The Left-wing bookshop where I worked bought boxes of them, mostly lurid black and yellow-covered paperbacks of Robert Burns' jaunty poems about fornication, The Kama Sutra, and The Perfumed Garden.

We possibly made a profit for the first time ever, though these were mostly rather dull clinical descriptions of the contortions you can get into having sex, just to prove it can be done.

They were innocent times. The Joy of Sex appeared, with illustrations of people performing and encouraging - from memory - the wearing of a kind of absurd loincloth arrangement to spice things up.

People huddled over copies of this in their lunch hour, too timid to be seen buying them, too nervous to take them home. I think they thought this was pornography. How quaint we were.

I'd seen the real thing by then, shown to me by older men who little cared how disgusted I was, and what the images showed so explicitly. It wasn't pleasant, it never is, and it didn't have a pleasant effect on me, but the thrill of potentially corrupting young people is irresistible to corrupt adults.

Nothing has changed since, as far as I can see, except that much more degrading images are now freely available everywhere, with the result that some young men's brains get hard-wired with images that degrade women, and none that celebrate affection.

We thought feminism had won the battle for equality only to find young women, who now excel academically, are targets of misogyny that reduces them to sex dolls for male amusement.

The pity of it is that many young women think this is OK. Some boast of being prostitutes to support themselves through degree courses, and somehow we've come to think this is OK.

It's OK, in other words, to be a high achiever so long as you demean yourself at the same time. No harm done. I don't believe it. Continue reading

• Rosemary McLeod is a New Zealand writer, journalist, cartoonist and columnist.

Justice Minister Judith Collins implied it was ridiculous and suggested this "sort of display" is "why people are leaving the Anglican Church".

Perhaps the symbol of a fenced in cell is upsetting to the journalist and the politician but Bishop Duckworth was just doing his job, albeit in a colourful way.

Last week Anglican churches around the country were focusing on penal reform. We have some serious problems in New Zealand. We incarcerate people at a greater rate than almost all like countries and we have a very high recidivism rate.

This is a problem for all of us because a prison system that is not rehabilitating people becomes a school for further crime. That in turn puts us all at risk.

The bishop's question is, "Do we want a system that simply punishes offenders or do we want one that changes behaviour and leads to less reoffending?"

The time in the cell drew public attention to the question and allowed him a week to contemplate and pray.

We all understand the former. The latter is perhaps a mystery for some, but you have to admit that is what you would expect of a bishop.

So what is the substance? The rate of imprisonment in New Zealand more than doubled from 91 per 100,000 people in 1987 to 197 per 100,000 in 2010. Today's figure shows a small improvement, sitting on 192.

These very high imprisonment rates are well above like countries with the exception of the United States. Britain imprisons 148 per 100,000, Australia 130, Canada 118 and France 105.

The picture gets worse if we look at the imprisonment of Maori. They are imprisoned at a rate of 700 per 100,000, three and a half times more than non- Maori, or over five times more than the total Canadian rate.

So are New Zealand's streets safer as a result of all this very expensive locking up? It does not appear so because the recidivism rates are very disturbing. Around half New Zealand's prisoners (49 per cent) return to prison having reoffended over the four year period after being released.

The figures suggest some smart thinking is needed. We lock up more people than other like countries. We have a shameful ethnic bias within those figures and a very high reoffending rate.

The bishop didn't blame the Government or the justice or correction systems. He stated that his vigil was not a protest. It was a call to think, discuss and act. This problem has grown over the last 25 years under successive governments, but there are hopeful signs within the corrections and justice systems. Continue reading

Sources

• Charles Waldegrave in Stuff
• Image: Anglican Taonga

Charles Waldegrave leads the Anglican Church's family centre social policy research unit.

You need only consider the position the ghastly Kardashians occupy in the hearts and minds of millions of television viewers for evidence of that.

We wreck the world through overpopulation, squander resources and exterminate species far lovelier than ourselves. Climate change looks to be fiercely upon us. We're choking with plastic that nobody needs, yet everything we did to cause this situation was considered entirely reasonable. It still is, some would argue, on the basis of the profit motive. What could be less rational than that?

Just as Pope Francis takes over at the Vatican, hoping to anchor Catholicism firmly, overcome its scandals and demonstrate its values convincingly, the forces of darkness are planning to come here in the person of Sean Faircloth, whose surname I find amusing, all things considered.

Mr Faircloth is the American director of strategy and policy for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, or what, in the Pope's terms, might be called propagation of the faith. He is a devotee of the cult of Dawkinism, then, which argues that there is no God and therefore religion is absurd.

Why you need to join a club to believe that I don't know, since the world is crammed with busy atheists, but Mr Dawkins has had a revelation of the truth that requires followers, and the more the merrier. He deeply dislikes the evangelical Christian movement, a similar scenario to his own, in some ways, although with hymns.

"I'm looking for people from Down Under to be a voice for an international secular movement and to preach the gospel of rationality," Mr Faircloth says, apparently without irony. I think this man of the cloth protests too much.

As for me, I struggle to think of much in human endeavour that is more than slightly rational, and what I can think of has a track record every bit as unfortunate as religion's. For every war caused by religion, there has been an equally appalling one based on reason, or so the protagonists have thought. Continue reading

Sources

• Rosemary McLeod in The Dominion Post
• Image: The Northern Advocate

Rosemary McLeod is a New Zealand journalist

Think of the recent trial of the teenager who set fire to a guest at his birthday party and thought it was hilarious. He doesn't now.

Worse, you're supposed to be jolly about being humiliated because of some dim, ancient agreement in our culture that says the prankster is a helluva dag. His victim is supposed to be a good sport and hide their anger or shame - bullied, then bullied again into denying the hurt. How hilarious.

I last tried out a practical joke when I was about 7, an age at which it's slightly excusable. I'd seen in a comic, probably a Beano, a drawing of someone pulling out a chair from behind a person trying to sit down. The victim fell to the floor in the comic, which seemed deliciously funny to me - bear in mind that I also thought Jerry Lewis was hilarious at the time - so I did it to a boy in my class.

To my surprise, nobody else thought it was funny and I saw that they were right. I've never tried anything like it since.

That's one excellent reason why I'm not a radio shock jock. Continue reading

Sources

• Rosemary McLeod in The Dominion Post
• Image: The Northern Advocate

Rosemary McLeod is a New Zealand journalist.

That a blue-eyed, pink-skinned, blonde MP, Todd McClay, tagging along after ex-Whanganui mayor Michael Laws, wants gang patches banned, illustrates the ignorance of even intelligent people when they demand draconian laws against whatever they dislike or don't understand.

I don't like what gangs do either, but I'd be tempted to join Harawira and wear a patch myself in protest against such a dopey idea if the law change ever happens. And when I link McClay's mission to advertising man John Ansell, another pink person, who wants a referendum linked to his 'Colour Blind' campaign, I wonder what planet they live on. Read more

Sources

• Rosemary McLeod in The Press
• Image: TV3News

In her weekly column, Rosemary McLeod reflects on what is likely to happen later in life to young people who are cruel to animals.

McLeod contends that cruelty to animals "as a child is the first step towards a life of causing harm", and that we "shouldn't believe we can do nothing when it happens".

• Read Rosemary McLeod's article
• Image: DogsTrust

Rosemary McLeod is a columnist, cartoonist and journalist.

Rosemary McLeod describes him as "a warning to whoever seeks a personal sage - and avoidance of reality - that you'll most likely end up knee-deep in something disgusting".

As McLeod sees it, giving such people guru status means denying "all the common sense of our upbringing, [and] the received wisdom of centuries".

Read Rosemary McLeod's column from The Press.

Image: The Northern Advocate

Rosemary McLeod is a columnist, cartoonist and journalist.

In her weekly column Rosemary McLeod contends that euthanasia is none of the Government's business. She says that the case of the man who assisted his mother bring on her death has been gone into at great length. He has been made to seem like a saint. No matter how noble his intentions were, no matter how good a person he is, "helping your mother to kill herself is never going to be an achievement to be wholly proud of", she says, and "a rubber-stamped form won't change that".

McLeod says that she sees no way around prosecuting those who assist others to die. "It's an important ethical issue, not a minor matter like dog licensing, and the sanctity of human life doesn't diminish just because someone is close to death", she says.

• Read Rosemary McLeod's article
• Image: The Handiest Girlie of All

Rosemary McLeod is a Wellington based columnist, cartoonist and journalist.

The British are known for their abstemious ways with alcohol, and the respectful way they behave on, for example, soccer grounds.

They may be known for their steady drinking at neighbourhood pubs, their homes way from home, where they down pints while eating whatever's curled up in the warming cabinet, but goodness knows they'd never chunder on Westminster Abbey, or pee outside a pub. They only riot.

What better time could there be than our national holiday to remind us of their gentler introductions to this country?

Alcohol was among those; early descriptions of the carry-on in the Bay of Islands, fuelled by booze, depict a Saturnalia that would astound even us today. And think of the Treaty itself, a pact with Maori made by the British in the name of Queen Victoria, but soon flung somewhere out of sight for rats to gnaw.

Those land-grabbing acts by our founding fathers are with us today in the annual Waitangi Day demonstrations.

There are sour memories, actually, in all Britain's former colonies, where indigenous people got a raw deal - but why pee on their footpaths? It's so disrespectful.

I was in London recently. Their great Trafalgar Square was looking tired and tatty, and I noted how many of their memorials and statues had to do with one war or another.

But they also brought us the neighbourly art of curtain- twitching, fine china, the Church of England, Oasis and the Rolling Stones, so we should go easy on them.

Labour leader David Shearer put his finger, metaphorically speaking, on why we should be gentle with each other, too, on our national day, observing that: "Often we don't realise how lucky we are until we are on our OE or travelling offshore on holiday."

Few Ngapuhi are able to enjoy that experience, being mired in poverty, but what a nice thought. Read more

Sources

• Rosemary McLeod in The Press
• Image: International Business Times

What I want from the police and the mayor when people are being viciously attacked in the small hours of a weekend morning, and with a fellow journalist murdered going home from his night shift, is tough talk.

There are people who think a good night out means ruining someone else's life for fun, or for the meagre contents of a wallet. Sometimes they work in groups - as happened in Courtenay Place last weekend - and sometimes they're soloists, and all of them deserve to be pursued and punished. The cruel must be made to pay. I want to hear this from the authorities, not statements questioning whether the streets have really become unsafe when manifestly they have.

Continue reading Rosmary McLeod's column 'The cruel should have to pay for random violence' in the Dominion Post

Image: Kevin Stent/FairfaxNZ Stuff.co.nz

Rosemary McLeod is best know as an outspoken columnist, cartoonist and journalist. Her columns regularly appear in Fairfax Media publications.