What matters

Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, November 19th, 2009 - 27 comments
Categories: child discipline - Tags:

Did you see Brain Rudman’s article in the Herald yesterday? The quote says it all:

never a truer word spoken

It just reminds you what an absurd debate this is.

Still at least we’re not arguing over whether ‘working dogs’ should be microchipped any more.

27 comments on “What matters ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Brickley Paiste 1
    19 November 2009 at 9:11 am

    Yes and I also saw that the paragraphs 2 and 7 were identical. Unfortunate that incompetent subbing had to fuck over such a good article.

    • Tigger 1.1
      19 November 2009 at 9:22 am

      Surely they can fix the online version – but I guess to do that they need a system for editing mistakes made online. It’s like the ‘Barak’ mistake noted recently on here. The electronic versions are so easy to repair. I know they can jump into action when they’ve gotten something wrong that they think will bite them in the bum. Just wish they had the same rigour for fixing glaring errors.

      And yes, great piece. I’m seriously thinking of mounting a campaign for an utterly absurd referendum but one that might likely get majority support if voted on – any suggestions welcomed – just to show the mob rule people what they might be creating here. Imagine a binding referendum on changing the name of New Zealand to Awesome-land. Or making it illegal to name your child a stupid name like Apple or Suri.

      • prism 1.1.1
        19 November 2009 at 9:39 am

        The people could identify more with a well-known brand name perhaps? Marmite in the South Pacific for instance. We were known for our quality ice cream, could do something there. Our butter used to be known for being yellow because it had Vitamin A? from open grass-fed cows, before we started overstocking as a positive farm management practice, and started on bug-infested, environmentally damaging palm kernel mass, now we could be called Paradise Manque. (New word learnt here.)

  2. prism 2
    19 November 2009 at 9:42 am

    Why aren’t we thinking about microchipping working dogs any more? Wasn’t it a good idea? I remember someone selling their farm after so much of their stock was predated by a dog, pig dog, I think Rhodesian ridgeback. People often lose their pig dogs and being able to recover them before they went feral seems a good idea. Was this chipping to be on farm dogs and farmers objected?

  3. Deus ex Machina 3
    19 November 2009 at 9:44 am

    Tigger is quite right. Mob-rule, otherwise known as democracy, is an absurdity. How can the peasant in the street know what is right for him or her? How can they be relied on to decide what is right for their own family? We, who know so much better than they, must have the power to order them to do the right thing.

    I agree their complaints can get a bit noisy and irritating but we must for their own sake close our ears and minds and ignore them.

    • Tigger 3.1
      19 November 2009 at 9:49 am

      Actually mob rule is known as Ochlocracy – effectively there is no government and disputes are resolved through the rule of the mob (force typically). Then again, force is just what the child beaters like…

    • Daveo 3.2
      19 November 2009 at 9:54 am

      I hold pretty radical democratic beliefs, but democracy requires constitutional checks and balances to protect minorities and ensure laws are properly thought out and subject to proper process.

      PR-driven sensationalist beatups, funded by the wealthy and followed by a majoritarian referendum aren’t democracy. Nor is this blatant and dishonest attempt at astroturfing.

  4. Nick 4
    19 November 2009 at 10:55 am

    As far as I am aware, there is no march anywhere purporting such a position. Can anyone point me to information that says there is a march in support of beating ones kids?

    • BLiP 4.1
      19 November 2009 at 12:54 pm

      Here’s a wee piece from the web site:

      Colin Craig, march organizer, spoke to the press about his passion for democracy and his disappointment in the Government response to the referendum result of late August this year.

      In the referendum nearly 88% of the 1.6 million people who voted said ‘no’ when asked if it should be a crime to smack children “as part of good parenting”.
      After the referendum Prime Minister John Key said the law would not be changed.

      “I find it deeply disturbing that such a clear message from the people of this country to government has been ignored.” says Mr. Craig “My fore fathers fought for a democracy and in a democracy the government does not pass and retain laws that nearly 90% of the people don’t want.”

    • Pascal's bookie 4.2
      19 November 2009 at 1:13 pm

      Hi Nick.

      Here’s what Ivan Bailey, the facebook organiser for the march, said to Bomber:

      Hi Martyn,

      People who want democracy are not planning to make it compulsory for you to beat your kids. You could choose for yourself. If you lived in a democracy.

      Thanks for your input.

  5. ben 5
    19 November 2009 at 11:12 am

    Brian is right. It is ludicrous that you have to protest a right that the government has no place whatsoever in taking from you. The right to discipline your own child is plainly valuable, and families protesting the socialisation of the raising of their own childing are properly upset.

    Great that even Brian Rudman sees it that way.

    • weizguy 5.1
      19 November 2009 at 11:23 am

      Assault is a right?

      Smacking is a small part of discipline. The Government’s taken away our right to do a lot of things that have been used to discipline children in the past. Are you saying that the government shouldn’t intervene in parenting at all?

  6. tc 6
    19 November 2009 at 11:20 am

    The scary and sad thought is these marchers represent the folk who put us where we are by voting for the NACT. It’s not so much a ‘pro beating’ turnout , even though it would contain a fair few of those, but more like ‘give us red necks what you promised’ turnout.

    NACT actively cultivated/twisted this and other issues like EFA/ETS to score some easy votes from this section of our society which I’m sure JK’s relaxed about.

    But then so would I if I had a crown guard around me as the PM.

    • Geek 6.1
      19 November 2009 at 11:59 am

      How easy it is to discredit them if you just hang the redneck label on them. After all they feel they aren’t being listened to, they must be racist child beaters mustn’t they?

      Of course everyone on the left is an intellectual bigot with overly polished dreams of a Utopia where every one is equal and our air is clean and smells like roses.

      All those who turned out for the Bikoi were patch wearing gang members who can’t afford the increased rego cause words getting out that their P is bad so its gettn harder to sell.

      This gross generalization thing is fun.

    • mickysavage 6.2
      19 November 2009 at 12:55 pm

      It serves NACT right. They are the ones who picked scabs and abused and terrorised people about how bad things were. They bet the mob up into a lather and promised that things would be better if they won.

      And then they get into power, get their hands on the limos and the baubles and things only get worse. They have not improved the plight of ordinary people one bit.

      No wonder people are grumpy. It is an irrational non thinking grumpiness but it serves NACT right that they are now on the receiving end.

  7. Brickley Paiste 7
    19 November 2009 at 11:25 am

    @ Tigger:

    Actually I emailed them yesterday about some online copy in which it said a 177cm tall defendant was xyz and 177cm tall. They’d fixed the copy within 20 minutes. I also emailed them above Rudman’s piece but it didn’t get changed for some reason.

    “Imagine a binding referendum on changing the name of New Zealand to Awesome-land.”

    In Canada one year when Stockwell Day was running for PM — a creationist pentecostal rube — a comedy show (they have those in other countries) got something like 250,000 signatures to have his first name changed to Doris.

    It was fantastic.

  8. HandleTheJandal 8
    19 November 2009 at 11:35 am

    Reminds me that Brian Rudman is an imbecile.

  9. Anne 9
    19 November 2009 at 12:31 pm

    @ Nick.

    If you lot purport to be “walking for democracy” then the rest of us will respond accordingly. As it stands you deserve nothing more than ridicule.

  10. Nick 10
    19 November 2009 at 1:10 pm

    I ain’t marching Anne. Even if I was I wouldn’t be doing so in support of beating kids.

    BTW, can you count? Because 88/12 is pretty democratic according to my calculator.

    • Zorr 10.1
      19 November 2009 at 3:36 pm

      88/12 on what exactly? What was the referendum even on? It confused the hell out of me so I didn’t vote because I felt that any vote I gave would be a completely wasted one based on the fact that I didn’t have a clue.

      If you can clearly answer here what that 88% voted in favor of that requires any law change I will be amazed. Thing is, as the law stands, you can legally smack your child as a part of discipline. So, tell me, why do we have to repeal s59(a) when that wasn’t what the referendum was asking?

      Honestly, ask a stupid question (as in the referendum) and you get a stupid answer.

  11. Rex Widerstrom 11
    19 November 2009 at 2:59 pm

    So… because what they’re marching for is wrong, you’d deny them their right to do it?

    I think people are wrong about a lot of things, some of them harmful. For instance if folk stopped believing in their own patented version of the Big Sky Fairy, then in many parts of the world they’d probably stop shooting at one another and blowing up innocent children.

    Yet “freedom of religion” is one of those rights everyone seems to agree upon, at least in liberal Western democracies.

    If people stopped inhaling carcinogens (and paying for the privilege) and exhaling them all over other people (including their children) then we’d all be better off, as part of Vote Health could be reallocated to other patients.

    We stop short of making these things illegal because we know that even if we were to do so there’d still be hard liners who continue these unwelcome practices — and they’d probably be those who were the worst offenders.

    Instead we try a mixture of tolerance, encouragement of “good” behaviour and education, and rely upon a change in societal attitude to make such behaviour increasingly unacceptable to the person’s peers.

    On this issue, however, increased police powers and criminalisation of a large section of the population is seen as the only effective answer and anyone who points out that it’s not going to stop those who cause serious harm to children is vilified as a “child beater”.

    Way to win hearts and minds, people.

    • Pascal's bookie 11.1
      19 November 2009 at 3:19 pm

      Who is trying to deny them the right to march?

    • felix 11.2
      19 November 2009 at 3:33 pm

      Ditto Pb.

      I’m simply reserving the right to ridicule them.

      • Gordon Shumway 11.2.1
        20 November 2009 at 8:15 pm

        I won’t be marching. I think some of the extreme religious groups are exactly that – extreme.

        However, I also think it’s pathetic that so many here chose to exaggerate, miscast and spin the “pro-smacking” side’s position. 99.9% of people who do not think it’s the government’s role to outlaw “smacking” are not planning to, and never will, “beat up” their children.

        Stop the crap that supporters are, by definition, child abusers.

        So you want to keep the law. We get it. Other than hyperbolic bullsh1t, you’re not adding anything new to the debate that people with a brain should be capable of having.

        • RedLogix 11.2.1.1
          20 November 2009 at 8:32 pm

          Actually agree with you for once; the hyperbole hasn’t ‘t helped either side.

          It would have been kinda nice if NZ had been able to pass this relatively minor legal ammendment like Germany did… with almost no fuss. On the other hand the fact that we couldn’t probably tells us that it is a debate we have to have.