I suppose its others that should be embarrassed, but the feeling has crept over me this week as more signs of madness emerge from my fellow Kiwis.
First, iconic author Witi Ihimaera admits plagiarism, then a few days later he gets a $50,000 award, and now it seems that he’s done it before. As if recidivist plagiarism is not bad enough, the University of Auckland is downplaying the whole thing. At least I don’t work there anymore.
Then there are those orange billboards with the jack-bootprints that have been around town for a while. What a cringe this is: a crowd of people demanding stronger legal rights to smack their kids.
I’ll certainly be voting with my feet tomorrow, by staying well away from these twits.
And for once I’ll forgive the Royal NZ Herald for constantly front-paging violent court news. This story, about the woman jailed for thrashing her son with a hosepipe is directly relevant to anyone considering joining tomorrow’s twits. The sentencing judge said that brutal beatings of children under the guise of chastisement are almost a daily occurrence in South Auckland.
I could go on, about the financial sector and guidelines for reporters, but I gotta get to work.
But first I must congratulate the Feds for finally saying something sensible about climate change. After all these years, they’ve decided that a fart tax might actually be a good idea. Still leaves them free to rail against ETS, but at least its a nice change from the trend of the week.
Just put a sign outside your office saying “Welcome to the outside of the asylum”.
Surely the law ex ante would have allowed prosecution of parents beating their children with hoses, no? I can understand the merits of a bright line rule where some communities have a very difficult time understanding a less clear rule, but I also worry that such communities are sufficiently inelastic in response to any rule, bright line or otherwise, that the gains there from the rule are outweighed by losses elsewhere. If the sentencing judge says that hose beatings are a daily occurrence despite the current law, the reversion to the law ex ante wouldn’t change much for those communities, no? Solution I’d expect has to come more through a whole lot of prosecutions leading to expectations of severe punishment for real child abuse rather than waffly legislation that doesn’t do much to target the folks causing harm. It’s like knocking back the drink driving limit from .08 to .05 when the folks causing most harm are up beyond .12 anyway.
Nice sign idea Eric – I may just find a use for that!
I totally agree that the law was already capable of dealing with child abuse and that its full force should be used with vigour. The anti-smacking law was in that sense imposing a non-binding constraint. Which makes those getting frothed up about it all the more nutty.