Monday, May 31, 2004

ORWELL LIVES

Mike Adams comments on Orwell's 1984: "I know that just about everyone reading this list had to read Orwell in high school. For me, that was over twenty years ago. Because I work at a public university, I am reminded of Orwell on a daily basis. The Office of Campus Diversity reminds me of Orwell's "Ministry of Peace" which, in Orwell's words, "concerned itself with war." This book is more relevant today than ever. Even those who have read it should take the time to read it again...".

He adds: "pick up a great work of classic literature and enjoy the reading. You know, like the kind they used to assign in college when English professors taught English instead of homosexuality and feminism".



MISBEHAVIOUR MUST NOT BE PUNISHED!

Should we slap children?

"During the course of Spock's career as the world's paediatrician, he changed his mind about smacking, and became an anti. But as he's dead, he is not here to lend his support in person to the hugely powerful campaign that is gathering steam in Westminster to remove from parents the right to `reasonably chastise' their own offspring, a removal that will necessarily criminalise millions of loving, responsible parents who slap a naughty child on the back of the legs...

If you read the literature put out by the Children Are Unbeatable! alliance, the lead agency of the anti-smacking lobby group, you would think that this country was a nation of child-beaters, and be ashamed to be British...

all parents who decide, for whatever reason, that the best way to put a stop to a child's behaviour is a smack, or who regrettably lose their temper, will have committed a crime. And their children can report them to the police, and then they will be put on a list, and social services can be informed, and so on.

The change to the law will fundamentally change the legal relationship between a parent and a child, and will encourage children to believe - both at home and at school - that they have a right to behave as they please and no obligation to follow adult instruction or direction, just as children at school do not believe that they have any duty to respect the teachers standing in front of them

`I'm furious about it,' one mother of three (who preferred to remain anonymous) told me. `I don't go about whacking my children, but I do believe a calm premeditated slap, given after a warning, can draw the line under particularly buggersome behaviour. If smacking was banned, I'd feel despair, and even more marginalised... "

No comments: