Catching up the blagosphere

Just catching up a bit this monday, but there is a very good quickie from I/S over at NRT on how staying together for the kids can be worse than divorce.

One with a gun or twenty with clubs

Would you prefer to have twenty people bash you to death with clubs, or one shoot you until you died? Either way you’re still hurting and dying. This principle is why I really don’t get people who say it’s okay to take away people’s rights so long as we do it by referendum- whether it’s [...]

Vote Yes

For those truckers who don’t follow me on G.Blog, here’s a cross-post:
Just a reminder to everyone who supported Sue Bradford’s Bill to repeal §59 of the crimes act and extend full protection from assault to children- there is a referendum coming up that is designed to undermine that decision, even though it passed overwhelmingly and [...]

Motherhood issues

The Standard has a good post on how well we’re doing in providing for mothers in New Zealand. (note: The Standard is a partisan blog for the Labour movement, so the post is not politically neutral) Steve notes that New Zealand is ranked the 4th best place to be a mother by the report, (Sweden, [...]

Why Women Have Lots of Opportunities

Uh, sorry, I mean Why Men Earn More. It’s a fascinating read. In the spirit of full disclosure, the author of this article, Warren Farrell, is actually the disenchanted feminist I mentioned back in my primer to men’s rights. He’s certainly on my watch list for future reading. I say it’s a fascinating [...]

The Elephant in the room

So, we’ve kinda got this big fat animal in the room and nobody has really had the courage to speak up about the fact that it’s there, because hey, we like to think we can ignore elephants and they can just go away.
But it won’t go away. We like to talk about our support of [...]

So, a pregnant man.

Scoring brief press attention in newspaper media over the weekend (yay that they covered it, boo that it was essentially a “look at how odd this is!” story) is the fact that Thomas Beatie is the world’s first pregnant man.
Thomas is a transman, and was born as Tracey. Due to issues with the way men [...]

A tip o’ the hat

Time for some blog pimping.
The ladies at The Hand Mirror continue to be awesome and insightful. I’d like to quickly plug the ex-expat again, for her wonderful post that gives a balanced account of her experience with her father as primary parent, and her regret that his choice is marginalised in society. Any [...]

Referenda and Human Rights

So recently I stumbled across a site advocated binding citizen-initiated referenda. This is an issue I’m really conflicted over. Basically, they want multiple referenda each year that the government is required to follow on contentious issues- so most of the issues that are today considered a conscience vote, where MPs do not have to vote [...]

And the breast puns bounced off…

So, Labour is finally updating its workplace laws, after a hundred years, to include policy on the very incident that spawned their party: adequate breaks.
The much more interesting news, however, is that they’re protecting the right to breastfeed. Excellent news for mothers returning from maternity leave, but still intending to breastfeed their children, and continues [...]