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Thursday, December 19, 2024

Sir Bob Jones: Shallow thinking


For avid newspaper readers like me (admittedly a sadly fading sector in an age of smartphone-induced ignorance) a highlight is the amusement I deprive from reading the letters to the editor.

I suspect newspapers don’t receive many, the give-away to that suspicion by so often the same letter writer names cropping up.

The amusement I derive comes from the frequent lack of deeper thought in these missives.

Consider this nonsense from a Graham Booth of Taradale, which appeared in Stuff’s The Post a few days back.

Graham, who sounds more like a Kevin, wrote the following.

“For over a century NZ has attempted to address criminal behaviour, without addressing the root cause.

We had hangings for murders but that never stopped other murders”.

He then goes on to detail other examples of different crimes and punishments, repeating his murder punishment assertion, that these penalties are plainly not working, given these crimes continue to occur. That assertion is totally devoid of logic.

While we can never know exactly, the fact of punishment is logically a detriment, for while we continue to have murders, how many have not occurred because of the potential punishment?

To take Graham’s faulty logic to an extreme, let us assume we legislate to recognising no actions being criminal.

Within a month we’d be reduced to a state of anarchy. There’d no longer be the need for bitter divorce disputes, rather, the simple solution would be to knock off the other party.

There’d no longer be a need to work, given the option to simply take what you want. Very soon we’d all be building fortress homes and arming ourselves to the teeth.

No female could venture out as rapists would find themselves in paradise.

The cold hard reality is that crime and punishment are age-old partners.

So rather than a softer, kinder approach as Graham recommends, again to take an extreme hypothesis, if say shop-lifting was subject to hanging, overnight we can safely assume that contemporary scourge would grind to a halt.

In short, bleeding heart tolerance is not working and instead a case can be made for a much more punitive approach to end criminality.

Sir Bob Jones is a renowned author, columnist , property investor, and former politician, who blogs at No Punches Pulled HERE - where this article was sourced.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

People's failure to read newspapers isn't a sign of ignorance. It's a sign of avoiding ignorance. It is more useful to just sit looking out the window for an hour because even then, what you see has actually happened.

Anonymous said...

I suspect newspapers don’t receive many anymore other than from the usual suspects purely because they do not publish the ones they disagree with.

The same names pop up because of illogical people like Graham from Taradale....as long as you write a letter that supports the 'narrative' you're in....write something else and it will never see the light of day.....

To that end, that is why the MSM print (and digital) are dead to most people.

Anonymous said...

This is an " I admit to the same logic as Sir Robert and recall with sadness the Newspapers (note capital N) of past".
In line with Sir Robert on " Letters to the editor (note lower case e) you only have to read those missives that appear in the Sunday Star Times. Yes I admit, that I read them, and " my take away" is the appearance of sadly misinformed New Zealanders
on many subjects. I could give many examples, but I am sure those who will read Sir Robert's opine then the comments will create in their own minds some of those failings.

Juliet said...

If you suffer from a sense of inferiority, what it sometimes called “imposter syndrome” - a feeling that you intellect is not up to the level of those around you - you need only read the comments on a news site.
If your imposter syndrome is really bad I recommend news.com.au - any story which has comments turned on will do.
You won’t have to read far to find intellects way inferior to your’s. In fact, I guarantee you’ll finish the exercise feeling much better in yourself, but in despair for the reasoning abilities (not to mention the spelling and grammar) of News.com.au readers.

Anonymous said...

Agree completely Bob.

There was a program on crims recently and some far left tosser was telling everyone the cost of sending and keeping people in prison was far too much.

As usual there was no mention of the cost of not sending people to prison. Let's think about the victims for once, because the left never do. We have seen the state of crime under Arderns far left regime , we were well on the way to the situation Bob was describing.

Anonymous said...

Our Manawatu Standard also has Texts to the Editor, which suffer the same fate as the letters; ie heavily censured. I suggested to the Editor he publish all the texts received (except for those with bad language), but claim the views were not always the papers view. Would almost wager a tidy sum that readership would increase dramatically as readers would enjoy sending in their opinions. Much better than the syncophatic reporters articles at present that passes for news