Louisa is on the warpath again, this time for more sex-change funding – but at whose expense?

Alf notes with great admiration the efforts of Labour MP Louisa Wall to turn lots more blokes into sheilas and lots more sheilas into blokes.

Ms Wall, for constituents who might have forgotten, is the Labour bint who introduced the legislation that legalised same-sex marriage.

Now she is banging on about the transgender community needing more support than it is getting from the Government.

More particularly, she wants taxpayers to cough up for more transgender folk to get the surgery they crave to turn them from one gender to the other.

She said more than 60 people were on the waiting list for sex reassignment surgeries and action needed to be taken.

“These are people who are wanting access to what is a medical procedure, who can’t in New Zealand because we don’t have the surgeons.”

So it seems Ms Wall’s demands are a bit more complicated than it seemed at first blush.

First, she wants more money for more surgery.

But second, she wants more surgeons trained in the delicate art of putting nuts where a fanny used to be and vice versa.

Greenie gathers a gaggle of MPs to promote equality – ha! – in a world where folk are obviously unequal

So how will the bloody law put these blokes on an equal footing?

Alf gave a momentary thought to joining one of those cross-party working group that do-gooders are apt to set up.

This one is being established to look at and advocate for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people.

All MPs have been sent an email telling them of the opportunity to join.

But Alf quickly recognised his application to sign up would be declined because he would want to add a few more rights to the list.

The right to discriminate, for starters.

And the right to be left alone by the state when you do something as a matter of conscience or belief.

He’s not too fond of having to work with Greens and lefties, anyway, which tends to be one of the requirements of joining cross-party working groups.

This one has been initiated by Green Party MP Jan Logie.

At the last count, it includes 12 members from her party, National, Labour, New Zealand First and Act.

The Maori Party is somewhat noticeably absent.

Shoot – it sounds like a race row but Dame Susan prefers to stay off the court this time

 

Here’s how to respond to questions of discrimination against non-Maori –

Dunno what to make of the fuss about the Maori basketball tournament that became the stuff of a Waitangi Day controversy.

Perhaps there’s some confusion about the rules and how they should be interpreted.

This is appropriate for a Waitangi Day controversy because the Treaty of Waitangi – clause two, anyway – is most certainly open to all sorts of interpretation.

It is understandable therefore that a spin doctor in the office of Sports Minister Jonathan Coleman opted to decline comment rather than be lured into denouncing anything that might involve racially discriminatory rules being enforced against non-Maori.

The spin doctor would have recognised that our Government tolerates discrimination against non-Maori, in the spirit of regarding indigenous citizens as special, and so this was an occasion when it was best to stay silent.

Good sense shows in talk about upholding hotel owners’ right to ensure against unmarried coupling

Give a dog a bad name and….

The Brits have shown us the way – or at least, one Brit has – in recent days.

No, not the England soccer team obviously.

The lesson in this case comes from a judge able to admit she was wrong (or may have been wrong) when she condemned a Christian couple for turning away gay guests from their hotel.

More important, this judge has invited an audience of legal luminaries in Ireland to have another think about matters of conscience and the protection of our rights in an awfully PC modern world.

 

Shock for conservatives: Her Majesty’s signing of Commonwealth Charter will endorse gay rights

The Grumbles will be paying close attention to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. They might have to shift their somewhat conservative thinking on gay rights and succession to the throne once she has given them a steer.

She apparently has been limbering up to sign the Commonwealth Charter tomorrow in her first public appearance since leaving hospital after suffering from a stomach bug

According to a Mail on Sunday report (here), she will make an historic pledge to promote gay rights and ‘gender equality’ in one of the most controversial acts of her reign.

Naz is too tall to be a hobbit but maybe her feet are covered with curly hair

If the film-makers are looking for Orcs they should check out our Labour MPs

Alf has never met a hobbit and therefore is in no position to judge the merits of a complaint about colour discrimination.

But in principle, he is not very sympathetic to the complaint being aired publicly today by a Pom with Paki whakapapa.

People are apt to become disgruntled when told they are the wrong colour, of course.

And so Stuff today reports:

At 1.5 metres (5ft), Naz Humphreys has the essential requirement to be a hobbit extra, but the British Pakistani has been told she’s not white enough.

“It’s 2010 and I still can’t believe I’m being discriminated against because I have brown skin,” Ms Humphreys said.

Last orders, please, from the human rights tossers and drink to the right to discriminate

Alf enthusiastically supports the New Plymouth landlord who wants to run a bar for oldies only.

Alas, Alf also cautions that the venture is bound to be torpedoed by publicly funded do-gooders before it can open its doors to a mature clientele.

The do-gooders, of course, are the prats who are paid much too much to serve as Human Rights Commission mandarins and to frustrate sensible business ventures like those proposed by the New Plymouth landlord.

Before the landlord knows it he will be advised he can not bar entry to people on grounds of age, or for all sorts of other reasons.

The awful reality is that he does not have the right to pick and choose his clients, which Alf would have thought was an important right and one worth dying in the ditch for.

It will be the same advice that was given a few months back when a bloke in Paraparaumu had the bright and commendable idea of keeping young louts out of his establishment by imposing an age limit.

The Paraparaumu bloke had the same problem: he had let in young people who couldn’t hold their grog and who tore the place apart when they had a few snorts on board.

Eviction orders are discriminatory, true, but bias is great when it favours we older people

Alf was tempted, at first blush, to see something ominous in the goings-on near Maketu, where a Maori company has ordered a beachside community to bugger off.

This – surely – will be happening up and down the country if the Government buckles and gives the seabed and foreshore back to the Maori who lay claim to them.

The mollifying element in the Little Waihi evictions is that Pakeha and Maori alike are being given the boot.

Or some of them are. Older ones can stay on.

The Herald reports the matter today –

A community in an idyllic coastal spot has been told it must leave within a year, abandoning baches which have stood on the site for 65 years.

At least 29 homeowners in Little Waihi, to the east of Tauranga near Maketu in the Bay of Plenty, have had their yearly lease terminated by the commercial arm of the Arawa iwi, which owns the land. More than 120 people will be affected.

Let’s disable this bloody tribunal before it cripples we hard-working taxpayers

Alf is troubled by the namby-pamby Human Rights Review Tribunal and its ruling about parents who care for severely disabled adult offspring.

It has decreed these parents should be eligible to receive payments from the Government.