Posts by Steve Parks
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I'm off to the pub.
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Wait on...
Is the judgment to exempt someone entirely up to the SA?
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1) Good post, Steve Barnes.
2) I actually agree with Graeme and Eddie that " Freedom OF Association" is intended to include Freedom FROM Association. (Much like how when we are speaking of 'Freedom OF Religion' it is taken to include freedom from religion, unless otherwise clear it is not meant that way for some reason.)
3) Steve says: "Mr. Douglas claims " The current legislation fails to guarantee individual students a satisfactory opportunity to withdraw from associations, and sets the bar too high for those who wish to make membership of a students association voluntary."
Then:
"Section 229A states "A students association may exempt any student from membership of the association on the grounds of conscientious objection; and, if exempted, the association must pay the student's membership fee to a charity of its choice."
How does that not satisfy Graeme's concern? Students are not forced to enter an association they don't want to. Where's the problem?
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I admitted to no such thing. Even if the question were crystal clear, I could only speculate about people's reasons for answering in a particular way. I say "I feel" when I'm speculating.
You were speculating on what the no voters were saying with their no vote. I don’t think it useful to separate these issues: their reason for answering speaks to what they actually want to have happen as a result. There’s clearly still debate (even amongst the ‘no’ camp!) as to what, if anything, should actually change about the law. As I said, I’m not in favour of CIRs, but if we must have them is it too much to ask that after the darn things are over everyone knows what we’re supposed to do next? We have in a sense a clear result (in the sense of the percentages themselves), and yet, we don’t have a clear outcome. To me, this is further evidence that CIRs are fundamentally not useful.
It can be if the subject in question is their feeling of harm. It's not an appeal to popularity. I'm actually saying "no other person can weigh up subjective harm better than the person experiencing it".
Ah, I see what you mean now. What you did was not an appeal to popularity, I’ll grant you. However, I don’t see this issue as a simple “subjective harm” case (i.e. if you think you’re harmed then you are harmed; if you don’t then you aren’t). An argument can be made that that is the way to look at it if you’re referring to a consenting adult judging harm to themselves from an activity they voluntarily entered into while they are adults.
We’re talking here about a past event (well, practice) imposed on someone as a child without their consent. Purely relying on self-assessment of harm later in life in that regard would be dubious.Regards your school example: It seems to me you just need to separate out the general notion that children are forced to go to school - more correctly, forced to engage in schooling - and the bad things that might be encountered during said schooling. Few would argue that bullying itself were something they should have to endure. That is a separate issue to why children need schooling. (Also, there'd be no bullying at home-schooling, unless the parents were allowed to smack as part of good teacherly correction.)
One question is therefore whether public policy should be based on evidence.
Quite, Sacha. Without wanting to get too side tracked, I don’t think there’s much public policy aspect to adults agreeing to engage in anal sex, for example. That’s a private matter, so the “subjective harm” principle applies . It’s not a purely private matter to decide whether there are detrimental effects from children being smacked in a disciplinary way.
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(there's a big difference between flaying someone half to death and rapping them over the knuckles with the handle). Can't find references to it anywhere, could you link to the details?
Sorry, Sacha and Ben, I was typing from memory. It was a riding crop.
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Getting your child our of the way of a speeding train from a distance when your trusty bullwhip was the only extensible option to hand?
It's how Indiana Jones would've done it.
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yeah but "the purposes of correction" is what I'm referring to here. That's what Sue Bradford wanted to change the law to prevent.
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I just said that people would not only want it to be a crime, but would probably realize that it already is. One is not the supporting premise of the other.
So it was a statement of the obvious that was not intended to support a premise? Fine, I’ll take your word for it, and just note that it looked to me like an odd way of making your point, and move on.
It's really poor because if you want to create a statement that elucidates how confusing the referendum question was, you don't do it by making up an example that is even less confusing.
You're having trouble keeping track. I did not try to elucidate how confusing it was, as I told you before. I’m claiming it is a poorly worded question. That was were we started: you said "it wasn't really confusing…", and I replied "I wouldn’t say the question was really confusing, just poorly worded."
It’s poorly worded because it’s loaded, and it is vague. (You as much as admitted to the latter, when you started speaking of your “feeling” as to what the no voters were saying.)
You said laws should come from science, or be 100% informed by science with no question of morality.
I did not say that. I did, however, refute your appeal to popularity when you claimed “if 88% of people think they weren't harmed by smacking, then maybe that's actually more true than an entire legion of experts”. Something like that isn’t “more true” because lots of people think it.
I was clarifying the idea of the non-scientific side of harm. To include consent, another moral notion, is only to play further into my hands.
Consent was implicit, so your analogy is poor. I agree there’s a generally accepted notion that adults can do things which are harmful (or allegedly harmful) in some way. In a sense, “harm” becomes subjective in such cases, as you said. However, that has no relevance to the smacking debate as the subject of the “smacks” are not consenting adults. So we assess harm as best we can with science.
At least in that case. Each case is new, with new jurors. Justice can be a bit like that, unfortunately.
So? You were still wrong when you responded: “That always was illegal man. Because it would not be considered "reasonable" by either a judge or a jury.” It was not always illegal. So let’s go back to what I asked you when you came up with that, now obviously wrong, response. I said: “Where it will have short term application is if someone beats their child with a bullwhip, for example, that parent will no longer have the old “reasonable force” defence. Surely that is a good thing?” I trust we all now agree that it is.
As for the example I used, it’s not "set” anywhere in particular, it was a hypothetical situation brought up purely to address this response from you: ‘So "encourage" then. When you use the law, it's hiding behind a stick of your own.’ I do not think we should only “encourage” one group of people to respect the rights of another - we also expect the laws of society to reflect that. It’s not either/or.
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I'm still struggling to see how "Should children have the same legal protections from assault as adults do?" is a lot vaguer.