Ok, so I can normally understand some people who spout the old Anti-PC rhetoric about turning men into wimps, women running the country, section 59, homosexual agenda blah blah blah, but this guy has me well and truly stumped…
Apparently, not only did Lochore leave his babies (not children, but three week old babies) outside in the mud while he was boozing, but he actually attempts to justify the fact that he assaulted other people’s children. WTF?
This isn’t even in the realm of rational debate about section 59 and its future in this country. This is the New Zealand Herald somehow justifying this man’s neglect and abuse of not only his own children, but others’ as well, as some kind of legitimate discourse about families and the rights of children. All because what, he’s an ex rugby coach? Un-fracking-believable. If this guy is the poster boy for the anti-PC thugs, then all I can say is good luck to them.
27 August, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Thanks for posting this Xavier. I ignored it earlier today, because I though it was just another celeb who had been dragged out by the spankers to support their unfounded arguments.
But I now see it is more than that: – Brian Lohore said:
I have some experience as a child too of that. In the back of the car outside the pub. For ages. Occasionally it got worse – my father would be so pissed he would wind down the window and throw up out it, while still attempting to drive the car.
And the crate of Lyon Rouge would be in the boot on the way home too.
So I would go to bed early, lest I said or did something that I “deserved ” a thrashing for after the crate was partially consumed.
27 August, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Kia ora toad…I totally get what you mean – my dad left my twin brother and I in the back of our car while he went to the pub…on our 10th birthday! I just don’t understand how this guy is justifying that kind of drinking culture…
27 August, 2008 at 11:46 pm
The childbeaters are currently running round in circles on FrogBlog. It really seems like this country is stuck in some timewarp sometimes. What to do?
28 August, 2008 at 7:48 am
Hey, just a word of caution here. Context is everything and everyone is coming from a different situation. I know the area and the community that Lochore is coming from, and in that closeknit place and those times, kids sleeping in the back of the car was probably as safe as any other care arrangement. Driving after drinking was a fact of life in country in those days, and still is, I fear, but I don’t remember any excess.
Which just goes to show Lochore shouldn’t be generalising from his past personal experience, I suppose. The only thing I wholeheartedly agree with him about in his rant is that we are too averse to risk these days, and kids suffer from not having the range of experiences and physical opportunities they used to.
28 August, 2008 at 9:13 pm
In my town the kids:
jump from the bridge into the river,
ride horses on a state highway
play rugby
moto cross (for fun and thrill) through the pines and over the dunes
fish from the wharves
raft
race 4 wheelers
etc. etc. etc.
no ‘cotton wooled kids here’
29 August, 2008 at 12:56 am
I’m with Southern Rata – lighten the f** up the rest of ya! Context is everything, and neither then nor now would toad or Xavier’s dads actions be legal.
And Xaviorgoldie – Lachore DID NOT ASSAULT other people’s kids (as far as we know). The S59 law at the time allowed him to smack chldren. On frogblog, toad and others have acknowledged that, even now with Sue’s law change, a light smack may be allowed for ‘good parenting’ etc.
Oh, and there’s a huge gulf between getting pissed and beating your kids and a light smack to correct a misbehaving child. The sad inability of many Greens to see this is why so many Green supporters get angry (and may vote elsewhere) – its not just the smacking issue – its your pious arrogance in refusing to recognise anyone else’s opinion. Which is why the Green MPs refused to listen to most NZers in the polls, aye?
Undemocratic behaviour angers most people even more than smacking…
29 August, 2008 at 1:00 am
Toads frogblog comments, before ya ask:
“toad Says:
August 27th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Mr Dennis said: It is a matter of personal discretion whether a particular incident is incidental to good care and parenting or not
No, Mr Dennis, it is not, You have misinterpreted the law yet again. If it [a smack] is incidental to good care and parenting (and that is a decision that must be made objectively) there is an absolute defence of justification.
The discretion comes in when the justification defences, including that one, are not available to the parent, as to whether it is in the public interest to prosecute.
And it is not a “personal” discretion – take a look here, but one that must be execised in accordance with accepted legal principles.”
29 August, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I, too, had experience as a child of being left in the car to care for my sister (younger, asthmatic, prone to stopping breathing … ) while my parents drank inside.
I’ll give this to the landladies: we were often taken into the landladies’ parlour, to watch tv with a free raspberry fizz. I am indebted to the Weber and Wimbledon Pub landladies in particular, c 1969-72 (Southern Hawkes’ Bay, for the geographically challenged.)
No, it wasn’t child abuse.
Some of the other stuff that happened when all the adults were drunk, on other occasions, at private house parties, though, was.
Once Were Warriors is not just a rural/poor maaori scenario. Working class pakeha behaved that way, too.
29 August, 2008 at 2:35 pm
squaredrive said: ‘…there’s a huge gulf between getting pissed and beating your kids and a light smack to correct a misbehaving child. The sad inability of many Greens to see this is why so many Green supporters get angry…
It is actually the sad inability of many parents to see this (especially when they are pissed) that gets me angry. And that inability of many parents to see this is one of the reasons that the law had to change.