NZ Nannies Try To Ruin Rugby

I have written before about how our children are being softened up to the point that they are losing vital physical and psychic resistances.  I have also written endlessly on the damage the ever-growing nanny state is inflicting on us.  Now, from New Zealand of all places, comes news that the nanny state has decided that children need to be protected from all notion of loss and defeat.

In what someone has rightly called “stomach-churning news,” the New Zealand Rugby Union has decided to engage in “social engineering”:

A new rule in children’s rugby aimed at preventing “blowouts” will cap the maximum score at 35-0.  If one team leads by more than 35 points, coaches are encouraged to discuss how to create a more even match … So in a nation boasting 40 million sheep, the poor little rugby lambs will be wrapped up softly in cotton wool if a nasty better team starts beating them up.  This fluffy sentiment is consummately unfair on the kids involved. I would bet my bottom NZ dollar that the last thing any youngster wants is to have his hand held on the rugby pitch.

The New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) believes the rule will stop under-13s from giving up the sport if their team is on the end of a thrashing. For a game that demands character, mental and physical toughness and stamina more than most other sports, this is frankly astonishing. In fact, it goes against the whole ethos of competitive sport and waters down its benefits to human development.

Hear, hear!  I couldn’t agree more.

The children and teenagers of New Zealand have been grossly insulted by those running Rugby Union in the country.  In making the blowout rule, you’re saying that kids who are losing are not competitive.  You’re taking away the chance for a young player to look at the scoreboard, see no chance of victory, and still give everything for the team until the final whistle.  You’re removing pride. You’re saying it’s not ok to try your best and get badly beaten. It is. You’re saying it’s not ok to feel bad, or to feel humiliated. It is. Those moments make you reach inside yourself and pull out something better. They make you get over it.

New Zealand rugby star Marc Ellis described this dumb rule in words that can be used in most cases of Nanny State stupidity:

“That’s the kind of weak-wristed thinking that’s the bane of … society… it’s protecting people from themselves – it’s protecting them from realities they need to find out.”

More than that, it is yet one more tiny step on the way to reducing us to malleable consumer units, unable and unwilling to resist.

I guess this post could easily be re-titled”Reason #5001 I am not a liberal.”

 

Keep The Nanny State Out Of My Kitchen!

The nanny state in Denmark has banned Farley’s Rusks, Horlicks and Ovaltine, for God’s sake!

As usual, a government has declared that it knows best when it comes to what you can and cannot eat (we have the same idiocy going on here in BC over raw milk). Now, it is true we can only applaud their position on Marmite (I haven’t eaten it in more than 50 years and I can still remember that ghastly taste and smell!), but that’s beside the point.

I’m all for the full facts about nutrition and ingredients and whatever being made as widely available as possible. Beyond that, let the people decide, which they can literally at the market. Anything else is sheer arrogance.