Posts by WH
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corporate media's principle obligation, like any corporation, is to deliver a dividend to its shareholders
Ideally it achieves this objective by providing the public with useful information. However it is by no means a perfect process. Anyone interested in this topic might want to read Palmer's Constitution in Crisis, chapter 9, The Media and Politics.
An example I currently have in mind is CGT on investment housing. It seems to me that there is no good reason why everyone should suffer higher interest rates and a higher exchange rate because our housing market is overheating. A very obvious answer to this problem is a fiscally neutral CGT on second houses (a solution that was proposed by the last major review of the tax system and informally suggested to me by Susan St John, back when I was at varsity).
<picks up the names he dropped>
This isn't exactly the preferred solution of those who have second houses.
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The role of the US news media in allowing Bush to come to office by portraying Al Gore as an idiot, then credulously cheerleading Bush's various foreign and domestic policy disasters after 9/11 is prolly a little understated IMO. The Scooter Libby trial has been an interesting insight into access journalism.
I was flipping through a Geoffrey Palmer book yesterday (as you do) where he said that his experience in government led him to believe that media coverage was often misleading or just perpetrated falsehoods (not necessarily deliberately, but falsehoods all the same). If the political coverage at the Herald is anything to go by I'm inclined to believe him.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1219027,00.html
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David,
Despite the natural tendency to focus on differences in discussions of this kind, I mostly agree with what you've said.
I hope that our societal debate on this will eventually come to focus on ways of providing parents the personal and parental skills they need to raise their kids properly. Peace out.
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Hey David,
I enjoyed your post. Just a couple of my own thoughts:
I would reframe the respective positions in this way:
Bradford's principle: All [child abuse] is wrong, but [mild smacking, although it technically contitutes child abuse/assault] is too trivial to be prosecuted.
Burrows's principle: All [child abuse] is wrong, but [mild smacking is not child abuse].I think the human rights argument, while valid, has the potential to theoretically muddle the real nature of the parent/child relationship and understate the practical importance of the instillation of discipline and socialisation in children.
It has even been claimed that the abolition of physical punishment will result in a generation of 'girly-men' who will be unsuitable All Black material.
Ha ha - I caught myself thinking this yesterday. Its interesting that the ability to withstand pain and hardship is such an important part of the male gender role.
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I'd challenge anyone to think of a single instance where it is legal and morally acceptable in our society to inflict a limited degree of pain in order to teach someone
My PE teachers used to give me press ups for being late to class, yet for some reason I still preferred PE to calculus.
There is a distinction to be drawn between mental and physical pain (which IMO is, in itself, morally ambiguous) and actual harm.
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Hey Simon,
I don't disagree with you. Its odd that a music critic should have to defend what they like to themselves.
I'd just say that some people's contrivances are feted while others' are pilloried, and I'm curious to know why that is. IMO the the disdainful orthodoxy about Britney Spears is getting in the way of basic human compassion, among other things.
in the weary predictability of the assault, in the crude missile hurled, in the sheer effort exerted to hate something
Now that she's bald, perhaps Britney should start wearing a stupid hat:
http://www.nme.com/reviews/the-good-the-bad-and-the-queen/8116 -
It's about protecting our most vulnerable citizens.
dreaming up the most minor example of a crime imaginable is not a valid way to criticise a proposed law
People who hit children, want to be feared.
cattle prod irrelevant/ad hominem argument
There is consensus that s.59 can be improved and that child abuse is bad. The argument is whether smacking your child should be legally classed as criminal child abuse.
I still tend to think it should not.
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/slap+on+the+wrist -
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I concur with the argument that Graeme has made. Bradford's personal moral conviction that smacking is wrong is not a ground for prohibiting it in a liberal society.
Bradford bill is deliberately poorly drafted - she is creating ambiguity to achieve a result she could not by more honest means. I would strongly support efforts to give our parents the skills they need to control their kids without smacking however.
There is no societal consensus that smacking is morally wrong, nor is there compelling evidence that it is harmful to a child's development. Until this case is made, what justification can there be for prohibition?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3821443a7144,00.html -
Simon,
Not being in the music industry myself, I must admit to having drawn my own highly unfavourable conclusions about the people who advise Britney Spears. (Love the early power chords though.) I'm sorry for being snippy in my reply to you.
A few years back I read Neil Strauss' account of his interview with Britney, and after watching her self-destruct on the public stage, I do wonder whether the 2 marriages, the 2 children, the divorce or the recent photographs are symptoms of an identity crisis rather than the product of careful planning.
Maybe its just the piling on I don't like.