What's $300,000?

How much compo should we pay Susan Couch?

Dunno. What's 11 years on the DPB living in Auckland worth?

$300,000.

Righto.

Home schooling - a right we take for granted

I'm shocked. Germany hates home-schooling apparently.  The Welfare State We're In has linked to a New American article about the persecution parents face in Germany and Sweden if they want to home school their children - THEIR children.

Earlier this year I made comment about how rules-bound and obedient Germans are in my experience. Perhaps the insistence on 'state education only' is part of the picture.

In October of 2005, the Neubronner family (pictured) decided to homeschool. In America, that would have been the end of the story. The Neubronners, however, lived in Germany, where government has taken an extreme hardline stance with the aim of eradicating home education altogether. The loving German parents applied for permission to educate their two young sons, Morris and Thomas, at home. Unsurprisingly, their application was rejected.

Over the next few months, the battle seemed interminable. They sued for permission to homeschool and lost. Then they appealed. Again, they lost. Finally, in the summer of 2006, the Neubronners struck a deal with school authorities: The boys could be homeschooled provided they were tested regularly. Like the vast majority of homeschoolers, the kids did great on the government’s tests.

Despite the high marks, or perhaps because of them, eventually, authorities decided to put an end to the successful home education scheme. The Neubronner parents were threatened with massive fines, and like many other homeschoolers in Germany, even a potential jail sentence was put on the table if they refused to comply. During that time, the family appealed all the way up to the German constitutional court.

As the fight was unfolding, the family’s story became national news, with mother Dagmar, a biologist and publisher, becoming the face of the secular homeschooling movement in Germany. The media coverage ranged from friendly to neutral because the family seemed — aside from the homeschooling, at least — like a rather “normal,” well-integrated, intellectual family without any particular ax to grind against government schools; they simply wanted to exercise their right not to use that particular government “service.”

When the family refused to pay the exorbitant fines, officials burst into their home and ransacked it, searching for something, anything, to take with them. They found nothing worthwhile, but the horror was just getting started. Finally, officials froze the family’s bank accounts. They even threatened to arrest both parents and auction their home to pay the fines.

More

What's yours is mine...

"Stay on the dole"

"Stay on the dole"  WINZ tells beneficiaries

WINZ refuses to put up a few hundred dollars to save thousands


These are the headlines we'd be reading if Work and Income was innocent of the charges Jacinda Ardern is levelling at them. 

An illogical sentiment abounds about keeping the unemployed domiciled here, as if they are worth more as potential employers than as an unemployed cost. Beyond the silliness of that, if someone can find work in Australia and be productive and satisfied, why hold them down on an unemployment benefit here? It makes no sense.

Another storm in a teacup manufactured by airhead Ardern.

Student allowances - almost 100,000

The statistics for 2011 have just been released and student allowance recipients for 2011 reached 97,308. That's an increase of 41,757 since 2005 or 75 percent. I think of student allowances as benefits even though they come out of the Ministry of Education budget. After all, if they weren't on a student allowance many would be on  the dole.

Looking at the allowances in the context of unemployment, in 1991 unemployment peaked at 11 percent. In that year 72,479 students received an allowance. The population  was smaller then but not by much with respect to the relevant demographic.

In 1991 the 15-24 population was 556,000.
In 2011 it was 644,000.

(Of course not all student allowance recipients fall into that age group but most do.)

On the face of it the ratio of young people receiving a student allowance to the unemployment rate is higher today.

Truth column November 22

My November 22 Truth column is now on-line:

Delegates at last weekend’s Labour Party conference decided electorate committees should have a 50% female quota.

Electorate committees are the muscle behind the candidate. I chaired one for ACT. Had anyone instructed me to turn away a willing and capable male member because I didn’t have a female counterpart, I would have resigned. It’s loony. But these days, Labour is loony.

More

Other Truth columns here

Talking up poverty

Earlier in the week Bob  Stephens and Charles Waldegrave two long-time anti-poverty campaigners wrote a piece for the NZ Herald which  looked at the cost of housing rental, the largest weekly outlay people have. They compared two and three-bedroom properties in the lowest income areas. Then made this statement:

If the children are of different genders and one is adolescent they would normally require separate bedrooms, so a three-bedroom house would be needed.

When I was very young my Mum and dad bought their first home and it had three bedrooms. Lucky me got one to myself because the three brothers had to share. When we moved here it was considered the height of luxury to build a four bedroom house with two toilets no less. Two brothers still shared.

Many - if not most - of the families discussed here are sole parent. If I was the sole parent with a low income I'd been opting for the smallest home in the best neighbourhood - maybe even one bedroom if the children were very young. The idea that a single parent with one boy and one girl automatically requires a three bedroom home is silly. But it does help the case of those who want to push up costs as high as they can.

I am not denying that low income families struggle. But the inevitable conclusion that government has to direct more money into these homes is not a given. You can argue the moral case, the economic case, the political case.... But perhaps the worst aspect of this type of thinking and analysis is it takes away from the poor the expectation that they can be smart, adaptive and innovative; that they can work out for themselves how to make their lives better tomorrow by making some sacrifices today. It's thoroughly patronising and paternalistic and will not deliver some sort of socialist nirvana. It will result in a helpless, dependent population who one day wake up and realise that the all-giving state is now their worst enemy.

Strike that.  It's already happened.

Questions for the first of the month

Why is it that banks can charge you account fees on a non-working day but not make direct credit transfers till working days?

Will Labour accept John Tamihere's membership application?

Why did someone send me an e-mail saying that this December features 5 Saturday's, 5 Sundays and 5 Mondays and according to the Chinese this was very, very rare and in order to avoid great misfortune I should pass it on? (So rare it last happened in 2007)

How the heck will I get done what I need to get done between now and the 25th? (Not by blogging)

Why do dogs pee exactly where another has just been? (Perhaps they've been observing human behaviour).

Why are children allowed to be held as hostages to their pathetic parent's lifestyle choices?

Should I or shouldn't I waste my time reading about smarmy from Palmy? (He won't be giving JT the big tick today)

Foodbanks are not soup kitchens

From the World Socialist Web Site, an article yesterday began:

Since the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2008, there has been a huge expansion in the UK of soup kitchens, known euphemistically as food banks, as a result of growing poverty.

A euphemism is "The act or an example of substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive."

But a food bank is exactly that.  A place where one person can contribute groceries and another can withdraw them. It is NOT a soup kitchen. Another left-wing distortion of language. To stir the emotions they invoke harsh historical images.

The article concerns UK legislation that will see some emergency welfare devolved to local councils.

New legislation will for the first time make charities, rather than the welfare state, the main provider of emergency food supplies to those fallen on hard times.

Another exaggeration when considering the next sentences;

From next April, the central government-administered Social Fund, which provides emergency loans and grants, will be abolished as a result of the 2012 Welfare Reform Act and the responsibility handed over to local authorities. The new funding is set at 2005 budget levels and not ring-fenced (protected), so local authorities will inevitably cut the number of emergency loans and refer those in trouble to food banks instead.

 Note the difference between "will" in the first quote and "inevitably" in the second.

Anyway, this is a sensible development. The more localised and intimate welfare assistance becomes, the more the wheat can be sorted from the chaff.

The article goes on to describe the increasing call on UK food banks. But that can happen regardless of economic conditions.

Note the growth in NZ (Auckland I think) usage of foodbanks in the first part of last decade when the unemployment rate and numbers on benefits were dropping.

Mark Lundy appeals to the Privy Council

It's become terribly fashionable to espouse the innocence of convicted murderers. The latest cause celebre is Mark Lundy. These particular fashion-followers are forking-out to take his case to the Privy Council in London and have even concocted a name for themselves, FACTUAL (For Amber and Christine - Truth Uncovered About Lundys). It's such a clever acronym, having thought of it they'd feel bound to proceed. Who'd want to waste it?

In the absence of religion, lots of substitute faiths take hold. Some believe in vast conspiracies, some in new-age health regimes, some in political ideologies (mine is individual freedom), and some in the wrongful conviction and detention of a particular criminal.

Some faiths are a search for truth; others are a denial. I'd put barking up the Mark-Lundy- is-innocent tree in the latter category. But if his supporters want to chuck their money away, that's their business.

Reading without comprehension

Metiria Turei's withering criticism of Rodney Hide's Herald On Sunday column is a perfect example of how someone can utterly mangle the sense and by implication, intent of a writer.

Rodney Hide’s latest piece in the NZ Herald exposes a callous and dangerous attitude. He needs to ask himself whether he really wants solutions to reduce child death or whether he just wants to pontificate while more women and more children suffer.

More

Truth column November 15

My Truth column from November 15 is now on-line:

Only a pointy-headed economist could find anything good to say about a rising unemployment rate, surely? Not so fast.

More

Other Truth columns here

Another blinder from Rodney Hide

Compelling reading:

... if we really cared about the lives of children we would put an end to the sponsoring of irresponsible parenthood. We once thought that welfare was the foundation of a compassionate society. It's not. Our horrible child abuse statistics prove that.

What am I supposed to take from this?

A happy ending ... except for those who collectively lost $40,000 through written off debt.

I mean, what is the point of this story? What is it meant to achieve? To send a helpful message about not getting into debt? To make people who haven't lost their jobs feel guilty? To put a human face on the recession? Is it a modern day Aesop's fable?

It doesn't link to any policy-barrow being pushed. Except maybe the socialist clamour over inequality. Good- guys- are- poor- too sort of thing.

They sound and look like a very nice family but they've also had (albeit inadvertently) stuff they never paid for and never will. I suppose that's uncharitable of me. But this "no asset" procedure just sounds like another  safety net that will encourage irresponsibility. Another scheme to transfer financial onus from the have-nots to the haves. Trouble is, sometimes the haves aren't.

IT contractor for teacher payroll can now talk

Adages are derived from eons of experience. Here's a topical example:

There are two sides to every story

The IT company that was contracted to pay the teachers can now speak out. Summarising, the problems seem to stem from school's unwillingness to embrace on-line technology.

I recently worked on a survey project which asked for on-line responses but a large number of respondents submitted in hand-writing via fax or scanned attachments. Accommodating the handwritten submissions was a time-consuming and unsatisfactory process. So I can sympathise with the staff at Talent2 and the backlog resulting from handling large amounts of unnecessary paperwork and labouring over illegible handwriting.

Most of the information required from  school administrators would be numerical. Deciphering handwritten numbers can be a nightmare. As I have discovered.

Perhaps the teachers should have individually been asked to log-in their details. They would have been highly motivated to get it right.

Labour creeps

I've never faithfully followed a virtual reality/elimination competition of the type that features a  few hand-picked wannabes stuck in a mansion, on an island or bound up  in some far-reaching global quest.

But isn't that what the Labour saga is resembling?

People who are under-talented and over-egoed figuring out which equally under/over endowed counterpart is their best stepping stone?

Greens tell PM to heed the children

 According to co-leader Metiria Turei and the Greens:

"The Prime Minister should look to children for advice on running the country, with an international survey showing the first thing kiwi kids would do if they had his job would be to provide the food, housing and necessities everyone needs, the Green Party said today....This should be a reality check for MPs and the Government in particular..."

The same survey shows other priorities:

“Kiwi kids continue to aspire most strongly to be professional athletes...New Zealand children are most afraid of spiders, but also sharks and snakes."

 The  aspirations and fears of children are not particularly rational. But then neither are the Greens'.

"Capably and ablably"

Yes, that's what Kate Sutton says about the female quota Labour plans to impose on electorate committees. The Labour Vice President says that international research shows that  "...when you create space for women they will capably and ablably fill it."

Quite.


Still at least she has stopped swearing in her speeches.

I've chaired an electorate committee and am just trying to envisage turning away willing and able male members because I didn't have a female counterpart - of any calibre. How utterly absurd.

No European parents named and shamed?

From yesterday's post about the ethnicity of child killers Joe asks this question:

"Lindsay from your figures why have no european parents ever been named and shamed -as a society is European infanticide acceptable but not for Pacific islanders like Luffely or other brown New Zealanders."

The report I kinked to does not break down the reasons for death but another does.

It reviews family violence child deaths from 2004-2011.

Some cut and paste facts:

33 children were killed by 34 suspects

79% of children were aged three years or under at the time of death

Cause of Death

Head trauma  16
Newborn baby killed by Mother  5
Injuries to body  5
Drowning  3
Suffocation  3
Stab wounds  1
Total  33

 Mothers killed 15 (45%) of the 33 child victims, comprising 10 daughters and 5 sons. 

In  five  cases  the  mother  concealed  her  pregnancy  from  family,  friends  and/or
workmates.  When the baby was born the mother, through act or omission, killed
the baby and disposed of the body.  Three of the mothers were European, one Pacific Island and one Indian.

Murder/suicide. Six children died as a result of (four) mothers who killed their child(ren) and then killed themselves.  Three mothers were European and one was Maori.

In three cases children aged between one and two years of age were drowned
by their mothers; in two of the cases the children drowned in the bath after being left unattended. The mothers were Maori, European and Fijian.

In the remaining two cases of mothers killing children, both victims died as result
of physical assaults to their head and body. Both mothers were Maori.

Stepfathers killed five stepsons and two stepdaughters. In all cases the injuries involved physical assaults resulting in trauma to the head or body.  Five stepfathers were Maori, one was European and one was Cook Island.

Fathers killed two daughters and one son.  Two babies were five weeks and 11 weeks old and died from head trauma.  One child was three years old and died from injuries to her head and body.  Two Maori fathers were aged 18 and 21, while the Tongan father was aged 27.


My guess is that just as suicides aren't necessarily reported, neither are child murder/ suicides. There is no trial. Killing a newborn at birth is more commonly reported but treated (rightly or wrongly) sympathetically. Equally, drowning through neglect might also not make the news. The one case I found from 2010 had name suppression so no clue to ethnicity.

The high profile stories are where children are killed via wilful physical abuse and a trial ensues. Hence, over this period anyway, the predominance of media reporting Maori/Pacific child deaths is because they fall into this category.

Family violence deaths and ethnicity

As per usual the discussion about the death of J J Lawrence features arguments about child abuse  being a Maori problem. It isn't solely, but it is disproportionately. But let's put the actual statistics on the line:

But what do you notice about the preamble to this table?