Friday, August 12, 2016

Anti-voluntary euthanasia submitters overwhelm (updated)

Jane Silloway Smith, who used to work for Maxim, has analysed the submissions to the health committee on the matter of voluntary euthanasia:

“Maryan Street and the Voluntary Euthanasia Society wanted to know New Zealanders’ views on legalising assisted suicide,” says Dr Jane Silloway Smith, Director of Every Life Research Unit, “and the people have spoken: at a ratio of about 3 to 1, they have told Parliament not to legalise assisted suicide.”

Dr Smith has been analysing submissions made to the Health Select Committee’s investigation into ending one’s life in New Zealand. She has conducted a random sampling of the 20,576 submissions made public by the Committee thus far. Her analysis has found that 78% of submitters are against legalising assisted suicide, while 22% are in favour of changing the law.


“Submitters to the Health Select Committee have overwhelmingly expressed their opposition to assisted suicide,” comments Dr Jane Silloway Smith. “The very clear ratio against a change in the current law alongside the high number of total submissions shows that there is a strong public political will opposed to assisted suicide.”


I am happy to take her word about the numbers but I've had a look at around 20 submissions.

Here's half a dozen of the noes. If Silloway is happy to assume her sample is right re numbers I will assume my sample is right re content.



(Right click on image to view)

Clearly a lot of effort has gone into collecting many sheets of paper featuring some oppositional statement in order to get anti-euthanasia submission numbers up.

Looks to me like the churches have been very busy.

Not one of the positive submissions that I have sighted was as 'unsupported' as these.

Ah. Democracy. It's a wonderful thing. Not.

I utterly resent religious people imposing their views on me via legislation - especially as pathetically expressed as these are.

Update

Some more single sentence, single page submissions.

Did any of these people follow or understand the Lecretia Seales case? Did they understand the text of the petition they were submitting on?

That the House of Representatives investigate fully public attitudes towards the introduction of legislation which would permit medically-assisted dying in the event of a terminal illness or an irreversible condition which makes life unbearable.



(Right click on image to enlarge)


Thursday, August 11, 2016

Criticism of WINZ case management approach awry

A Master's thesis student says Work and Income is pushing many beneficiaries into jobs that don't last.

But 61 percent still had paid work two years later. That's not a bad result. I don't have time now to check  but I believe it compares well to past performance.

But it was her recommendation that I took issue with:

"Sudden said the agency should be more flexible and supportive and bring back a system of personalised case managers that was axed in 2010."
Here is the current case management approach. Note the last sentence:

 You can still ask to be seen by a specific case manager if you want to, but it means that you may have to wait longer for an appointment if the case manager you want to see is busy helping other clients.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Breaching protection orders

The NZ Herald has a piece detailing  statistics relating to the breaching of protection orders. I read through it looking for mention of what appears to be  common scenarios. That is the female applies for a protection order and then the couple surreptitiously reconcile. Or the female uses a protection order maliciously to prevent the father from seeing his children and he refuses to accept it.

People use the law when it suits and ignore it when it doesn't.

Typically though  these circumstances are not acknowledged. The writer probably didn't ask anybody who might speak on behalf of male partners and fathers. The assumption is simply that men who break protection orders pose a further threat to the women. Doubtless this is sometimes the case. In fact women have been killed when protection orders are breached.

But how I long for some less superficial analysis of  matters that relate to 'family violence'.

Sunday, August 07, 2016

When solutions are worse than the problem

There I was, developing a great deal of sympathy for a woman whose child was removed from her at birth and put up for adoption. It must be hell to have a newborn forcibly wrenched from you immediately after the birth. The thinking behind those actions had to change.

But the last paragraph in the piece lost me.

(Link to the piece is broken - see related material here)