James Bartholomew: The Welfare of Nations

If you read The Welfare State We're In, by James Bartholomew, and knew he was writing a sequel, you will be very pleased to hear the publication date of The Welfare of Nations is March 31st. He will officially launch the book in London on April 9.

You can view a short launch video here.

He hasn't let up on his stinging criticism of welfare statism blaming it for unemployment (it is unemployment, not inequality, that makes people unhappy), lone parenting (the over-representation of single parent children amongst failing youth) and the warehousing of the elderly in old people's homes where many wish they were dead.

The following is the jacket blurb:

The twentieth century experienced an
epochal war between capitalism and
communism but the real winner of the conflict,
James Bartholomew argues, was welfare statism.
The defining form of government of our age,
welfare states have spread across the advanced
world and are changing the very nature of
modern civilisation.
In his bestselling book The Welfare State We’re
In, Bartholomew controversially argued that
the British welfare state has done more harm
than good. Many people – including Lady
Thatcher – responded by saying, ‘If that is the
case, what should we do about it?’ Now, in this
hard-hitting and provocative new contribution,
Bartholomew sets out to answer that question.
Travelling across the globe, from Australia
in the east to San Francisco in the west, he
investigates what happens elsewhere in the
world and considers which welfare models
Britain could potentially follow. His search
for the best education, healthcare and support
services takes him to eleven vastly different
countries as he teases out the advantages and
weaknesses of other nations’ welfare states
and delves into crucial issues such as literacy,
poverty and inequality.
What damage is being done by failing welfare
states? What lessons can be learned from the
best welfare states? And is it too late to stop
welfare states permanently diminishing the
lives and liberties of people around the world?

Maori trust police more than the media

Statistics NZ surveyed Maori adults and asked them to rate their level of trust in various institutions, '0' being 'not at all' and '10' being 'completely'.






What would have been really interesting is how these ratings compare with other ethnicities but that wasn't part of the exercise.

Anyway it is reassuring that Maori do have relatively high trust in the police. Many will deal with the police as victims.

As for trust in the media, I expect that would be representative across all adult New Zealanders.

Here's a thought. How would you rate those two institutions? We can run our own mini survey. I'll kick it off.

Media. Depends on which media and in what respect eg delivery of information or personal dealings. Generally I'd be around 4 but there are exceptions.

Police. My personal dealings with police have been good and bad. Brushes with authoritarian heavy-handedness and possible racism takes my rating down, but generally, compared to other countries I think we've got a fairly non-corrupt and responsive police force. So a 7.

Half of NZ 15 year-olds sexually active?

A Massey post grad researcher told the Herald on Sunday,

"About half of New Zealand 15-year-olds were sexually active..."

What is the source for that?

Some googling turns up this from the Ministry of Health,

"Studies suggest that by the time they reach 15 years of age, about 10–30 percent of New Zealand young people have had sexual intercourse....There is evidence that a sizeable minority of New Zealand teenagers have had sexual intercourse before they reach 16 years of age...A 1986 study of 15-year-old girls living in Wellington’s Hutt Valley found that 29 percent had experienced sexual intercourse (Lewis 1987). Just under 2 percent of the group had first intercourse a age 12, while 12 percent had first intercourse at age 15. A similar study of 16–19-year-olds attending an urban coeducational high school found that 22 percent of students were sexually active before age 16 (McEwan et al 1988). When assessed at age 15 in 1992, 8.5 percent of young people in the Christchurch Health and  Development Study reported having had sexual intercourse at least once (Lynskey and Fergusson1993). Girls (10.2 percent) were more likely than boys (6.8 percent) to have had sex. A year later, at age 16, a quarter of the sample reported having had sexual intercourse (Fergusson et al 1994)."

Add to that information the latest research into the falling teenage birth rate finds:

"Delaying becoming sexual active among school-aged teenagers is an important factor in the declining teenage birth rate in New Zealand."

According to the Herald on Sunday the researcher thinks the reason HPV vaccination rates are low amongst Pakeha is a belief that "white girls don't have sex".

That would be a stunningly stupid idea but exaggerating the incidence of it doesn't aid her cause.

Update
Family First's Bob McCoskrie has also pointed to the following quote from the University of Auckland's  The Health and Wellbeing of NZ Secondary School Students in 2012,

Approximately three-quarters of students have never

had sexual intercourse. Twenty-five percent of male

students and 24% of female students reported ever

having had sex