MacDoctor

It is unfortunate that the Herald appears to have a bee in it’s bonnet about Brian Tamaki and the Destiny Church. I say unfortunate, because the Herald does not appear to have the tools, understanding or, indeed, the inclination to approach the topic of donations to a church, or to the pecunious “Bishop” in question, with anything like a competent analysis. I have remained silent on the issue of Tamaki simply because it is not really an issue of public debate per se, it is more an internal issue amongst Christians. However, the Herald persists in making observations that make little sense. Take this one from the HoS Insight article on giving (not on line)

“But, plainly, churches are not like other charities.

“If the boss of a secular, non-profit organisation, let’s say, the CEO of a trust for disabled children, used donor cash to buy a mini-mansion and a Harley, supporters would go elsewhere.”

One assumes that the journalist, Heather McCracken, has not yet realised that CEOs have salaries, upon which they can spend whatever they like, including mansions and Harleys, if they are that well-paid. Taking donations directly is, of course, fraud and would warrant immediate police investigation. It is highly unlikely that Brian Tamaki’s income is fraudulent in this sense of the word.

The thing is, his income is not the issue, nor is his wealth. The Bible makes no restriction on your earnings or your assets and that lack of restriction extends to pastors. Wealth is often mentioned in a negative sense, particularly in the New Testament, but always in conjunction with warnings not to let your wealth supplant the place of God in your life. Having wealth is not the problem, it is trusting in wealth. This is not to say that I am quite comfortable with the extent of Tamaki’s wealth, but that is because I am fully aware that his congregation is not wealthy and that Tamaki’s wealth derives mostly from their donations (rather than from Tamaki’s own resources). This tells me that there is something seriously wrong.

The wrongness, however, has absolutely nothing to do with the eftpos machines in Destiny Church, that the Herald is so excited about. The church I worship at has an eftpos machine. It is extremely convenient for making (free-will) donations when you have forgotten to draw money (a frequent occurrence for me). It’s presence is not an issue, because no-one is being co-erced into giving. Eftpos is not the problem – bad doctrine is.

In fairness to the Herald, their articles have touched on both aspects of Destiny/Tamaki doctrine that are poor. Unfortunately, the Herald does not have the background or the interest to explore these, preferring to waffle on about Tamaki’s boat and Harley. But the doctrinal issues are central to understanding the problem.

The first issue is the one of tithing. Many churches, particularly Pacific Island congregations, have a strict adherence to a 10% tithe of all of your income. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of tithing. The biblical injunction to give is :

“2Cor. 9:7 Let each one [give] as he has made up his own mind and purposed in his heart, not reluctantly or sorrowfully or under compulsion, for God loves (He takes pleasure in, prizes above other things, and is unwilling to abandon or to do without) a cheerful (joyous, “prompt to do it”) giver [whose heart is in his giving]. [Amplified Bible]”

I have purposefully used the Amplified Bible here because it renders the meaning of the passage very explicit. The decision to give brings God pleasure, but it is our decision. This passage does not make any sense if there is some biblical injunction to give 10% of our income. I do not have space, or inclination, to give a biblical exposition on what the Old Testament tithe means to us today. If you are really interested, you can download Eating Sacred Cows by Graeme Carlé, the pastor of the church I attend. It is by far the best exposition of the biblical tithe I have read (and it is a short and easy read). I also recommend Matthew E Narramore’s Tithing: Low-realm, Obsolete and Defunct which is available on-line here.

The other doctrinal problem is the one that has plagued the “prosperity cults”. The strange idea that, if you give generously, God will make you wealthy. Not bless you, mind you, but make you wealthy. This is simply playing a game of spiritual Lotto. I put money into the offering and. magically, more money appears in my bank account.

This would be great, if it was true, but God does not work like this (if He did, people would become Christians just to get money, obviously). Whereas God does love a cheerful giver and God loves to bless those he loves, His blessings rarely consist of financial rewards. And our motivation for giving is not to receive rewards anyway, at least, not immediate, tangible rewards. This does not mean that God does not reward His children, just that He is not obliged to by our giving.

This sort of non-biblical teaching inevitably leads to vast disappointment and disillusionment amongst the believers. It also tends to lead to pastors who know no financial constraints and start to see the congregation as their very own inexhaustible syphon of money. Their motives may remain pure rather than venal, but the end result is always the same – grandiose dreams destroyed by ugly rifts as disenchantment spreads through the body of the church. The split we have just seen in Brisbane (where Tamaki’s influence is the least) is just the first signs of a great deal of internal disruption. I suspect that the recent “vows of allegiance” that Destiny’s leaders had to take (“voluntarily”, of course) is simply another sign that things at Destiny are starting to fall apart – Tamaki’s “loyal” lieutenants are attempting to consolidate authority.

“And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like a stupid (foolish) man who built his house upon the sand.

“And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great and complete was the fall of it. Matt. 7:26-27 [Amplified]”

Pink Floyd have won their long-standing lawsuit against EMI, part of which was a complaint that they had an agreement with EMI not to sell incomplete albums. This has been pitched as a triumph for artistic integrity and has lead to some postulate that Pink Floyd may withdraw their songs from iTunes or insist that their albums are sold in their entirety only. Both of these observations are likely to be poppycock.

To argue that this legal victory is a triumph for artistic integrity, is to remain locked in the old model of music dominated by the record labels. That model dictated that artists produced 45-60 minutes of music that the labels could sell as a commodity unit called an LP (later a CD). All LPs/CDs from new acts cost roughly the same, with only a little price-flexibility for the most popular artists – a reason for viewing the recording labels complaints about iTunes uniform pricing strategy with suspicion.

This commoditisation meant that artists were essentially paid the same for 45 minutes of good music as they were for 15 minutes of good music and 30 minutes of garbage. Incentives being what they are, it is not surprising that most musicians supply the latter (in fact 15 minutes is probably overly generous!). The primary reason why CD sales have fallen so far, and continue to fall, is that people are less prepared to pay for garbage in order to get the music they like – and online sales of individual tracks has made it possible to do exactly that. Previously, your only way of buying a single track was the expensive CD single, which has now appeared to have morphed into the EP. Thankfully, Steve Jobs mostly stuck to his guns on pricing, thus killing the CD single.

iTunes and the other online stores have now changed the game drastically. The Record labels and, if the truth be known, most musicians do not appreciate this. It is no longer necessary for bands to produce 45 minutes of music before they can sell it. Musicians who only have a one-hit-wonder in them will no longer be obliged to subject the world to a pile of indifferent music. They may still do so, but at least they now have a choice. It may be that those musicians, once they are no longer under pressure to produce a certain quantity of music, will be able to produce far better pieces, less often.

It is also no longer necessary to use a record label to promote your music. Currently most musicians who become well-known on the internet (typically by distributing their works for free) eventually sign on to record labels, rather than going the next step (which is to use their internet leverage to promote themselves and start charging people). This is not to imply that the labels are not useful for promoting musicians, but why take the retrograde step of going with a record label when you have already done all the hard promotion work?

The other thing that online music also provides is an outlet for hobbyist musicians. There is a wealth of free music available from these musicians (obviously of variable quality) but there is no reason why the better hobby musicians should not place their better works on iTunes themselves. Eventually, their hobby might pay enough to go professional, but in any case the opportunity is now there.

This sort of opportunity should not be lightly dismissed. The opening up of the music industry to hobbyists adds a wealth of talent (and non-talent) to the music world, providing us with the possibility of discovering new talents who would not have otherwise taken the plunge into the financially dangerous world of professional music.

Admittedly, the iTunes model makes it difficult to produce “concept albums”, where each track is meant to be played in a particular order and the whole piece needs to be played together. But there are easy ways around that. Simply making the entire album a single track being the easiest. iTunes automatically makes any track longer than 10 minutes an “album only” track, stopping individual purchase. However, I suspect Pink Floyd do not really care about this issue, using it only as leverage against EMI. They have produced a number of compilation albums and allowed their “concept” music to be used as backgrounds to many, many commercials and documentaries (especially the track “Money”). In fact, I would guess their sentiments might be expressed by this line from that famous song:

“Money, It’s a hit. Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit”

Indeed.

Though many people are highly critical of the columns of Garth George, I often find that, past the general curmudgeonly nature of his columns, he often makes a great deal of sense. Unfortunately, he tends to couch his points in a fashion designed to bring out the worst in the blogosphere. It is not simply his overtly Christian content that irks people, after all people do not react quite so vituperatively to M&M or NZ Conservative. It is more the way he expresses Christian views in a rigid, legalistic, condemnatory fashion that mimics the worst aspects of the Pharisees of the New Testament. For instance, his column today on Garrett’s unwise espousal of voluntary sterilisation incentives has this to say on the subject in hand:

“Apart from the fact that even voluntary sterilisation under such circumstances is a violation of what little is left of the moral and ethical framework of a civilised democracy, what would it achieve?”

I fail to see how offering someone – who is clearly incapable of decent parenting in any shape or form – an incentive to have no more children, can be construed as a violation of ethics. Offering the incentive to someone because they are Maori or Poor or Jewish would be exceedingly dubious, I agree. These things have nothing to do with a person’s ability to bring up a child. But offering the incentive to a child abuser makes a great deal more sense than offering the same person DPB for having another child.

I rather think that Mr George’s extreme reaction to this suggestion is rather more to do with his take on sterilisation in general – viz.

“voluntary sterilisation amounts to self-mutilation and renounces the natural law of self-preservation.”

I can find no biblical basis for this remark at all and I suspect Mr. George’s take on contraception would be equally extreme. He is, of course, entitled to his beliefs on this matter but he cannot use his opinion as a valid argument  for the ethicality and morality of sterilisation. Note, we are talking about voluntary sterilisation here. There is no question that involuntary sterilisation is completely unethical and entirely distasteful.

Sterilisation is a reasonable medical procedure done when a couple have decided not to have more children. The only alternative would be to continue with various forms of contraception which may have side effects and may not be entirely effective. This risks the health of the mother (who has to take the contraception) or risks an unwanted child or, worse, an abortion.  In other words, the alternatives to sterilisation are considerably worse than any consideration for the “natural law of self-preservation” (whatever that may be).

The unfortunate thing about these remarks is they detract from Mr. George’s otherwise very reasonable argument – that voluntary sterilisation will do little or nothing to the statistics of child abuse and amounts to little more than putting a band-aid over a festering, cancerous sore. This is entirely true and an excellent point of which politicians should take note. The tendency of people, especially politicians, to hide from this nasty truth is exactly what encumbers us with myriad unwieldy laws and regulations, while doing nothing for the very real social problems that plague our society.

Daft he may be at times, but Garth George is also right.

Well, there seems to be no doubt what the (supposedly unbiased) Herald’s official position is on the proposed “three strikes” law. The headline

‘Unjust’ bill means 11,000 per cent rise in prison time

is not exactly studiedly neutral. And making out that Kim Workman comes from “an independent organisation on crime” is simply a bad old-fashioned lie. It is rather like saying that Phil Goff comes from an independent organisation on Politics. Of course, the headline and the statement on Kim Workman’s “independent” status as one and the same thing. The 11,000 percent (PS Herald – percent is a single word) is a typical Kim Workman “statistic”. Invariably derived from taking the most far-fetched scenario or most bizarre comparison he can think of to make his point. In this case he is postulating that his third strike criminal will only deserve a two month sentence for his crime instead of “life” – not the most likely scenario. Mr Workman is also full of strange comparisons, quoting a bizarre Californian case (despite it not being applicable to our proposed law) and then postulating that Bruce Emery (he of tagger-murdering fame) may have received a life sentence if he had two previous strike – which he did not. Mr Workman possibly chose Emery because if he had used someone like Graeme Burton as an example, he would have disproved his point (that the three strikes law is unjust) immediately.

Which is a pity because, in this case, I am inclined to agree with Workman. The Californian version of this law does not work well because of two obvious defects. The first is that the list of offenses causing a strike is too long and contains many minor offenses. The second is that there is no way of differentiating a less severe offense from a more severe offense, making those minor offenses damning. Sadly the New Zealand version of the law contains the same two flaws.

For some reason known only to the Law and Order Committee, they have chosen to remove the clause limiting strikes to offenses with a sentence greater than 5 years or an indefinite (i.e. life) sentence. This means that they now have no way of differentiating between severe offenses worthy of a strike and fairly trivial offenses. For instance, “indecent assault” is a strike offense. So if you are a bottom-pinching chauvinist, you may well find yourself imprisoned for life after you have annoyed your third victim. Of course, you would have to be grossly stupid to gain three strikes in this fashion, but the point is that the law is not intended to have this effect, it is intended to take violent criminals out of circulation.

Perhaps a less frivolous example is that someone can have two strikes for robbery and then get into a bar fight and find themselves in jail for life.

Clearly, there needs to be some rider that differentiates these more minor crimes from others. The five year sentence rules did exactly that, which makes it a complete mystery why the rule has been reversed. While there may be some debate around the exactly length of sentence that would spark a strike, there should be no debate about the actual rule itself. In addition, some of the non-violent offenses should be removed, as the entire thrust of this law is to remove violent offenders, not simply crims.

The three strike law could be made to work well, but there seems to be a great deal of undercover politicking going on that is threatening to produce a bizarre and unworkable law that will produce the same crazy injustices of the californian law. This will serve no-one well and it is time that the Law and Order Committee got its act together (in both senses) and produced a more sensible document.

Steven Joyce has said today that some tertiary education funding would be linked to student performance and drop-out rates. This is an excellent idea and should provide some incentive for universities and colleges to pay attention to those students who are clearly not doing well, instead of simply writing them off as they usually do. I have known numerous teenagers who have attended the first year of university only to be overwhelmed by the volume of work and the need to be self motivated. Little or no help came their way and they failed hopelessly. My brother was one of these unfortunates (who then went on to educate himself through technical college correspondence courses and is now a highly regarded planning engineer). Anything that might induce lecturers to climb down from their ivory towers and actually do some educating would be definitely in order.

Of course, one might more or less guarantee that Labour would take a contrary position (and pretty much guaranteed that NZPA would lead with it):

“Hitting tertiary education providers with funding penalties for high student drop out and fail rates would put teachers under pressure to give passes even when they were not deserved, Labour tertiary education spokeswoman Maryan Street says.”

Nonsense. Excessive pass rates are statistically quite easy to spot (there is a great chapter on it in the original Freakonomics book) and universities watch out for it all the time anyway. There is nothing more deadly to a university’s reputation than lowering standards. And Ms Street’s suggestion that universities will offer less challenging courses is laughable. She appears to have forgotten that it was Labour’s willingness to fund every course in creation, no matter how bizarre, that lead to the profusion of daft courses being offered by the technical colleges. But even in the midst of that the universities stayed well away from such things.

Standards are everything to a university and even the tech colleges usually maintain reasonable ones. But it is crazy to have students chalking up large student debts while not attaining any sort of qualification that would help them pay that debt off.

The Timaru Herald has run an article on the website offtheradar.co.nz, who are calling for the removal of Gardasil from the vaccination regime because it causes 16 times more serious adverse events than it prevents cervical cancer fatalities. Like most of the websites “crusading” against vaccines, it destroys its own credibility by drawing non-scientific conclusions from statistics. Ms Smith, who runs the site from Timaru, does not really understand the meaning of the words “serious adverse events”. This term encapsulates events ranging from anaphylaxis (severe allergy) and death right through to vaccination site infections. Therefore the only meaningful comparison would be deaths from Gardasil compared with deaths from cervical cancers caused by HPV (Human Papilloma Virus) strains that Gardasil protects against. Unfortunately we know neither death rate. The “deaths from Gardasil” are, of course, portrayed by the authorities and the drug company as being fatalities from other causes rather than Gardasil. The cervical cancer death rate does not usually state the type of HPV infection, or even if an HPV infection was involved at all. We therefore do not have definitive data to define the problem.

All this is irrelevant.

The simple matter is that cervical cancer is caused by strains of HPV that Gardasil does not protect against and sometimes happens in the complete absence of HPV. Therefore the only way you can be safe from cervical cancer is to have a regular pap smear. As the cure rate for early cervical cancer caught by pap smear is close to 100%, it is arguable the Gardasil is a fairly useless, expensive addition to the vaccination schedule and that any serious adverse event is one too many, if the vaccine itself is useless (this is the same argument currently being used against cough syrups in under 6 year olds).

While it is true that a pap smear is not 100% successful in detecting an early cervical cancer and that some slip through the net, as it were, it is also true that the vast majority of women who die from cervical cancer have not had a pap smear for more than 5 years prior to their diagnosis. In other words, women would be far better off if we put all the expensive Gardasil money into an effective campaign to promote regular pap smears.

So – bad reactions to the Gardasil vaccine are not the reason why we should abandon it. The real reason is that it is a complete waste of money that should be spent elsewhere.

When Julie Smith suggests on her site that Gardasil may actually increase cervical cancers, she is accidentally right. It is perfectly possible that girls who have been immunised will be less motivated to get pap smears at regular intervals. A drop in pap smear rates may well increase the death rate from cervical cancers.

Tony Ryall would be better employed looking properly at the data available, rather than issuing bland assurances that “the Ministry of Health did not have concerns about the vaccine’s safety or effectiveness”. We have insufficient data to be sure about either.

I see an number of doctors are voicing their concerns of the government interest in a Pharmac-like organisation to take over hospital based purchases. Not without good reason, I might add. The Pharmac model has a major flaw. That flaw is that the model is based on the free availability of cheap “equivalents”.

There is no problem with the Pharmac model when an exact generic equivalent is available. While we may desire Medsafe to be a little faster at investigating generics that appear to be non-equivalent for various reasons (as in the thyroxine debacle), and we may desire that Pharmac should not be quite so willing to take the cheapest equivalent almost without regard to the source, in general, the Pharmac way of doing business does no harm to New Zealanders and keeps our drug bills enviably low. Even here, however, you see a trace of the major flaw in the system. When a generic drug is not the exact equivalent product of the the drug it is replacing, unexpected problems arise. Hands up all those who find Dr Reddy’s Omeprazole not exactly the same stuff as Losec.

The problem is much more obvious when there is actually no equivalent and Pharmac moves into “substitute mode”. Here the decision-making process moves from simple cost-comparisons and attempts to generate clinical protocols. Pharmac starts to dictate not merely the brand that is available but the actual chemical substance, and even the category. Choice is purposefully restrained to ensure that only the cheapest products are used. The flaw is now obvious. It is the attempt to cost the incremental benefits of one drug over another, without reference to appropriate use in real patients.

Let’s use an example. There are two blood pressure tablets A and B that treat blood pressure well but can cause coughing. There is a third product available tablet C that does not, but it is also the weakest (and cheapest) in its category and does not treat blood pressure as well as the other two. Pharmac forces you to be on both A then B (despite the fact that if one causes coughing the other almost certainly will do the same) before it allows you to use C. While you had good blood pressure control on A and B, you are battling with C (but at least you are not coughing. There is a product D on the market which is more powerful AND does not cause coughing, but Pharmac won’t fund that on the basis that 95% of people will be controlled on A, B or C and that the other 5% can use another funded product E – which is another type of drug entirely, with its own special set of side effects.

But wait, there’s more…

Shortly after you get your patient nicely controlled on product C with a little bit of product E, Pharmac decides to purchase a newer cheaper version of C. This version does not work as well in your patient, so you increase E, which causes some side effects. Then Pharmac decides that E will no longer be available (because it has too many side effects) but they will fund a drug F which is a cousin of E (but not the same thing). The patients blood pressure is now uncontrolled so you send him to a physician who used products G and H, stops F and doubles C. After a while you add some product I which Pharmac then changes to a new generic…

Now you know why GPs hate Pharmac.

The problem is that Pharmac’s decisions are based on averages. On average this product is like this one. Unfortunately, people are unique individuals who rarely obey the laws of averages. When measuring the incremental cost of a benefit of a drug, it is not the average benefit that is important, but the benefit in that particular patient. This is not to advocate therapeutic nihilism, but to advocate a freeing of the series of choices that Pharmac provides so that better fits can be made as to what works for a particular person.

In particular, Pharmac needs to set a level of funding for it few chosen drugs but allow people to choose drugs outside of that range but still get the same level of subsidy. It is manifestly unfair that a patient must pay the full price for a drug when another (for who the Pharmac choice works well) gets his drug for free. Pharmac allows doctors to substitute for some generics (usually reluctantly), taking the amount of Pharmac funding for the generic of the brand’s price so that the patient only pays a part charge. This should be the normal model.

In addition, Pharmac should beware of costing an apparently marginal benefit too cheaply. There are often many factors that they do not take into account, simply because it is a complex matter and economists and accountant tend to oversimplify.

This is why we should be careful about using the Pharmac model for purchasing equipment. There is no generic equivalent here; only old, outdated stock. While it is not always necessary to have the latest and greatest technology, obsolescence is extremely rapid in medicine and obsolete equipment can be a massive disadvantage in often unpredictable ways. Only 5 years ago defibrillators were mostly monophasic (delivered a shock in one direction) at that time a massive purchase of monophasic defibrillators would have been sensible, considering the cost of the newer biphasic ones. Large number of studies have shown that resuscitation results are significantly better with biphasic ones. We would have been left with technology that would have disadvantaged thousands of New Zealanders a year, killing hundreds of people (or failing to resuscitate them)

Cost comparisons are dangerous when you do not know exactly what you are comparing, be it an individual patient response or a new technology. The Pharmac Model is not an extensible one and should remain as a costing mechanism for generic equivalents only.

Not satisfied with rendering cold and flu medicines ineffective by removing pseudoephedrine from general sale, Medsafe continues it’s onslaught on cold and flu meds by trying to remove all the syrups and infusions from supermarket shelves. Apparently they are concerned about the use of them in under sixes (despite the fact that fatalities are very rare and only from the most insane of overdoses). The interesting thing is that the Herald reports that Medsafe contracted out the report on cold and flu medicine safety to a pharmacist. Weirdly, the article leads with the suggestion that such medicines may go up in price because they are more expensive at the pharmacy. I say that is weird because it is speculative, whereas the real story is the cosy relationship medsafe appears to have with pharmacists.

In a move designed to make their products more acceptable for non-pharmacy release, the drug companies removed pseudoephedrine from all of their products, swapping it with phenylephrine – a decongestant of questionable value. As this was thought to be much “safer” than pseudoephedrine, the products (at the behest of the drug companies, of course) were allowed on to the open market, rather than being confined to the pharmacist. The loss of business for the pharmacy industry (who relies mostly on over-the-counter sales, rather than drugs to make a profit) was not insubstantial.

Since that time the pharmacy industry has been working on getting their monopoly on cold and flu remedies back. The tack seems to be that these syrups and infusions are “dangerous” for children and therefore should be controlled by the pharmacist. There has been considerable lobbying of medsafe for the current review. There certainly has been some recent literature detailing horror stories of mothers and fathers who have given absurd doses of multiple medicines to children with both harm and even death resulting.

Unfortunately, this sort of barely sane behaviour will not be stopped by placing these medicines in the pharmacy. People who give excessive amounts of multiple brands of the same or similar product invariably buy the products at different places and at different times. People make collections of cold and flu remedies and then, when desperate, take all of them one after another. Adults do this to themselves as well as to their children. I have seen several cases of people who have taken overdoses of paracetamol quite by accident because they somehow did not realise that Codalgin, Pamol, Paradex and Panadol etc all contained paracetamol.

To add to the confusion these medicines (that are so dangerous that only a pharmacist should have control of them) are also supposedly ineffective. One wonders why the pharmacist would want to stock large quantities of a medicine supposedly ineffective – until, that is, one recalls that they also stock substantial quantities of homeopathic medicines…

Here are the actual facts:

• If you stick to the manufacturers recommendation on a single product you will not overdose your child. If you must add paracetamol, check on the cough syrup label that there is not already paracetamol in it.
• Adverse reactions other than overdose are extremely rare and usually transient.
• Useful products are: bromhexine – thins sticky mucus; pholcodeine  and dextromethorphan both cough suppressants (not very good ones, but better than nothing). All other ingredients are dubious (except possibly squill morphine (Gees Linctus) – but I would not recommend that to children).
• Decongestant nasal sprays like otrivine and drixine are useful but should only be used at night – continuous usage causes rebound congestion (the blocked nose gets worse than before, when it wears off).
• If in doubt see your doctor – remember it is “free” (paid by taxes) at most GPs for under sixes (Declaration: Yes, I have a pecuniary interest in promoting under six visits!)

I have just returned home after watching this – by far the most enjoyable version of the Alice in Wonderland story I have seen. Except that all the reviews of the movie I have read so far do not appear to have noticed that this is not a re-interpretation of the two books by Lewis Carroll. Tim Burton has set his story up as a sequel to the two books, with Alice, as a young woman, recovering her memories of previous visits to “Underland”, that she remembers as “Wonderland”. In the process of recovering her memories, she discovers her true self and her true purpose. All very Disney – but with some typical Burton twists and the usual Burton darkly gothic feel. The quirkiness of the characters gives the movie the same over-the-top feel of Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but also captures the quirkiness of the original Alice books quite well.

Depp is perfect for the part of the Mad Hatter, managing to be crazy, endearing and creepy all at the same time – something I haven’t seen since his performance as Edward in Edward Scissorhands. Helen Bonham Carter is also wonderful as the red Queen, reminding me strongly of the character of the Queen in Blackadder II. Alan Rickman as the voice of the caterpillar and Stephen Fry as the voice of the Cheshire cat are also great choices and lift the movie in some of it’s saggier moments.

The 3D effect I found more annoying than anything else. It gave the movie a feel somewhat like a child’s cardboard pop up book in places – an effect I noticed in Avatar; but it was certainly more noticeable here. Still, it was quite fun to see boulders and hedgehogs rolling out of the screen towards you and the pop-up look was usually transient.

If you are a Tim Burton fan, this movie is a must see. If you are expecting a more CGI remake of Disney’s animated Alice in Wonderland, you will be disappointed. The story is much more like Narnia than the original Alice.

And a word of warning. Many of the scenes are way too scary for preschoolers. This is definitely a movie for older children – at least 8 and upwards.

In September 2008 I wrote this:

“Unfortunately, what this [the repeal of section 59] does to parents is place them in a position of having no clear idea what is an acceptable smack. Worse still, it allows children to threaten their parents, thereby seriously reducing their authority, even if the child has no intention of notifying the police.”

Yesterday, I blogged about the Deputy Police Commissioner seeking to suggest that police were being discrete. I said that he was missing the point.

Today, as if to emphasise my argument, we have this:

“A schoolbus driver was taken to court for grabbing the arm of a rowdy boy who would not stop pulling a girl’s hair.”

This case graphically illustrates the dangerous consequences of the repeal of section 59, as outlined in my original post quoted above. Here is an adult attempting to control an unruly child with minimum force who is then not merely threatened with police action or even simply questioned by police, but prosecuted for it. By all accounts his handling of the boy was reasonably restrained, not abusive and certainly justified. Yet the police still saw fit to drag him through the court process despite having so weak a case that the judge simply threw it out of court.

Note that in terms of the new section 59 (and section 48) of the crimes act , the driver was well within his rights to use reasonable force anyway. Here is the relevant part of Section 59:

““Parental control
(1) Every parent of a child and every person in the place of a parent of the child is justified in using force if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances and is for the purpose of—
(a) preventing or minimising harm to the child or another person; or
(b) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in conduct that amounts to a criminal offence; or
(c) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in offensive or disruptive behaviour; or
(d) performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting.
(2) Nothing in subsection (1) or in any rule of common law justifies the use of force for the purpose of correction.  [emphasis mine]”

I would have said his actions fall under 1(a), (b), (c), and (d) and are not interpretable as being in any way “correction”. It would seem therefore that the police do not even know their own law. I other words, they were not merely not using their discretion but actively pursuing an obviously innocent man.

Stuff provides us with this scary addition to the story:

“The case had been referred by Gore police for diversion but it had been turned down by a senior officer, Mr McCorkindale said. [emphasis mine]”

So the local police were happy that this was a piece of nonsense (although they should have simply dropped it, after ascertaining the facts – “Diversion” implies guilt). But some silly twit in a senior position decided to prosecute an obviously meritless case. Said senior officer should be placed on traffic duties immediately – that is where officious prats really belong.

From this sorry episode we can see the inevitable consequences of criminalising even the slightest use of force over children.

1. Children no longer have any incentive to respect adults. Why should they when they can enlist the police at the slightest hint of forceful coercion? Let us be clear here. I do not favour violence against children in any way. But there are certainly cases where using force against a child is the only way to ensure obedience. Particularly if the child in question is large and aggressive and doing actions that must be stopped. Note that this scenario has been rendered far more likely because section 59 has ensured that many parents now do not discipline their children at all.
2. Police “discretion” is shown to be wholly inconsistent and dependent on the whim of the senior officer responsible. As I pointed out yesterday, this discretion is subject to the politicians in power and this event merely confirms this. Senior police officials inevitably enforce the political will of the times, although there is a certain lag between governments (due to the length of time cases take, but also due to the political nature of senior appointments).
3. The worst consequence of this, though, is the inevitable backlash of adults being too afraid to administer any sort of restraint at all. Can you just imagine the state of school busses? Children will be allowed to run riot simply because no driver wants to be dragged through the time, stress and expense of a prosecution. Drivers will retire early and be hard to replace. School bus services will inevitably become more expensive to attract drivers with higher salaries. Magnify this effect throughout society. It is already obvious in education. How long before paediatric nurses and doctors decide they have had enough? How long before CYFS is overwhelmed with unruly, out-of-control children?

I realise this is an emotive debate for some people; that they find the use of any physical force against children repulsive. I have some sympathy for that view, but the sad fact remains that a substantial number of parents lack the skills to discipline their children in any way other than by smacking. This is partly due to lack of knowledge; but also due to lack of time and, it has to be admitted, inclination. Section 59 ensures that most of these parents do not discipline their children at all, or discipline them in an ineffectual manner. Add the fact that many of these parents are in the same risk groups for child abuse and criminality, and you have, in the repeal of section 59, a dangerous time-bomb set to explode traumatically in our near future.

And the saddest thing is that John Key, who is an intelligent man, will have seen this coming and ignored it, when he could so easily have changed it.

Smile and wave, boys…

Additional:

Additional input from Madeleine at M&M; Andrei at NZ Conservative; Whale Oil at Gotcha.