New Zealand Conservative

I'm listening on the radio to people phoning up, largely in support for William Roache, aka Ken Barlow (RIP, 2013) of Coronation Street. This is in reaction to being arrested on two counts of rape of a child (I use the common terminology here) 40 years ago. From what I gather, being arrested in the UK can just mean "we want to talk about a credible accusation", but the media certainly makes it sound more serious than that. It may have been recent comments in defense of Jimmy Savile and colleagues on Coronation street that also have been recently accused of sex abuse: “But things were different in the Seventies. People were more tactile. You did things that today are regarded as wrong." He's right in that regard, things were very different in the seventies, and we are now judging events by different standards and different attitudes, which is partly why so many people come forward years afterwards. However, even with different standards, such things have ...

The Sensible Sentencing Trust is in trouble with the NZ Government (Sunday Star Times, A2, April14) You see, the NZ Government believes it is important to release known pedophiles into the community and then move them around in secrecy so as to allow them to have a greater chance of re-offending on the hapless public. [ like here ]   Of course, this isn't a page one story, and the focus is on reporting on the actions of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, not broadcasting NZ Government policy on hiding and protecting pedophiles. The interesting thing is that the man doesn't even appear to have legally obtained named suppression. Without any evidence to say otherwise, in spite of requests for this information from the Sensible Sentencing Trust, the government has sided with the pedophile without any sort of due process. Not only that, the government believes that making payouts to pedophiles is more important than victim compensation. He's already received $15,000 and i...

According to a comment made by a female reader at another blog who works with troubled and abused children, the 50 Shades Of Grey book that is so popular at the moment may actually be a thinly veiled story of paedophilia where the older man is a Jerry Sandusky type of abuser. Although in the book, the woman's age is given as 21, the reader and her friend contend that this is a thin cover and the signs point to a much younger aged protagonist. Now I know after saying that, many female fans of 50 Shades, many of them mothers, will naturally put up a defense against that kind of description.  These women, being mothers, are naturally wired to protect kids.  People like Jerry Sandusky are viewed with hatred, revulsion, and disgust.  Rightfully so.  What mother would want to condone anything having to do with the sexual abuse of children?  Of innocents? [...] My professional experience centers around nearly 20 years with Child Protective Services.  Over...

This is an image from the movie the Godfather. In the final cut of the movie the little girl in this image gets about 20 seconds of screen time but in the original script and in the book from which it is drawn - it is her twelfth birthday and the movie director in the story takes her virginity - to the delight of her mother, who presumably sees it as career enhancing, and to the utter disgust of Don Corleone, the Godfather. The book of course was based on real things that had actually happened, mish-mashed up of course. For whatever reason this pedophiliac subplot disappeared from the final cut but it reflected a reality of Hollywood in the late forties and the fifties, sixties, seventies and later . Are we to believe Hollywood directors and agents celibate or something?

Rioting students overturning a news van. There is nothing particularly unusual in that - we've seen it before many times. What makes this a little unusual is the reason for the riot, the sacking of a beloved football coach. The reason why the coach was sacked? He was informed of an assistant coach sodomizing a 10 year old boy in the showers and did nothing! Yesterday Ele posted at HomePaddock about asset sales . I left a comment Governments shouldn’t be engaged in commercial enterprise anyway – its not their brief. People are essentially corrupt, a fact we have to live with because it’s not about to change anytime soon but to limit the damage this causes is to dilute and spread power as widely as possible. Ele, who has a lovely soul and who sees people as essentially good, as I do to, took exception, perhaps to my use of corruption - you can read the thread. I quickly realized, of course, that were engaged in a misunderstanding of semantics. For me "corru...