Standing up to Bullies

MandM have had to deal with school bullying first hand and have blogged about their journey over recent months. Today they took a brave step and named the school, Henderson's Liston College, as part of their attempts to expose the school's poor response towards bullying.

It is easy to be shocked at the serious beatings but until you are faced with it you tend to not think about the psychological impact of even the smallest of assaults. TV and movie stars brushing off harrowing events in macho-istic displays of heroism have numbed us. The workplace has become ridiculously over protective of workers yet somehow students in schools are expected to take what none of us would. Teenagers are very cruel when they get away with it.

Freedom and Iran

Countries like Iran, whose governments believe they have a handle of the truth, think that possession of truth means they can suppress all wrong.

This all goes along swimmingly until the great truth the country is based on becomes increasingly unvalued and questioned.

Surely it is better for truth to have dissent permitted? For how else can we know and value truth?

If one is so sure one has the truth then one has nothing to fear from allowing dissent because dissent and debate all help us, if we are honest, to see truth more clearly and to value it more dearly.

If you think it is only countries like Iran that need heed freedom of truth think again.

And the Award for Stating the Obvious Goes to...

Joe Karam in the first press conference outside the courtroom following David Bain being found not-guitly:

"I couldn't have continued in this fight without David"

No shit Sherlock.

Boring Budget

For those of you, like me, who found this budget boring and reeking far too much of National's apparent tactic of trying to be all things to all men I give you this from Peter Wilson:

When a new government takes office and decides remedial economic action is needed, strategy usually focuses on getting it out of the way as quickly as possible.
Swift implementation, it is hoped, will mean that in three years' time voters will have either forgotten about it or become used to it.

A good example was the "mother of all budgets" that followed National's election win in 1990, although in that case it had such far-reaching effects that despite having the longest possible recovery period the party only just managed to retain power in the 1993 election.

Finance Minister Bill English has taken a course opposite to the one dictated by political wisdom -- his next two budgets, by his own admission, will very likely be more severe than the one he presented on Thursday. more