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Feedback: Letters To The Editor

Published: Wed 27 Feb 2008 09:16 AM
Feedback: Letters To The Editor
REGARDING ARTICLE:State of It: Labour Jitters n Poster-Boy Politics
I was interviewed last night and your article reads identical to my pollsters questions; reading through your analysis, one thing I feel is that under either government all the problems you listed will probably continue to increase, there will be no relief for the urban poor. There is not the political will to find a solution beyond the press's frothing at the mouth "boot camp- capital punishment" rhetoric.
I also hope our economic slide post property boom that America, England and possibly Europe are facing wont take us back to the days where the rationalization of state assets had a decent go at stripping our social fabric. It could be Labour's conservative fiscal policies that may dampen the decline.
The real future for us will not simply lie with the Government, Labour or National, but the extent to which personal debt can be managed. And to make our communities better places to live how about we follow the example of communities nationally that are finding practical ways to overcome the issues we are all facing.
Tailouring a shallow message to a particular demographic, with clip on facts is hollow and transparent - you may well be right, National could become government and possibly on little more that presidential posturing. Still Labour has delivered the goods on a wide range of social and economic areas you did not mention in your article,well anyway I could go another round.
Chris Twemlow
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REGARDING ARTICLE: Unreasonable Force – Book Launched
The Editor, Scoop
Dear Sir/Madam
Don’t you just hate it when people who abuse you, then tell you to get over it and ‘move on’?
And that’s precisely what Ian Hassall, former Children’s Commissioner, recently told us to do as he and his co-authors launched their mis-named book ‘Unreasonable Force’, re the so-called ‘anti-smacking’ debate. Mis-named because ‘unreasonable force’ has always been illegal in New Zealand. What Hassall and the small minority of people who support him have done is abuse 85% of Kiwis by using unreasonable force to make them criminals for using reasonable force to correct their children.
Not content with this abuse she has already heaped on vast numbers of people far better than herself, Sue Bradford dares to again abuse the 85% of Kiwis who oppose her, calling them ‘the forces of ignorance and bigotry’ who want to turn ‘the clock back’.
This illustrates exactly what Thomas Sowell said in his brilliant book ‘The Vision of the Anointed’. The ‘Anointed’ - those few who think they have a divine right to run the lives of everyone else - the Bradford’s, Hassall’s, Clark’s, Kiro’s of this world – don’t answer their critics with rational argument, but name-call and abuse them, and patronizingly tell them to ‘move on’.
Renton Maclachlan
Porirua
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REGARDING ARTICLE: Multimedia: PM's Post Cabinet Presser 25 February
The flaying of the media by Prime Minister Helen Clark over her perception of how the media treat the Labour Party is further confirmation of both her political and personal neurosis. Dr Lyle Rossiter, psychiatrist and author of "The Liberal Mind: The psychological causes of Political Madness" affirms as such when says that the current ideology driving political organisations such as the Labour Party is evidence of a collective mental disorder.
This disorder is recognised as a developmental distortion, which, if left both unrecognised and untreated, results in irrational beliefs and an almost diligent paranoia of any order, structure, morality, or common decency.
According to the findings of Dr Rossiter, the evidence of this developmental disorder in New Zealand politics is there for all to see: politicians acting like spoilt, angry children rebelling against the normal responsibilities of adulthood, and encouraging others to do the same; an erroneous assumption that a parental government should meet all a citizens needs from cradle to grave; the dismissal of the principles of free choice, voluntary co-operation, and moral integrity; an inability to recognise differences in talent, drive, personal appeal, and work ethic; the imposition of utopian economic and social equality on our population; the creation of an environment that over-regulates and over-taxes its citizens; the enabling of a corruption of character, and then facilitating a dependence on the state once the consequences of such corruption of character has become evident.
In creating such an environment, the Labour Government have created and reinforced perceptions of victimisation, enabled infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence, and compensation, empowered primitive feelings of envy, and rejected the sovereignty of the individual, forcibly subordinating personal sovereignty to the will of the state.
Imaginary victims, imaginary villains, and the overwhelming desire by our Government to then run the lives of people who are competent to run their own lives is the result of this disorder: a massive transference neurosis which is then acted out within the institutions of power.
It now seems clear that a formal Mental Health Assessment should be part of any candidate selection process for Parliament, as it would appear that a number of our current New Zealand politicians are suffering from a collective madness. On the other hand, the majority of the population voted for the current political incumbents, which begs the questions - who are the mad ones?
Steve Taylor
Mt Roskill
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