The national bash rate of babies continues at shameful levels. Television presenters are tut-tutting and lamenting “our” shocking rate of violence towards children.
They continue to earbash us that “we” have one of the worst rates of child abuse in the civilized world. So much for the anti-slapping law.

“We” apparently haven’t learnt to stop beating, stomping and dropping them on their heads.
The question is: Who is this “we”, Tonto?
Why is it “our” problem when the vast majority of NZ parents love and care for their children? The average New Zealander would give their life to keep their offspring safe and most have a proud record of caring.
Violence in the homes of nearly all Kiwi families is a non-event.
Mind you, taking a swing at mine would be suicidal. One is now bigger than me and the other a blackbelt. But even when they are little, any parent with a shred of parenting instinct works to protect, not harm.
The problem is a small minority who do not have the intellectual capacity to qualify as parents and so should be sterilized.
We all know the majority of child bashing cases emanate from the same distinct group of losers. They are usually known to the law, are bludgers on society and have no intention of ever being worthwhile contributing members of a community – or raising their offspring to be.
We are too polite – or Politically-Correctly neutered – to face it and deal with it.
The simple answer is: stop those breeding who do not have the skill to be a decent parent. Force feed contraception if necessary for the lowlifes who are capable of breeding, but not capable of nurturing.
Not only for the sake of stopping the cruelty and suffering – the human cost – but for the sake of the stretched health resources and taxing price of senseless violence against the defenseless – our tax revenue that should be better spent looking after decent, law abiding and caring citizens.
If child abuse is “our” problem, then “we” should dictate the answer:
Don’t let them breed.
If we can’t dictate the solution, then why insist on labeling it as society’s collective problem?

Annual ageing
On a lighter note, another birthday occurred again this year and I’m suspicious there’s a pattern emerging here. After too many years of careful observation it would appear that this happens on an annual basis.
It wasn’t my idea to have a birthday every year. That is some sort of tradition my mother started. Since then, however, I’ve just gone along with the idea. Can’t see the point in fighting it, when there’s presents and cake involved.
The grandchildren made some great cards. Darcy enquired how old I would be, didn’t get a straight answer, so cheerfully announced he’d draw about a million candles on it.
However, the downside of many birthdays, which no-one really explains to you way back as an excited four year old, is that if you keep doing it, you will get old. They warn you of the consequences of a host of other hazards:
Don’t put beads in your ear. They’ll get stuck.
Eat your veges or you’ll get scurvy.
Don’t kiss THAT girl, you don’t know where she’s been.
Wash behind your ears. There’s potatoes growing there. (Huh?)
Don’t play with matches, you’ll cause Global Warming.
No, they never tell you: “If you keep having birthdays, one day you’ll be so old there will so much hair growing out your ears you’ll never fit a bead in there.”
The growing old issue starts in a subtle way. Nothing obvious at first, just little insidious changes that creep up.
Then you find you’ve been burgled.
One day you’ll wake up and find someone has stolen the end of the sellotape. No matter how long you look, and scrape a finger nail around the smooth surface of the reel, there will be no sign of the edge. This is because someone must have snuck into your house in the middle of the night and taken the cut end of the sellotape.
The answer of course is not a new roll of sellotape – the only solution is that you need glasses.
You never realise how bad the eyesight issue has become until you are loaned a pair of glasses, usually by some old wise person who has been through the Getting Old stage before you. Such as your sweet old wife.
Then it dawns, just how visually impaired you’d become in a space of, what seems like, 30 seconds.
Suddenly a whole new world opens up and you realise all the little things that you can see again. Reading without squinting and getting a headache; digging a prickle out of a foot and actually being able to see it; and gazing upon the lovely face of one’s spouse and being able to recognise them. Ah, bliss.
If only I could hear what she was saying.

Rude fruit
Finally, the parting word comes from a fruit marketer, responding to the Advertising Standards Authority’s upholding of a complaint about rude fruit.
A fresh food and juice company’s campaign, of a banana “flashing” its phallic bare bits to a horrified strawberry and a distraught pear, has been ruled inappropriate.
The company however says the campaign has gained “good penetration”.