In which she almost ticks the wrong box

[zeborah]

"Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"

I know which box I want to tick in order to (hopefully) get the result I want. But oh my goodness that question has even more things wrong with it than I'd gathered from being vaguely aware of the news coverage about how wrong it is. It's like some terrible hybrid of presupposition-tricksiness (see also "Have you stopped beating your wife?) and layers-of-negation-tricksiness (see also Proposition 8).

To refine my earlier-today modification of a colleague's question on Twitter today: "Should confusing and biased referendum questions as part of a just democratic society be legal in New Zealand?"

Fortunately the stupid thing isn't binding on the Government. If it were I don't see how it'd be possible for the Government to figure out what the heck the results meant.

Comments

[poetrychook.livejournal.com]

Not only is it not binding on the government, but the government has already said that they are not going to change the law, no matter what the referendum results are.

[zeborah]

I still want the referendum to get the result I want. If we're going to waste all that money, at least I want some gloating rights.