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?

Not Bothered

God Botherer is not a term I ever use to describe my religious friends. Mainly because I have no religious friends, or at least none deserving of that derisory epithet. But I know what the term means, implicitly and effectively, and it is entirely accurate. These people do bother God. They bother God because, I think, He’s thinking, “Who the Hell are they talking about ?” The God they are talking about—the tele-evangalists, the people who come knocking at my door—bear no relation to the God I was taught about at Sunday School. The God I was taught about was kind, compassionate, all-embracing; not a redneck, bigoted, self-styled moral arbiter with an obscene bank account and a hankering to delve into secular politics. Mitt Romney’s problems were two-fold. The first was that he represented a party with archaic values. The Republican Party, the Grand Old Party, is these days neither grand nor, given its ideological splits, a party. But it is old and long out of touch with progressive thought and a young vote determined to reshape the world. It will find it hard to bounce back from this, and almost impossible to do so in its present form. The second reason I believe that Mitt Romney lost this election—and I believe that he did lose this election, Obama didn’t win it (not with 8% unemployment)—was his religion. Religion is all very laudable, but when it governs all that you do, and therefore, if applied to a President, governs all that you and I do, then it becomes dangerous and these days unacceptable. We saw that with George W. Bush (remember him?) and the memory of war-mongering Bush is still fresh and haunting. It haunted Mitt Romney and ultimately—I believe—played a large part in his losing the election. I once said and remain of the view that the American presidency is so important to the world that Americans should be excluded from voting—its like putting a squirrel in charge of a nut farm; but on this occasion they made the right choice. Thank God.

For they shall inherit

A few weeks ago I had the occasion to write of the new-found pleasure of nieces, nephews and goddaughters. I revisit that today for two reasons—light and dark. The light is that it is soon to be my goddaughter’s birthday and, through that, I have found another pleasure—buying gifts. Happy birthday Lilia. Love you. Also on the light side of delight is the accumulation of pseudo-relatives: L in Whangaparaoa who has so much to share and G in Queenstown, whom I have met only once, but of whom I am taking a paternalistic view. And if my niece in Christchurch, Jessica, who shares my love of snail-mail, has not yet replied to my letter, I blame not her, but her mother. Get your act together sister. The dark side is this It is time for us all to put an end to the torture and liking of our children. It is time for us to state the obvious: there is no greater crime on earth than to torture and then kill a child. For those who are found guilty of doing so, of ending such a young life, there should be no life. If I am not advocating the death penalty for this crime, I am at least saying there should be no life of freedom, there should be no 12 years and then release, there should be only prison and death. This awful crime deserves nothing less. And for those who blame me—society—for these horrendous crimes: FO. If you were less PC about these things, and if you were to Google child torture and killings in New Zealand and then Google Maori child torture and killings in New Zealand and find a striking similarity of the two lists then we may start getting somewhere. Recognition of a problem is always a good start to solving a problem. Get real, get hard. Rest in peace JJ. I hope your sad, sad death will come to mean something for us all, specially our children.