Death of Aaron Spelling

Aaron Spelling died on Friday following a severe stroke he experienced on 18 June.
.
He produced hundreds of TV series and episodes, including Starsky and Hutch, Charlie’s Angels, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, Dynasty, The Love Boat, Melrose Place and most recently, Charmed.
.
Now none of these will ever be seen as brilliances of drama or comedy, but he was instrumental in creating a genre of storytelling with drama and comedy that was immensely successful and popular. That popularity was due to it being light entertainment – who can forget Mr Roarke and Tattoo on Fantasy Island (pictured), which I remember watching as a child, or the cheesy Love Boat.

Cindy "Stalin" Kiro’s approach to child abuse

There is another world that some people inhabit – a world where the state can solve everything, and everything bad is nobody’s fault, just the system doesn’t ensure that things “fall through the cracks”. It is the world of Childrens’ Commissioner Cindy Kiro, and if ever there was an argument for abolishing this role and keeping Dr Kiro far from any public policy role, this is it.
.
She is rightly concerned about child abuse, but what stands out a mile is her solution and her view of the perpetrators in her official press release.
.
For the solution, she has said:
.
“I am calling for the creation of a plan for every child so that no one falls through the gaps. These plans would mean that educational, health and safety information would be shared and assessed in a consistent way.”
.
Yes, rub your eyes. A plan for every child. The state will now truly be a parent, not only for those on welfare, but for every child. How do you plan a child’s education? How about health? Does this include diet? Safety? Do your kids ride bikes without helmets, climb trees, use electrical devices? Do you have smart kids who are highly responsible, or really stupid ones? Imagine that – a plan. You need a lot of bureaucrats to set up plans and monitor them, though who knows if there will be enforcement? It does mean that all sorts of aspects of parenting could be questioned – do you allow your children to watch adult rated TV? Do you discriminate under the Human Rights Act in front of your children? Do you smoke near them? Do you allow them to taste wine? Chilling isn’t it – a politically correct Cindy Kiro vision of the state planning a child’s life – all for the child’s good you understand. Not quite Brave New World – but do you want a bureaucrat establishing a plan for your child?
.
Then she says: “A key benefit of the integrated framework is that all professionals will be required in their assessments to take account of the child’s life in the context of the families and communities in which they live.”
.
So teachers marking kids’ school work will have to “take account of the child’s life”? “It’s ok, little Johnny comes from a poor semi-literate family, so we will scale up his English marks to a B even though he performed at a D”. What the hell does this really mean Dr Kiro?
.
Finally- you know how violent abusive parents kick and beat their children up, and are cruel and deliberately malicious? Well ACTUALLY how stupid could you be. It isn’t THEIR fault they torture and kill their kids. See Dr Kiro says:

.
“It’s time to stop the blaming and ask ourselves how these children escaped the safety net that was available to their parents.”

So not only DON’T blame the perpetrators – not THEIR fault they are evil, but how did the children escape the safety net AVAILABLE TO THEIR PARENTS? What the hell is that? “Hey kids how did you escape this safety net we abusive violent thoughtless parents have to rescue you”? Imagine if this was describing a man who abducts and rapes a child, and you said “don’t blame him – find out how the child escaped the safety net available to the rapist”. This is fundamentally corrupt of reason and morality.

Dr Kiro – the abusers are to blame, fully and completely. Most New Zealand parents are not like that, they are not to blame. The safety net is not available to perpertrators – these parents are vile, disgusting, lowlife and your failure to acknowledge this minimises this crime, and minimises the responsibility they have for what they do.
.
She concludes “In future we need to put in place a plan for each child from the day that they are born so that children don’t fall through the gaps again.”
.
No we don’t Dr Kiro – leave good parents alone, put abusive parents in prison and prevent them from ever having custody again - stop subsidising bad parents with money taken from good ones – and while you're at it, buy a ticket to Pyongyang – you’ll find your ideas of planning children’s lives working a treat. Please also state how many children you have saved from abuse as Commissioner for Children - I doubt if it is as high as 1.

Why law and the state can only do so much for children.

Cactus Kate has the case of the Kahui twins in one. What pieces of shit.

.

A "closely knit family" who Mafia like are now keeping their mouths shut about who murdered these two. This happens time and time again, and it is only the kids who die that we get to hear about. How many get brain damaged, or get badly injured and just go through life without a chance?

.

Tariana Turia is no better. As Lindsay Mitchell has noted Turia's comments:

.

"She says the case points up the need for better understanding of families under pressure."

.

What evil appeasing nonsense. This is possibly one of the most endemic problems for Maori - the abuse within families that goes unspoken, protected and shielded- the risk of being disowned and ostracised by families for speaking up and talking to the Police about Uncle Charlie the rapist or Aunt Sheila who kicks her kids. Close extended families can be both a blessing and a hell.

.

I understand the Kahui's - they care as much about their kids as any child abuser - this family is not a family, it is a bunch of dysfunctional adults abusing children. The children should be taken away and there should be a sentence which bars anyone convicted of physical abuse of children from having custody of anyone under 16. Remove the children, adopt them out. I want to hear no bleating and cries of "breaking up the family" - the people who procreated these children have lost the right to be parents.

.

A recent commentary on the BBC talking about proposals to introduced Megans law (which would publish names and addresses of convicted sex offenders) mentioned how ineffective it would be - because the vast majority of these cases happen in families, where there is permanent name suppression to protect the victims. In other words, you might know if Bob next door molested a child 20 years ago, but you wouldn't know about it if it had been his daughter or son. It also only covers sex offences - you wont know if Bob used to punch his 6yo boy about, or even battered his ex.wife. If you met him in a pub, you wouldn't know if Bob molested or kicked his sisters.

.

Most child abuse isn't stranger danger - it is family danger (83% of sex offences are not committed by strangers to the victim) - and much of that is in families who don't even give a damn anyway. How can it happen once in a family where the other parent is watching out for the child, or where the child can turn to someone for help? Look at the Kahui family, who of them really gives a fuck?

50 years of US Interstate highways

While New Zealand embarks on its biggest road building binge since the 1960s, it is worth noting that it is 50 years ago this month since President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act which committed the US Federal Government to embark on building a US wide network of interstate highways - and I mean REAL highways - at least 4-lanes, with no intersections (just on and off ramps) and bypassing towns and cities where possible. The Federal government committed to paying 90% of the cost, with states covering the rest.

.

Now the US has 75,440km of interstate highways (and many more thousands of kilometres of state highways and urban freeways).

.

This enormous state spending did several things. On the good side, it spurred an enormous amount of economic growth, allowed the development of logistics and linked the US together in ways the railroad network never did. No doubt the building of large 4-lane highways with median strips and no intersections has saved tens of thousands of lives from the prevention of accidents - although it also encouraged the growth in motoring on a wide scale as well.

.

However, and this should be of particular interest to environmentalists, it was also a subsidy for road transport - a subsidy that helped to precipitate the fast demise of profitable privately owned passenger rail systems (which the federal government bought out in the form of Amtrak in the 70s) and put freight railroads under enormous pressure.

.

Yes, there was a gas tax which was dedicated to the federal highways fund, a tax that from 1983 was increasingly siphoned off for public transport and general revenue, but that only pays 56% of the cost of maintaining and building the network - which is now around US$80 billion a year. Before 1956, toll roads were far more common - and federal funding of highways saw the growth of toll roads come to a grinding halt.

.

So, in essence, users weren't paying. Trucks especially weren't as the gas tax didn't come close to paying for the wear and tear big rigs would place on the system - those trucks competed with the privately owned railroads. The same private railroads that jumped when the federal government bought out their passenger services in 1974, and included a handful which were taken over by the federal government in 1978 with Conrail.

.

In addition, unlike the privately owned railroads, which were required by shareholders to make a profit and pay dividends - the interstate did not make a profit from users paying to use it. So investment in capital upgrades of railroads shrunk dramatically.

.

Now part of Eisenhower's reason for the interstates was defence - providing an easy means to move soldiers, equipment and arms in the event of war, and to evacuate major cities in the event of an attack. The Soviet Union treated its railway system in much the same way. Some highway overpasses were designed to be high enough for ballistic missiles to be transported beneath them.

.

However, it is clear that - for the usefulness and economic return the interstates have delivered, they also represented one of the biggest postwar planned interventions in the US economy.

.

Much of the network might also have been built by private enterprise, had it been allowed to toll, and it may have meant the federal government need not have intervened to save railroads being put of out business by trucking and bus companies paying half the cost of their networks. The Bush Administration's policy is to promote new highways as toll roads with private investment and encouraging the states to privatise sections of highway - which, in the form of long term leases, is now happened in Indiana and Chicago. May this trend spread!

BBC can't get over Thatcher being right

The left doesn't like criticism of the BBC. For they see it as the repositary of objectivity, balance and free speech - because it so often reflects, primarily, their view of the world. The BBC is like the Guardian - except that the Guardian isn't state subsidised, and there is no Telegraph or Times to counterbalance it (ITV News is more leftwing and vapid than the BBC, Channel 4 is closer to the Independent as far as newspapers go).

.

However, the BBC's ability to act, on the one hand like a commercial broadcaster, paying exhorbitant salaries to personalities to stop them being lured by private broadcasters, and on the other re-write history.

.

Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph explains how, in a recently produced drama by the BBC, Margaret Thatcher is depicted as "a bellicose drunk, demolishing whiskies and importuning other guests for refills". As Heffer has known Thatcher personally for many years, he testifies to having never seen her drunk or asking for drinks. He claims that there is an ongoing campaign to villify Thatcher, partly through lies (such as claiming her to be a drunkard), partly through only telling one side of the story.

.

He notes the lack of any conservative or free market plays, dramas or comedies on the BBC:

.

"Like many viewers and listeners, I have been beaten into surrender about the dramatic and comic output of our state broadcaster. We accept, with due docility, that Right-of-centre playwrights, scriptwriters and comedians (I suppose there are such people, starving in garrets somewhere) simply cannot survive the commissioning process. "

.

While the BBC claims to criticise Blair as well, that also is from a socialist perspective. He "betrayed" the Labour cause (i.e. made it electable three times), he isn't criticised for growing the state. Blair is the new Thatcher, because he got re-elected by being more palatable than the Marxists the Labour Party used to put up, like Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.

.

Heffer does offer an explanation:

.

"A long-time servant of the BBC explained to me, in a moment of stunning insight, why the Leftists in that organisation, and the Leftist contributors to it, are so bilious and angry even 16 years after Lady Thatcher left office: it is because they lost. They were wrong. They were humiliated. They have become bores with nothing else to say. They were not, of course, defeated just by Lady Thatcher: the coming down of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War defeated them, too."

.

Thatcher's reforms saved the British economy, and Britain has reaped the rewards of those reforms for the last decade. She also championed the fight against socialist tyranny (although sadly not fascist tyranny of Pinochet). How many journalists would have thought that by the end of Thatcher's leadership, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia would be on the verge of independence - and by now, members of the European Union. How many would have wished it?

.

However most of all, her legacy has held on by "New Labour" largely not undoing what she did. Blair won by being "Thatcher-lite" - and he continues this. Heffer concludes that the BBC's mates - the Labour Party haven't delivered what the BBC would have hoped:

.

"Finally, why hasn't "their" party undone all the "damage" of Thatcherism? Why do trade union laws remain unrepealed, and industries privatised? Why has there been no uprooting of the property-owning democracy? It is because she was right, and they know she was right. They cannot, however, bear to admit it. All they can do instead is tell lies, call her names and spit with rage. Don't laugh at them. Pity them."