Preventing perverted thoughts is impossible

New member of my blogroll, Tezza has pointed out how Gymnastics New Zealand is requiring all spectator's cameras to be registered. According to Stuff "SAFE sexual offenders programme director John McCarthy said there was a small risk paedophiles could attend the event". Really? I wonder if he will spot them. It can't be the coach can it? Or how about Sarah's dad? Or Tania's brother? or Tiffany's mother? You can spot them you see. You know who they are.

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Of course it is up to Gymnastics New Zealand to do as it wishes on its own property. However this is part of a bigger trend. There is:

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- Banning photos of kids in a nativity play;

- UK Post Office banning 5yo's passport photo because her exposed shoulders might offend a Muslim country (later overturned;

- FBI calling on schools to not put photos of their students on their website;

- This blogger banned from taking a photo at an Irish dancing championship;

- Air NZ and British Airways not seating men beside unaccompanied children.

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Now nobody is going to question the need for children to be protected from pervs. However, there is palpable hysteria out there about the likely risks. The number one risk of children getting sexually abused is from people the child knows. Why? Because a stranger has to be brave or stupid to start randomly approaching children - it used to happen more in the past when there was some perspective on these things. I remember being warned about strangers, and some man invited me to his cabin on a holiday and my parents told me it wasn't a good idea. Having said that, I wandered the streets alone as a child quite a lot from age 8 upwards, in ways I bet few parents allow now - nothing happened to me, and if an adult scared me (which happened occasionally) I ran - it helped I lived in a suburb with wide open streets and footpaths, so it was difficult to do anything without being seen.

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So after mum's boyfriend, stepdad, dad, grandad, uncle, cousins, neighbours, family friends and brothers - you've knocked out most of the risk factors. The next level would probably be sister, mother and aunt (yes there are female child molesters, they are in the minority, but certainly there). Then you can worry about the photographer.

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You see, I remember being at school swimming sports and there was a father of one of the children who took photos of many of the kids by the pool, for the school magazine. He was always a kindly man who was very sweet, and there was never an issue of his motives. Now one can never really know who is turned on by what. I can bet you that odds are that you know someone who gets aroused by things that might shock or disturb you, or maybe it is you. You'll never ever know - because, after all, it's rather easy to use your imagination and masturbate. It is reasonable to protect your children from being sexually assaulted (or assaulted full stop), it is also reasonable to avoid strangers taking photos of them without your permission - but when does this start to become a ridiculous restriction on freedom of expression. If you allow your child to perform in a play, you probably want to take photos - other parents probably do too - if the local perv does as well, then really what IS the harm? He isn't peeking in changing rooms, where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.

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The problem is that people masturbate about other people all the time. It has probably happened to you and you can be grateful you probably don't know the people who have done it. If you're really hot you'll have had thousands get aroused for you, and there were almost certainly pedos who got aroused for me when I was a child. The fact I never saw them or knew about it means it doesn't matter.

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Pervs putting gymnast photos on the internet is disconcerting. However, there is little doubt that there is a fetish for professional gymnasts. There is also a fetish for girls smoking, fetish for school uniforms and fetish for girls in football clothes etc etc. There is probably a fetish for women wearing the burkha. People will sexualise whatever arouses them, and as long as they don't act on it, except with consenting adults, it is nobody else's business.

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So hopefully the hysteria will die down - and the law will never get involved, except to protect private property rights.

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Hopefully it wont get to this stage.

Brash, Winston and political correctness

Don Brash in the last few weeks has said some of the same sort of things that got me in a slight amount of trouble in university.
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It was when I realised that free speech was something that you took into your own hands at university. I learnt that there was a received wisdom, and it had a long list. Some of that was things I agree with, other I don’t. The ones I didn’t were the notion that ethnicity should ever matter, and that people were not responsible for their own lifestyle. I talked of what being Maori “really was” and why someone who is born of certain parents should be entitled to a special place at university. I talked of how the only way Maori health statistics could make a huge step forward is if they stopped smoking so much, ate better and exercised more. None of this is rocket science and it wasn’t new in the late 1980s.
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However, I got hounded. I was told I had a racist point of view, that I didn’t take into account the Treaty, that I ignored poverty and how much Maori had lost – and that to be Maori you had to “feel” Maori. My response was that I could “feel” Maori and that would be legitimate – except I guess there would be a committee to decide whether I really did feel what I said. I found that there was an accepted view of Maori having been oppressed, not responsible for what they do and all being disadvantaged. Being the son of lower-middle class Scottish immigrants, who came to NZ with virtually nothing, I found this rather grating. However, as I wasn’t Maori/Polynesian, female or gay, so I was part of the power hierarchy that ran the world – and the assumption was that everything was easy for me. So nice to have non-Maori women judge me so thoroughly. Fascists!
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I had to keep my mouth shut- there was an unofficial longlist of opinions that would raise irrational responses ranging from patronising sadness (oh dear, poor boy doesn’t know better) to anger at how offensive I could be. The list included a wide and varied type of issues:
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- The government should give more money to Maori;
- There should be a separate Maori legal system;
- Education should be free;
- Free market reforms are wrong;
- All women are oppressed, men are the oppressors;
- Ronald Reagan is an evil warmongerer, the USA is the cause of so much trouble in the world;
- All women have a right to state funded free contraception and abortion on demand;
- Nuclear weapons are bad and all countries should disarm;
- Nuclear power is unsafe;
- Prisons are wrong and Maori commit crime because of the Treaty breaches;
- Pornography should be banned because it insults all women;
- Free speech is a right, except when it offends or upsets anyone;
- It is impossible for non-Maori to understand the special relationship Maori have with the land, sea, sky and spirits;
- Maori spirits should be respected, but Christians should accommodate blasphemy;
- Building motorways is bad;
- Big business is bad and the world is being taken over by transnational corporations;
- Free trade is bad, because it oppresses poor countries and it doesn’t work and doesn’t exist anyway.
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Get the picture? Buy into the leftwing manifesto or get sneered at.
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Brash was foolish talking about the blood purity of Maori – because it is irrelevant. The notion of being Maori, English, Japanese, Mexican or Serbian is psychological. Race is, at the most, a relatively minor biological feature which should have about as much interest to us all as hair and eye colour. I am sure that if statistics were gathered for blondes, brunettes and redheads there would be umpteen overs and unders in health, education, sports, crime, wealth etc. The discrimination as well is obvious. Blondes are stereotyped as stupid, redheads as having anger problems. These characteristics are more objective than being Maori – being Maori is a state of mind. Now there is nothing necessarily wrong with having an affinity to others as such, especially if you appreciate having some shared DNA and culture. This is part of the diversity of being human – but it is not a reason for the state to think of you differently. The heterogeneity of humanity is a good thing – and when the state has discriminated, it deserves attention – but the state does not do so anymore and has not for some time. Brash would have been better simply saying that whether or not people are Maori should be irrelevant to government. He shouldn’t get embroiled into whether there is anything objective about being Maori – because, realistically, it should not matter.
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As far as lung cancer is concerned, Brash is dead right. Maori die more of lung cancer because more smoke, and that is their choice. There has not been tobacco advertising now for around 18 years, and for some years before that it was quite innocuous – promoting brands rather than “you should smoke”. Most people start smoking in their teens, and it happens because they are trying to be adults – because they are sheeple, following their peers and because it annoys adults. Thousands stop smoking by choice – those who don’t do so knowing the dangers – this is because the dangers have been publicly known since the 1960s at the latest.
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Unfortunately, in New Zealand in 2006, it is ok for a Labour government and a Green MP to tell you what to eat and when to exercise, but not for a Caucasian male National Party MP to point out that if more Maori people choose to smoke than non-Maori, it is no wonder that more will die of lung cancer. Brash is a victim of the insidious political correctness cultivated by the left – the same political correctness that makes excuses for those who beat up their kids, because of their race.
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To top it off, for Winston Peters, who once proclaimed the same policies as Brash on Maori affairs, who campaigned as such, to call Brash evil is such incredible hypocrisy (Winston is hunting for the Maori vote again). Let’s see some quotes from Winston to see how he plays the race card:
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“We have now reached the point where you can wander down Queen Street in Auckland and wonder if you are still in New Zealand or some other country”
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"We are being dragged into the status of an Asian colony and it is time that New Zealanders were placed first in their own country."
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Yes, Winston courted the votes of his greedly grey grizzler constituency – you know the ones that think anyone who looks Asian is a “Jap” and “doesn’t bloody trust them, remember the war?”. How about the ones who say “they’re different from us”, “they’ll take our jobs”. Winston knows the prejudices he milks, the fear he stoked among Asian immigrants – and now he’s in bed with the Labour Party. I need say no more.

Compulsory pay TV and how to end it

I have a standing order demanding I pay £131.50 (NZ$400) for a pay TV service that I didn’t ask for, and don’t really like. I am about to tell the organisation concerned this fact.
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Like many European countries, the UK does not have free to air television. Every year, the BBC through its subsidiary “TV Licencing” strongarms £131.50 out of every British household for the privilege of using a colour TV set. Excluding the elderly, for political reasons, this means that the UK has compulsory pay TV.
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The UK TV licence, unlike the abolished NaZis on Air TV licence in NZ, does not go to an independent body to allocate funds based upon proposals put forward by broadcasters. Oh no. It all goes to the BBC. Why? Because, apparently, without the BBC getting this funding, all hell would break lose. The world would end, and British society would decay with the other 19 advertising supported ACTUAL free to air channels (3 analogue the rest on digital freeview) clearly doing such a bad job.
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The BBC is only a “public” broadcaster in that it is state owned, plays a few minority oriented programmes and carries no advertising. Besides that it is an enormous expensive populist organisation. It pays high rating Radio 1 breakfast host Chris Moyles £630,000 a year – presumably to avoid him being poached by commercial radio. Now given he is very popular, given the music played on Radio 1 is essentially Top 40 contemporary hits (a highly commercially viable format), you’d have to wonder why people are forced to pay for it? Terry Wogan on Radio 2 gets £800,000 a year, and is also very popular and is on a format (adult contemporary) that is highly commercially viable. Jonathan Ross, who presents a weekly TV and a weekly radio show is to be paid an estimated £18 million to be exclusive with the BBC for the next four years. The BBC also spend millions to share the coverage for the soccer World Cup – the final was simulcast on ITV and BBC1 – why didn’t the BBC leave it alone, as it costs a fortune to compete with commercial broadcasters who themselves were very willing to show it? The reason is – the BBC is driven by ratings, and has little constraint on funding.
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So is that public broadcasting? Spending vast amounts of forcibly acquired money to compete with commercial broadcasting on their terms? Well the BBC couldn’t give a flying of course, because every year it asks the government to raise the licence fee by an exhorbitant amount, and the government agrees to raise it, by a little less. Apparently the licence fee keeps the BBC independent – ha! Independent from its craven ecological philosophy that makes Friends of the Earth always welcome? Independent such as the statement from a BBC London interviewer that “stockbrokers don’t actually produce anything”.
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There are conflicting views about the public opinion of the licence fee. According to Wikipedia “a poll by the BBC's current affairs programme 'Panorama' showed that 31% were in favour of the existing licence fee system, 36% said the BBC should be paid for by a subscription, and 31% wanted advertising to pay for the programmes.” The BBC thinks the public is willing to pay £31 more a year – unfortunately it wont test this, because nothing about the licence fee is about “the willing”.
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A majority want to either not pay (advertising is fine to them), or to choose to be able to pay. The BBC prefers forcing people to pay – this fascist approach is regardless of whether or not you ever watch or listen to the BBC. There are plenty of options not to.
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Fascist? Really? Well you see, you are forced to have a “licence” to operate an appliance that you own which does not in the slightest way interfere with other people (excluding operating it very loud, but then you don’t need a licence for your stereo or voice!). On top of that, the organisation (Capita) responsible for collecting the licence fee can send agents round to check up on whether or not you have a licence or need one. Then if the agent (who gets commission to catch you) has reasonable cause to suspect you operate a TV set he can apply for a search warrant to check to see if you have a TV – a SEARCH warrant.
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Yes the BBC is fascist. It is the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation.
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The BBC supports extending this fascism using the Orwellian doublespeak of its surveys. The public isn’t willing to pay the licence fee – it is forced to.
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British TV owners should boycott the fee and write to the Secretary of State for Culture and say no to being forced to pay for the BBC. The BBC should become a pay TV organisation – that would be true public broadcasting. An easy transition is the shift from analogue to digital. People with digital TVs or digital set top boxes (including all subscribers to existing pay TV services) would be exempt from the licence fee, but would also have to pay a subscription to receive the seven BBC TV channels. Those with analogue TVs and no digital equipment would still pay the licence fee, but this would incentivise them to shift to digital.
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Of course this will mean the BBC gets less revenue, and will need to divest itself of commercially viable operations or introduce advertising. Local radio should be the first to go, and then the most popular network radio, such as Radio 1, Radio 2 and Fivelive. However, many would save money by not paying for what they don’t want. People on low incomes could watch commercial television without being forced to pay for the BBC, and the BBC would need to be accountable for how much it spends on.
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However, far too many in the UK are listless useless inert nobodies, who have the “mustn’t grumble” attitude, who rather than fighting for something out of principle, will roll on all fours and pull open their bumcheeks. Oh and don’t expect the BBC to broadcast in primetime a show where this issue is debated openly and evenly – you’d need a truly independent broadcaster for that to happen.

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and if you want to ask the TV Licencing fascists why they force people to pay for something they didn't ask for, may never use and don't like? Go here. I already have.

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The TV licence was ended in NZ, largely due to a campaign started by Lindsay Perigo, Deborah Coddington and the Libertarianz – although it was replaced with taxpayer funding and the public didn’t mind that. It is about time that the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation was told it had to convince people to pay for it, not force them – given that it doesn’t understand the concept of voluntary choice, it will be a hard battle.

Do what we say not what we do - Greens on trains

As the final trip of the Overlander is scheduled on Saturday, Stuff has reported on how often Green MPs ever used the train (although it is unclear if it was asked whether they used other trains). The various responses are:

Sue Kedgley (who notoriously takes "publicity" trips on trains) admitted to using it three times in "recent years" to go to Ohakune.

Sue Bradford - no "it takes too long" (but she "loves trains". You might wonder if she ever uses the Auckland trains)

Nandor - no "doesn't have enough time" (but he used to take the Northerner, the overnight Wellington-Auckland service which, of course, doesn't run anymore because of lack of patronage)

Metirea Turei - no, "last caught it in the late 1990s, but now lives in the South Island" (where, there are two profitable passenger train services, and the Southerner died in 2002)

Russel Norman - A month ago, "but had not used it much" because it is "too slow".

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So they don't catch trains, but want to force you to pay for other people to catch them, or for you to catch them. Now let's not forget that the Overlander is no slower today than it, or its predecessors have ever been. The train also has more catering (including alcohol, meals, snacks available for purchase) than ever before - before 1968 there was NO catering on the equivalent train, and until 1988 it used to stop for 30 minutes at Taihape for lunch. So there is no excuse that service has declined.

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There is only one conclusion. Green MPs, like almost everyone, see little use for a 12 hour train trip between Wellington, Palmerston North, Hamilton and Auckland. So when the Greens say get the train or bus, don't drive or fly - they don't mean themselves. They mean you, and they'll force you to pay for it regardless, and castigate you for driving. Sue Kedgley caught the Bay Express on one of its last trips, for "publicity", very "Green", and she has done the same for the Overlander - wasting money, fuel and time travelling unnecessarily.

Blair's final conference speech

To the relief of the Labour left, and the Tory Party, Tony Blair has made his final speech to a Labour Party conference. He has done so highlighting exactly what the Blair government stands for. After months of heckling about when he is leaving, he hasn't announced the date, but he has thanked the Labour Party for him being leader - but should we thank him? What’s the scorecard?
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At his worst is his:

- Pride in massive taxpayer spending in the NHS and schools (unfortunately there isn’t a great deal to show for it);
- Pride in abolishing the minimum wage (while homeless unemployed people still clutter major city streets);
- Pride in introducing new layers of government, particularly London regional government and devolution (and presumably the massive growth in public sector spending these socialist bodies have engaged in);
- Pride in there being “virtually no long term unemployed”, ignoring that the northeast has a GDP of which 57% is generated (redistributed from the private sector) by the state – unemployment through socialist economics;
- Pride in banning handguns, and the soon to be introduced ban on smoking on some private property (called public places);
- Pride in having introduced new layers of welfare by saying “before 1997, there were no tax credits not for working families not for any families; child benefit was frozen; maternity pay half what it is; maternity leave likewise and paternity leave didn't exist at all. And no minimum wage, no full time rights for part time workers, in fact nothing”;
- Supporting energy policy driven by massive state intervention “We will increase the amount of energy from renewable sources fivefold; ensure every major business in the country has a responsibility for greenhouse gas reduction; treble investment in clean technology, including clean coal; and make sure every new home is at least 40% more energy efficient.” ;
- He justifies ID cards and DNA databases because of the results “That is why Identity Cards using biometric technology are not a breach of our basic rights, they are an essential part of responding to the reality of modern migration and protecting us against identity fraud. I remember when I introduced the DNA database. On it go all those who are arrested. We were told it was a monstrous breach of liberty. But it is now matching 3,000 offences a month including last year several hundred murders, and thousands of rapes and other violent offences.”. Apparently the state having data on you is protecting you. Apparently being arrested gives the state the right to hold a database on you. Hmmmm he loses points for that.
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Let’s face it, Blair is no friend of civil liberties – the ends justify the means, and he has been at the forefront of a significant growth in the state sector in the UK. However, following a forlorn Tory government, that revoltingly stabbed Margaret Thatcher in the back several years before, there have been some good points:
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He gave the Bank of England independence – you know, the sort the Reserve Bank in NZ has had for many years now. He slammed the mad socialism of previous Labour governments “Even in 1974, the Labour Government spent 2 years renationalising shipbuilding and the public spent 2 years wondering why.” He gets better talking about health and education being consumer driven not bureaucratically driven “My advice: at the next election, the issue will not only be who is trusted to invest in our public services, vital though that is. It will be who comes first. And our answer has to be. The patient; the parent.” Helengrad is about renationalising, and about health and education being driven by bureaucracy. Blair is well ahead of Helen Clark on this one.
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However, he is best on foreign policy. Perhaps his best statements are these:
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“the new anxiety is the global struggle against terrorism without mercy or limit.This is a struggle that will last a generation and more. But this I believe passionately: we will not win until we shake ourselves free of the wretched capitulation to the propaganda of the enemy, that somehow we are the ones responsible.This terrorism isn't our fault. We didn't cause it.It's not the consequence of foreign policy.It's an attack on our way of life.It's global.It has an ideology.”
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Hear hear. This is not about Israel/Palestine - it is not about Iraq, they are attacking our way of life – that is it. 9/11 happened before any invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq. If there was no Israel, and no allied presence in the Middle East, they would still wish to eradicate our way of life. It is clear - the terrorists are not "our fault".
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He continues:
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“It is not British soldiers who are sending car bombs into Baghdad or Kabul to slaughter the innocent. They are there along with troops of 30 other nations with, in each case, a full UN mandate at the specific request of the first ever democratically elected Governments of those countries in order to protect them against the very ideology also seeking the deaths of British people in planes across the Atlantic.

If we retreat now, hand Iraq over to Al Qaida and sectarian death squads and Afghanistan back to Al Qaida and the Taleban, we won't be safer; we will be committing a craven act of surrender that will put our future security in the deepest peril.

Of course it's tough. Not a day goes by or an hour in the day when I don't reflect on our troops with admiration and thanks - the finest, the best, the bravest, any nation could hope for. They are not fighting in vain. But for this nation's future. But this is not a conventional war. It can't be won by force alone. It's not a clash of civilisations. It's about civilisation, about the ideas that shape it.”
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This is about civilisation full stop. What Islamists promote is not civilisation - it is a racist, bigoted, sexist, authoritarian irrational dark age.

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Now I’m no friend of the British Labour Party. I tend to see it as a breeding ground for a hodge podge of do-gooding interfering busybodies who think they know what is best, who talk about social justice, combined with a hardcore of died in the wool Marxists who should have been brought up in the USSR. The Labour Party in the UK has little it should be proud of, being a party of big government. However, the Tories have recently been riding high in the polls – based on what? However, the Tories have recently been riding high in the polls – based on what? Blair has a pretty good idea:

“His foreign policy. Pander to anti-Americanism by stepping back from America . Pander to the Eurosceptics through isolation in Europe. Sacrificing British influence for Party expediency is not a policy worthy of a Prime Minister.

He wants tax cuts and more spending, with the same money.

And his policy for the old lady terrorised by the young thug is that she should put her arm round him and give him a nice, big hug.

Built to last? They haven't even laid the foundation stone. If we can't take this lot apart in the next few years we shouldn't be in the business of politics at all.The Tories haven't thought it through. They think it's all about image.”
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Indeed - Chameleon Cameron has been coined by some - they want to give tax cuts and increase spending, and are largely involved in image manipulation. Blair, of course, knows how important image is. Let’s face it, half of the British public wouldn’t know how to improve government if they tried – they choose image, and Cameron is the younger man, and Blair is yesterday's man, and the predominantly leftwing electronic media (BBC, ITV/Channel 4 news) is out for his blood.
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I’ve said before that I’ll miss Blair. I will, if only because Gordon Brown is worse and David Cameron has watered down the Tories so much they don’t deserve my support. Blair has presided over Nanny State government growing more and more in the UK, he has also presided over tax increases and increased state spending at all layers of government. He has done little to confront the EU leviathan, a beast that sucks up productivity, innovation and freedom from 25 countries in Europe, and sucks up money to dish out to inefficient, environmentally unfriendly producers of food, undermining producers elsewhere around the world and world trade more generally. The EU is a revolting institution that does little besides sustain massive corporate welfare and be regulatory Big Brother – it is socialism’s revenge for the end of the Cold War. Blair has been weak in confronting this.
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At best, Blair has rolled back little of what Thatcher did, he shifted the Labour party from being on the far left to being in the centre – more than NZ Labour. Also, he started devolving school control to schools themselves, and allowing private providers of health care to compete with the NHS for NHS contracts – the latter is less important, the former is very important. Giving schools more control and more independence is a welcome step forward in moving education away from bureaucrats and teacher unions, to what parents want.
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However, Blair’s greatest achievement has been clarity on the war on terror. At this time in history, it has been critical – and one for which he has personally carried much flak. He is hated extensively by many on the left, Saddam’s sycophant George Galloway, Islamists and others who believe in appeasement, despise Blair – it has taken courage to allow so much of his party to hate him, and to continue with policies that undoubtedly are opposed by much of the British public.
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Nevertheless, he has less than a year as Prime Minister. Whoever Labour chooses as successor is hardly likely to impress me – after all it IS the Labour Party. Britain is a country full of people who love interfering with other people’s lives, this is why it is full of gossip magazines and tabloids that delve into personal matters of the famous. Blair was popular because after 18 years of Tory austerity, he threw other people’s money at so many who wanted it, and responded to those who wanted to ban or compel. The worshippers of mediocrity who comprise most of Labour’s voting public got a PM that exceeded themselves – and when he stood up for values, they hated him for supporting the USA – because the USA isn’t a place that worships mediocrity. In a couple of weeks, the Tories will show their colours - if only they knew what they stood for - if only the great unwashed gave a damn!