Boy oh Boy....Colin Craig is sure being groomed for a seat in Parliament It's a great way of taking the spotlight off John Banks.

SF, Don,t forget that Winston has become attractive to John now too.!the headline today in Sunday star-Times says it all. Nats may need to sleep around.

But that's promiscuity! And we don't like that. Do we?

"Yes, I do blame the mother when a baby is harmed by her new boyfriend. Yes it is the male who inflicts the damage, but it is the mother who lets these scumbags into her house when her FIRST priority should be to keep her children safe, not where she can get her next bonk. If that means keeping her pants on and her legs crossed, so be it. All this nonsense about a woman having a right to an active sex life is a liability "


It seems you're quite good at blaming the mothers OKK - you blame them for having a normal & very strong biological urge which almost all humans have,then you blame them for having a child as a result,then for daring to have a boyfriend once they become a parent - (heaven forbid they might,like most other people want a loving relationship!:roll & then for the violence of a partner. All while ignoring that there are men who deliberately seek out vulnerable women with children,men who are very skilled at hiding their true nature at the beginning of a relationship.


Was having an active sex life for all those centuries a liability for men,OKK?
And once again you assume that any woman on a benefit will bonk ANY Tom,Dick & Harry.






"that is NOT heartless. Nothing wrong with that. "


Seriously? You see absolutely NO cruelty in forcibly removing a baby from its mother,Chris?


"is the various legislations put into place by P. C, and permissive governments. By taking away the rights and authority of parents to discipline their children"


Um...how long has that legislation been in place Chris? NOT long enough to have any bearing whatsoever on THIS present generation of teenagers - THEIR parents were still able to thrash their kids,so trying to blame that is a bit foolish,& child abuse has not a thing to do with 'PC' since its been with us for centuries.



"...5. Most of the people on welfare are unmarried mothers – many of them teenagers – who have extra children so that they can get more money"
This is a hoary old myth that combines the resentment of beneficiaries in general, with prurient resentment of the sexy young having too much sex. In fact, the US and New Zealand evidence is that young people are having less sex, later than their parents’ generation."

Many people have enthusiastically embraced this myth,much loved on forums like this.

It makes it SO much easier to then view women on benefits as being somehow 'other.'


"So, what I think is happening is, we are being tricked into a moral panic about this situation which hasn't really changed much except perhaps in a small way for the better."


Yes - in part I think to remove focus from the John Banks affair,but more worryingly,to 'soften up' society for further 'requirements' from those on a benefit - particularly women & garner support from their more limited supporters.

We are being quite deliberately encouraged to view women on benefits as 'other' & I find it appalling that more people fail to see what's happening.

http://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/article.aspx?id=147359

This is rather scary:

C&P
"12 May 2012
Welfare payments could be linked to whether beneficiaries get their children immunised.

The New Zealand Herald reports the Government is considering a suggestion it should be a requirement, unless people opt out for conscientious reasons.

The Social Development Minister says immunisations are considered important.

Paul Bennett says the Government is now discussing at what point the social obligation to immunise should be part of a requirement to get a benefit. "

There are two issues;immunisation & govt control.
I don't think govt will go with this because it would only take one child to be damaged by immunisation to lose them support images can be extremely powerful & that ONE image would remain in people's minds regardless of what govt argued - pre existing condition,coincidence or whatever - but I DO think its a testing of the waters as to what 'requirements' from beneficiaries are acceptable to society.
I think it could be an extremely dangerous path to go down.


"the QUALITY of the parenting is important. And to have good quality parenting, the first requirement is good parents"

Precisely Chris. And married heterosexuals do NOT have a monopoly on good quality parenting skills. The world is not black & white.

I don't know but I think immunization is free for children now. All children. I also think, one group of non-immunised children are those middle-class children whose parents do not 'believe' in immunization, who hold 'measles parties' (extraordinary risk), who send them to school with other children or to some 'private' schools which themselves do not support immunization. (Are the Steiner schools one of those? I read somewhere they were.)

But I don't suppose they'll be targeted and made to appear 'bad parents'. I don't suppose their WFF will be withheld until they get their kids immunized.

This is a health matter. This is not a welfare matter. The two should not be bound together - that's coercion and might as well be compulsion.

Education is the answer to both concerns; free immolation for all children, free long-term contraception for all women IMO.

Provide the service, and the understanding of the pluses, and they will come.

BD, I have been hearing about this governments intentions to broaden there targetting of groups to social engineering like contraception for all those on corporate welfare Can this be true.?
Surely they wouldn,t take it one step further and suggest voluntary euthanasia for all those on Government Super when we reach the cutoff age.

Don't be silly, Doc; those on corporate welfare get the carrot not the stick.

Anyway, the question you need to be asking is

"When does the right to die become the duty to die?"

That's a natural consequence of all this picking off one vulnerable group after another - pitting one group against another - scapegoating single mothers today, sick elderly tomorrow. They came for the unions, they came for the young, they came for the poor, where does it stop? And who will care when they come for me?

Ask not "For whom the bell tolls" it tolls for thee!

Arandar, Your post 72, This is precisely the sort of situation that proves, beyond doubt, that what Old Kiwi Kid, post 71, and I have been saying. It is only TOO obvious that little Coral's welfare was not even considered against her mother's "needs". And unfortunately, there are far too many situations like this. There have been far too many young children put at risk because of the so called "rights" of the mother involved. And in far too many cases the very real concerns expressed by the fathers, relatives, and agencies have been ignored, I would almost say deliberately, by those who consider that mother has her "RIGHTS", or even just too inconvenient, or in the too hard basket, or whatever.
And I am NOT saying that only the woman is wrong. Far from it. My feeling is that once the man is convicted, the most suitable penalty is a rope dance.
But if the mother had taken the time to "vet" the man properly, and that does take time, she, hopefully, would not have put the child at risk. (And I will add that I do have a personal axe to grind here, because my children were also put at risk like that by my ex wife, just for a few 'dirty nights' out. She put them in the care of a man she had never even met.)
It all comes back to accepting the consequences for your actions. And this applies to BOTH sexes. If your night out results in a baby, be grown up enough to shoulder responsibility for this. The child never came along and DEMANDED that you have him/her. The two of YOU were responsible for that. Nobody else. So asccept that the two of YOU will now have to taylor your lives around that little child. End of story.

Belladonna, 76, "how long has this legislation been in place ?"
It has been creeping in for the last twenty-thirty years or more. And on top of that, the trend has been to teach children that they have "rights", but they are NOT taught that they have responsibilities, OR that they are accountable for their own actions. And THAT has been going on for a lot longer than twenty-thirty years. And that is one of the main reasons why there is so much youth offending, far more than when we grew up. If they HAD been taught accountability, as WE were, mixed with respect for others, society would not be in the mess it is today

Chris, it proved only that Coral-Ellen Burrows was failed.

It does not prove that every child is failed, or might be failed, in situations that superficially might look similar to hers.

Most mothers by far, single or coupled, do put their children first. In fact, that is one of the reasons why many men leave relationships, leave their own children, because they say they don't like the responsibility, that their partners the mothers of their children are putting the children first and not them. And it's another reason often given for their using violence to stop crying infants, demanding preschoolers, wayward teens, requiring their mothers' attention when the men wanted it.

And if a baby born into a DPB household is so endangered surely so must be the older siblings? So would you not advocate removing all such children from the home?

Your experience may explain your attitude Chris but you ought not to extrapolate it to all other relationships.

And once again you assume that any woman on a benefit will bonk ANY Tom,Dick & Harry.(post 76)

Gee BD...I was a solo mother for 4 years and I didnt even know any TOM, DICK or HARRY.

Not to mention, most women are on the DPB for less than 4 years, so for that short period of time and relatively little cost, they should have a new baby taken from them, because of what MIGHT but probably won't happen to them?

I don't think so. I think this is much more about punishing women who have a child while on benefit either for (obviously) having sex out of marriage or for then needing a little more taxpayer support for a little longer or both.

OKK said, she doesn't want to pay for them. Seriously, OKK, what if one of those young women said, she doesn't want to pay for your pension? I know you were offended by that question but I would really like to know what the real difference is in your opinion.