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This also generates an e-mail to Trevor Mallard and Dick Hubbard

Update; Last night's TV3 Poll was split 68 % against, 32% for. This one is much closer....so far.

13 year-old on contraceptive pill without parental knowledge

I've been vaguely aware of the rules that allow this to happen but it's still something of a shocker. The debate has previously raged over abortions being procured for very young girls. When I last thought about it to any extent I think I came down on the side of the health authority based on the types of homes some of these girls come out of and the repercussions of having to tell their family (the pregnancy could be the result of incest). While I hate the idea of most parents not being involved or a girl not wanting them to be, sometimes it's in the child's best interests. But perhaps the legislation should allow exceptions as opposed to making proviso for all. That may be the way it is interpreted anyway. Certainly it would be my preference for the pill over an abortion. Sure, abstinence or protection from molestation would be preferable but in some cases it just isn't going to happen.

And sometimes contraceptive pills are prescribed for reasons other than preventing pregnancy - for example, reducing acne.

It might not happen overnight.....

.....but it did. What was a headline about Australian Aborigines yesterday is now a front page headline about Maori, Maori 'facing extinction' from diabetes.

Professor Zimmet labelled rising world diabetes rates – with the disease affecting one in four "indigenous" adults – a tragedy threatening to consume world economies and bankrupt health systems.

Self-induced diabetes is just another abuse of the socialist state. Another instance of Nanny killing people with 'kindness'. Make people responsible for their healthcare costs and they might develop an interest in staying healthy.

Meningococcal death rate climbs

(Death rate should not be confused with number of deaths.)

This is a graph just released by anti-MeNZB vaccine campaigners Ron Lane and Barbara Sumner Burstyn.

1/ How do they get the data so quickly??

2/ The graph would be far more useful if it included the total number of cases. The fact it doesn't makes me slightly suspicious.

Percentages of smaller numbers are subject to greater fluctuation.

But I appreciate what they are giving us here and certainly the increase in fatality could be due to greater complacency. The, "My child is immunised so she can't be sick with meningitis" scenario. This result may have even been predictable.

"Cocacolonisation"

There's a word begging to catch on here. It is being used to describe the diabetes epidemic threatening the Australian Aborigine with extinction, if you believe this news report.

Maori were going to be wiped out by disease before the turn of the twentieth century too.

Coca Cola really is demonised beyond reason. It's a sugary drink for goodness sake. Come to think of it I haven't heard anyone talking about the 'alcholonisation' of Aboriginal Australians.

They don't want to know

Media Release
UNDER 1 IN 5 BENEFIT APPLICANTS NEW
Monday, November 13, 2006

Less than one in five people applying for a benefit is new to the system.

According to welfare commentator, Lindsay Mitchell, "In the year to June 2005 218,491 benefits were granted to working-age people. Of these 34 percent had previously been on a benefit within the past year, 15 percent had been on a benefit within 12 - 48 months previously. Only 23 percent had either never been dependent or the dependency was more than 4 years ago. The remaining 28 percent were transferring between benefits or regions."

"The significance of this 'repeat business' lies in the total time people are spending on benefits over their lifetimes. Currently the Ministry only tracks continuous time spent on benefit - not total time."

"While many politicians portray benefits as a stepping stone to a new life, the reality is they are a revolving door which most beneficiaries pass through many times. When the Australian government gave consultants access to beneficiary records their analysis revealed that the average time women spent on a benefit, commonly cited as 3 years, was actually closer to 12."

"The importance of understanding how long people are affected by benefit dependency was highlighted by the Ministry of Social Development Deputy Chief Executive Marcel Lauziere who said in the October issue of Research News, 'People on benefit were found to have lower living standards than working people with comparable incomes.' "

"Benefits, not low incomes, reduce living standards yet the Ministry appears to show no interest in understanding just how long people are dependent on benefits across their lives. They, and government politicians, prefer to talk about current durations of stay because this masks the horrendous level of benefit dependency they have allowed to develop."

Fergusson criticises Families Commission

Excellent. Some substantiated criticism of the Families Commission. I understand the argument but ultimately David Fergusson is right. They can't have a bob each way and talk about the most severe forms of violence (which tends to come from the pathologically jealous male) and then brawling, which goes on in a much larger section of the community and flows both ways.

"...the commission is backing White Ribbon Day on November 25, which asks men to wear a white ribbon to show that they do not condone "men's violence towards women"....

But in an email to the Herald, Professor Fergusson said: "It is my frank view the commission's stance on domestic violence is not being guided by a dispassionate and balanced consideration of the evidence.

"Rather, it is being guided by an ideologically driven model that assumes on a priori grounds that domestic violence is a male problem and that female-initiated domestic violence does not exist or is so trivial that it can be ignored in the commission's policy focus."

(If I see a man wearing a white ribbon I'll punch him in the nose:-))

"How Government destroys moral character"

An excellent short piece from the San Francisco Examiner by Robert Higgs. Well worth the read;

“Thou shalt not steal” is a rule as old as human society itself. We are taught early to respect what belongs to others, and by the time we are three years old, we understand the difference between mine and thine. Those who do not take the lesson to heart and persist in treating everybody’s property as something to take, so long as they can get away with it, are viewed as sociopaths.

Yet government as we know it rests entirely on this kind of sociopathy. Rulers take what does not belong to them and dispose of it to suit themselves.

Dear Landlord

This is a letter Russel Norman has drafted for tenants to send to their landlords. I hope he will be particularly encouraging those in the Green's beloved council and state houses which, in my experience, are in the worst state of disrepair. I was hanging curtains in one on Friday which had two panes of glass with holes in them. The tenant told me the council had inspected them and said they were safe as the remaining glass was firmly intact. Holes that let in cold air are obviously not a concern.


Date

Name
Company
Address
City
Suburb

Dear [Landlord]

I am writing this letter because of the report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment released on the 7th of November on building insulation and energy conservation. This report details the importance of ensuring that homes are well insulated not only to conserve energy use (and thus lower energy bills), but also because homes that are well insulated are more easily kept warm and dry, thus ensuring better health for their residents.

This report is intended to encourage homeowners to invest in better insulation for their homes. However, since I rent my home, I am not in a position to make the changes necessary to improve the quality of insulation.

However, these changes are important not only for conservation of energy, but also for my wellbeing and for your ability as landlord to keep your property viable in an increasingly competitive market. Thus, I am writing this letter to ask you to contribute to a more sustainable, healthier, and more economical home by considering the advantages of improving the insulation in this property. This could include insulation in the ceiling and floor and insulation around the hot water cylinder. Solar hot water would be great too!

With the release of this report, many New Zealanders will have the opportunity to act to improve their quality of living through better home insulation. I hope that you will consider aiding this effort by improving the quality of the insulation in your property and my home.

Thank you for your time and your consideration of this matter.

Sincerely


[Name]

That's Life

A man and his wife were sitting in the living room discussing a 'living will.'

"Just so you know, I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug."

Without a word his wife got up, unplugged the TV and threw out all the beer.

Getting in on the act

New Zealand's very own Paul McCartney/Heather Mills celebrity muck-raking, mud-slinging, bust-up hits the news.

Say What?!

MORE research. This was released yesterday by the Ministry of Social Development, from their Research News, Issue 5, October 2006;

The research, part of the Centre for Social Research and Evaluation's ongoing living standards programme, found that, while income is important, sustainable employment, education and assets are also key to achieving good living standards.

"One example of this," says Deputy Chief Executive of Social Development Policy and Knowledge, Marcel Lauzière, "is that people on benefit were found to have lower living standards than working people with comparable incomes. While income can certainly help improve our living standards, this research demonstrates the importance of sustained employment, as well as higher levels of education, home ownership and assets accumulation."

So? There are plenty of jobs. Get rid of the benefits.

More Families Commission research

More hand-wringing and naval-gazing here. And YOU paid for it. Well-educated, well-off women with too much time on their hands whining about how society views them. Where is their self-respect?
But it gets worse. Their solution is to demand even more of your money!

Unbelievable, literally.

Andrew Falloon has linked to a video which has Sue Bradford making this claim about the number of child deaths through physical abuse in Sweden. Apparently, "Between 1971 and 2000, in 21 of these years not a single child died from physical abuse and in each of the remaining 9 years one child died from abuse."

Below is the most recent UNICEF-produced Innocenti League Table for deaths from maltreatment. Sweden has 0.5 deaths per 100,000 children. If Sweden has around 2 million children (assuming a similar demographic spread to NZ) that means, on average, 10 children die from maltreatment per year (right click on image to enlarge).



I am fairly sure Sue Bradford would be quite happy using this table to point out how poorly NZ is doing.

"Women bear brunt as job figures fall"

This headline in today's DomPost is highly questionable.

The article continues,"10,000 women lost their jobs in the last 3 months".

Yet the Statistics NZ release says, "The decrease (in employment) of 9,000 over the quarter was wholly due to falls in female full-time and female part-time employment.....Unemployment rose by 4,000 over the quarter....this movement was wholly driven by an increase in male unemployment."

So the women no longer working are not unemployed which rather suggests they have other means of support, probably a partner. They might have 'lost' their jobs or alternatively, they may have decided not to work. Why? Because as I suggested yesterday, the Working For Families assistance means they don't need to.

The DomPost article goes on to say,"Fewer jobs means overall spending is likely to slow down." Not necessarily, if my suggestion is correct.

What we need to know is the recent trend in WFF payments to see if there is a correlation with the drop in women employed. I'll see what I can find. But the WFF scheme is such a significant redistribution of wealth it has to be factored in to what is happening in the labour market.

The writer has overlooked the fact that women have a much greater degree of choice about work than men.

False complaints

This case is disquieting, to put it mildly. The former policeman has been found not guilty of rape charges yet the person who made the false accusations gets name suppression? Will charges be laid against her? And now it is revealed that the case only went to court because it is one that the PM "personally" referred to a commission of inquiry into Police conduct, according to the man's lawyer, Gary Gottlieb.

Mr Gottlieb said there was a huge bill for private investigators and Ogle had to sell his house to met his costs.

"If we hadn't done what we did and had treated it like an ordinary trial, he would have been rolled.

"This is the trouble with anyone. If the state brings its forces against you, it is so bloody hard to stand up to it," Mr Gotlieb said.

And then, on a related subject, you have to wonder what motivates people to make false complaints. Coincidentally while pondering that I received this in the letterbox;




$100,000. And you pay nothing unless they get a result. Seems to me we are increasingly appealing to the worst aspects of human nature.

Latest Employment Statistics

Unemployment rises slightly to 3.8 percent

NZ falls from 2nd in OECD to 4th=

But here's the interesting development; The decrease of 9,000 (0.4 percent) over the quarter was wholly due to falls in female full-time and female part-time employment.

That'll be the effect of Working For Families. Now the kids can have their Ipods and their mums. Doesn't it give you the warm fuzzies.

No? You're worried about productivity? So's Helen but let's face it - the votes are more important.

The philosophical problem with the DPB

So ably described by David Green in Poverty and Benefit Dependency;




Try to remember this when next confronted with an indignant lifestyler belly-aching about society's obligation to support mothers and children. And if they try to argue they are raising future taxpayers tell them to take out a loan in anticipation.

On the same wave length

Last night I had the honour of stepping in for Rodney Hide and addressing the Waikanae Rotary members. No surprises what I talked about (after describing MY experience of Dancing with the Stars - a phone bill that grew at about the rate Rodney shrank) - welfare and the worst excesses of the welfare state.

But I also talked about my experiences as a volunteer and my conviction that people are far more resourceful and creative than government ever give them credit for. There was audible assent when I said the government should back off.

The President responded with a George Washington quote about government being like fire; a dangerous servant and a fearful master. We were on the same wave length.

Three killed in Gisborne

Yesterday there were radio reports about two domestic violence incidents in Gisborne but they have barely rated a mention in today's papers. Just small columns. Three killed, one woman is still fighting for her life in hospital.

I asked David if he knew about the killings in Gisborne and he responded, what killings in Gisborne? Life is becoming very cheap in some circles. Perhaps its lack of value is reflected in the media's lack of interest.