When will adults be given full time parents?

This sort of scheme is absurd. "A smart card that subsidises healthy foods has been recommended by obesity researchers. The system was proposed in research commissioned by the Ministry of Health, the New Zealand Herald reported."

We have the nonsense that people who are overweight, are actually poor. The opposite of the developing world. The latest excuse is that "it's cheaper to eat badly". This, of course, is nonsense.

Here are some ideas:
- Pasta (without cheese);
- Soup, with bread;
- Canned vegetables;
- Water, the universal drink - or even tea and coffee.

The attitude that people are overweight because of money is the attitude that there are adults incapable of looking after themselves, that they should be wards of the state, that nanny looks after them, feeds them, spends their money and ensures they are healthy. It is at best patronising, at worst a damnation of decades of welfarism that has produced people who are no better than children, because the state houses them, gives them money to spend and expects little in return. Of course once obese, people have the delight of the state picking up the tab for health care, because it sends no price signals over the years about how much extra it will cost.

I love this at the end though "Pensioners should be excluded because they had not been found to experience food insecurity, he said."

Oh hold on, so pensioners don't have this problem because presumably they aren't so stupid as to buy unhealthy food, or they aren't so lazy to not think a little bit about their shopping?

It's time to give up on this nanny approach, start thinking about health care as a personal responsibility and move towards people paying towards their health costs. I don't support removing GST on food, as GST should simply be abolished altogether. Removing GST on food makes food relatively cheaper than other "entertainment". However, it wont make any difference to obesity.

One thing might though. Getting rid of subsidies for bus services would encourage more people to walk and cycle.

Feedback on Telecom proposal

The NZ Herald reports "The Government wants feedback on Telecom's request for a variation on its planned operational separation.

Telecom announced a three-way split of its operations as part of the previous Labour Government's 2006 decision to reregulate aspects of the industry.

Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce said Telecom recently requested the government consider a variation to the proposed plan"

Here's my feedback:

1. Let Telecom do as it wishes. The Government does not own Telecom, Telecom's shareholders do.

2. Advise Telecom it does not need government permission for any changes to its own corporate structure, and that the Telecommunications Act 2001 will be amended to remove any powers of the government to direct the Telecom as to its property rights.

The NZX50 should take a rather significant leap at that point. The mooching participants in the telecommunications industry might have to think again before expanding their "businesses" using other people's property under duress.

"Nanny state" is about defending freedom

Dr George Thomson from the University of Otago, Wellington has told delegates to a Public Health Association conference that 'public health initiatives to protect populations from the risks of the tobacco, alcohol and food industries have increasingly been labelled as nanny state'.

He of course portrays the "initiatives" as being benign measures by people who know what's best for us (doctors of course, who could dare question the good intentions of members of the medical profession, in whose hands we always want to submit our lives), and that the measures are protecting us from the "risks of the tobacco, alcohol and food industries", presumably because we are all naive children.

No Dr Thomson.

Virtually everyone knows smoking is bad for you. All children are taught it can cause lung cancer, emphysema and contribute to heart disease and many other cancers. It's no secret.

Virtually everyone knows alcohol is bad for you. Being drunk makes you less risk averse, excessive drinking kills your brain cells, causes cirrhosis and exacerbates some circulatory complaints and cancers.

Virtually everyone knows eating sweets, chocolate, snack food, deep fried takeaways and the like can make you fat, give you heart disease, diabetes, contribute to bowel and stomach cancers and other conditions.

Yet people do it. Why? Some because they like it, some because they are going through enormous stresses and strains, and getting drunk or gorging on ice cream can help you feel better.

The idea that people are naively being conned into eating, drinking and smoking is patronising and wrong - unless Dr Thomson can point out places where people don't know any better.

He thinks that the term nanny state comes from the industries selling these products:

“The increased use of these terms appears to be driven by industries that are afraid of increased control over the marketing of unhealthy products"

No it's not Dr Thomson, it is as much by individuals afraid of you controlling our choices in our lives. You don't get this, it is called freedom. Many people, fully aware of the risks, don't want to be told how to live their lives by do gooders.

He continues "There’s a need to reframe public health activity as stewardship that protects people. Governments are expected to balance the public good against the interests of big business, and to care for the vulnerable in society. We need to create the language to reflect this, which looks behind slogans and the stereotyping of opposition to unhealthy products"

The vulnerable? He means everyone. You can't target one without controlling all adults. More simply. I don't mind getting information about food, drink and other products for consumption, about the health effects, as long as I am not forced to pay for it.

However, I don't WANT your protection Dr Thomson. I'm an intelligent grownup who can make my own decisions.

He continues down a more disturbingly anti-business refrain "there’s a need to reframe and analyse businesses that inflict health damage to people, as leeches on society".

Ah so the pleasures people get from these products are worth nothing to you. They are not leeches, they are supplying products people want, that they choose to buy and enjoy. However, you're paid for by the taxpayer, forcibly, in other words people pay for you whether they want to or not. Who is the leech then?

He finally shows he true Orwellian hatred for freedom, by demanding the most intrusive nanny state possible by implication from this statement "Governments that allow damage to the general public are creating the ninny state, and are following corporate welfare policies, rather than the public good".

The government should protect us all from ourselves! We mere children, the state knows best, fortunately there are intelligent grownups to tell us what to do, for the "public good".

Dr Thomson, please kindly fuck off, feel free to spend your own money on promoting health living as much as you like, but when you force people to comply you're crossing a line. THAT is what Nanny State is about.

It's about freedom. Freedom to eat, drink, smoke whatever I want, as long as I am responsible for my actions. You see that is what differs us from the joyless drones who live in the likes of North Korea - where your message undoubtedly would be warmly embraced.

OECD report IS a wake up call

Tariana Turia and Annette King both think the OECD report "Doing Better for Children" is a wake up call. Sadly the people who most need to wake up, spend too much time sleeping and ignoring their kids as it is.

Tariana Turia thinks it is a wake up call to the government and you. Yes you! It’s up to you to fix these problems and you should be forced to do so, through taxes.

The response has been tragically asinine:

- Labour is calling for more fiscal child abuse to subsidise errant families;
- Jigsaw family services is calling for the same;
- Idiot Savant continues his state worshipping;
- The perpetually inert Child Poverty (in)Action Group wants to pilfer more money from successful families to increase welfare benefits (whilst CPAG itself does nothing material to help children).

Lindsay Mitchell by contrast points out that the OECD report contains a damning indictment on welfare for single parent families. She quotes "Some countries spend considerable amounts on long-duration single-parent benefits. There is little or no evidence that these benefits positively influence child well-being. Durations could be reduced and resources concentrated on improving family income during the early part of the life cycle for those children".

In other words, the OECD doesn't support the blind "more welfare" approach at all, and denies that such benefits are good for children. Ironic, when so many want to use this report to promote more welfarism, they deftly avoided that.

Many New Zealand families function reasonably well, and don’t have suicidal children or children in poverty. The people who should be waking up are as follows:

1. Everyone who breeds without the means to look after their kids: Why would you do that? Why would you produce children in poverty? The reason your kids are living in poverty is you. Yes, you.

2. Parents who abuse their kids: Apparently most of you were abused yourselves, which is hardly an excuse to repeat the behaviour. You are vile, you don’t deserve to have children, and you should be in prison and denied ever having custody of kids again. Just because Sue Bradford made it look like most parents are like you, they are not.

3. Parents who ignore their kids: Yes it isn’t a crime to always go to the pub instead of staying home and playing with or helping your kids, to never read to your children, to take little interest in what they do, to tell them that a lack of schooling never did you any harm, to be more interested in picking up men that picking up your kids’ homework or to regard your kids as a nuisance. However, you’re pretty useless as parents.

4. Politicians who insist on forcing everyone to pay for categories 1-3 above: Why are you penalising good families by subsidising bad ones? Why do you want to continue treating children as a welfare gravy train for indolent nobodies? Why wont you confront the disincentive the status quo is for good behaviour? Why do you create virtually useless agencies like the Ministry of Youth Affairs or the malignant (nobody is to blame) Office of the Childrens’ Commissioner? Wouldn’t children be better off if their parents didn’t need to work so much to make a living because you weren’t strong arming so much tax from them?

5. Staff of the Office of the Childrens’ Commissioner, and Ministry of Youth Affairs: You have failed, time to resign. 5x the suicide rate of the UK? Double the suicide rate of Australia and the US? Time to ease the budget deficit back a bit and shut those entities down.

Quite simple, if you can't afford to have kids, don't have them. If you have them, make sure you love them and dedicate a good part of your life to giving them the attention they deserve and need. Beyond that, either close your legs, take the pill, wear a condom and stop producing children you wont love or can't care for - and stop electing politicians who encourage it.

Then, people who can afford to have kids, might have more, and besides - those who think human beings are a blot on the environment ought to support people breeding less.

70 years on

It is the anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, an invasion facilitated by the Soviet Union, which saw the belated start to World War 2. A war that should have started long before, when Hitler was expanding his way through what is now the Czech Republic. According to Wiki, 6 million Poles were killed in World War 2.

Poland is now frustrated that Russia doesn't acknowledge its disgraceful role in appeasing Nazi Germany, and of course keeping Poland under 40 years of Stalinist tyranny (how many Western academics talk of Soviet imperialism?). Russia is claiming Poland conspired with the Nazis. Of course Russia now whitewashes over its own history in the Katyn Massacre.

Poland was truly one of the worst victims of the war, and the biggest losers afterwards.