16er's and voting rights

Good old Green MP Sue Bradford is at it again. It wasn't enough shes invading...sorry, invaded your home and ruled out smacking, now she want's to drop the voting age to your bearly legal adult child.

The reason? A 16 year old can be taxed, can have a drivers lisence, can get married and have kids. I guess those are the qualifications for one being able to vote now a days. Real mature voting.

Yes, a 16 year old can get married...but consent has to be given. Does that make them adults though? Does that allow them to under stand the situation they now find themselves in being a married couple? How many married 16 year old couples does she know?

How many parents can she find that are actually wrapped with joy that their 16 year old teenager is now a parent? (that is not from a southern US State).

How many 16 year olds can she find that totally understand the relationship between rights and responsibility? One can have the right to vote, but the responsibility in casting that vote...the change that a single vote can cause...is something to think about carefully.

So...why should this be given to 16 year olds? You have to worry about some adults who probabaly shouldn't be able to vote.

Don't get me wrong. I think some 16 year olders are quite mature for their age, but we are talking about a percentage of their age group who are still in single figure mentality being given a right that even some in the 18+ group should not have. Look how much adults picked, pecked, argued and slandered about the anti-smacking bill. Its good, its bad, its horrific, its great, its an invasion of privacy, its saving lives. Adults, cant even make up their mind if its one way or the other.

Why would we want to add more to the burden of a life thats already filled with challenges, with more responsibility. Next thing you know, they are old enough to vote, get married, have kids, drive a car and then, they might as well be allowed to legally get drunk. Its the next logical step to to further the lowering of New Zealand's moral standards.

Sue. You've done enough damage to New Zealand's parents. Let the kids grow up to look forward (if it can be said that) to being able to contribute to society when it really counts. I guess that it also could be said that let 18 year's old be known for something more than becoing 18 and going into a pub.

I'm no parent...but

You know, I've not crossed the thresh-hold of parenthood yet, but I know that a light smack isn't all that bad for the child. In fact, I got one all out hiding from my dad during my years, bless his heart...and you know why he did it? Cause I cussed out my mother...I've never seen him chase me down like that, but as an adult, I can appreciate it because I learned, no one can talk to my mother like that.

Now you know what...under today's PC ridden laws, he would have been locked up for sure. I didn't get anything more than a bruised ego. No body injury, nothing that would have been emotionally scaring in nature or physically damaging. But because he did it, he would have been the brunt of the full weight of the new law.

Now...those two who killed their kid...I've said enough about that one.

But I find myself thinking that physical discipline is not evil. I do not believe that any parent has the right to thrash the living daylights out of their kid at all, but the right to enact physical punishment for grievous wrong is a parental right with the responsibilty to ensure that its not overboard. If I want to send my kid to a time out corner, that's my right. Some time in isolation is at times good. Its not emotionally scaring. Hmmm, lets look at that. Hiding with a vacuum pipe...time out corner....which one has the potential to do more damage.

You know adults do it too. Or at least should. They should when they feel that something is going to erupt, put themselves in a corner. Is that better than saying or doing something to a great gift like a child something you will later regret?

Schools have become rife with disrespect. Why? The threat of punishment is gone. I like the coach Carter approach. In the scene when he ruffs up one of his players and his player says, teachers can't do that to kids, and coach says, "I'm not a teacher, I'm your basketball coach." Kids know they have a right not to be hit...but they do not know they have a responsibility to behave like a "normal" person would. You cannot have a right, without an accompanying responsibility. Everyone who is of age has a right to get a drivers licence, but in getting one, you have the responsibility that comes with it. Seat belts, speed limits, noise control, WOFs and rego's.

I look forward to the day when I can join the ranks of a parent. I'm interested to see what I will be like. I have good parents. I have good role models to follow. They may have somewhat spoilt us all as kids, but they in no measure spared the rod. And the rod wasn't a physical object or an act...but if we did something that was wrong, we all knew they were disappointed. There was a look, a feel, a sense like them saying that we're not right with you right now, but give us some time and we can get back, and we always did. Sometimes now its me giving it back to them, but the outcome is the same.

This has all come about with the guidelines given to police. I tend to agree with some of the public who think it wont take much before someone comes into the courts because they did hit their kid. This from the Waikato Times..."under the guidelines sent to officers yesterday, even parents found to have used "minor, trivial or inconsequential" force and not charged will have their details recorded by police family violence co-ordinators." Reading on it says that "inconsequential" has not been defined. How the hell can you define that? Its like saying appropriate length. How long is appropriate? How long is a piece of string?

I fear the innocent ones will find themselves on the short end of the stick while the guilty ones, get small jail terms and "inconsequential" sentences and then they are back into it.

Makes you wonder...

I was watching Campbell Live tonight and there was an interview with a lady who was on Florida's death row for a crime she didn't commit. Her time there must have been harrowing and un-imaginable for those of us who do not live in a country with the death penalty. She seems though to have weathered a rather nasty storm.

But I look at the two most recent high profile murder cases to come through the courts and wonder, is it worth the eye for an eye, rather than tax-payers footing the bill year after year for them to live in relative comfort even behind prison walls?

15-year-old Kori Trevithick who killed 77 year old Doreen Reed by stabbing her 25 times in a home invasion was put away for the murder for 14 years. He won't see freedom until he is almost in his 30's. The sheer brutality of the murder and the surety of the case against him should have been enough to put him away for life and perhaps may have had him on death row.

Then there is the couple who beat that poor child to death with all sorts of things. Why the hell did they only get 4.4 years each for a brutal murder. I say murder because I do not believe they were stupid enough to think that the things they were doing to this child were for its benefit. Maine Ngati and Teusila Fa'asisila were last month found guilty of manslaughter, wilful ill treatment and failing to seek medical care for Ngati's three-year-old son, Ngatikaura.

I think the judges thoughts of them feeling remorseful as a reason for the low sentence length is a bit off the mark. This beating didn't happen in one moment, it was drawn out, it was lengthy, it was painful and at times to a point when the pain caused the 3 year old to pass out. Yet, a moments remorse robbed the other family members of this child to feel robbed.

I know a lot of people who would like to go into a room with this couple and see how they like it with a baseball bat, or a vacuum cleaner pipe and see how they like it. In cases like this, where will-ful mistreatment and deprivation is the cause of death I can see the sense of the anti-smacking act comes into play. BUT, would you think twice about doing anything like this if you knew there was a possibility you would end up with a lethal injection, or a gas chamber, or a firing squad, or a noose or a shocking encounter with a chair?

Hey...maybe...you guys who drive trucks and run red lights, or boy racers who end up killing people on the roads might even want to think about that one. What if by your own action, you kill someone, and what if the possible sentence handed down to you was death.

I think, it is only a matter of time before one government or another thinks about bringing it back. Our PC laws and ways of doing things is creating a society where the school of hard knocks in normal life might soon itself be out of work and the only school like that will be in a prison.

Maybe you would like to go back and look at my Blog of January 8th this year. The case is compelling.