June 19, 2009
The last few days have seen many public statements from journalists and MPs expressing disapproval of the referendum question and of the cost. The Prime Minister’s reassurance that he believes the law is working well and that he will not be changing the law is very welcome. Many people say that they are “over” the debate about child discipline.
So it may be tempting to ignore the referendum altogether. But there are some excellent reasons to vote in the referendum, and support A YES Vote.
- To demonstrate that people are not fooled by the referendum’s tricky question.
- To continue to demonstrate to politicians that there is support for the law.
- To address attempts to undermining public confidence in the law.
- To achieve some quiet time for the law to bed down peacefully and have a positive effect on the way children are disciplined in New Zealand.
- To observe over time, and in an unbiased way, how it is working in practice.
If over time we find that there are cases where prosecutions would have been best avoided because they involve trivial assaults and the stress caused by prosecutions is counter-indicated lets look at measures outside law to ensure that these are handled in a compassionate way. We do not need to re-introduce a law that says some assaults on children are acceptable and that physical punishment is ok part of family discipline.
A YES Vote strengthens support for the law.
Others have commented on this as well; see The Standard’s Still Voting Yes, and Kiwipolitico’s fascinating Game Theory Analysis of Voting in the Referendum.
June 17, 2009
It’s time to share some love. Over the last few days, we’ve had lots of coverage from a variety of blogs, and we’d like to give you the opportunity to see what others are saying. We’d like you consider supporting our friends who support us, by visiting their blogs occasionally and joining in the conversation.
The Hand Mirror has supported us from the start, most recently pointing out how confused John Boscawen is over the whole issue. They were the first to run our skyscraper.
No Right Turn has mentioned us several times, and runs our lovely banners too.
The Standard has run several items, most lately “Child beating lobby finished“, and also runs our skyscraper.
g.blog’s published “That ridiculous referendum” yesterday and continues to give us good and broad coverage; they also run our skyscrapers.
Still Truckin had a story today called “And it’s all wasted time” and also runs our skyscraper.
TechTime summarised what we’re about and also runs our banner.
Ideologically Impure says “The question is stupid and its writers should feel stupid“.
Red Headed Devil child runs our skyscrapers.
If you think Christians are on the wrong side of this debate, think again. Christian Social Services (the folks who have to deal with the consequences of bad behaviour) are right behind us. Other brave religious souls have also spoken out.
Pork ‘n Puha run our banner.
Public Address have run a couple of great stories which have generated heaps of discussion and traffic.
Chris Nimmo not only runs the YES in ’09 Facebook Group, he also runs our banner.
TruthseekerNZ is unequivocal about his position.
Andrew McMillan discusses Childrens’ Rights in New Zealand.
Thank you so much for your support! We’re sorry if we missed anyone, do let us know and we’ll mention you in the next round.
Tags: andrew mcmillan ,chris nimmo ,christian social services ,g.blog ,ideologically impure ,john boscawen ,no right turn ,pork n puha ,red headed devil child ,still truckin ,support ,techtime ,the hand mirror ,the standard ,truthseekernz
May 31, 2009
Google’s PageRanks were updated last week, and we’ve achieved an astounding PageRank of five after being live for under two months! We’ve never seen that happen to a site quite so quickly before, and we’re pleased to be part of a movement that’s able to generate so much traction so quickly. PageRank is Google’s measure of how important and authoritative a web page is; the higher the pagerank, the higher up the search results lists your site is when people search for topics related to your site.
We’ve served tens of thousands of pages to thousands of visitors.
We’ve also received excellent coverage online in places like Hard News, The Hand Mirror, No Right Turn, The Standard, and Frogblog.
The YES in ’09 Facebook Group has 273 members and is still growing stronger every day.
For a study of how attitude affects outcomes in the Twitterverse, compare a search on @theyesvote to a search on @vote_no to see what people really think.
We are committed to retaining a tone that is positive, constructive and evidence-based. This referendum isn’t about personalities, it’s about the issues. It isn’t about religion, it’s about best practice. It isn’t about sound bites, it’s about the whole complex story. And it isn’t about protecting parents, it’s about protecting children.
But the real contest isn’t in cyberspace, it’s in the real world. It’s great to get the word out and build our online following, but to win the real game we need to convince our friends, families, colleages and contacts that a Yes Vote in the August referendum is the only way to send a clear message to our politicians to protect our children by retaining a Child Discipline Law that is working well.
While we seem to be winning the cyberspace contest for now, we won’t be smug or complacent. We need to be out there taking action, and engaging in conversation with everyone who is willing to listen about why a Yes Vote in this referendum is so important to the future of our country.
So let’s seize the initiative, and get out there and raise awareness with as many people as possible.
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Tags: anti-smacking referendum ,cyberspace ,facebook ,frogblog ,google ,hard news ,no right turn ,pagerank ,the hand mirror ,the standard ,vote no ,voteno.org.nz
