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What’s it got to do with the UN? On Channel Four News tonight it was reported that the UK government is to ban childminders from smacking children from the autumn. What I found odd in the report was that apparently the UN thinks the government should go further and prevent parents, not just childminders, from smacking.
I don’t have strong feelings either way on whether smacking should be allowed. What gets me is that the UN thinks it is its job to decide whether or not it should be legal. Surely the UN’s role – if it has one at all – is to provide a forum to discuss disagreements between countries, helping to prevent wars. It should not be for deciding the domestic policies of individual countries.
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Surely you jest…the UN thinks its business is every single person’s life!
“They” know what’s best for absolutely everyone! Of course, the fact that they learned quickly from the Iraqis how to loot just shows they learn the best techniques for everything VERY quickly, thus prooving they should be in charge of all else!
The UN has not prevented a single act of genocide or rid the world of a single dictatorship and is now hell-bent on stopping the parents of the world from smacking their children.
A more modest program of UN action or am I missing the most colossal joke of modern times?
I’ve been promoting the idea of evicting it from Manhattan and using its headquarters as a hostel for victims of government persecutions the UN refuses to address.
Whack the UN!
We should not talk about the UN’s “role”, because it doesn’t have one. The UN is defunct, toothless, a sleazy rest home for thugs and dictators. Their opinions, including the opinions of Mr Busyboots Kofi Anan, are no more relevant to the First World than are the opinions of my cat. We must stop clothing them in credibility. They have none. It doesn’t matter what they think about families dishing out the occasional slap to their children. Why is Channel 4 reporting on their thoughts? Was it a slow news day? Of course the UN should be evicted from Manhattan. But I don’t think it should become a hostelry for people with grudges against governments, Alan K. Once they’d had the exterminators in and hosed down the walls, it might make nice, expensive condos. No one previously employed there would be eligible to buy.
What it’s got to do with the UN is precisely the same as what it has to do with any government: they like ordering people around.
“I don’t have strong feelings either way on whether smacking should be allowed.”
Is it that you no strong feelings on whether or not assault is acceptable? Or is it just assault against children that is OK?
Actually, Alan Forrester, I think it’s smacking you (really hard) that most of us feel would be really neat.
Hear hear, Belle.
Mr. Forrester, the point is not how people discipline their children. The point is that it is not the UN’s business. And, might I point out, it isn’t your business either, except when it comes to your own — but I must note that your statements make it obvious that you have none. (If you do, I hope you’re prepared to send them to prison, which institution will impose the control you weren’t willing to.)
Julian Morrison writes:
The UN is not a government.