Posts by Matthew Poole
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I'm constantly amused (bemused, mebbe?) by how the Yanks have been so thoroughly conditioned to reject "socialised" medical care, as though it will somehow lead to worse outcomes for a majority of the population.
Is there something in the water over there? Or do they actually, honestly, not understand that for the majority of insured people (I won't even get into the 1/6 of the population who have no insurance at all) their carrier will do its utmost to weasle out of paying for anything more expensive than a consultation? Assuming they even pay for that much, of course.
Sure, most countries with socialised health systems have longer wait times than the US. That's largely an acceptable trade-off (though I'm less than convinced about some of the queues we have here) for getting care, when you need it, with no fuckery on the part of "the system" as to whether or not the care will actually be provided. I'll take that with great pleasure when faced with an alternative that involves the private sector getting to say "yay" or "nay" to me being treated.
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An appropriate moment to link to this gem from The Onion, I feel.
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Look no further than the Pulitzer-winning Seattle Times expose on the University of Washington football team and their antics, genially covered by highly-sympathetic public officials.
I have to say, for all the shit that gets bandied about around both our police and our top-level sporting figures, we just don't seem to have the misbehaviour and covering-up that goes on in the US. The notion of serious assaults being brushed under the carpet on the strength of a phonecall from a team coach is pretty much unthinkable to most Kiwis, I hope. Hell, look at the strife that followed the Kelston/Grammar brawl, and that was just high school students!
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James, yes, true. Though the two go hand-in-hand. Remove loans and fees would become unaffordable to so many (no profit-making financial institution is going to loan you money for education at a reasonable interest rate) that the entire issue would have to be revisited. Remove fees and loans would become unnecessary.
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Graeme, I was under the impression that membership is voluntary, unless the student body determines otherwise? It certainly is at U.Auckland, and I remember the great glee of the former Unitec Student Union events coordinator when they became the first tertiary institution in the country to vote for a return to compulsory membership back in '07.
As for student loans, they could be less extortionate by not existing at all. I find it utterly obscene that education is treated as a private good, not a public benefit.
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One concern with voluntary membership is that, invariably, students don't want to pay. This leaves the union reliant on funding from the institution, the very body over which it is meant to be watching for the benefit of the students. Selling democracy as something that must cost is a good way to get people to switch off, especially when student union fees are a couple of hundred dollars a year and student loans are already quite extortionate enough as it is.
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Euan, I'd be quite pleased if they were made a criminal offence :P
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Andy, that defence is available in cases of general assault (hence my qualifier that I would be quite happy for the only defences against assault on a child being those available in any other case of assault), but of course you won't hear the no crowd admitting that the law recognises that preventing self-harm justifies the use of reasonable force in any situation not just in circumstances where your kids are involved.
Craig, see above. The use of reasonable force to prevent harm to another is justified and is available as a defence in the Crimes Act. This is one of the reasons I have no time whatsoever for the argument that teachers won't break up fights by pulling students apart because they're scared of assault charges. It's either a BS situation put forward by people who are doing it in the same vein as Palin's "death squads" crap, or there is some seriously negligent legal advice being dished out to teachers.
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Also, Ben, don't mistake the effect of particular votes for their actual motives. Certainly some of the no voters voted on the absolute wording of the question, with full understanding, because they grasp that the current law doesn't criminalise a smack within some semi-reasonable notion of "good parenting". Some, probably a majority, of the others, however, voted with an intent best summed up by a conversation at the next table when I was out for dinner a few weeks ago: "I'll be voting no, so that I can treat my kids how I choose." That's paraphrased, as I don't remember the exact words used, but there's no exaggeration to the sentiment - they're my kids and I'll hit them if I want to.
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Ben, many of us who voted yes, I suspect, did so in part because we couldn't stomach the thought of Baldock et al having their wet dream of a reversal come true. Whilst I would be quite happy if the law removed any defence for assault on one's own child that isn't available if one assaults an adult (such as defence of self or another, or prevention of harm to the "victim"), I accept that there are some situations where most parents for many years to come will instinctively use a minor level of force: the stove top being the classic situation where batting the child's hand away is, technically, assault, but where there needs to be wriggle room in interpretation. The police will use their discretion whether or not it's statutorily mandated, as they do every day in hundreds of cases around the country. The no brigade have distorted not only the black-and-white reality of the drafting of the statute, but also the intelligence and sanity of the police by suggesting that prosecution would be the automatic result in any case brought to the attention of the authorities.