A late link to TGIF

Ian Wishart has released the first edition of his new weekly e-newspaper – TGIF. The first edition is available for free. As web designer Dennis Smith has noted, it is quite large (8.5 MB), but probably hard to have it much smaller and retain the quality.

The lead story focuses on this quote from Ruth Dyson:

“Shifting the focus from social welfare to social development is about considering the wellbeing of the whole population, and communities within that population, rather than solely focusing on the traditional family group. We must cater for the diversity, we know exists. By this I mean the range of relationships from single, couples, triples, blended, de facto, and so on. That’s where we’re going with social policy.”

Now this is not just something Dyson blurted out, or was secretly taped saying in a sting operation. This was in her speech notes on the Beehive website. They have since taken it down, which suggests the Government knows it is embarrassing. That is in itself worthy of questions as the Beehive website is meant to be a record of all Ministerial speeches, and not just selected ones.

Now I’m a fan of the TV series Big Love, but really I don’t think the Government needs to be catering for the polygamists. In fact in most countries they actually tend to discourage polygamy, while Ruth seems to want the NZ Government to cater for it.