I’m betting that the left (when they find the article) will have something derisive to say about Muriel Newman’s point that children are not protected from overt educationallly-driven political indoctrination in New Zealand. She cites Al Gore’s strangely acclaimed powerpoint presentation An Inconvenient Truth as an example. Personally, I think Gore’s movie is nowhere near [...]

New Zealand is now contemplating using the same set of incentives to boost immunisation rates that Australia used to boost it’s rates from 50% to 91%. The MacDoctor is not convinced that New Zealanders will respond quite as well as Australians to the incentives. The incentives were: Cash payments to parents for completing immunisations at [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The Herald reports today that 39 “minor acts of physical discipline” were brought to the attention of police, resulting in one prosecution and  37 warnings. The article goes on to say: Deputy Police Commissioner Rob Pope said the figures showed police continued to apply discretion in handling “anti-smacking” cases. Sadly, Mr. Pope completely misses the [...]

An HoS article on the sexual incontinence of famous men and the curerent trend towards “polyamorous relationships” (viz. Sleeping around) opens with the question “Are men naturally monogamous?” This is a stupid question. I am well aware that most of the males in animal kingdom do not mate with a single female for life, that [...]

Yep. That’s Whale Oil’s newest attempt at breaching name suppression orders – almost. Nice one, Cameron, only a complete geek could get this one. I’m geeky enough, but I simply can’t be bothered. In fact, I suspect that the only reason why anyone would go to the trouble of deciphering Whale’s clue to the identity [...]

I saw this headline on Stuff and thought “about time”. Parents win disabled children care payment case Sadly, it turns out only that parents with adult disabled children have won the support of the Human Rights Tribunal, not the government itself. Currently only caregivers who are not related to the disabled adult receive payment from [...]

If I suggested to someone that they should let their six-year-old drive their Kawasaki motorbike down the freeway, you would rightly be suggesting that they lock me up somewhere nice and quiet. Yet that is more or less how risky it is to allow a child to ride an ATV (All-Terrain vehicle alias a Quad-bike) [...]

Today the police have blithely announced that 12 children were killed through abuse (9 murders 3 manslaughters) over the past two years (June 2007 – June 2009). This is unchanged from previous years with an average of five children a year dying from abuse and 45 seriously injured. My immediate reaction to this was: The [...]