Forget about “Baby Face” Nelson – a fresh claim can be made to the baby-face hoodlum title

Betcha we would not be allowed our bottles if we found ourselves in the dock.

We could learn a lot from the Pakistanis about how to deal with young thugs.

In this country we have separate justice processes for under 17-year-olds. There’s a child offending process for 10- to 13-year-olds and the youth justice process for 14- to 16-year-olds.

Pakistan does not share our namby-pamby approach. Right now – according to a report in the Daily Mail – one Muhammad Mosa Khan has appeared in court accused of planning a murder, threatening police and interfering in state affairs.

He was charged along with other members of his family.

And this little toughie is…

Wait for it…

Nine months old.

Michael Houston would like to meet J.S.Bach (whose second missus would have had big feet)

J.S.Bach … composer and foot-enlarger.

Your hard-working member happened to be tuned in to the National station this afternoon when he heard classical pianist Michael Houston chatting about the people he would like to take with him on a voyage to Marsh.

Johann Sebastian Bach was on his list.

Alf can’t imagine the great composer being a great conversationalist, other than to ask his missus if she was in the mood tonight, something that presumably happened fairly often because he had heaps of kids.

The tally is recorded here.

Mallard comes up with a new rule to muzzle Our Maggie’s joshing of the childless Jacinda

Dunno if you should put children in it, but it’s good for coal. And for ill-considered private member’s bills.

The wonderful Maggie Barry showed them Labour tossers a thing or two yesterday.

She refused to apologise for claiming Labour’s Jacinda Ardern was ill-equipped to comment on paid parental leave because she did not have any children.

Maggie made that remark while we were debating a private member’s bill proposing to extend leave from 14 weeks to six months.

The bill is sponsored by Labour’s Sue Moroney (who happens to have two children, the last time Alf counted).

Just look at Don Brash before blaming junk food for the rising obesity levels among today’s school kids

Billy Bunter was a rare exception when Alf went to Greyfriars.

Dunno if similar work has been done in NZ, but Alf was cheered to learn that someone has studied the trend towards driving kids to school and sparing them the effort of getting there the hard way.

Back in Alf’s schooldays we walked to school or we got there on a bike.

Bloody good exercise. And this – he reckons – explains at least partly why the brats who are driven to school by molly-coddling parents are becoming a generation of tubbies.

He is fortified in this thinking after stumbling on the work of an American researcher who has looked into this and reported her findings in a paper headed Active Transportation to School: Trends Among U.S. Schoolchildren, 1969–2001

Surprise: tots tend to hit trouble on farm bikes

Looks like some farm parents should buck up their ideas.

Alf is perturbed to learn that children as young as two are being injured while driving all-terrain vehicles.

No, not simply sitting on them. Driving the bloody things.

Kate Anson, a former New Zealand researcher now working in Australia, has studied deaths and injuries caused by all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), which can have three or four wheels and are also known as farm bikes or quad bikes.