Smacking children

The NZ Herald reports that a petition to repeal NZ's so-called "anti-smacking laws" failed to collect (by a small amount) the necessary number of signatures to force a referendum on the issue.

I am gob-smacked that at least over quarter of a million New Zealanders would sign a petition to assert the right of parents to hit their children. I am even more bowled over by the fact that some mean spirited Dickensian group has gone to the extraordinary effort to collect such a vast number of signatures so that mums and dads across the land can hit their children with impunity.

I could understand going to great effort to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures for petitions that would genuinely improve the welfare of children, such as petitions aimed at getting:
- the government to put pressure on the UN to step up in Darfur.
- funding for Plunket
- more funding for equipment in children's hospitals
- more action towards ending child poverty, here and abroad
- improved public facilities for families
- more help for special needs children

But a petition aimed at the so-called right of a parent to hit a child? What have we come to?

Children have rights. They are not sub-human. If it is not OK for my neighbour to give me a smack on the bum because my dinner guests from last night were a bit rowdy, then it is certainly not OK for me to smack my child for whatever reason. Find another way to channel your anger, away from the children, and find another way to discipline them. Good parents don't resort to abuse.

Holy crap batman! It has been a long time since I last posted, having promised myself I would post Nearly Every Day. Idiot.

I have been looking at the sad little list of blog ideas from months back and they are now incomprehensible (third generational skid marks?), irrelevant (the demise of Runescape - 14 year old brother fell into deep angst), or not interesting (TomKat zzzzzzz).

But wait! There be one topic I can really talk about, but eeek! It is home renovation! Three little words peeked out at me - 'closed in deck' - and the idea came flooding back (actually, not enough to be a flood, more of a trickle.) It goes something like this:

"Modern suburban life - why the planet will be a ball of dust in 50 years"

-Home owner thinks, "wouldn't an outdoor living area be nice" and builds a deck, preferably with good orientation to the sun, and perhaps even cuts down some trees to let in more light
- The sun beats hard through the gap left by the trees. The home owner thinks, "Hmmm that thar sun is too darn hot", and introduces artifical shade
- Home owner decides the deck is too cold in the evening and commits carbon crime by getting an outdoor gas heater or fire that attempts to heat the great outdoors
- Home owner thinks, "stuff this, if I enclosed the whole thing, we would keep warm, the mozzies wouldn't get me and I would have another room on the house", and turns the deck into a conservatory
- Home owner decides the conservatory is too hot and installs blinds to shut out the light.
- Home owner thinks, "wouldn't an outdoor living area be be nice"

Fooking 'ell