Climber, Kiwiland is not a flogging land, though it was when I was at school. Since execution of criminals and general wet bus ticket punishments were adopted, along with the creation of a fatherless society with nanny state as Daddy and welfare payments as the finances source, murder, rape, burglary and general crimes of violence have gone off the Richter scale.
When West Side Story was created, it was shocking. Now, it's nothing. I used to feel pity for Americans with their violent, run-down, society, but now it's spread to here [which means the conditions which create the crime have spread to here]. But they haven't spread to Singapore or Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan was becoming crime free. With General Dostum back in the saddle, we can expect mayhem to rule again there.
Ed Hillary can rightly be called a decent joker. A dinkum good bloke. I don't know about a saint. He lived just up the road from us [until we moved here last year] and our youngest daughter and her friend went and knocked on his door one day to say hello and ask him for his autograph.
Okay, sorry, you didn't say that, but the implication was that punishing crime can't be separated from abuse of power, repression and loss of initiative and I don't buy that.
The main thing is to define crime only as something which creates victims, where somebody else's property or person suffers damage. So, drug buying or selling is not a crime. Neither is adultery. Nor most other crimes. Theft, fraud, assault and breach of contract would be crimes. The courts and prisons would empty out.
They do flog in New Zealand, but it's mostly Maori and Polynesian children or children getting the flogging from male 'partners' of their mothers, [step fathers but informal ones], living on welfare payments. Children and women feature strongly in the crime lists [as victims; assaulted, maimed or murdered].
Mqurice |
