Take Wall, Apply Head – No 2.

Ah, look at that. Last year, Unite launched a referendum campaign to raise the minimum wage. Under the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act, they had one year to gather the 300,000 signatures they needed to trigger a referendum. Today was the deadline for that project. According to an email I got tonight, they failed: To force…

Take wall, apply head

Sometimes you just want to bash your head against the wall. This post from Idiot is one of those. …The effects of the ASBO in this case seem to be to increase the penalty above that legislated by Parliament, while also lowering the standard of evidence required to impose it. So we’re not just seeing…

Greens on the Rule of Law

Seems that the Green Party do like the rule of law. There are many views on rule of law  but “characteristics of generality, equality, and certainty” are common to most definitions. … Another view of rule of law is that “a society in which government officers have a great deal of discretion has a low…

So… what happened 5 years ago?

It was interesting watch the Bus driver story on Campbell live last night. The driver specifically mentioned that in the last 5 years children’s behavior had gotten significantly worse. Whereas children previously would listen and act, now they have to “consider” if they’ll change their behavior, if they listen at all. Hm, I wondered what…

Judge Abuses Child

In the news today, there’s a story about a judge abusing a child by sending him to the cells for “timeout”. There is clearly a problem with our legal system – this poor boy came to court as a victim of an assault by a much older (and one assumes, much stronger) man who was…

Barnadoes S59 Pamphlet

Someone mentioned this pamphlet to me. It’s a shocker, and is well deserving of a good fisk. Why was the law changed in 2007? The old law (Section 59 of the Crimes Act 1961) was a legal defence. This meant that adults who were taken to court for hitting a child could claim they had…

Cultures within Cultures

Ken has this advertisement on his blog. Note “diaper bag” is circled. My guess is whoever did this linked the two, with the implication that someone would use a rod on a baby. (Clearly, that’s not going to be “reasonable in the circumstances”. Wait, doesn’t that mean it was already against the law all these…

Again, not a S59 case

Idiot once again lies through his teeth about the old smacking law. Here’s the report on Stuff. In September, a High Court jury found Mikaio guilty of wounding son Benjamin with intent to injure and neglecting to provide him with the necessaries of life by delaying getting medical treatment. Mikaio admitted the third charge she…

Protest Today

Well, the march for democracy is today. unfortunately I won’t be there, but here is a thought. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see all the MPs who voted to ban reasonable force for correction try to get through even one day without using any reasonable force for anything?

Wait, who’s being divisive?

HT: Semper Vita who pointed out the disgusting bias in the Herald’s article where they renamed the march. The Children’s Commissioner has some comments printed in the Herald today. “Instead of a clearly divisive march, I would rather see our time taken up with debating the nature of the relationships we have with children as…