#12: “Larry Baldock”
In which I suddenly go political. Which is of course incredibly stupid, because (a) most of my regular listeners don’t live in New Zealand, so the song won’t make the slightest bit of sense to them unless they do lots of googling, (b) it’s going to age badly, and (c) going political is always stupid, because it alienates the people who don’t happen to share your exact point of view.
For what it’s worth, I only genuinely believe about 14% of what I say in this song. I have nothing against Larry; I’m sure everything he’s done has been with the purest intentions. But when when you single-handedly spend $9,000,000 of your country’s money, I’d say that makes you fair game for some good old-fashioned theatrical vitriol.
In related news, “theatrical vitriol” is really fun to say.
Love the song. One way or another the same AH’s that bash their kids still do it regardless of the law.
Tony loved it too!
Just so you know, Alexs Mum, the law in question isn’t actually about stopping child abuse. It never was. Assault laws take care of that, it’s just that Section 59 of the NZ Crimes Act was allowing child abusers to get off in some jury trials because 59 allows them to plead ‘reasonable force’. It clearly was not working, because in some cases juries believed tying a kid up with duct tape and taking to him with a riding crop or a bit of 2×4 was ‘reasonable force’. So now that defence is gone and assault laws (which have always protected kids from physical force) remain almost unchanged, only now they specifically say police should exercise discretion over smacking. If you’re a Kiwi then I think you’ve been misinformed, and you wouldn’t be the only one.
My favourite thing about Larry Baldock is something he once sent me via email: “[Gay partnership] has been around for thousands of years, at times it has been tolerated by society, but seldom seen as something beneficial for society. I think History shows that when it has gained more acceptance and normalised it has been at the tail end of the collapse of the civilisation that supported it.”
PS. I love the Daily Refrain!!
I really shouldn’t have missed that part out. :/
Genuine political discourse! I feel so cultured all of a sudden.
Thank you Matty, you explained it perfectly – it’s amazing how misrepresented the amendment has been by people on both sides of the argument, when in reality it was created to work on a very narrow spectrum.
While I quite clearly support the amendment, I have to admit that in terms of promoting it the government failed miserably. Misinformation can only spread this effectively when actual information is lacking. Though that’s probably just me being incredibly naive.
In fact, I know it is.
crumbs!