Just Thinking

I live in New Zealand, so these comments are related to our conditions, but much of the western world is similar I think.

Government is always making new laws. The very seldom scrap old ones. So we have more and more laws all the time. And yet we find that when it comes to the police enforcing them, there are many that they now just do not bother about. This is not about bashing the police, as they have limited funds and have to set the priorities. Unfortunately that same lack of funds, pressure to balance the books along with the combination of police and traffic departments some years ago has all come together to make one of the top priorities handing out speeding tickets. I suspect that it is also a little more attractive to catch people doing no harm to anyone and get some quick income because most of these people do not carry guns or attack the police. It must be less attractive to chase after armed gangs who produce drugs and ruin many people's lives.

It occurs to me that government needs to be more responsible. They need to either fully fund the police to deal effectively with the laws as they stand or to get rid of some of the crimes off the books.

An example of a crime that the police do not wish to deal with, is vandalism. A few years ago our brick wall between our house and a shared driveway was attacked and knocked down in ten places along its length. It was obviously a deliberate act of vandalism. I had a suspicion about who did it because there had been some discussion with our neighbours about relaying the concrete driveway and we had not all agreed. One of the neighbours had even stated that they didn't like that wall. When I asked all the neighbours if they had seen anything, that neighbour replied that maybe the wind had done it. I told all this to the police who did not wish to even record the crime. It annoys them because they actually tell you they are not going to investigate it and so why have it on the books as an unsolved crime? The answer is that it shows that there are many unsolved crimes and hopefully leads to thinking about that. Of course many people are not like me and would just go away and not have the particulars written down. Perhaps they would decide to throw a brick through the neigbour's window some night. It might all end in someone burning the other's house down and someone's head getting split open. Then the police will come.

I think that the best way to stop crime or neighbourhood disputes is right at the start. You don't allow a certain amount of it and then when it gets really serious take some action. Or, if you decide that neighbourhood relationships are not police business the government should change the law. Define exactly what degree of damage you can do to the neighbour's place before the police should be called in. If $300 is OK then say so and we don't need to report that we can just do $400 back and see how that goes. But burning a house down would not be OK. Not unless it was a really small one.

If the government made a contract with the police to enforce the laws, they would have to provide adequate funding. If they don't then they are being hypocrites. They have to either supply more funds or less laws until a reasonable balance is met. We are not near that at present.

The same should be done with health services. Decide which problems the state will deal with and then do those and nothing more. Get rid of stupid waiting lists. They serve no purpose but to tell people that the government does not care about them. Well tell them directly to their faces, not by passing the buck. Say you can have a $100,000 heart-lung transplant because you smoked too much but not a $1,000 varicose vein surgery because too many people want them. Or whatever the rules are, but make them fair and known to all, and then actually do what you say.

Until the last couple of generations it has not always been possible for those that are not religious to speak openly and honestly about their beliefs if they valued their wellbeing, health and even life. Even in much of the world today that situation remains, especially in some Moslem countries and some Christian dominated regions in the USA. Being an Atheist is often considered lower than a thief or even sex offender.

So the idea that Atheists should come "out" and declare themselves has recently been promoted, and an organization has been started for people who do not have belief in anything supernatural, although they do not have to be Atheists. The difference between being an Atheist and not believing in the supernatural may not be obvious to some. The new organization is called the Brights and they exist to try and counterbalance the pressures of religion in society so that people without religious beliefs are not disadvantaged. Religious groups, like other groups, do try to influence governments and education authorities and even companies. Where these influences might disadvantage non-religious people the pressures should be resisted.

The organization has so far mainly gained members in Europe, North America and Oceania, but it is to be hoped that their example will gradually change the climate of religious tolerance so that in other places people may have less fear about exposing their beliefs.

To quote the bright's main page:

What is a bright?

* A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview
* A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements
* The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview

There is also a forum for discussion of issues.

A campaign for Atheists to come Out has also been started. I have mixed feelings about this sort of thing, but do see that Atheists have often felt the need to hide, and that some sort of security from numbers allows that to be overcome. There is the danger of becoming just like that which is being rejected, and it is wise to guard against that.

Richard Dawkins has been a major spokesperson for Atheist views which has no doubt been influenced by his seeing the silliness of the religious pretense about evolution. First creationism and now intelligent design propaganda have been attempts to stop evolution being taught in schools, mainly in America, but now based on USA funding this has been taken into the UK and other countries.

Richard Dawkins is an intelligent man and his ideas on how evolution works have been clearly presented and shown that genes rather than individuals are the units of evolution. While appreciating fully and sharing his concerns, it does seem to me that he needs to be careful in his campaign. I already see propaganda that has originated with him that asks questions about whether certain things are rational. Some of those things are not at all irrational, although they may be mistaken. There is a difference, and a man like Dawkins should be careful to keep his statements correctly expressed if his objective is to stamp out irrationality and superstition. Otherwise, Richard Dawkins, good luck.

It began when Australian PM Howard passed a special racist law to deal with problems of drunkenness and sexual offenses in Aborigine settlements. New Zealand Maori MP Hone Harawira called him a racist bastard.

"John Howard is a racist bastard imposing racist policies on a people who are not in a position to fight back," Mr Harawira said on Maori TV's Native Affairs programme last night.

He compared Mr Howard's move in the Northern Territory, with its mineral wealth, to United States President George Bush's invasion of Iraq, allegedly to control oil. A similar move in New Zealand would be met with violence from the Maori community.

"If they tried this up north, we'd be out with guns. It wouldn't happen."

He told Australian press agency AAP he stood by his comments: "If I was an Aboriginal man in the Northern Territory I would feel like absolute shit right now.

Mr Howard declined to comment.

There is no doubt that NZ's MMP electoral system has made Parliament more colourful. Harawira has shown staunch support for the Australian Aborigines who really are treated poorly in their own country. His next step was when he was on a trip with other MPs to Australia and he went walkabout much to the discust of MPs of other parties. He turned up at some Aborigine communities because he wanted to see for himself how bad the situation was without media distortion. Parliament's speaker's decision as reported in the New Zealand Herald:

Maori Party MP Hone Harawira has been ordered to pay back half of the cost of his taxpayer-funded airfare to Australia after he went walkabout while on an official parliamentary visit.

Speaker Margaret Wilson told MPs that Mr Harawira's "private visit" to the Northern Territory to see aboriginal communities had come halfway into a select committee visit to Melbourne.

MPs had an obligation to complete their work for which they received public funding, she said.

"As Mr Harawira participated in less than half of the committee's business I consider it appropriate that he refund half of the airfare that has been paid out of public funds," Ms Wilson said.

Ms Wilson's ruling today sparked a number of exchanges between MPs with Mr Harawira's co-leader Pita Sharples having a go at his MP's critics over incidents in the past.

This included National MP Richard Worth going for a camel ride, when he was on an official trip and also the travels of MPs in the parliamentary rugby team.

"Has the same due diligence applied (to them)?" Mr Sharples asked.

Pita Sharples once again shows how astute he is in finding previous situations where the shoe is on the other foot. He has also spoken out about the problem of violence being perpetuated by Maori families, and gave a severe telling off to a Maori family who did not help the police with their inquiries when young twins will beaten and later died.

In the past I have visited Hone Harawira's web site and always found it interesting and thought provoking. He is a man of action and he sometimes hitch hikes from Auckland to his home in the North. He says that this is good for developing humility because he sometimes gets an ear-bashing on the way. I don't see any statement yet by him on this issue, but look forward to what he has to say.

While it is fair to ask him to attend a conference that the taxpayers have sent him to, and he does not deny that and seems quite willing to pay half the air fare, he is quite right that the issues involved for Australian Aborigines are very serious. All the problems that NZ Maori have, and they are considerable with many recent terrible cases of young children been brutally beaten to death, are many times greater in Australia.

Hone, may your efforts be successful in keeping these issues in the public eye so that they are addressed in a meaningful way, both in New Zealand and Australia.