"Teaching men to respect women a priority - Davis" TV3

TV3 is reporting on an interview with Kelvin Davis this morning.

Kelvin Davis is "determined" to lecture men on how to treat women properly, as he prepares to take his seat in The Beehive.

The Labour list candidate is due to replace outgoing MP, Shane Jones, just months out from September's general election.

Mr Davis says the recent Roastbusters' scandal has highlighted major failings in men's treatment of women.

“Men don’t have conversations with their sons about how to treat, love, and respect women,” he says.

Questions for Kelvin.

Do women have converstaions with their daughters about how to treat, love and respect men? Further, do they demonstrate those behaviours?

I always bristle when the finger points one way.

(I also wonder how men can have conversations with sons they have no knowledge of or relationship with.)

So poverty doesn't matter after all?

Conservative Perspective drew my attention to research reported in The New Zealand Herald. I cannot find any mention of it at the NatCen website.

Children raised by a single parent are no less happy than those living with two biological parents, a study has found.
Researchers from NatCen Social Research found family composition has "no significant effect" on the happiness of children. Rather, it is the quality of relationships at home which are most strongly linked to a child's well-being.
The results challenge the popular conception that children in two-parent families are more likely to be stable and content than those raised in "broken" homes.
Researchers analysed data from the Millennium Cohort Study, which was made up of 12,877 children aged seven, in 2008, from across the UK. The children came from three family types: those living with two biological parents; those living with a step-parent and a biological parent; and those with just a single parent.
The seven-year-olds were asked the question: "How often do you feel happy?"

Of the children living with a lone parent, 36 per cent said they were happy "all the time" while the remaining 64 per cent reported being happy "sometimes or never".
Exactly the same percentages were recorded when the question was put to children from the other family types.

Why weren't percentages for "sometimes" and "never" reported separately? That's what would interest me. That nearly two thirds of all children are "sometimes or never" happy tells us very little. Also how would the responses differ amongst, say, a group of 12 year-olds?

The results were largely unchanged when other factors which could influence a child's well-being - such as their parents' social class or the affluence of the area in which they live - were taken into account.

So poverty doesn't matter after all. Poor children are just as happy as rich children, so that's that.

Jenny Chanfreau, a senior researcher at NatCen, said that a "happy, harmonious family dynamic" was crucial for child happiness, adding: "It's the quality of the relationships in the home that matters, not the family composition."

I am sure that is correct, but that quality rests largely on the well-being of the adult. It is a fact that single parents suffer more stress and mental ill-health (often linked to financial worry.)  One result is the higher likelihood of children in a single parent home being abused or neglected.

Ms Chanfreau told the British Sociological Association's annual conference in Leeds: "Getting on well with siblings, having fun with the family at weekends and having a parent who reported rarely or never shouting when the child was naughty were all linked with a higher likelihood of being happy."
The study's findings contradict previous research which indicates that family division is likely to have a detrimental effect on children.

Not on what we know of the "study's findings" so far, it doesn't. The many studies that have shown poorer outcomes for children in single parent families are based on actual findings in later life. That just over a third of single parent children say they are happy "all the time"  does not nullify the abundance of evidence that finds they tend to suffer more physical and mental ill health, substance abuse, interaction with police and justice systems, poorer academic achievement and broken relationships.

One 2008 report, based on figures from the Office for National Statistics, claimed that children whose parents had split up were four and a half times more likely to develop emotional problems than those whose parents had stayed together.
- The Independent

National Statistics is the equivalent of Statistics NZ. They deal with reality as conveyed by statistics reported by many government agencies and gathered through various surveys. They are non-partisan and don't seek answers that fit a particular worldview.

Absolutely the same applies in this country

NCPA again  highlights how much single parent families ahve contributed to inequality. Then they ask the question, why don't politicians talk aboiut it?

How much do single-parent households matter?

• University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox determined that children in high-income households who experienced family breakup fared less well emotionally, psychologically, educationally, and ultimately economically than their peers in two-parent families.
• Children of single or cohabitating, but not married, parents experience abuse, behavioral problems and psychological issues at higher rates than children of married couples, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control.
• Just 2 percent of children raised in two-parent families experience poverty long-term, while more than 20 percent of children in single-parent families live in long-term poverty.
• Penn State sociologist Molly Martin estimated in 2006 that 41 percent of economic inequality generated between 1976 and 2000 was the result of changed family structure.
• According to researchers at the Brookings Institution, the U.S. poverty rate would be a full 25 percent lower today if the U.S. family structure resembled that of 1970.

While the mainstream media and research groups have been focused on inequality, they have largely ignored family breakup. Why? Maranto and Crouch point to three reasons:

• First, leftists do not want to side with social conservatives, despite the plethora of evidence.
• Secondly, minority families have experienced the worst family breakup, and bringing up the issue leads to fears of charges of racism.
• Lastly, because there is no immediate or quick fix to the family breakup problem: such a societal transformation will take decades.

Source: Robert Maranto and Michael Crouch, "Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families," Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2014.

Regarding the second reason I remember getting it in the neck from Tau Henare when the NZBR released my paper on Maori and Welfare in which I pointed out the correlation between the high rate Maori welfare dependence and ex-nuptial births. He wrote me a letter saying I was Maori bashing. In other words, racist.

Let's just blame the perpetrator

Conservative Perspective blogs about ACT's Three Strikes for Burglary policy. He remarks about 'Gavin' who has been burgled 5 times.

"I’m sure Gavin represents a good percentage of the population when he suggests that the causes of burglary are ‘poor education and the wealth gap between rich and poor.’  But is that really the case?"

People who blame burglary on poor education and the gap between rich and poor are often equally quick to highlight white collar crime - theft via solicited dodgy financial investments, corporate fraud etc.

Can't blame those on poor education.

There's a perversion or rejection of values at all levels of society.

Remedying problems would be much simpler if we just started blaming the perpetrators - period. Let's proceed from that position and then, maybe, permit mitigating factors.

As it is, too many look first for the fashionable, extraneous causes of crime because they've been - and continue to be -  well-versed in them. Right from school.

An American guy rang Sean Plunket yesterday and said that NZ is a great country but we are too nice to our bad people. Not like you Yanks, went through my mind, thinking large-scale imprisonment for drug offences and capital punishment.

But he has a point. Our Kiwi tolerance (and Christian forgiveness) sometimes extends into damaging excuse-making for deeply immoral, unacceptable behaviour.

What I do like about any 3 Strikes philosophy is the inherent expression of clemency and redemption - TO A POINT.

Questions about Jones' successor

Excuse my ignorance about  Labour Party developments and electoral law.

I do know that Shane Jones was a list MP and assume  his departure requires a replacement for the months between June and September. But I may be wrong, in which case the rest of this post is redundant.

	Labour Party List 2011 General Election
1	GOFF, Phil
2	KING, Annette
3	CUNLIFFE, David
4	PARKER, David
5	DYSON, Ruth
6	HOROMIA, Parekura
7	STREET, Maryan
8	COSGROVE, Clayton
9	MALLARD, Trevor
10	MORONEY, Sue
11	CHAUVEL, Charles
12	MAHUTA, Nanaia
13	ARDERN, Jacinda
14	ROBERTSON, Grant
15	LITTLE, Andrew
16	JONES, Shane
17	SIO, Sua William
18	FENTON, Darien
19	MACKEY, Moana
20	PRASAD, Rajen
21	HUO, Raymond
22	BEAUMONT, Carol
23	DAVIS, Kelvin
24	SEPULONI, Carmel
25	BARKER, Rick

So, I know Prasad is still an MP because of his Easter outburst over Nigella Lawson.

I had to wiki-search the next too. Yes, they are MPs.

But I do know Kelvin Davis is not. One of the few that should be.

He has been selected for the Te Tai Tokerau but somewhere I read he isn't available for campaigning yet? So will he be available to make a swift trip south to replace Jones in the House?

And how will that affect Hone's chance of keeping the seat? Will Davis find himself in parliament for just a couple of months if he doesn't win Te Tai Tokerau,or will Labour sensibly push him up the list this time?

Or can he turn it over to the next party-lister, ex MP Carmel Sepuloni?

Who would think a sane person wanted a bar of Labour but he has put up his  hand for candidate selection. Good Guy in my opinion.

Cell phones for ex-prisoners and misplaced outrage

I cannot believe the naysayers on the business of equipping released prisoners with mobile phones that have "pre-programmed numbers for police mentors and other support services."

The Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesperson is "outraged".

 "This is like giving a reward to offenders for completing their sentences," she said. "If free mobile phones are being handed out to anyone, it should be to victims, not criminals."

First, they have served their sentence. Second, it isn't victims who need rehabilitation assistance. Help and support yes, but not mobile phones. Thirdly SST should be supporting attempts to rehabilitate. Their attitude increases risk.

And Jacinda Ardern is just as loopy. She believes "...Vodafone should provide offenders with jobs or training rather than cellphones."

Well that's a slap in the face. It would be great if any potential employer takes on a released prisoner but they do not have an obligation.

I think it's a great idea (still only a pilot at this stage) and couldn't agree more with the sentiment expressed by Serco's director of operations Scott Nairn

"If it prevents just one person from becoming a victim, it will be worth it."