Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Reports authors state Family First mislead N.Z Public


When does Family First actually get something right?

This ideologically driven pressure-group is not gifted at picking winners and has failed dismally to achieve the goals it has set out to do = a society based on The Old Testament.

Time after time Family First and their ubiquitous spokesman Bob McCoskie shoot-off at the mouth (often in tongues) rather than doing a semblance of research & thinking-through the consequences of their actions.

This time last years they claimed Divorce Rates were harming the New Zealand Economy. One small fact seemed to have escaped their paid researchers - but not myself. Taking their Leviticus logic to its natural conclusion, the fastest way to reduce the so-called harmful effects of divorce is for more Kiwis to become atheists – who are comparatively less represented than Christians in statistics.

Family First wanted Kiwi’s to boycott The Hells Pizza chain (2006) over their condom promotion – giving their targets more free publicity than they ever could have possibly paid for – increasing their sales and establishing their brand.

The year prior they demanded the T.V Program ‘Californication’ be taken off our screens – which again had just the opposite effect – alerting the public there was graphic sex scenes on free-to-view state T.V resulting in ratings sky-rocketed.

So you can firmly place where Family First falls in the ideological spectrum Bob McCoskie personally wanted The Simpson's taken off our screens in 2005 due to foul language.

Over the years bans and boycotts are Family Firsts modus operandi & the list grows year by year they crudely attempt to sledge-hammer their so-called ‘family values’ on-to a reluctant society.

‘Boobs on Bikes’ – should be banned.

‘AIDS pamphlets depicting genitalia ’ – should be banned

‘Web Site Miss Bimbo’ – should be boycotted

‘Girls kissing Girls Radio Competition’ – banned and boycotted.

Now the latest flummox in a long line of them, is their failled attempt to repeal smacking legislation. Family First were one of the major drivers of the appalling worded referendum held this year that wasted 9 million dollars and achieved - yet again - nothing.

This weeks released report commissioned by the incoming National Government into whether smacking laws were effective and if inconsequential smacking by parents had lead to criminal prosecution (which Family First claimed was the reality) has lead the authors of the report to single-out Family Firsts central-role in scare-mongering.

Yet, again Family First got their facts horribly wrong and many of the cases they had championed as being evidence of ‘good parents being targeted’ were at best selective and as one of the authors Nigel Latta told New Zealanders “that can lead it to throwing weight behind parents who don't deserve it and in so doing mislead the public.”

Latta went on to tell of one case Family First had ‘backed’ on Radio New Zealand that they had solicited support for their cause by highlighting “a case were a parent prosecuted for hitting a child with a pillow " but went on to clarify that “at face value ...an extreme over-reaction" but then introduced the real-facts that “it turned out the (perpetrator) had more than 70 convictions for violent offences.”

It was just the bit about the pillow-slapping Family First hollered-about to the local news-media – not the other 70 plus cases of assaults the abuser was found to have perpetrated.

In-fact ALL the cases Family First forwarded cases to Mr Latta and his committee to review as part of some pattern of over-zealous authorities prosecuting innocent parents – in not one of them did Latta feel Child, Youth and Family and police behaved in an appropriate fashion.

Latta is scathing of the Family Firsts selective reporting and its scaremongering – telling McCoskie and his rabble they were at times duped into believing false testimony and, as I said in my introduction, not doing their homework.

Thanks to Latta’s honesty and frankness New Zealanders now know Family First, a so-called Christian based organisation, were happy to back convicted scum-bag child-abusers to achieve their narrow political goals.


2 comments:

Efrique said...

Re the sign at the top: "tennants" isn't a word, and "tenants", though a correctly spelled word, is the wrong word.

tenet
tenant

Canterbury Atheists said...

Hello there,

This is an amateur ‘off the cuff’ blog mostly written over a sandwich at lunchtimes - not ‘The Times of London’ or ‘Newsweek’ magazine who may care about pedantics (is this even a word?) spelling mistakes, grammaticisms (is that a word too?) etc.

All I care about is getting my point across.

Cheers there.

Paul.