoats who stood up on the steps of Parliament in April 2007 swearing total opposition to the anti-smacking amendment, and then in May 2007 filed obediently into the lobbies to vote for it. I’m talking about National Socialist sell-outs Chester Borrows, Shane Ardern, Toe-rag Henare, Maurice Wimpianson and Judith ‘Don’t-Believe-A-Word-I-Say’ Collins.

Get onto them and tell them now to have the courage of whatever convictions they pretended to have back in April 2007.

mailto:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]

(And if you’re super-keen, then as a commenter advises send the buggers a letter. "MP name, parliament" is all that it needs. No stamp required. Emails are much much easier to delete than letters, which will all be delivered physically to the MP’s office.)

UPDATE 4:  Interesting that the Reds’ Red Alert blog hasn’t mentioned a thing on the referendum. Seems their beloved democracy gave them a good smacking on this occasion.

And interesting too that the Reds’ luminary, Braying Oddwords, chose to mention it on Saturday only with a photo of Larry Baldock punching the air in celebration and the caption “A Picture Worth a Thousand Words.”  (FWIW, I left the comment “You do spin well here, don’t you,” but Oddwords wasn’t interested in my comment and it never made the main page.

Smacking is not beating [updated]

Turns out the overwhelming majority of voters, 87.6%, didn't agree with those who insisted the majority ofparents just want the freedom to beat their children.

Smacking is not beating.  It never was.  And people, those who count anyway, are intelligent enough not to buy the spin that it is.

They are also too intelligent not to buy the spin from an out-of-the-country Mr Key that this is a law change that needs to be changed back. Time to listen, John Boy. Time to listen.

UPDATE: 

• The Best Headline I’ve seen on the result is from Home Paddock:

Which part of no don’t you understand?

• Best spin is by Sue Bradford:

Bradford says result inconclusive

• And the Best One-Liner is from Andy Moore, who asks at his Facebook page:

Should smacking Sue Bradford as part of good democracy be a criminal offence in NZ?

“Just Say 'No!' to Apartheid!” [update 2]

Rodney Hide has got a lot of flak for telling National privately what Tau Henare chose to say publicly – that he’s prepared to hold fast to at least one ACT policy with which he went into the election.

Oddly however, it’s not Tau who’s in trouble for leaking, but Rodney who’s in trouble for grandstanding.  (Not really sure how you grandstand when it’s somebody else letting your cat out of the bag, but there you go.)

Anyway, in a parliament where election promises are forgotten before the new government has even been sworn in, for staying true to one principle in the ACT Party manifesto – the principle of One Law For All – Rodney has my congratulations.  And for everyone else claiming that it’s the person insisting on colour-blind councils who’s playing the race card – yes, I’m looking at you Tau Henare and Tariana Turia and Sues Kedgely and Bradford, and sundry partial bloggers – Lindsay Perigo has a message for you all.  It’s this: Just Say 'No!' to Apartheid!

    The fact that Green MPs Sue Kedgley and Sue Bradford are demanding Rodney Hide's resignation over separate Maori representation on the proposed Auckland super-council is a pretty good indication that Mr Hide is right, says SOLO Principal Lindsay Perigo.
    Mr Hide is threatening to resign as Local Government Minister if the National-led government does an about-face and approves separate representation.
    "Judging by the weasel-words emanating from Prime Minister John Key's office, it seems the government is wavering," says Perigo. "National is supposed to be abolishing the separate Maori seats in Parliament. It would be unconscionable to allow such apartheid atlocal government level.
    "The two socialist Sues are urging Mr Hide to resign regardless. These serial Nanny Statists are terrified that Mr Hide will let the fresh air of freedom into New Zealand's Town Halls. What this totalitarian twosome tout as 'local democracy' is simply a ruse by which their ilk get to ban everything they disapprove of.
    "Mr Hide is to be congratulated on taking a principled stand. Maori are as capable as anyone else of standing on merit in local body elections. To say in this day and age that they require guaranteed separate representation is outrageously, patronisingly, racist. Maori Party leader Tariana Turia should be ashamed of herself for promoting such redneckery.
    "The only reason Mr Hide should be made to resign are his shirts and ties and shaven head, which frighten horses, children and the elderly," Perigo concludes.

And finally, to those who are suggesting that John Key should take Rodney’s offer and award him the D.C.M., may I suggest you consider that while election promises are for National no more than something to say in November and forget about at the first Budget, National was once nonetheless enormously popular for that very policy, One Law For All, for which Rodney is now under fire.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if a National Party with Bill English as second-in-command were now to sack the Minister of Local Government for espousing the very policy that rescued National from the near-oblivion into which that same Bill English once plunged it,

UPDATE 1: You want to see someone playing the race card, Tariana?  Then look no further than the US of A, where you can be an “official poll watcher” who carries a night stick and issues threats to voters at the entrance to a polling place, just as long as you’re a member of both the Democratic Party and the “New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.”  As far as Obama’s Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perelliis concerned, ‘dem threats is alright with us jez as long as you is black. Read the story here: Now THIS is what a racist Administration looks like.

UPDATE 2:   Eric Crampton suggests that having separate Maori seats would end up reducing Maori influence rather than increasing it.  I think he’s offering that as a reason not to include Apartheid seats, rather than the reverse.

Medical marijuana patients told to go to hell [update 2]

Last night New Zealand MPs voted overwhelmingly against a law change that would allow patients to use cannabis for specific medicinal purposes.  They thought they knew the interests of these patients better than the patients and their doctors -- and knew the issue better than legislators in Canada, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and in fourteen states in the US, all places where medical marijuana is legal. They told those patients essentially to go to hell, because that describes the pain that some are in.

     The Green Party bill [says TV3 News] would have allowed doctors in New Zealand to prescribe cannabis for 22 approved illnesses and eligible patients would have been given an identification card allowing them to grow, possess and consume marijuana.
    ACT MP Heather Roy says that the stance is supported by science.
    "There's very good scientific evidence to show that some medical conditions are improved by the use of cannabis," she says.

Evidence that would have been presented at Select Committee, but 86 MPs, a clear majority said with their vote that they didn’t want to even hear.

ACT were all for, including their conservatives. So too were the Greens, whose bill this was. For Maori, all but one were against. Labour was split. And the Nats were all against – very revealing that as a conscience vote not a single Nat broke ranks for the bill. Not one apparently had enough of a conscience to even cross the floor.

Here’s who Voted For:
Ardern, Jacinda      Labour Party, List
Beaumont, Carol      Labour Party, List
Boscawen, John      ACT New Zealand, List
Bradford, Sue      Green Party, List
Burns, Brendon      Labour Party, Christchurch Central
Chadwick, Steve      Labour Party, List
Chauvel, Charles      Labour Party, List
Cunliffe, David      Labour Party, New Lynn
Delahunty, Catherine      Green Party, List
Douglas, Roger      ACT New Zealand, List
Dyson, Ruth      Labour Party, Port Hills
Fenton, Darien      Labour Party, List
Fitzsimons, Jeanette      Green Party, List
Garrett, David      ACT New Zealand, List
Graham, Kennedy      Green Party, List
Hague, Kevin      Green Party, List
Harawira, Hone      Maori Party, Te Tai Tokerau
Hide, Rodney      ACT New Zealand, Epsom
Hipkins, Chris     Labour Party, Rimutaka
Hodgson, Pete     Labour Party, Dunedin North
Jones, Shane      Labour Party, List
Kedgley, Sue      Green Party, List
King, Annette      Labour Party, Rongotai
Lees-Galloway, Iain      Labour Party, Palmerston North
Locke, Keith     Green Party, List
Mackey, Moana      Labour Party, List
Moroney, Sue      Labour Party, List
Norman, Russel      Green Party, List
Pillay, Lynne      Labour Party, List
Prasad, Rajen      Labour Party, List
Roy, Heather      ACT New Zealand, List
Sepuloni, Carmel      Labour Party, List
Street, Maryan      Labour Party, List
Turei, Metiria      Green Party, List
Twyford, Phil      Labour Party, List

Metiria Turei, whose bill this was, wrote in support of her bill in a recent Free Radical.  Here’s what she had to say.

Medicinal Cannabis Vote Coming Soon!
by Metiria Turei, MP

     Compassion for ill New Zealanders is a core New Zealand value. Many campaigns for legislative or policy change have been about supporting and protecting the ill. My campaign enabling doctors to prescribe medicinal cannabis to patients supports thousands of ill New Zealanders who may benefit from this option, relieving the pain of (for just a few examples) nail-patella syndrome, muscle spasms, phantom limb pain, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia and the wasting syndrome from HIV/AIDS.
    The world is increasingly recognising the value of medicinal use of cannabis. Fourteen US states now allow medicinal use, with similar systems in Canada, Spain and the UK. New South Wales is developing a four-year trial for medicinal cannabis. International health organisations supporting medicinal cannabis include the American Medical Association, US Institute of Medicine, Federation of American Scientists, the WHO and the UK Royal College of Physicians. All these jurisdictions and organisations base their support on evidence from highly regarded international medical research teams and institutions.
    There is a process for medicinal use in New Zealand which has never been used because it is simply unworkable. The application must be made by your GP, involving extensive negotiations with both the Ministry of Health and Customs. The patient must purchase the pharmaceutical version of medicinal cannabis, which is extremely expensive. One constituent, who has a very low tolerance for cannabis, was quoted a price of $300 per week for the pharmaceutical cannabinoid preparation Sativex. In effect, ill New Zealanders, especially those who have the least resources or are the most ill, are denied access to potential relief.
    My Bill proposes a system whereby patients grow their own cannabis and are registered with both the Ministry of Health and local police. It is the most accessible and cheapest model for ill New Zealanders. (There are other models that have greater and lesser degrees of control, many of which are used in other jurisdictions. I am open to the discussion on those other models.)
    My campaign enabling doctors to prescribe cannabis is based on medical evidence. Research from the UK, Israel, Germany, Canada, USA and numerous universities and medical associations demonstrates cannabis can provide relief to some patients where mainstream pharmaceuticals have failed. In New Zealand, the NZ Medical Association supports research into the benefits of cannabis for medicinal use, and the NZ Pharmaceutical Guild told the 2001 Cannabis Inquiry that it considers it perfectly possible to safely distribute legal medicinal cannabis.
    Our proposal adds cannabis to the tool box of medical interventions available to doctors. To hear more from the medical profession the Greens conducted a survey of doctors in 2003 to find out exactly what sort of professional support there is for medical use. The results were revealing, showing medicinal cannabis has been widely discussed or considered by doctors and/or patients. The potential use of medicinal cannabis is very high. Doctors were asked to rate their knowledge of medicinal cannabis: we found that those with a high level of knowledge were more likely to consider prescribing cannabis. 6% said that they have recommended their patients try cannabis; 10% said they currently had patients who would benefit from using cannabis; and 32% said they would consider prescribing cannabis if it were legal to do so.
    Thirty-two percent demonstrates a “silent epidemic” of ill New Zealanders searching for alternative relief that the pharmaceutical industry simply cannot provide. Their silence should be cause for shame amongst those who make decisions about laws that prohibits this relief. They are silenced because they fear prosecution – and it is a real fear. Our courts have sent to jail for cannabis use people with very serious medical conditions for which the jails are simply not equipped -- and because these people have no other form of relief, they are by their very nature repeat offenders, attracting longer jail sentences. Regardless of one’s view of recreational use of cannabis, medicinal use is clearly a question of compassion.
    There are a number of arguments against medicinal cannabis. Many are worried about the effects of smoking. Many are concerned about controlling dosage. And many are worried about enforcement of the law. Let’s address those in turn.
    There are concerns smoked cannabis will contribute to lung damage -- this was a real concern of doctors surveyed. But the health risks of smoking are meaningless for patients with terminal conditions, especially if the drug relieves suffering during the remaining stages of their lives.
    For non-terminal patients there are many different forms of ingestion with few negative health effects. One constituent of mine makes a tea; others use vaporisers, tinctures or even massage oil rubbed on damaged muscles or stumps. With good information, doctors can work through the various options for ingestion that work best for the patient. And in terminal cases, compassion has to be the dominant concern.
    As for the question of dosage, patients say they do not want the euphoric effects, but rather to simply be free of the perpetual pain that confines their lives. GPs work out dosage issues all the time with other pharmaceutical drugs, and with appropriate information can do that with medicinal cannabis as well.
    The third major concern is continued law enforcement against recreational marijuana use, a real concern that should be taken very seriously. Some are concerned about pharmacy break-ins, for example, but the NZ Pharmaceutical Guild say they can manage the storage and distribution of any legal medicinal cannabis product – and in this respect, medicinal cannabis can be compared to any drugs or medicines. The police already have systems for managing misuse of drugs such as barbiturates, sleeping pills, and pain medications such as morphine and anti-depressants, some of which – unlike the case with cannabis -- are fatal if misused.
    In New Zealand there is increasing research on medicinal marijuana. Otago University research for example explores the use of cannabis in minimising damage caused by strokes, as well as in pain relief. More New Zealand-based pharmacological research is one benefit of freeing up medicinal marijuana. If we can enable a doctor-directed process rather than a ministerial one, researchers will have greater incentives to engage in that research, and patients will have another treatment available to them.

What she neglected to say is that this is a clear-cut issue of personal freedom.

And what she neglected to do was campaign for her bill.  But now, with this vote, this issue of personal freedom has been put back years.

UPDATE 1: Plenty of reaction around the place, the pithiest perhaps being Russell Brown who says, “It's hard not to see MPs' rejection of Metiria Turei's medical cannabis bill as the result of a desperate desire to avoid talking about the issue, rather than a genuine exercise of conscience.”  It sure does.

UPDATE 2: Alright, this from Danyl at Dim Post is pretty pithy too:

It’s a measure of the hysteria about drugs that we can have ‘medicinal heroin’ (diacetylmorphine, or other morphine derivatives) prescribed by Doctors but medicinal cannabis would simply be beyond the pale! And with the highest rates of cannabis abuse in the world I think its safe to say the drug is already present in mainstream New Zealand society.

Enviroschools – do you know what your children are being taught?

The government has cancelled the Enviroschools programme, for which they earn my belated congratulations.

It’s a first step in beating back the forces of darkness, and if my saying that sounds like hyperbole then just listen right up.  The intellectual warriors of the left have long known that the best way to start their “long march through the culture” was first to capture the schools.  (Or in Sue Bradford’s case, to start them.)  Capture kids early before they realise the statist noose they’re putting their heads into, that’s been the story.  As Australian Education Union president Pat Byrne said in an address to her union's conference, openly acknowledging the ideological bias that dominates the school system:

“We have succeeded in influencing curriculum development in schools, education departments and universities. The conservatives have a lot of work to do to undo the progressive curriculum."

Or, when it comes to the environmental indoctrination, as Michael Sanera and Jane S. Shaw say in their introduction to their book Facts, not Fear:

    Childhood was once supposed to be idyllic and carefree.  Children were allowed to be children. But today many schools are plunging our children into environmental activism.
    “Kids have a lot of power,” writes John Javna, author of 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth, a best-selling book found in many [American] classrooms.  “Whenever you say something, grown-ups have to listen . . .  so if saving the Earth is important to you, then grown-ups will have to follow along.”
    We want out children to learn good citizenship [and, not incidentally, to read and write].  We don’t want them to be polluters when they grow up.  But often, instead of being taught information that will lead to intelligent choices in the future, they are being enlisted in trendy causes ands sent out to bring their parents “on board.”
    Environmental activism is the latest in a series of social reforms championed in our schools.  Schools are fighting the war on drugs, encouraging physical fitness, fostering self-esteem, teaching about sex [and about Te Tiriti] – you name it.  And now our children are supposed to save the Earth. The way these issues are taught shapes the way our children think.

Sure does.  And given the way they’ve been taught – and what their teachers are teaching them – it’s no wonder, as philosopher Stephen Hicks points out, that “results from a recent [American survey indicate] one in three schoolchildren fears that the Earth will no longer exist and over half believe it will be a nasty place by the time they grow up.” 

    All of this is aside from the issue of sorting out the complicated science. The issues here are the psychological set (negative emotionalism versus we-can-handle-it confidence) and the educational methods used (indoctrination versus informed critical thinking).
   On this very topic, my short Wall Street Journal article from some years ago about neither indoctrinating nor overloading children — “Global Problems Are Too Big for Little Kids” — is online in text [pdf] and audio [mp3].

Hicks’ short WSJ article linked above is a brilliant demonstration of why the educational methods involved violate what educator Lisa van Damme calls “the single most neglected issue in education”: the Hierarchy of Knowledge.

    It’s a truism that you can’t teach calculus before arithmetic. In trying to convey their sense of urgency about the world’s problems, many teachers are committing an analogous error. 
    Children are not able to deal with problems of international garbage disposal when they are still grappling with issues of personal hygiene. They are not able to put in context issues of international race relations when they are struggling with how to deal will schoolyard bullies and being talked about behind their backs. 
    When students are overloaded, they become frustrated and frightened. When they think the problems they are being asked to consider are too much to absorb, they give up trying to understand. If the teacher persists, the student simply mouths the appropriate words to appease him or her. 
    My college freshmen classes are regularly populated by young adults who are convinced that no solutions are possible and so it’s useless to try, or who are so desperate for answers that they latch on to the first semi-plausible solution they encounter and become close-minded. Both apathy and dogmatism are defense mechanisms against feeling that you are living in a hostile world whose problems are too big for you to handle.  And these are attitudes children often acquire early in their school careers. 
    This does not mean educators and parents should pretend that problems do not exist. But many of these issues, by definition, are complex global issues—issues that many adults have difficulties dealing with intellectually and emotionally. We need to take extra pains to teach our children about the principles involved on a scale they can grasp. 

So having said all that, when you realise how successfully eco-fascists have taken over the education system – when you see what your children are being fed at a time when their brains are not yet even fully formed – when you see how brainwashed are the braindead graduates of the factory schools – chanting with heel-clicking blindness all the mantras they’ve been fed on “sustainability,” “protecting the planet,” and “saving the world” – “saving the planet” when they can’t even look after themselves yet – then you will know that cancelling the Enviroschools indoctrination programme is just one small step on the way to liberation from the grey ones.

No wonder the Greens are so upset.

The programme is not so much about educating children, but indoctrinating them – producing, as its website baldly states “a generation of innovative and motivated young people, who instinctively think and act sustainably [emphasis mine]” with all that such a thing implies, not excluding the dog whistle of politics. 

Watch that video again at the Green Party’s Frog Blog to see just what “a generation of innovative and motivated young people, who instinctively think and act sustainably” actually looks like.  They’re like a frog that’s been pithed before it’s even had a chance to become a tadpole.

So all this should now help you put in context The Herald’s announcement of the scheme’s axing:

Teacher aides who help children learn about recycling, saving water and growing their own food have been scrapped by the Education Ministry because those are not considered "core" skills for children to learn.
    A spokesman for Education Minister Anne Tolley said . . . the Government was focused on "core spending priorities" of raising literacy and numeracy and increasing the numbers of pupils leaving school with educational qualifications.
"This programme does not contribute directly to these priorities."

Bravo, I say.  Spend time and money on what schools should be doing, make the information on how they’re doing widely available instead of hiding it, and you’ll save taxpayers’ money and stop wasting children’s time – and stop endangering their future.

And bravo too for having a spokesman. If that’s another sign a sign that PC is being rolled back, then I could well become a fan.

Smacking referenda

In the wake of John Key effectively rejecting in advance the results of the forthcoming referendum on smacking, I’ve been inundated with emails from folk calling for NZ to embrace the concept of “binding referenda.”  The latest such missive

If politicians are going to take referenda seriously . . . they should also be considering the right of citizens to have their will enforced, and make all referendums binding. If they are not binding they are not worth the paper they are written on.

I have a couple of problems with hanging my hat on that idea.

The first objection goes to motive. The enthusiasm for binding referenda is rooted in the feeling that politicians don’t listen to us – which is true.  But since I don’t see any sign of politicians presently taking binding referenda seriously, not at least as long as the two-party capture of the body politic remains in place, I’d suggest that persuading them that they should take the idea seriously becomes about as difficult as persuading turkeys to vote for Christmas – and if you have that sort of persuasive power then you’d hardly need binding referenda to make your voice heard.

The second objection is more substantive. It’s that binding referenda do not represent an increase in freedom. Not at all.

In fact, the idea behind binding referenda is that the will of the majority should always be enforced; that unlimited majority rule is always right.  Nothing could be more dangerous, or more destructive of real freedom. It’s not just that the majority is not always right, but that unlimited majority rule puts in danger every “minority” who disagrees – and the smallest “minority” is the individual. As the ghost of Socrates might tell you, in any battle between an individual and the community under such a system, it’s the individual’s life that is forfeit.

And as the people of Iran might presently tell you, even if the majority did vote for Ahmadinejad, that doesn’t make it right. As  Walter Williams reminds us, "Democracy and majority rule [can] give an aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny." Principled government is not built on majority rule, but on individual rights.  Hanging your hat on the verisimilitude of a vote is not the way to bring freedom to Iran, or to anywhere (are you listening President Obama?).  Hanging your hat on a system of constitutionally protected individual rights would be.

That said, I’ll still be voting in the forthcoming referendum on smacking.  And I’ll be voting “no.” Even if the politicians refuse to listen to the result, which by their hysterical reactions over the wording of the referendum we can pretty easily predict, the overwhelming message is going to be hard to ignore.

And parents deserve to have their children back from the clutches of those so abjectly ignorant as to be unable to distinguish between smacking and beating, between assault and reasonable parental force. 

You might object, as John Key does, that “To date I have not seen any evidence that it is not working” – that there have been no court cases indicating the law isn’t working, no good parents being criminalised, no police resources wasted on fruitless inquiries, no children snatched from their parents’ hands by uncaring state monitors.

But that completely misses the point, doesn’t it.  The anti-smacking law hasn’t stopped parents beating and killing their children, has it, even though Sue Bradford insisted it would. And as MacDoctor says however, hanging this particular hat on some very short-term outcomes rather misses the more important point.

    The problem is, as I have blogged before, that the effects of the repeal of section 59 are actually being felt in family dynamics, not in law enforcement. There is considerable fear, uncertainty and doubt about the new law and what is really acceptable. Listening to someone like Bradford, one would assume that a smack on the bottom is the equivalent of true child abuse , on the scale of Nia Glassie. The net result of this uncertainty is a reduction in the use of smacking – a result that the advocates of the repeal applaud. Unfortunately, the unintended consequence of this is that some parents will lack the skill-set to use some other form of discipline, resulting in the use of no discipline at all.
    Thus the true consequences of the repeal of section 59 will not be seen in 2 years, but in 15 years time when undisciplined children become undisciplined youth. But you can already see some of the consequences already. Noticed an increase in very unruly children recently? It is very noticeable in my consulting rooms. There have always been inquisitive kids and some downright hyperactive ones, but there is now an obvious flurry of toddlers who wander round the consulting room utterly unsupervised, barring an occasional protest from the parent. My observation is purely anecdotal, of course, but I am willing to bet that doctors reading this blog know what I am talking about. I am also willing to bet that other readers have noticed an increase in badly behaved children in public places.
    Let me be clear. I do not think that smacking is a particularly effective form of discipline. I do not subscribe to the idea that “spare the rod and spoil the child” means “beating your kids is your duty as a parent” (the rod in that passage is a rod of authority, not a weapon). But I think other forms of (non-violent) discipline require considerably more skill as a parent than smacking. It seems to me that a more measured way of reducing smacking in our society is to assist parents by improving their skills in other disciplinary forms, rather than removing the only form of discipline to which they have access.

I agree completely with that. How' ‘bout you?

Uptown Top Rankin [updated]

There must surely be many more useless government departments than the Fatuous Family’s Commission, and there is surely fierce competition for the spot, but the government department created by the Clark Government as a bribe to keep Peter Dunne on side (and to foster the illusion that his years in parliament had actually achieved something) must be the most well known as a prime candidate for the chop.

What has it actually achieved? Nothing. What was it supposed to achieve? To fool Done-Nothing's supporters into thinking he'd achieved something in his career.

So when former bureaucrat Christine Rankin was appointed to the position of head of the Fatuous Commission yesterday it hardly made my heart sing. Yes, she took the right stand on the anti-smacking bill promoted by Sue Bradford (who yesterday was disgracefully characterising Rankin as being a promoter of violence towards children) but she’s still just a wasteful bloody bureaucrat in charge of a department that should not exist.

So that’s what I was thinking as I listened to her interviewed on Newstalk ZB last night. That anyone who could make both Sue Bradford and Peter Done-Nothing expose their true character can't be all bad (and aren't they nasty when they're crossed) , but this is still just another high-spending bureaucrat in charge of just another useless quango.

But then she said something that made my jaw drop. Larry Williams put to her that very point – that the Families Commission was nothing more than a political creation, by expediency out of MMP, and a complete waste of time, space and money – and she agreed. And she said that if after examination she still held that view, then she would be working to close it down.

I’ve never heard a bureaucrat say that before – even with those few weasel words. So just this once, I’m going to support the appointment of a new bureaucrat, no matter how wasteful she's been in the past. Well done Ms Rankin. You now have a year’s grace before I see you as just another jobsworth.

Here’s a song which may or may not be related to this discussion:

 UPDATE:  Oops.  A commenter points out that Rankin isn’t boss, “she's only one of seven. Also look up the FamCom website to check out the drivel they produce. The thing should have been abolished....full stop.”

Ode to a fig leaf [updated]

On the occasion of the announced retirement of Genetix Fitzsimplesimons, Liberty Scott strides on to the stage not to praise her career, but to bury it and to spit on its grave:

    There is much more than can be laid at the feet of the wolf in sheep's clothing. She looks like and generally talks like she wouldn't hurt a fly, but the truth is that she has been a force against reason, against science, against economics, against individual rights and has happily used personal attacks when she saw fit to do so.
    She is a simpering vapid scaremongerer. New Zealanders should be pleased this nice but dim woman has not been in Cabinet, and has at the most dabbled around the edges of power rather than been in control of it.

There’s more, much more where that came from.  Read on here: Farewell to the wolf in sheep's clothing.

The best thing about Fitzsimplesimon’s retirement?  In Rob Hosking's words in the NBR, the departure of Fitzsimons -- “who has become a sort of organically grown, carbon-credit-worthy fig leaf for what is basically a radical left-wing party” – and in particular the elevation of non-environmentalist Sue Bradford, will expose for all to see the antediluvian Marxism that is now the ideological base of the local Greens.

UPDATE: Searching Scott’s ‘Marxist Gits’ file uncovers another seriously good lambasting of the woman who is the human fig leaf for the Marxist martyrs in the Greens: Just one more chance.  [I thank our ActSupporting commenter for the pointer.]

Parenting advice from Sun Tzu

Now that one iniquity created by the Clark Government has been removed, it’s time to address some others.  How about the Anti-Smacking Bill, in which the present PM is still implicated.

One of the worst errors forced on parents by those who were unable to distinguish between smacking and beating (yes, I’m talking to you Sue Bradford) was the legally enforced confusion between assault and reasonable parental force.

There is a difference.  A distinct difference.

Rational Jenn has a great post that explains the difference perfectly, and concretises why reasonable parental force is sometimes so crucially necessary: The Art Of War For Parents.

Think of it as the necessary update to Sun Tzu.