Canary in the Mine

The High Court has apparently delivered a king hit to brothel bylaws around the country. The court in Christchurch is understood to have come down in favour of a brothel owner who challenged the Christchurch City Council's bylaws restricting brothels to an inner-city zone. If the decision stands, it will effectively allow brothels anywhere in the city. This report is by word of mouth, as the news is too recent to have hit the media yet. If confirmed, I assume that the Council will take the matter to the Court of Appeal, otherwise it could dump the bylaws of all other councils in the country into the waste basket.

Wheeeee! Three political polls in 24 hours! A lot of number crunching. What do we make of them? Has Labour suddenly bounced back - has National really slipped so badly in a couple of weeks?
The volatility of the polling figures raises some interesting (and important) questions which I haven't seen answered anywhere yet.
Either:
a) The NZ public is so fickle and driven by single-issue items, that a minor "stumble" by a party leader, or one single policy release, can trigger huge shifts in public opinion. (If this is the case, why did the massive stumbles by Labour in the first 4 months of this year produce so little change in the polls of the time?)
b) The polls are skewed in their sampling; ie, polls pick up an unrepresentative number of voters for a particular party. (The polls of some survey companies do seem to have a tendency to favour a particular party - eg, the NBR poll often produces higher figures for NZ First than the other polls.)
c) What is the percentage of "Don't Knows"? TNS-TV3 said this week the DKs were 12 percent, consistent with their previous polls. I suspect the DKs are higher in other survey companies. It is probable that the current DKs will effectively choose the government come election day. Are they dimwitted; or confused; or cautious; or strategic thinkers? I suspect (although I have little hard evidence to back this up) they comprise a mixture of unsure and strategic thinkers.
d) Some survey companies try to push respondents who initially give a DK into stating a preference. That might have a bit more validity in the week of the election, but this far out it simply produces a result with suspect validity.
d) There is another group which the polling companies don't talk about who could have any greater effect on the election outcome. They are the people the polling companies can't contact, or who refuse to be interviewed. (They are not included among the DKs.) Reasons for not being contactable include: not home when phoned; don't have a phone (ie, too poor); mostly use a cell phone (the survey companies don't include cell phone numbers in their sampling). Refuseniks are a growing problem for survey companies - I am sure you can think of reasons why people won't talk to interviewers. Do all these people differ in their political views from the population at large? No-one knows, because no-one has done a study of them.
e) The major-minor party split is still holding up way too high in favour of the major parties, going on historical figures. This will be a most unusual election if maybe 10 percent of the vote doesn't slip away from the combined major parties to the minor parties.
f) Incidentally, all three polls released this week were not uniform in their direction. The TNS-TV3 poll actually showed an improvement for National on their previous poll.
The upshot of all this is that no-one can take anything for granted. There are simply more questions than answers at this stage.

Abortions in the UK have risen by almost 4,000 in 12 months, with a growing number of girls under 14 terminating pregnancies. Department of Health statistics yesterday showed that abortions in England and Wales rose to 185,400 last year, a figure that pro-life groups described as "staggering". Pregnancy advisory groups said the overall figures reflected the trend of women delaying families and having fewer children to concentrate on their careers and paying their mortgages. A total of 1,034 girls under the age of 15 had abortions last year; 877 were aged 14 and 157 were under 14. [Proportionately, New Zealand has a much higher abortion rate than the UK. For instance, 85 girls under 15 had an abortion here last year, while the total for all ages was 18,211.]

The IRA says it has ended its 'armed campaign' in Northern Ireland but says it was 'entirely legitimate'. Sinn Fean leader Gerry Adams says the IRA will pursue its aim through the political process from now on. [I guess only history will tell how well this holds.]

"Religion will play a dominant role in Iraq's new constitution, which will identify Islam as 'the main source' of the nation's laws," the Chicago Tribune reports today, quoting members of the drafting committee. "It will also state that no law will be permitted that contradicts Islam, language that could potentially see Iraq transformed into an Islamic state." Constitutional drafting committee chairman Humam Hamoudi says enshrining Shari'ah law into the constitution is necessary to gain support in the referendum to approve it. The referendum is scheduled for October. He also promised that Christians would be able to practice their religion. "The constitution will not impose anything on people," he said, according to The Washington Post. "Everyone can practice their freedom in their personal affairs according to their beliefs. But the identity of the community goes after the majority of people."

I can guarantee that the following would not take place in Iraq. (In fact, I'm still struggling to work out exactly what this press release means.) It comes from St Andrew's on The Terrace in Wellington, and is headed "Geering Lecturer Introduces 'Indecent Theology'". To quote: "Dr Marcella Althaus-Reid, the St Andrew's Trust for the Study of Religion and Society 2005 Geering Lecturer, has been as influential as she has been controversial in insisting that all theology is sexual theology. Drawing on the experiences of queers, the poor and Latin American spirituality, Dr Althaus-Reid will introduce "Indecent Theology" as she explores "sexuality, poverty and God" in four addresses at St Andrew's on the Terrace in the first fortnight of August. "All theology is sexual theology. Indecent theology is sexier than most," she says. And we wonder why Muslims think the western world has become decadent. [The item below makes it even clearer.]

The new fad in publishing is risqué adult-themed [as in, full-on sex] books written for teenagers and younger pre-teens. This trend is being fueled by the notion that today’s teenagers are sophisticated enough for such themes and that teenage sex is a good thing.

The Qualifications Authority has hired an independent evaluator to make sure this year's exam questions do not offend anyone. Education officials defended NCEA exam writing and checking procedures yesterday to an education select committee investigating allegations of political bias in a level 1 history exam last year. The question asked candidates to write as if they were a 1980 National MP not sympathetic to Maori. It included an illustration of the MP, which National leader Don Brash said appeared to be a "rather poor caricature of me". Qualifications Authority group manager Kate Colbert said the evaluator was vetting 418 exam papers for potentially offensive stereotypes to ensure there were no problems this year.

Iconic clothing brand Swanndri will no longer be made in New Zealand as the company moves production from Timaru to China. [Trade ministers from countries around the world are now believed to be negotiating to have China manufacture everything for everybody, which will remove the necessity for anyone else to have a messy infrastructure, and means the rest of us can concentrate on importing. That should be consistent with the latest trade balance figures, which are the worst since 1976.]

A group campaigning to change the New Zealand flag has dumped its petition for a referendum - and has blamed apathy for the failure. NZFlag.com Trust chairman Lloyd Morrison said yesterday that assembling a network of volunteers to collect 270,000 signatures by October to force a referendum had proved too big a challenge.

The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) is suing to have courts in North Carolina allow oaths to be taken on the Koran as well as the Bible.

The Church of England yesterday found itself in the potentially embarrassing position of telling its clergy that if they entered civil partnerships under new UK legislation they would have to pledge to remain celibate. A House of Bishops' statement said: "Partnerships will be widely seen as being predominantly between gay and lesbian people in sexually active relationships. Members of the clergy and candidates for ordination who decide to enter into partnerships must expect to be asked for assurances that their relationship will be consistent with ... teaching." It is understood that several bishops have already said privately that they have no intention of asking their clergy about whether their relationships are sexual or not. The statement has been forced on the church by the Civil Partnerships Act, which comes into force in December and will enable same-sex partners to register their relationships.

This is where promotion of children's rights and hysteria takes us: "The ordeal is finally over, but for the past year, a North Carolina family has been torn apart after state officials claimed family photos of a father kissing his baby's belly button were some kind of child abuse."

"It was once considered unseemly to listen to the phonograph alone. It was considered the equivalent of drinking liquor alone or talking to yourself. Before the phonograph, listening to music was something done almost exclusively as a communal activity. It was hardly possible to listen to music alone. So in the early days of recording people often listened to recordings in groups and applauded as if they were in concerts." Music professor Mark Katz discusses how technology has changed music over the last century or so.

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a "female" android called Repliee Q1. She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner. She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe. Professor Hiroshi Ishiguru of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3359209a1863,00.html

This election campaign is going to be no different from those that went before. If you want to read about the dirty tricks that go on behind the scenes in even NZ politics, this article is an eye-opener.
"In my judgment, few New Zealanders are looking for radical policy change this election," says Helen Clark. Someone should tell her that we weren't looking for it last election, either.

The media continue to show that they don't stop even a moment to ask the hard questions about the material presented to them. According to the Herald, a survey has found that most parents and caregivers of under-5-year-olds consider smacking to be the least effective way to discipline children. UMR Research polled 1367 readers of Tots to Teens magazine on behalf of the Littlies Lobby, a joint initiative between Plunket and the Children's Commissioner. More than 90 percent of respondents rated praise for good behaviour and leading by example as the most effective means of fostering discipline. Only 9 per cent thought smacking was effective, with an "overwhelming" 71 per cent rating a smack as ineffective. But any social scientist will tell you that a self-selected audience such as this has absolutely no validity as a scientific survey. It's like asking the readers of Playboy whether they agree that pornography should be censored.

Opinion polls have been rampant since the UK bomb attacks. Some very disturbing figures have emerged. For instance, less than three-quarters of Muslims in Britain indicate they would tell the police about an impending terrorist attack, which raises grave doubts about the Blair government's tactic of getting Muslims to police their own community. And one-third of Muslims do not accept British society and want to end it.

Momentum is growing in Australia for new measures to counter terrorism, including even tougher laws, closed circuit television networks, and random bag searches at train and bus stations.

Is the great Kiwi OE stealing NZ's men? In a new study of transtasman populations, Bernard Salt, a partner in KPMG's risk advisory services practice and one of Australia's best-known demographers, warns of a growing "man drought". In 1991 there were 8000 more 30-something women than men in New Zealand. By last year this had soared to a surplus of 24,000 women. "If you are a 34-year-old heterosexual woman in New Zealand you have as much chance of finding a male partner your own age as does an 85-year-old woman," Salt said. "This aligns precisely with what's happening in Australia." Mr Salt believes that the main cause of the man drought is that while both men and women head abroad on the great OE, women are far more likely to return, or return unattached. "New Zealand and Australia need to think about defensive migration policies to protect what we've got.

Couples are delaying having children and using IVF as a safety net, according to Australian government-sponsored research into fertility decision making. The results of a study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows that 42% of 1,600 people surveyed thought that they would use IVF if they found it difficult to conceive a child. "This is our worry," says researcher Ruth Weston. "The research reveals that couples assume that there is a 'plan B'... We need greater education of women to get the message across that IVF is not necessarily an option."

Some children could legally have three or more parents if the Law Reform Commission in the Australian state of Victoria has its way. It has recommended that the state's adoption law be amended "to permit more than two people to be recognised as the legal parents of a child". Most of the commission's proposals are intended to take same-sex parenting into account. Although the notion of three parents is unconventional, to say the least, the commission feels that it should be possible for donors of sperm or eggs to be recognised as parents in addition to the birth mother and a lesbian partner. It even appears to be open to the idea of four legal parents.

The founder of the modern hospice movement, Dame Cecily Saunders, died early this month in London. She discovered her vocation to care for the dying in 1948 when she fell in love with a dying Polish Jew while working as a "lady almoner", or social worker. She realised that she could only be effective if she obtained a medical degree, and began her studies at the age of 33. In 1967 she opened St Christopher's Hospice, still one of the leaders in the field. In her youth she was an atheist, but became a Christian while training to be a social worker. It was, she said, "as if a switch had flipped". Although the philosophy of her hospice was Christian, people of all persuasions, or none, were welcomed there.

If you think rock music is more popular than classical, think again. Beethoven (1.4m) beat Bono (20,000) in internet downloads from the BBC.

Meet Mark C. Taylor, the virtuoso of Nietzschean boosterism: Say you're a theologian in the religion business who's concluded that your company's oldest and most trusted product doesn't really exist. What do you do after the death of God? You could lie to the customers and stockholders, continue writing copy, and ruefully await retirement. But if you're more imaginative, you could turn your crisis into an opportunity, as consultants like to say, and spin God's death as a new form of life, an "entrance of divinity fully into the human." You could "re-tool" and jump to another firm—English, philosophy, or perhaps a start-up in something-or-other studies. Or, like Mark C. Taylor, you could become an entreprofessor, a broker in the emerging intellectual markets, trading in some of the hottest stocks in cultural capital. Pooling your dwindling fortunes in theology and philosophy with venture capital from postmodernism, you nimbly navigate the volatile and bubbling markets in profundity, hang out with the rich and famous, and after a while you're a pioneer in internet education, adulated in the Sunday New York Times. As long as the bubbles don't burst, and as long as the old business doesn't revive, you're as safe as a tenured academic—which, of course, you are already.

This is a long extract from an interview with UK Labour MP Frank Field (former Minister for Welfare Reform), but his views on how welfare can be overhauled are an important contribution to the debate. Field is author of a book titled "Neighbours from Hell":
"Over a 200-year period in Britain, we marched towards respectability, reaching an apex by the middle of the last century. What sort of people we were was shaped by two major forces. The first was the evangelical revival, which instilled a deep feeling of personal responsibility into an ever-growing proportion of the population. People felt they were responsible and would be accountable for their actions.
"The other great force was the discipline the labour movement imposed on the membership of its mutually owned welfare state. Bad behaviour did not rule for the very simple reason that it risked the welfare of the entire membership.
"Anti-social behaviour is now one of the major issues which concerns voters. The surprise is not its current dominance but that good behaviour and a reasonable degree of civility continued to be taught in families long after the evangelical revival became a spent force, and that our mutually owned welfare state was ruthlessly confined to the history books.
"Now we are reaping a whirlwind of bad behaviour due to our failure to consider the most basic of all political questions. What kind of character do we want our fellow citizens to have?
"Addressing this question constitutes the new politics of behaviour. But because in the past our national characters were largely formed within families whose values were determined by civil society politicians took a back seat. Voters are now demanding that politicians take control of the steering wheel.
"What can politics do when a growing number of families fail to teach their children a set of common decencies? Those common decencies not only make family life tolerable, but enable children to navigate successfully the outside world. The politics of behaviour is essentially about how we reteach these common decencies.
"One of a number of proposals put forward in Neighbours from Hell is to transform welfare from a rights based entitlement to a contract. Each contract would spell out what society is to provide and the other side of the contract would specify what kind of behaviour society expects in return.
"Given that most children are not now baptised, an obvious place to begin this reform would be to convert the registration of a birth into a public ceremony. At that event the registrar would welcome the child into the wider community, spell out what society wanted to help the family achieve for that child, and in return give a basic outline of the responsibilities of parenthood. In this way welfare would become a teaching force akin to what religion did for Victorian society.

This could just as easily be written of NZ as Australia: "Tax and welfare reform are on the agenda. Given the government’s newly-won control of the Senate, most attention is focused primarily on the next 18 months, but it is important to think longer term about the kind of tax and welfare systems we shall need over the next few decades. This paper analyses how the welfare state might be transformed to give ordinary people more control over key areas of their lives which are currently managed for them by the government. Saunders demonstates that, to a large extent, we no longer need the welfare state. Most people could afford to buy most of the services they need if they weren’t taxed so highly to pay for the services the government wants them to have."
For an earlier release on the same topic, see here.

Labour politicians of today frequently criticise the "failed economic policies of the 90s." But Jim Eagles examines each one and asks, if they were failed policies, why are they still all in place today?

A bipartisan task force on the United Nations has released a report that found the world body is in very bad condition. Task force member Edwin Feulner, said the UN has problems -- starting with the secretary-general and working its way down. "In terms of the management structure," Feulner said, " I think it is fair to say the United Nations is a mess." Another task force member, Rod Hills of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.N. needs a chief operating officer. "It was our judgment that the General Assembly should insist that the new secretary-general have some real management skills," he said. "And that those management skills would be used to appraise the capacity of the people who report to him." [Considering that Helen Clark is said to be angling for the Secretary-General's job, one would have to ask how well she is really qualified for the task.]

Ony 4% of Auckland and Christchurch primary school children can jump, skip and do the other 10 movements they should be able to, a survey has found. The study, for the Ministry of Education, found only 17 of the 423 children tested could complete the 12 "fundamental movement skills". The children were aged under 13 and only two girls had all 12 skills - including jumping catching and kicking - which children should be able to do by age seven. North Shore schools last week told the Sunday Star-Times many pupils could not sit up straight or concentrate because of a lack of motor - or movement - skills. Some blamed early childhood centres for focusing on the three Rs rather than play. Some physical education experts say the push to improve literacy and numeracy has led to children missing out on the "physical literacy" important for well-rounded development. Lifestyle changes are also blamed.

Touching kids is OK for primary teachers, new draft guidelines suggest - but a look might still be enough to get them into trouble. Primary teachers are debating the draft drawn up by the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) designed to replace its controversial eight-page, hands-off code of physical conduct introduced in the mid-1990s after the Christchurch Civic Creche case. Instead of saying teachers should avoid touching children and being alone with them, the guidelines say physical contact is "perfectly acceptable". But they still warn about squeezing students' shoulders and hugging or eye contact that might be misconstrued. Michael Neville, a Levin teacher who was last year found not guilty of sexually assaulting four former pupils, said the draft was fraught with problems, particularly where it prescribed against eye contact. Teachers were afraid to look at children for fear of inadvertently looking at their chest or groin. "I just find that absolutely absurd," he said. Auckland University education lecturer Alison Jones, whose research has found anxiety over sexual abuse has become embedded in the school system, said the climate of panic had disastrously put young men off teaching. In the past decade the proportion of men in primary teaching has steadily declined - from 21% to 18% in the past 11 years.

Soaring fuel prices have added $500 a year to the cost of running the average car, the Sunday Star-Times estimates. research on the fuel economy of the most popular new and used cars shows $20 of petrol took a car 45km further two years ago than it does now.
I have wondering why nobody seems to be overly worried at the long-term implications of the current price of oil, or the prospect that it could even go as high as $85 in the near future. Compare with the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, when there was a huge panic. A look at the BP energy survey for 2004 shows that in 2004 dollars, the 1979 price at one stage went up to about $82. So we're not far behind that peak. I suspect a major difference this time is that we are more assured of continuity of supply for the foreseeable future. But I would not be surprised to see a few SUV's coming onto the market prematurely.

A stream of complaints about offensive advertisements has been overturned by an advertising watchdog, but media commentators say adverts are increasingly pushing boundaries. The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled on four advertisements this month, including Toyota's "sheep shagger" and Volkswagen's "peeing boy", which attracted complaints from offended viewers. Volkswagen has decided to replace the opening sequence of its advert, after numerous complaints about its "sexualised" content, which one viewer said encouraged paedophilia. The ad features a series of shots of a young boy, beginning with him standing naked urinating into a potty and later eyeing a woman in a short skirt. Victoria University media studies lecturer Tony Schirato said areas that were once taboo, such as bodily functions and pornography, were making it into mainstream media. "These days there isn't much that's forbidden."

Children as young as five are being treated at a counselling programme for sexual abusers. Wellington Stop manager Hamish Dixon said children as young as five had been referred to it after "quite serious abuse on other children". Mr Dixon said their behaviour went beyond the typical sexually curious "play" of many children. It was common for children to be interested in the opposite sex's genitals, but inappropriate behaviour could involve penetration and causing the other child to feel frightened or forced. Children on the programme showed a greater awareness of sex than typical young people and had often been victims of abuse themselves or had seen explicit pornography. [When you sexualise a culture, don't be surprised at the unintended consequences.]

Could this be the last fling of the Labour government before the election? Sue Bradford's Bill to ban smacking says in the Explanatory Note: "The effect of this amendment [repealing Section 59 of the Crimes Act] is that the statutory protection for use of force by parents and guardians will be removed. They will now be in the same position as everyone else so far as the use of force against children is concerned. The use of force on a child may constitute an assault under section 194(a) of the Crimes Act." She would see parents exercise the same amount of authority to discipline their own children than total strangers normally have: none. The Bill to repeal Section 59 will not just ban smacking: it will ban any and all use of force. It will mean that effective parenting is basically outlawed.