Written By: - Date published: 2:03 pm, February 27th, 2008 - 38 comments
Categories: inoculation, national -
Tags: inoculation, national
Again from a Parliamentary address, the following passage was deleted from Bill English’s Wikipedia entry in June last year:
He married a Catholic GP, Mary, and they now have six children – five boys: Luke, Thomas, Rory, Bartholemew and Xavier; and one daughter, Maria. He is a devout Catholic himself, and upholds his churches opposition to [[abortion]], [[voluntary euthanasia]] and [[physician assisted suicide]], [[civil unions in New Zealand]] and [[prostitution in New Zealand]].
His wife Mary edited the newsletter of an anti-abortion medical practitioners group, “Doctors for Life,” and served as President of a conservative Christian women’s group known as the Family Education Network, before stepping down when her husband was elected Leader of the Opposition. Both organisations are now defunct.
It’s well known that John Key is cagey about his views on most things, preferring instead to tell people whatever it is that they most want to hear – I sometimes think of him as kind of our very own walking, talking Mirror of Erised.
I did think that at the very least we could rely on Bill to be straight with us about what he really believes though, mainstream or not.
Instead, it looks like their political consultants have got National rolling out systematic inoculations caucus-wide.
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Absolute fury eh? I take it you’re new to the blogging thing… However apologies if that’s how it appeared. I’d call it more frustration as I tried to understand your angle.
I have agreed regarding the family thing. Wikipedia can only show the entirety of an edit, so the graphic includes everything that has been deleted. Perhaps that could have been edited by A_Y_B to only include references to Bill himself, but then the link to wikipedia would still show the full edit. If you have suggestions about how that could be avoided, feel free to suggest away.
However, the post made the thrust of the article perfectly clear – nary a mention of the Wife, but questioning of what he (note the bold he in the post) believes in. there’s no scoring points off his wife here and I think you’re making a cheap shot yourself by trying to bring that point into focus, you’ll notice the debate has purely centred on Bill.
For a supposed neutral, I’m not sure how you missed that. That’s why I ‘assumed you’re a rabid right-winger’ – their usual strategy is to ignore the actual substance and focus on irrelevant side issues that no-one else is actually debating. My apologies if I have misjudged you, but that’s what your approach has been. Doesn’t help whet you continuously ignore what someone is attempting to debate (when it’s what the actual post is about), while they’re answering your points. People call that trolling.
You’ve turned something about wiki editing into a debate about whether South Aucklanders would appreciate the content of said editing, yet don’t link it back to what we’re talking about.
Your comments regarding social conservatism in South Auckland are interesting but I’m not sure what I am meant to understand – their concern with the prostitution reform law has nothing whatsoever to do with wiki editing and you haven’t made any specific point.
If I started to mention the failure of Think Big to have a positive economic impact of the residents of Tolaga Bay you’d probably equally confused, for example.
I think you’re overestimating that sense of betrayal however, there are more issues out there that people are concerned about. On the day though, people do often vote based upon a single issue.
so bill thinks he is Moses in his spare time but he doesn’t want anyone else to know…have I got that right?
I think this information about Bill is very very relevant. There were comments made by both he and John Key a few months back quoted by one of the Sunday papers saying that they were sick of the government paying for Solo Mothers late term abortions at North Shore hospital. The domestic purposes benefit is so low I imagine some mothers don’t even have the transport they need to get to the sparsely located free clinics where they can get contraception free.
The Nat’s don’t need to change the law on abortion, all they need to do is administer it with a different emphasis.
In the US now the Catholic Church is buying up a lot of hospitals and denying women abortions. They are also denying them contraceptives. Practices are spreading of intimidation of doctors who do provide safe abortions for women. These doctors are been threatened with exclusion from promotions etc. etc.
On June 7 in the US the pro life people staged a nation-wide protest against the pill for goodness sake so for many of the pro life pro family people its really more about sending women back to the dark ages where you do nothing but breed. Its not about protecting foetuses, Its about stopping women having any choices at all.
Many of the National pro family policies are very anti to single parents and make it difficult for a woman to leave an unhappy marriage and still sustain her family.
The child care package they promoted last election is a tax break of up to 5000 per year. But for a poor minimum wage woman alone she would probably only qualify for a small part of that. That means its not possible for her to pay for child care while she works which makes it damned impossible for some woman who don’t have family to mind their kids and help them out to get away from miserable situations etc. unless of course they go on the domestic purposes benefit which you can bet the nat’s will be attacking once in government.
They are a very backward thinking party in total when it comes to women’s rights to exist independently outside marriage. They vote against just about every initiative to help poorly paid mothers etc.
In their last period of government over 9 years the minimum wage increased by $1. Of the 91000 minimum wage earners during that time most were women.
They continually blocked attempts by nurses to get pay increases yet touted the free market and paid Don Brash 1 000 000. Yes they like cheap female workers and believe in the free market for the rich and those who in their books are worthy of such excessive salaries. They also passed the privacy act which effectively made Wages and salaries private. This in effect made equal pay legislation which has existed for women here in NZ for years almost
completely null and void. If you don’t know your boss is cheating you how can you challenge what is happening behind your back. This pay privacy can hide nepotism and all sort of shady pay practices from employees.
Of course poor prospects for pay and improvement are the things that induce women to stay in marriages when their partners cheat on them etc etc. Basically if you have kids to feed its very hard to stand up for yourself and leave. The Nats want to keep it that way.
They believe in the coercion of women to remain married through their impoverishment. Having looked at their voting history and having spoken with some of the people in that party that is my belief.
Last election the Labout government introduced a penalty for employers found to be paying female employees less for the exact same job. Don Brash was incensed by this. He thought it was wrong that an employer should be penalised for knowingly underpaying women.
When Jim Bolger was Prime minister his most important first priority was to reverse legislation achieved previously by Helen Clarke which made it possible for women working in female dominated industries to compare their jobs with similar mens jobs and claim increases based on jobs which were comparable. The legislation was only passed in a very weak form and would not have increased women’s wages by much but Nationals first priority was not to woman voters but to employers. Don Brash promised to do exactly the same thing. It was a “gone by lunch time ” policy. Top priority.
Theres a lot more. Go look at their voting record in parliament and you will see that every effort to help improve the financial lot of women they have opposed again and again and agian.