A MAN WHO WILL SHAPE THE MINDS OF OUR CHILDREN?

We dont think so. But from this story in Stuff it appears that John Tamihere is seriously considering allowing Clint Rickards to look after some youth programmes at Waipareira.

You see we are a bit ambivalent about Rickards. Its pretty obvious he had some very crap views of women in his younger day . He may have changed , we hope he has, but nothing we have seen anywhere gives us any indication that he is sorry for his past , can understand the impact his actions may have had or that he thinks he did any thing wrong.

Sorry, but until he can go into a room full of kids and say - you never want to be what I was , then he shouldn't be allowed near them.

It is men like him who reinforce the warped beliefs of those who were responsible for the death of Nia Glassie.

And we wonder if the possible employment of Rickards to the Waipareira Trust is an indication of Tamiheres own attitudes toward women?

OF BLACK EYED BEASTS AND BALLERINAS

Nia Glassie could have been a ballerina but we will never know because her life was cut short by bad people .That is the real tragedy. You see we have seen the dead eyes of the lost and forgotten, many times. They are chilling, as it is not anger or sorrow you see - its is just a deep emptiness. They are simply, souless.
Those are the eyes that Nia Glassie saw every day of her little short life. To her killers she was an irrelevancy, a broken toy, a soft ball to be kicked but she was never loved, of that we are sure.
We have a society that allows children to grow up into black eyed beasts that kill our innocents. That must change. We need our children to grow up into men and women who respect life and the living.
That a disproportionate number are Maori is not something we can back away from for fear of being called racist. The Maori Party now has the portfolios that can make a difference and that may mean together we can finally find ways to stop young men becoming black eyed beasts and let little girls, with pretty names and soft brown eyes full of innocence, grow up and dance for the world.

MACDOCTOR FOR PRESIDENT

Macdoctor has some of the best posts . And his latest is no different . It is well reasoned , well written and well, just plain bloody right. It about Nia Glassie.

He calls it Souless Savagery - and talks about the eyes of the killers - and I know from experience that there are no depths to those eyes - they are just fathomless pools of nothingness.

Read his take on Nia Glassie, gangs and the need for authority.