Friday, August 12, 2005
I missed this speech at the time, but I highlight it because of its importance. In an address entitled "Four million people in search of an idea", journalist and commentator Colin James explored the forces that he currently sees shaping the complexion and reflexes of New Zealand. James has summarised this era as two revolutions - the bi-cultural revolution (or as he calls it the 'reindigenisation of Aotearoa') and the revolution carried through by the Vietnam generation which he describes as 'the indigenisation of the Anglo-Celts'. The first saw Maori bring the Treaty of Waitangi back to centre-stage and with it, their relationship with the political institutions of the land; the second, saw a confident crop of Anglo-Celts "[tear] up the rulebook of public policy and private behaviour".
A response by Simon Upton can be read here.
Pope Benedict has cut the core of the danger facing Western civilisation. Consigning the Almighty to the sidelines of public life, Benedict said at Subiaco, fuels a rage that threatens all of Europe — not just among Christians angry at Europe's radical secularism, but also among the world's Muslims. "Muslims do not feel threatened by our Christian moral foundations," he declared, "but by the cynicism of a secularized culture that denies its own foundations." The same is true for Jews, he said. "It is not the mention of God that offends those who belong to other religions, but rather the attempt to build the human community absolutely without God." Thus the violence of terrorism is fed less by the clash of civilizations or belief than by its lack, and the insult to God (and the founding mystery of the universe) that European disbelief represents. If the only moral standards are supposed to be those calculated by governments and individuals, the Pope went on to say, then society is cut off from its Christian roots and loses its way.
Unfortunately, some clergy are also cutting themselves off from their Christian roots. The Church of England's crisis over homosexuality deepened yesterday after gay clergy said that they would defy their bishops over civil partnerships. Some told The Daily Telegraph that they had no intention of assuring their bishops that they will be sexually abstinent when they "marry" their partners.
Mankind is on "a slippery slope to eugenics", a doctor warned last night, as the UK's fertility watchdog suggested screening embryos for late-onset genetic problems. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has launched a consultation on the possibility of screening for genes linked to breast, ovarian and some colon cancers. But the Scottish Council on Bioethics (SCB) said screening for a disease that will not necessarily develop and, if it does, strike later in life, is wrong.
What is France's fastest-growing language? Why, it's English! In a recent survey of 26 of France's largest companies, 16 gave English as their official working language - including Renault, Danone, and Aventis. Of these, nine have dropped French altogether. Seven put English and French on equal footing. To some here, the trend is a slap in the face. After all, this is a country known for its linguistic pride, and one whose government outlaws advertising in English, and mandates a 40 percent quota of French songs on the radio.
A significant rise in temperatures across European cities suggests that a crucial two-degree rise in global temperature could come earlier than feared. A WWF survey of the temperatures in 16 European Union cities relative to temperatures in the early 1970s shows some of the continent's capitals warming by more than 2 degrees C.
Meanwhile, ski-loving Austria is taking desperate measures to protect its 925 melting glaciers by covering parts of them with blankets of white plastic or foil that keep the cold in and the heat out. The Swiss, who have lost nearly 20 percent of their glaciers in the past 10 years, are using similar methods every summer to try and slow the rate the melting. Melting of some of the largest glaciers in the world, ranging from Greenland to the Antarctic, is speeding up.
On the internet front, two revelations this week about new threats related to spyware illustrate how the growing problem of invasive adware and spyware has taken a sinister turn for the worse.
Tail-out: What's the most expensive drink in the world? How about water - at $40,000 a gallon? That's what it costs NASA to cart water up to the astronauts.
A response by Simon Upton can be read here.
Pope Benedict has cut the core of the danger facing Western civilisation. Consigning the Almighty to the sidelines of public life, Benedict said at Subiaco, fuels a rage that threatens all of Europe — not just among Christians angry at Europe's radical secularism, but also among the world's Muslims. "Muslims do not feel threatened by our Christian moral foundations," he declared, "but by the cynicism of a secularized culture that denies its own foundations." The same is true for Jews, he said. "It is not the mention of God that offends those who belong to other religions, but rather the attempt to build the human community absolutely without God." Thus the violence of terrorism is fed less by the clash of civilizations or belief than by its lack, and the insult to God (and the founding mystery of the universe) that European disbelief represents. If the only moral standards are supposed to be those calculated by governments and individuals, the Pope went on to say, then society is cut off from its Christian roots and loses its way.
Unfortunately, some clergy are also cutting themselves off from their Christian roots. The Church of England's crisis over homosexuality deepened yesterday after gay clergy said that they would defy their bishops over civil partnerships. Some told The Daily Telegraph that they had no intention of assuring their bishops that they will be sexually abstinent when they "marry" their partners.
Mankind is on "a slippery slope to eugenics", a doctor warned last night, as the UK's fertility watchdog suggested screening embryos for late-onset genetic problems. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has launched a consultation on the possibility of screening for genes linked to breast, ovarian and some colon cancers. But the Scottish Council on Bioethics (SCB) said screening for a disease that will not necessarily develop and, if it does, strike later in life, is wrong.
What is France's fastest-growing language? Why, it's English! In a recent survey of 26 of France's largest companies, 16 gave English as their official working language - including Renault, Danone, and Aventis. Of these, nine have dropped French altogether. Seven put English and French on equal footing. To some here, the trend is a slap in the face. After all, this is a country known for its linguistic pride, and one whose government outlaws advertising in English, and mandates a 40 percent quota of French songs on the radio.
A significant rise in temperatures across European cities suggests that a crucial two-degree rise in global temperature could come earlier than feared. A WWF survey of the temperatures in 16 European Union cities relative to temperatures in the early 1970s shows some of the continent's capitals warming by more than 2 degrees C.
Meanwhile, ski-loving Austria is taking desperate measures to protect its 925 melting glaciers by covering parts of them with blankets of white plastic or foil that keep the cold in and the heat out. The Swiss, who have lost nearly 20 percent of their glaciers in the past 10 years, are using similar methods every summer to try and slow the rate the melting. Melting of some of the largest glaciers in the world, ranging from Greenland to the Antarctic, is speeding up.
On the internet front, two revelations this week about new threats related to spyware illustrate how the growing problem of invasive adware and spyware has taken a sinister turn for the worse.
Tail-out: What's the most expensive drink in the world? How about water - at $40,000 a gallon? That's what it costs NASA to cart water up to the astronauts.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Nearly 40 per cent of school principals are highly stressed and about the same number are spending more than 65 hours a week on the job, a new survey shows. Results of a survey by the New Zealand Principals' Federation carried out at the end of June showed while over 80 per cent of the 1500 principals surveyed said they still got satisfaction from their job, many were suffering as a result of long-term stress. "Many of them say 'We love the job, but it is killing us'," said federation president Pat Newman. Nearly 40 per cent of respondents put their level of stress at high or extremely high, and 42 per cent were spending more than 65 hours a week on the job.
In a significant social shift, embryos left over by Kiwi couples who have successfully undergone in vitro fertilisation (IVF) will be made available to others trying to have a child. The new rules, released by the National Ethics Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction, provide a fresh avenue for couples desperate to have a child and could save them thousands of dollars otherwise spent on IVF. Embryo donation will be subject to strict conditions and approved case by case because of the ethical and social issues it raises. It effectively involves the separation of children from their genetic parents and siblings and sees them raised by "social parents". [This is another step in a major movement which is separating children from their biological parents. It is a consequence of the HART Act passed in the last couple of years, but it is reflected in much other legislation, such as the Care of Children Act.]
A genuine debate about immigration and multiculturalism seems almost impossible in New Zealand at the moment. But at least it is starting to happen in Britain. “My view is that a multicultural society is an impossibility,” [Norman Tebbit] says. “ Society is defined by its culture. And if you have competing cultures existing inside the same territory, sooner or later there will be a contest to decide the dominant one.”
Tebbit’s views, once confined to the fringes of his own party, are now suddenly back at the centre of a new and highly focused debate on multiculturalism. The importance and profile of the debate was emphasised last week by David Davis, the favourite to become the next leader of the Tories, who claimed Britain’s pursuit of multiculturalism, one he defined as allowing people of different cultures to settle (in the UK) without expecting them to integrate into society, is now “outdated” and should be abandoned. Davis claimed “the authorities” have seemed “more concerned with encouraging distinctive identities than with providing common values of nationhood … we must speak openly about what we expect of those who settle here, and of ourselves”.
Appeasement has cost millions of lives in Europe: the Jews in Nazi Germany, Germans under the Communists, atrocities in Kosovo. So how is Germany planning to meet the threat of Islamic terrorism inside its borders? By suggesting an official state Muslim holiday.
America is becoming more virtuous. Americans today hurt each other less than they did 13 years ago. They are more likely to resist selfish and shortsighted impulses. They are leading more responsible, more organized lives. A result is an improvement in social order across a range of behaviors. The decline in domestic violence is of a piece with the decline in violent crime over all. Violent crime over all is down by 55 percent since 1993 and violence by teenagers has dropped an astonishing 71 percent, according to the Department of Justice. The number of drunken driving fatalities has declined by 38 percent since 1982, according to the Department of Transportation, even though the number of vehicle miles traveled is up 81 percent. The total consumption of hard liquor by Americans over that time has declined by over 30 percent. Teenage pregnancy has declined by 28 percent since its peak in 1990. Teenage births are down significantly and, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions performed in the country has also been declining since the early 1990's.
Fewer children are living in poverty, even allowing for an uptick during the last recession. There's even evidence that divorce rates are declining, albeit at a much more gradual pace. People with college degrees are seeing a sharp decline in divorce, especially if they were born after 1955. I could go on. Teenage suicide is down. Elementary school test scores are rising (a sign than more kids are living in homes conducive to learning). Teenagers are losing their virginity later in life and having fewer sex partners. In short, many of the indicators of social breakdown, which shot upward in the late 1960's and 1970's, and which plateaued at high levels in the 1980's, have been declining since the early 1990's. I always thought it would be dramatic to live through a moral revival. Great leaders would emerge. There would be important books, speeches, marches and crusades. We're in the middle of a moral revival now, and there has been very little of that. This revival has been a bottom-up, prosaic, un-self-conscious one, led by normal parents, normal neighbors and normal community activists.
There are many big stories happening in the world outside the radar of the news media. Rick Warren - pastor of Saddleback Church and author of the best-selling "Purpose Driven Life" - gave a bunch of key US journalists a list of them.
Americans have long considered Saudi Arabia the one constant in the Arab Middle East — a source of cheap oil, political stability, and lucrative business relationships. But the country is run by an increasingly dysfunctional royal family that has been funding militant Islamic movements abroad in an attempt to protect itself from them at home. A former CIA operative argues, in an article drawn form his new book, Sleeping With the Devil, that today's Saudi Arabia can't last much longer — and the social and economic fallout of its demise could be calamitous.
Where bin Laden is, why he's still alive, and why it may be impossible to capture him. At least, according to WorldNetDaily.
In a significant social shift, embryos left over by Kiwi couples who have successfully undergone in vitro fertilisation (IVF) will be made available to others trying to have a child. The new rules, released by the National Ethics Committee on Assisted Human Reproduction, provide a fresh avenue for couples desperate to have a child and could save them thousands of dollars otherwise spent on IVF. Embryo donation will be subject to strict conditions and approved case by case because of the ethical and social issues it raises. It effectively involves the separation of children from their genetic parents and siblings and sees them raised by "social parents". [This is another step in a major movement which is separating children from their biological parents. It is a consequence of the HART Act passed in the last couple of years, but it is reflected in much other legislation, such as the Care of Children Act.]
A genuine debate about immigration and multiculturalism seems almost impossible in New Zealand at the moment. But at least it is starting to happen in Britain. “My view is that a multicultural society is an impossibility,” [Norman Tebbit] says. “ Society is defined by its culture. And if you have competing cultures existing inside the same territory, sooner or later there will be a contest to decide the dominant one.”
Tebbit’s views, once confined to the fringes of his own party, are now suddenly back at the centre of a new and highly focused debate on multiculturalism. The importance and profile of the debate was emphasised last week by David Davis, the favourite to become the next leader of the Tories, who claimed Britain’s pursuit of multiculturalism, one he defined as allowing people of different cultures to settle (in the UK) without expecting them to integrate into society, is now “outdated” and should be abandoned. Davis claimed “the authorities” have seemed “more concerned with encouraging distinctive identities than with providing common values of nationhood … we must speak openly about what we expect of those who settle here, and of ourselves”.
Appeasement has cost millions of lives in Europe: the Jews in Nazi Germany, Germans under the Communists, atrocities in Kosovo. So how is Germany planning to meet the threat of Islamic terrorism inside its borders? By suggesting an official state Muslim holiday.
America is becoming more virtuous. Americans today hurt each other less than they did 13 years ago. They are more likely to resist selfish and shortsighted impulses. They are leading more responsible, more organized lives. A result is an improvement in social order across a range of behaviors. The decline in domestic violence is of a piece with the decline in violent crime over all. Violent crime over all is down by 55 percent since 1993 and violence by teenagers has dropped an astonishing 71 percent, according to the Department of Justice. The number of drunken driving fatalities has declined by 38 percent since 1982, according to the Department of Transportation, even though the number of vehicle miles traveled is up 81 percent. The total consumption of hard liquor by Americans over that time has declined by over 30 percent. Teenage pregnancy has declined by 28 percent since its peak in 1990. Teenage births are down significantly and, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions performed in the country has also been declining since the early 1990's.
Fewer children are living in poverty, even allowing for an uptick during the last recession. There's even evidence that divorce rates are declining, albeit at a much more gradual pace. People with college degrees are seeing a sharp decline in divorce, especially if they were born after 1955. I could go on. Teenage suicide is down. Elementary school test scores are rising (a sign than more kids are living in homes conducive to learning). Teenagers are losing their virginity later in life and having fewer sex partners. In short, many of the indicators of social breakdown, which shot upward in the late 1960's and 1970's, and which plateaued at high levels in the 1980's, have been declining since the early 1990's. I always thought it would be dramatic to live through a moral revival. Great leaders would emerge. There would be important books, speeches, marches and crusades. We're in the middle of a moral revival now, and there has been very little of that. This revival has been a bottom-up, prosaic, un-self-conscious one, led by normal parents, normal neighbors and normal community activists.
There are many big stories happening in the world outside the radar of the news media. Rick Warren - pastor of Saddleback Church and author of the best-selling "Purpose Driven Life" - gave a bunch of key US journalists a list of them.
Americans have long considered Saudi Arabia the one constant in the Arab Middle East — a source of cheap oil, political stability, and lucrative business relationships. But the country is run by an increasingly dysfunctional royal family that has been funding militant Islamic movements abroad in an attempt to protect itself from them at home. A former CIA operative argues, in an article drawn form his new book, Sleeping With the Devil, that today's Saudi Arabia can't last much longer — and the social and economic fallout of its demise could be calamitous.
Where bin Laden is, why he's still alive, and why it may be impossible to capture him. At least, according to WorldNetDaily.
Monday, August 08, 2005
Prime Television has axed the nightly Holmes current affairs programme, saying it will air for the final time tonight at 6pm.
Was David Lange one of New Zealand's greatest prime ministers, as the Sunday Star-Times claims?
To me, he comes across as a sad - and now lonely - individual. He left behind his Methodist upbringing and rejected any coherent basis for morality. He left behind his wife, despite knowing he had made a vow for life, and took up with his speech-writer.
He became a man with flexible morals, a schoolboy charm, who elevated playground taunts to an art form. He was the Labour Party Quip, keeping the faithful (and unfaithful) in line with his wisecracks.
He was apparently great because he could make people laugh. I would say that of Bob Hope or Danny Kaye. I would expect more than laughter from a great politician. We would not say of Winston Churchill that he could make people laugh, even though his acid wit was no less than Lange's.
Of a great politician, we expect great politics, and Lange's biography reveals that great politics - even less great statesmanship - was totally off the agenda in the back-stabbing ideologically driven government that he presided over.
In his memoirs published this week, David Lange attacks his Cabinet colleagues as 'terrible', accuses Helen Clark of staying silent over Rogernomics and reveals he snubbed Mike Moore because he did not trust him.
How many great policies can you point to that Lange inspired? He was ambivalent at best about Rogernomics, and utterly opposed to it at the finish.
Lange was hailed as a great orator. An orator should inspire us with a vision of something greater than ourselves. So what was the great vision that he inspired in people? Our nuclear-free policy? Michael Bassett reveals that the policy was not Lange's idea - he was even having serious second thoughts about it, but was railroaded into it by caucus colleagues who were the real authors of it, and who dealt behind his back in every conceivable way. (Lange says, by way of retaliation, that Bassett was venomous in Cabinet.) Lange's legacy in foreign affairs, therefore, was the dismantling of the ANZUS alliance, and providing the justification for downgrading our armed forces.
There was one Lange policy which did merit acclamation - and strangely today it is the policy which gets him the least credit. That was Tomorrow's Schools, which almost began to deliver us a decent education system. But the current government has done its best to dismantle those reforms, so Lange's memory will not be immortalised there.
The words that for me most sum up the life of David Lange and his colleagues come from T.S. Eliot:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion.....
The Great Morality Debate. Says Michael Laws: There is no morality. The concept is simply an excuse for situational ethics. Might I suggest a new order that is grounded in the permissive rather than the negative? First, anyone should be allowed to do anything. Second, you are allowed to respond and retaliate to the cruelty of others. Third, lying is acceptable. Fourth, good intent is not what is good for me. Fifth, one should be generous.
But if you think Laws is bad, watch the bottom of the barrel being well and truly scaped by Bridget Saunders.
Rosemary McLeod points out exactly where the Laws and Saunders kind of morality has got us.
Dr James Dobson has compared experiments that involve the willful destruction of human embryos to experiments Nazi doctors conducted on Jewish concentration camp inmates during World War II.
How to have an early mid-life crisis: Many young men, aged 25 to 44, are racked with anxiety in their quest to secure a better home, job and perfect family life, a Mintel survey in the UK has shown. The survey of almost 2,000 men in May found that one in seven in this age group regularly worried about stress, work and job security, compared with one in ten across all ages. Mintel consumer research manager Angela Hughes said "The key problem is their over-ambitious aspirations." Psychologist John Rowan said that younger men were chasing "four holidays", "designer clothes" and a "high-earning job", but these are "a substitute for the real thing, which is an inner happiness".
China is seeing "an unexpected upsurge in Christianity" through lay evangelists like Beijing beauty salon owner Xun Jinzhen, the UK Daily Telegraph reports. Mr Xun says he "introduced 40 people to the church last year". Despite the eruption of materialism in the wake of economic reform, large numbers are embracing Christianity. "City people have real problems and mental pain that they can’t resolve on their own," Mr Xun explains. "In the countryside, people are richer than before, but still have problems with their health and in family relationships." Despite an often heavy-handed approach to the church by local party leaders, underground churches are growing rapidly and said to have 80 or even 100 million members.
Meanwhile, black-led churches are at the forefront of the few areas of church growth in the UK, according to the Christian Research Association. In the last five years black-led church membership has grown 18 per cent compared to a five per cent drop for churches overall. And the participation of African and Caribbean Christians across the churches accounts for 7 per cent of worshippers nationally, although the Afro-Caribbean population is only 2 per cent of the nation.
Thousands of iPod users have been downloading sermons from a church in rural Suffolk. The small congregation at St Nicholas in Wrentham originally developed its website so that housebound worshippers could access the sermons at home. But the sermons were devoured by over 2,000 users the moment they re-engineered the audio stream to put them on iTunes. The response was so great that Revd Leonard Payne had to change servers to cope with demand. Mr Payne said he hoped the technology will build contact with those who are "believers rather than belongers".
The latest TV1-Colmar Brunton poll puts Labour on 45% and National on 41%.
Some observations:
1) On the surface, it looks like the election is becoming a two-horse race. Labour and National between them totalled 86% in the latest poll, the highest of any poll this year. The minor parties between them could manage only 12%. In the past 3 MMP elections, the highest total for the two major parties was 69%. Are we essentially going back to a FPP style election, with the minor parties being squeezed out? Even on a worst-case scenario, not entirely, as NZ First, the Maori Party, Progressive and United Future are all virtually guaranteed at least one electorate seat each, which will put a minimum of 10 minor party seats into Parliament (probably more). So even if Labour held on to 45% of the party vote, they would still not be able to govern alone. And if the Greens don't reach the 5% threshold, as they are not likely to win an electorate seat, Labour could lose its strongest ally.
2) But is it really a two-horse race? There are several contradictory things going on, which make it very hard to read.
a) The minor party vote in the polls is definitely significantly lower than at the comparable time of previous elections, and while it will recover somewhat come election day, I doubt it will do so to the same extent as previously.
b) We are in danger of the polls becoming self-fulfilling prophecy. If people who would otherwise support minor parties become disheartened by the polls that there is any prospect for their party, they may well switch their vote to a major party.
c) But as I have noted previously, there is the giant unknown of the "don't knows" and the "not contactables". I do believe there is a significant constituency out there whose opinions are either not being polled, or who will not make up their mind until the last few days.
d) Consequently, I think the survey companies need to be asking themselves some hard questions about their polling methods.
3) This latter point is reinforced when you compare the results from the various survey companies. In the May and July polls, for instance, there was a variation of seven percentage points between the highest and lowest figures for Labour, and March was almost as large. The polls are not becoming more consistent as the election approaches.
Herald-Digipoll generally tracks highest for Labour and lowest for National (except for their June poll).
NBR consistently tracks lowest for Labour, and highest for NZ First and the Greens.
TV1-Colmar Brunton has been a mixed bag for Labour. It started out the year hunting in the middle of the pack for Labour, but then moved to the highest for several months. It has been in the middle-of-the road for National and NZ First but generally the lowest throughout the year for the Greens.
TNS-TV3 has been in the middle of the pack for Labour, NZ First and the Greens; started tracking highest for National in the early months of the year, but then switched to tracking lowest for National.
Was David Lange one of New Zealand's greatest prime ministers, as the Sunday Star-Times claims?
To me, he comes across as a sad - and now lonely - individual. He left behind his Methodist upbringing and rejected any coherent basis for morality. He left behind his wife, despite knowing he had made a vow for life, and took up with his speech-writer.
He became a man with flexible morals, a schoolboy charm, who elevated playground taunts to an art form. He was the Labour Party Quip, keeping the faithful (and unfaithful) in line with his wisecracks.
He was apparently great because he could make people laugh. I would say that of Bob Hope or Danny Kaye. I would expect more than laughter from a great politician. We would not say of Winston Churchill that he could make people laugh, even though his acid wit was no less than Lange's.
Of a great politician, we expect great politics, and Lange's biography reveals that great politics - even less great statesmanship - was totally off the agenda in the back-stabbing ideologically driven government that he presided over.
In his memoirs published this week, David Lange attacks his Cabinet colleagues as 'terrible', accuses Helen Clark of staying silent over Rogernomics and reveals he snubbed Mike Moore because he did not trust him.
How many great policies can you point to that Lange inspired? He was ambivalent at best about Rogernomics, and utterly opposed to it at the finish.
Lange was hailed as a great orator. An orator should inspire us with a vision of something greater than ourselves. So what was the great vision that he inspired in people? Our nuclear-free policy? Michael Bassett reveals that the policy was not Lange's idea - he was even having serious second thoughts about it, but was railroaded into it by caucus colleagues who were the real authors of it, and who dealt behind his back in every conceivable way. (Lange says, by way of retaliation, that Bassett was venomous in Cabinet.) Lange's legacy in foreign affairs, therefore, was the dismantling of the ANZUS alliance, and providing the justification for downgrading our armed forces.
There was one Lange policy which did merit acclamation - and strangely today it is the policy which gets him the least credit. That was Tomorrow's Schools, which almost began to deliver us a decent education system. But the current government has done its best to dismantle those reforms, so Lange's memory will not be immortalised there.
The words that for me most sum up the life of David Lange and his colleagues come from T.S. Eliot:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion.....
The Great Morality Debate. Says Michael Laws: There is no morality. The concept is simply an excuse for situational ethics. Might I suggest a new order that is grounded in the permissive rather than the negative? First, anyone should be allowed to do anything. Second, you are allowed to respond and retaliate to the cruelty of others. Third, lying is acceptable. Fourth, good intent is not what is good for me. Fifth, one should be generous.
But if you think Laws is bad, watch the bottom of the barrel being well and truly scaped by Bridget Saunders.
Rosemary McLeod points out exactly where the Laws and Saunders kind of morality has got us.
Dr James Dobson has compared experiments that involve the willful destruction of human embryos to experiments Nazi doctors conducted on Jewish concentration camp inmates during World War II.
How to have an early mid-life crisis: Many young men, aged 25 to 44, are racked with anxiety in their quest to secure a better home, job and perfect family life, a Mintel survey in the UK has shown. The survey of almost 2,000 men in May found that one in seven in this age group regularly worried about stress, work and job security, compared with one in ten across all ages. Mintel consumer research manager Angela Hughes said "The key problem is their over-ambitious aspirations." Psychologist John Rowan said that younger men were chasing "four holidays", "designer clothes" and a "high-earning job", but these are "a substitute for the real thing, which is an inner happiness".
China is seeing "an unexpected upsurge in Christianity" through lay evangelists like Beijing beauty salon owner Xun Jinzhen, the UK Daily Telegraph reports. Mr Xun says he "introduced 40 people to the church last year". Despite the eruption of materialism in the wake of economic reform, large numbers are embracing Christianity. "City people have real problems and mental pain that they can’t resolve on their own," Mr Xun explains. "In the countryside, people are richer than before, but still have problems with their health and in family relationships." Despite an often heavy-handed approach to the church by local party leaders, underground churches are growing rapidly and said to have 80 or even 100 million members.
Meanwhile, black-led churches are at the forefront of the few areas of church growth in the UK, according to the Christian Research Association. In the last five years black-led church membership has grown 18 per cent compared to a five per cent drop for churches overall. And the participation of African and Caribbean Christians across the churches accounts for 7 per cent of worshippers nationally, although the Afro-Caribbean population is only 2 per cent of the nation.
Thousands of iPod users have been downloading sermons from a church in rural Suffolk. The small congregation at St Nicholas in Wrentham originally developed its website so that housebound worshippers could access the sermons at home. But the sermons were devoured by over 2,000 users the moment they re-engineered the audio stream to put them on iTunes. The response was so great that Revd Leonard Payne had to change servers to cope with demand. Mr Payne said he hoped the technology will build contact with those who are "believers rather than belongers".
The latest TV1-Colmar Brunton poll puts Labour on 45% and National on 41%.
Some observations:
1) On the surface, it looks like the election is becoming a two-horse race. Labour and National between them totalled 86% in the latest poll, the highest of any poll this year. The minor parties between them could manage only 12%. In the past 3 MMP elections, the highest total for the two major parties was 69%. Are we essentially going back to a FPP style election, with the minor parties being squeezed out? Even on a worst-case scenario, not entirely, as NZ First, the Maori Party, Progressive and United Future are all virtually guaranteed at least one electorate seat each, which will put a minimum of 10 minor party seats into Parliament (probably more). So even if Labour held on to 45% of the party vote, they would still not be able to govern alone. And if the Greens don't reach the 5% threshold, as they are not likely to win an electorate seat, Labour could lose its strongest ally.
2) But is it really a two-horse race? There are several contradictory things going on, which make it very hard to read.
a) The minor party vote in the polls is definitely significantly lower than at the comparable time of previous elections, and while it will recover somewhat come election day, I doubt it will do so to the same extent as previously.
b) We are in danger of the polls becoming self-fulfilling prophecy. If people who would otherwise support minor parties become disheartened by the polls that there is any prospect for their party, they may well switch their vote to a major party.
c) But as I have noted previously, there is the giant unknown of the "don't knows" and the "not contactables". I do believe there is a significant constituency out there whose opinions are either not being polled, or who will not make up their mind until the last few days.
d) Consequently, I think the survey companies need to be asking themselves some hard questions about their polling methods.
3) This latter point is reinforced when you compare the results from the various survey companies. In the May and July polls, for instance, there was a variation of seven percentage points between the highest and lowest figures for Labour, and March was almost as large. The polls are not becoming more consistent as the election approaches.
Herald-Digipoll generally tracks highest for Labour and lowest for National (except for their June poll).
NBR consistently tracks lowest for Labour, and highest for NZ First and the Greens.
TV1-Colmar Brunton has been a mixed bag for Labour. It started out the year hunting in the middle of the pack for Labour, but then moved to the highest for several months. It has been in the middle-of-the road for National and NZ First but generally the lowest throughout the year for the Greens.
TNS-TV3 has been in the middle of the pack for Labour, NZ First and the Greens; started tracking highest for National in the early months of the year, but then switched to tracking lowest for National.
