Sick to Death

Yesterday I had the pleasure of enjoying a couple of hours in the company of a couple of intelligent and articulate friends. The adjectives are of course relative; all my friends are intelligent and articulate, in their own way rather than by degree. Each of us has a contribution to make to the world. Everybody enhances it. Well almost. I wonder if, like me, the child killers in our midst heartedly sicken you. We had another yesterday: Joel Loffley, the killer of two year-old JJ Lawrence. JJ is just the most recent of a long long list of such toddlers and Loffley is –most frightening—just the most recently convicted of an unknown number of killers and potential killers who will ram yet another photo of an awesomely cute young kid on to our televisions and in to our newspapers. This Fryday is, to be honest, not going where I wanted it to go. But I think there is a question to be asked. And it concerns commonality in such killers. Yesterday, I read that a couple of treaty settlements had been signed. One was for $10 million; the other—to Ngati Whatua Orakei—was for $18 million cash, other assets and an apology. We are told it addresses 150 years of grievances. And we, New Zealand, have to apologise for that. I take issue with that—both the predication, and the settlement that implicitly subjugates one part of society to another. There is not a lot I can do about it, though. However, if we are going to shell out that type of money to iwi (and we are told that Ngati Whatua now has $500 million in assets) do we not have the right to ask THAT question? That question being: When are you going to stop killing your kids?