Theology Community for New Zealand

A Complaint and Its Aftermath

The following piece has appeared in Quadrant Online.  It concerns a visitor to New Zealand, a sojourn at Te Papa, a complaint, and what happened as a result.  The complaint?  It was about the museum’s display on “Climate Change”. 

Climate correction in NZ

In November I was a passenger on the cruise liner Volendam, ex-Sydney and hopping from port to port in New Zealand. Note: this is NOT a piece about cruise liners’ safety or otherwise. About November 18 we tied up at Wellington and I scampered ashore to enjoy a visit to Te Papa, the wonderful science and nature museum alongside the wharf.

The best bit was ogling the 4.2m metre colossal squid, alas looking a bit puce in its tank of formaldehyde but nonetheless with eyes as big as basketballs, outstripping the dog in Hans Andersen’s Tinderbox story that had eyes only as big as saucers.

From there I wandered over to the “Awesome Forces” display of nature’s power, where among other activities you can stand in a mock living room and feel what happens when a house is shaken by a NZ-style earthquake.

Nearby was the climate change exhibit, showing how ice ages come and go. I moved along it to the end, and there I got a shock.
The final display was to the effect that global warming is upon us, and the evidence was a blown up graph showing the soaring of temperatures in the past half-century. I looked closer, and discovered the graph was Michael Mann’s now-notorious “Hockey Stick” purporting to show that after 1000 years of stable temperatures, manmade CO2 outpourings were causing unprecedented warming – the graph line showing an uptick resembling the blade of an ice-hockey stick, if the shaft was positioned on the floor. (Remember, an ice-hockey stick blade is a lot bigger than our grass-hockey-stick’s blade).

The Mann graph was the darling of the 2001 IPCC report as it provided a simple, accessible ‘proof’ of the man-made global warming hypothesis. It was not only used half a dozen times in the report but was the poster-child for IPCC forums, for example used as the backdrop for a television address by the then science co-chair of the IPCC, Sir John Houghton. Al Gore of course used the graph tellingly in his movie “Inconvenient Truth”.

However, the graph was exposed as dud science by the McIntyre & McKitrick duo in 2003, whose efforts to check it had been delayed by Mann’s reluctance to provide them with his raw data. Among the revelations were that Mann’s algorithms were such that almost any data fed into his model resulted in a hockey stick shape, and that his 15^th Century temperature estimation depended on data from a single bristle-cone pine  – oh influential tree! By the time of its 2007 report, the IPCC had tactfully swept the Mann graph under the carpet.
Whole books have since been written on how the Mann graph embodied the flaws of IPCC science and processes.

I made a bee-line to the Te Papa reception desk to get a feedback form, and on it I wrote my complaint to the director that a science museum, in a display tailored to the student demographic, was using discredited scientific material. I did my best, from memory, to spell out why and how the graph was discredited, and left my contact details.

I also dropped in to a public library and emailed a letter to the Dominion Post complaining about the exhibit, correctly assuming the museum itself would pay no attention to my feedback note.

It happened that it was a NZ election weekend and the letters page was full of election argy-bargy, with my letter understandably consigned to the bin.

Life moved on but on January 16 I decided again to be action-man, and sent my complaint this time to Terry Dunleavy, honorary secretary of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, a sceptic organization. Terry promptly passed my complaint on to Dr Hamish Campbell, Senior Scientist, GNS Science, a research institute and consultancy “demonstrating scientific excellence since 1865”. Hamish doubles as a Te Papa geologist and curator.

Terry ended his message with a threat that, in the event, proved quite unnecessary: “We would like your assurance that it (the Hockey Stick) will be removed from display in Te Papa, failing which we will be forced to complain to higher authority.”

Hamish’s reply was a model of pleasant and constructive response to criticism, a far cry from the defensive and often contemptuous feedback normally provided to ‘deniers’ by the warmist establishment. Hamish remarked that the Hockey Stick display resulted from collaboration among his GNS Science, the semi-government National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, and the NZ official MetService weather bureau.

Hamish wrote:

Terry replied in equally friendly fashion:

So there we have it. A casual visitor to a museum makes a complaint, an official agrees it is valid, and pledges to get to work on a correction. Is life meant to be this easy?
Tony Thomas is a retired business and economics journalist

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I don’t know Mark Driscoll. Nor, for that matter, do those who make up the disturbingly enthusiastic crowd of stone-bearers who wait in the wings, apparently hoping for his downfall. They’re calling him a thug, alleging that he suffers from mental illness, calling him a slime ball, a heretic, an “ass,” a “jerk,” and worse. [...]
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Gendercide

Ram Mashru

Gendercide in South Asia takes many forms: baby girls are killed or abandoned if not aborted as foetuses. Girls that are not killed often suffer malnutrition and medical neglect as sons are favoured when shelter, medicine and food are scarce. Trafficking, dowry deaths, honour killings and deaths resulting from domestic violence are all further evils perpetrated against women. This femicide has led the Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces to report in ‘Women in an Insecure World’ that a secret genocide is being carried out against women at a time when deaths resulting from armed conflicts have decreased.

The brutal irony of femicide is that it is an evil perpetrated against girls by women.
The most insidious force is often the mother in law, the domestic matriarch, under whose authority the daughter in law lives. Policy efforts to halt infanticide have been directed at mothers, who are often victims themselves. The trailer shows tragic scenes of women having to decide between killing their daughters and their own well-being. In India women who fail to produce sons are beaten, raped or killed so that men can remarry in the hope of procuring a more productive wife.

It is an oft-made argument that parental discrimination between children would end if families across south Asia were rescued from poverty. But two factors particularly suggest that femicide is a cultural phenomenon and that development and economic policy are only a partial solution: Firstly, there is no evidence of concerted female infanticide among poverty-stricken societies in Africa or the Caribbean. Secondly, it is the affluent and urban middle classes, who are aware of prenatal screenings, who have access to clinics and who can afford abortions that commit foeticide. Activists fear 8 million female foetuses have been aborted in India in the last decade.

Hat Tip: The Independent.

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Panty Waist Liberals and Criminal Gangs

The case of the Turangi child rapist has sickened the nation.  There has been a plethora of reports in the media about how the 16 year old, who has plead guilty, is an ordinary fellow.  His friends expressed puzzlement, disbelief, and confusion over his actions.  His community network spoke of his family being fine, upstanding people.  We were all left wondering, What on earth has gone on here?

Now, more sinister matters are coming to light.  This from Stuff:

The teenager who raped a five-year-old girl in a Turangi holiday park has gang connections.

The Sunday Star-Times has been told the 16-year-old, who has pleaded guilty to the attack, was motivated by the possibility of securing entry into a gang.  Because of the suppression orders around the case, the gang cannot be named.

The Star-Times understands the teen’s father had been associated with the gang, but not since the attack, which shocked New Zealand in the lead-up to Christmas. The boy’s father cannot be named for legal reasons. The claims were made by several sources close to the investigation.”The family and the boy are connected to a gang,” one said. “The family is gang-associated. It’s not just the father.”

Another source said: “The family are well-recognised as being what they are … rotten apples. Where are you heading in society when you have this underbelly?”

A couple of cautions.  Firstly, the Sunday Star-Times is hardly a fish-wrap of record and reports such as this should be treated with a dose of salt until reliably corroborated elsewhere.  Secondly, we note the report refers to “sources close to the investigation” and “another source”.  None are named.  This hardly deserves credence until people are named and go on the record. 

We shall see.  In general, however, there is an aura of credibility about the story.  It is well known that gang recruitment most often requires a novitiate to commit a serious crime as part of his “entrance exam”.  Whether or not gangs were involved in this case–something which will no doubt be corroborated in due course–it reminds us that there are vast criminal enterprises in New Zealand whose primary reason for existence is to prey on others and benefit financially from their crimes.  And for many gang membership is an attractive career option.

It’s time to clean up.  We should never have allowed the civil right of  free association to be abused by liberals to the extent that it covers the right of criminal gangs to exist.  A serious respect for civil rights would lead a more enlightened society to conclude that if an organization were proven through due judicial process to exist for the purpose of committing crimes and preying upon other citizens, the organization needs to be outlawed and interdicted.  Just to belong, or be associated would then be a criminal offence. 

Oh, but then no doubt the UN would scold New Zealand as a pariah state. The shame and scorn would be just too much for our panty waist liberals who only see all of life through their insipid, one dimensional pinot-gris.

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The Three Most Deadly Words in the Language

Justin Taylor has posted the following:

A new documentary, It’s a Girl! The Three Deadliest Words in the World, explores the systematic gendercide taking place in India, China, and other areas of South Asia.

Ram Mushru, reviewing the film the Independent, writes:  “The trailer’s most chilling scene is one with an Indian woman who, unable to contain her laughter, confesses to having killed eight infant daughters.” That line makes me think of Romans 1:32: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things [like heartless, ruthless murder---see vv. 29-31] deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

You can watch it here:

We are thankful for the expose, the disgust, and the opposition. May it grow to an unstoppable crescendo. But don’t expect much support from feminists and liberals. How can they oppose in India and China and South Asia what they promote in their own back yards as a human right?

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Unscrewing the Inscrutable

Culture and Politics – Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, January 20, 2012

So then. Let us have a little chat, you and I, about the exuberant Newtlove that is popping up in some quarters. Whence cometh it? I would like to identify the point of origin first, and then give perhaps something of an indication of what I think of it.

The meme that is circulating, mostly in Newt’s head, is that he is a great debater, and we need someone on that stage who could smoke Obama in a presidential debate. And I do grant that smoke would be involved, along with other acrid smells, but I don’t really think a debate with Newt would result in Obama’s second term aspirations departing from him with a whoosh.

Why do some think that Newt is a great debater? To pose the question is to ask me, to use Mencken’s phrase, to unscrew the inscrutable. They think it for the same reason that others think Obama is a great rhetorician, and still others think the musical soundtrack from The Little Mermaid is great art.

But here is my stab at it. We have had politicians who are limp-wristed and indecisive for so long that we now think that anyone who has articulated a clear point of view in a manner that looks prepared to stand by it (for five minutes on either side) has actually argued for it already. Another way of saying this is that Newt is combative with liberals, and that is why some folks like it so much. Everybody loves a show, and Newt is a gorgeous mountebank. In the theater of drab that our press-release approach to politics has become, he is a saucy fellow.

John King of CNN wilted under Newt’s bombast, but that is not the point. The point is whether or not he needed to wilt. King tried ineffectively to defend himself against Newt’s attack by saying that it was another network that had done the interview, and it was one of those things that was “out there” with people “talking about it,” gotta ask, journalistic duty, etc. Newt, in bellicose mode, wasn’t having any and said to him, on the contrary, “your network decided to lead off with this question, and it was Disgraceful, Appalling, Reprehensible,” or whatever words of high dudgeon he used. “How dare you bring moral indignation into a presidential debate! I’ll show you moral indignation.” The audience was at first agape, and then it roared to its feet. Is he not whacking a liberal? What’s not to like?

Despicable is not serial adultery. Despicable is asking about it.

I don’t think we have seen the like since Woodrow Wilson was a blastocyte. Obama is certainly arrogant, working that little tiptilted-nose-attitude thing of his, but his hubris is an arugula salad kind of pride. Newt works day and night in the great kitchen like a master confectioner of conceit, with one of those thirty gallon stainless steel mixing bowls, making tray after tray of the peanut brittle of brag.

I don’t think I could watch an Obama/Newt debate without constantly looking around for the little car that the 13 clowns were going to tumble out of. This is the circus, isn’t it?

We are dealing with a high vulgarian, living well above the tree line. We are dealing with an ego of field rank, looking around for Wellington. We are looking at a flyblown reputation, masquerading as something else — but we should remember that shiny is not the same thing as clean. This is a merchant of buncombe, with everything in his shop priced to move.

If a Newt administration were to find its ideal historian, we would have to fill that role with a cross of Rabelais, Hunter Thompson, and H.L. Mencken.

The one question that has not yet been asked, and perhaps needs to be, has to do with that $1.5 million tab of his at Tiffany’s. It has been too easily assumed that the jewellery was for his wife. But perhaps he needed to save up a little bling for the Obama debates?

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Unscrewing the Inscrutable

Culture and Politics – Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, January 20, 2012

So then. Let us have a little chat, you and I, about the exuberant Newtlove that is popping up in some quarters. Whence cometh it? I would like to identify the point of origin first, and then give perhaps something of an indication of what I think of it.

The meme that is circulating, mostly in Newt’s head, is that he is a great debater, and we need someone on that stage who could smoke Obama in a presidential debate. And I do grant that smoke would be involved, along with other acrid smells, but I don’t really think a debate with Newt would result in Obama’s second term aspirations departing from him with a whoosh.

Why do some think that Newt is a great debater? To pose the question is to ask me, to use Mencken’s phrase, to unscrew the inscrutable. They think it for the same reason that others think Obama is a great rhetorician, and still others think the musical soundtrack from The Little Mermaid is great art.

But here is my stab at it. We have had politicians who are limp-wristed and indecisive for so long that we now think that anyone who has articulated a clear point of view in a manner that looks prepared to stand by it (for five minutes on either side) has actually argued for it already. Another way of saying this is that Newt is combative with liberals, and that is why some folks like it so much. Everybody loves a show, and Newt is a gorgeous mountebank. In the theater of drab that our press-release approach to politics has become, he is a saucy fellow.

John King of CNN wilted under Newt’s bombast, but that is not the point. The point is whether or not he needed to wilt. King tried ineffectively to defend himself against Newt’s attack by saying that it was another network that had done the interview, and it was one of those things that was “out there” with people “talking about it,” gotta ask, journalistic duty, etc. Newt, in bellicose mode, wasn’t having any and said to him, on the contrary, “your network decided to lead off with this question, and it was Disgraceful, Appalling, Reprehensible,” or whatever words of high dudgeon he used. “How dare you bring moral indignation into a presidential debate! I’ll show you moral indignation.” The audience was at first agape, and then it roared to its feet. Is he not whacking a liberal? What’s not to like?

Despicable is not serial adultery. Despicable is asking about it.

I don’t think we have seen the like since Woodrow Wilson was a blastocyte. Obama is certainly arrogant, working that little tiptilted-nose-attitude thing of his, but his hubris is an arugula salad kind of pride. Newt works day and night in the great kitchen like a master confectioner of conceit, with one of those thirty gallon stainless steel mixing bowls, making tray after tray of the peanut brittle of brag.

I don’t think I could watch an Obama/Newt debate without constantly looking around for the little car that the 13 clowns were going to tumble out of. This is the circus, isn’t it?

We are dealing with a high vulgarian, living well above the tree line. We are dealing with an ego of field rank, looking around for Wellington. We are looking at a flyblown reputation, masquerading as something else — but we should remember that shiny is not the same thing as clean. This is a merchant of buncombe, with everything in his shop priced to move.

If a Newt administration were to find its ideal historian, we would have to fill that role with a cross of Rabelais, Hunter Thompson, and H.L. Mencken.

The one question that has not yet been asked, and perhaps needs to be, has to do with that $1.5 million tab of his at Tiffany’s. It has been too easily assumed that the jewellery was for his wife. But perhaps he needed to save up a little bling for the Obama debates?

Go to Source

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Nothing a Special Grant from WINZ Won’t Fix

We are about to have another talk-fest on child poverty and income inequality in New Zealand.  This will be a politically inspired confabulation. 

Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia are setting up a ministerial committee on poverty under the Maori Party’s post-election agreement with the National Party.  (NZ Herald)

Some social researchers have discovered that children born to parents living in “poverty” are likely to be significantly poorer than others in their demographic cohort for the rest of their lives.  In other words, if they are born into poverty, it, more often than not becomes a trap, a deep slippery pit from which they never climb out.

A long-term study of 1265 children born in Christchurch in 1977 has found that those whose families were poor in their first 10 years of life earned about $20,000 a year less by the age of 30 than those who grew up in rich families.  Those from poor families were more likely to leave school without qualifications, have babies before they were 20, commit crimes, go on welfare and have addiction and other mental health problems in adulthood.

This is the sort of thing that politicians don’t like to hear because it means that intergenerational poverty is not something which can be fixed with a few more taxpayer dollars being showered down upon unworthy recipients.

Professor Fergusson said the study showed that income inequality and behavioural issues, such as parents’ addictions, both had to be tackled to fix social problems.  “For example, increasing the income of substance-using parents may be counter-productive since it will give them more access to purchasing alcohol or drugs,” he said.

The academics are not sure what the critical factors or switches are which consign the children of poor families into lifestyles of poverty.  No doubt there are many.  Far too many for bureaucrats and state programmes to fix.  So, the politically inspired confabulation will contribute to global warming, but little more.

We will state the matter plainly.  Poverty is not the problem.  Humanity, or the human soul is.  The perpetual, intergenerational poor are that way because they have a malady of soul.  Yes, the children caught this from their parents, but having caught it, they are enslaved and conditioned to such an extent their escape is virtually impossible, without a radical conversion.

What are some of the characteristics of this spiritual affliction?

Firstly, self-indulgence.  You can be poor without being self-indulgent, but once self-indulgence has overtaken the soul, poverty is a perpetual occupant of the household.

Secondly, an epicurean “living for the moment”–that life is a matter of eating, drinking, and being merry, for tomorrow we all die.

Thirdly, a deep sense of envy and entitlement–that things are bad because someone or something owes us something, and we are doing it tough only because they haven’t been made to pay it over yet.

Fourthly, a view of time and the future that counts the future in hours or days.

Fifthly, a lust for possession and consumption goods to satiate and  provide temporary pleasure.

Sixthly, wealth is something which comes by chance, good luck, or winning Lotto.  This is an outworking of the belief that there is no, or little, sense denying oneself in the present for the sake of the future.  Everything is existential.  Everything is now.  Or, it is not real.

Seventh: hard work is an affliction that society from which society ought to protect me.

Eight: there is no sense of duty, obligation, or responsibility.  There is no sense or belief that one has come into this world to serve, to honour, and to obey.

These are the eight deadly sins of poverty.  In our view, a person can be living in threads and yet not be poor in heart or attitude.  They can be far richer than their economic circumstances.  By the same token, some people can be living in the lap of luxury and be poverty-stricken in heart.  But once the richer person had squandered his or her wealth and are at the bottom of the heap, neither they nor their progeny are likely to escape, without a change of heart–a conversion, if you will.

The real issue, then, is whence and how will such a conversion come?  Call us cynical, but state programmes are just never going to cut it.  In fact, the underlying premises of statist amelioration actually locks the spiritual malady in place, reinforcing it, making it stronger.  State programmes implicitly reinforce the maladies of envy, covetousness, demand rights, instant gratification, and instant satiation.  (Why else would the State own and run lottery companies?)

In complete contrast, consider, for example, the testimony of the Proverbs (chapter 6)

⁶ Go to the ant, O sluggard;
   consider her ways, and be wise.
⁷ Without having any chief,
   officer, or ruler,
⁸ she prepares her bread in summer
   and gathers her food in harvest.
⁹ How long will you lie there, O sluggard?
   When will you arise from your sleep?
¹⁰ A little sleep, a little slumber,
   a little folding of the hands to rest,
¹¹ and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
   and want like an armed man.

Proverbs 26:

¹³ The sluggard says, “There is a lion in the road!
   There is a lion in the streets!”
¹⁴ As a door turns on its hinges,
   so does a sluggard on his bed.
¹⁵ The sluggard buries his hand in the dish;
   it wears him out to bring it back to his mouth.

Proverbs 20:4

  The sluggard does not plough in the autumn;
   he will seek at harvest and have nothing.

But, no worries, mate.  We’ll all take care of you through a multitude of state programmes taking other peoples’ money and giving it on to you.

Proverbs 24:

³⁰ I passed by the field of a sluggard,
   by the vineyard of a man lacking sense,
³¹ and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns;
   the ground was covered with nettles,
   and its stone wall was broken down. 

You poor thing.  Here’s a special grant from WINZ to tide you over.

Nope.  Our expectations from the government talk fest on poverty and inequality are exceedingly low.  Somehow, we don’t think we will be disappointed.

One thing is clear: these texts from Proverbs are entirely offensive and unacceptable in a religious culture which believes in demand rights or state-funded entitlements.

Go to Source

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Nothing a Special Grant from WINZ Won’t Fix

We are about to have another talk-fest on child poverty and income inequality in New Zealand.  This will be a politically inspired confabulation. 

Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia are setting up a ministerial committee on poverty under the Maori Party’s post-election agreement with the National Party.  (NZ Herald)

Some social researchers have discovered that children born to parents living in “poverty” are likely to be significantly poorer than others in their demographic cohort for the rest of their lives.  In other words, if they are born into poverty, it, more often than not becomes a trap, a deep slippery pit from which they never climb out.

A long-term study of 1265 children born in Christchurch in 1977 has found that those whose families were poor in their first 10 years of life earned about $20,000 a year less by the age of 30 than those who grew up in rich families.  Those from poor families were more likely to leave school without qualifications, have babies before they were 20, commit crimes, go on welfare and have addiction and other mental health problems in adulthood.

This is the sort of thing that politicians don’t like to hear because it means that intergenerational poverty is not something which can be fixed with a few more taxpayer dollars being showered down upon unworthy recipients.

Professor Fergusson said the study showed that income inequality and behavioural issues, such as parents’ addictions, both had to be tackled to fix social problems.  “For example, increasing the income of substance-using parents may be counter-productive since it will give them more access to purchasing alcohol or drugs,” he said.

The academics are not sure what the critical factors or switches are which consign the children of poor families into lifestyles of poverty.  No doubt there are many.  Far too many for bureaucrats and state programmes to fix.  So, the politically inspired confabulation will contribute to global warming, but little more.

We will state the matter plainly.  Poverty is not the problem.  Humanity, or the human soul is.  The perpetual, intergenerational poor are that way because they have a malady of soul.  Yes, the children caught this from their parents, but having caught it, they are enslaved and conditioned to such an extent their escape is virtually impossible, without a radical conversion.

What are some of the characteristics of this spiritual affliction?

Firstly, self-indulgence.  You can be poor without being self-indulgent, but once self-indulgence has overtaken the soul, poverty is a perpetual occupant of the household.

Secondly, an epicurean “living for the moment”–that life is a matter of eating, drinking, and being merry, for tomorrow we all die.

Thirdly, a deep sense of envy and entitlement–that things are bad because someone or something owes us something, and we are doing it tough only because they haven’t been made to pay it over yet.

Fourthly, a view of time and the future that counts the future in hours or days.

Fifthly, a lust for possession and consumption goods to satiate and  provide temporary pleasure.

Sixthly, wealth is something which comes by chance, good luck, or winning Lotto.  This is an outworking of the belief that there is no, or little, sense denying oneself in the present for the sake of the future.  Everything is existential.  Everything is now.  Or, it is not real.

Seventh: hard work is an affliction that society from which society ought to protect me.

Eight: there is no sense of duty, obligation, or responsibility.  There is no sense or belief that one has come into this world to serve, to honour, and to obey.

These are the eight deadly sins of poverty.  In our view, a person can be living in threads and yet not be poor in heart or attitude.  They can be far richer than their economic circumstances.  By the same token, some people can be living in the lap of luxury and be poverty-stricken in heart.  But once the richer person had squandered his or her wealth and are at the bottom of the heap, neither they nor their progeny are likely to escape, without a change of heart–a conversion, if you will.

The real issue, then, is whence and how will such a conversion come?  Call us cynical, but state programmes are just never going to cut it.  In fact, the underlying premises of statist amelioration actually locks the spiritual malady in place, reinforcing it, making it stronger.  State programmes implicitly reinforce the maladies of envy, covetousness, demand rights, instant gratification, and instant satiation.  (Why else would the State own and run lottery companies?)

In complete contrast, consider, for example, the testimony of the Proverbs (chapter 6)

⁶ Go to the ant, O sluggard;
   consider her ways, and be wise.
⁷ Without having any chief,
   officer, or ruler,
⁸ she prepares her bread in summer
   and gathers her food in harvest.
⁹ How long will you lie there, O sluggard?
   When will you arise from your sleep?
¹⁰ A little sleep, a little slumber,
   a little folding of the hands to rest,
¹¹ and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
   and want like an armed man.

Proverbs 26:

¹³ The sluggard says, “There is a lion in the road!
   There is a lion in the streets!”
¹⁴ As a door turns on its hinges,
   so does a sluggard on his bed.
¹⁵ The sluggard buries his hand in the dish;
   it wears him out to bring it back to his mouth.

Proverbs 20:4

  The sluggard does not plough in the autumn;
   he will seek at harvest and have nothing.

But, no worries, mate.  We’ll all take care of you through a multitude of state programmes taking other peoples’ money and giving it on to you.

Proverbs 24:

³⁰ I passed by the field of a sluggard,
   by the vineyard of a man lacking sense,
³¹ and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns;
   the ground was covered with nettles,
   and its stone wall was broken down. 

You poor thing.  Here’s a special grant from WINZ to tide you over.

Nope.  Our expectations from the government talk fest on poverty and inequality are exceedingly low.  Somehow, we don’t think we will be disappointed.

One thing is clear: these texts from Proverbs are entirely offensive and unacceptable in a religious culture which believes in demand rights or state-funded entitlements.

Go to Source

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