What is this fixation with Wales, Boaz?

>>The Welsh revival of 1904 is mocked by some of our 'thinkers' here, but it surely changed and transformed Wales. Who cannot be touched by a 50,000 crowd singing "Guide me oh Thou Great Jehovah"<<

That's just singing, Boaz. That's what the sound of massed voices does to you. They are just as spine-tingling when they launch into Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, or even Sospan Fach if you happen to be in Llanelli.

Sospan Fach is - as you probably know, being a fan - is all about Mary Ann's hurt finger, David the servant, the baby, the cat, the little saucepan, the big saucepan and David's shirttail hanging out.

Banal, it would appear. But with ten thousand tenors behind it in Stradey Park on a Saturday afternoon, it is spiritual stuff.

A fallacy that has always amused me is that the devil has all the good tunes, when the Church has for centuries relied upon the magic of music to fool people that there is something deeply mystical going on. In the days before recorded music, freely accessible music meant, predominantly, going to Church, and boy, did they ever leverage that capability.

Yes, 50,000 people singing Cwm Rhondda cannot fail to touch. But that has nothing to do with christianity, or the "Welsh Revival of 1904".

I noticed this little piece on the Revival, apparently written without irony.

"Public houses became almost empty. Men and women who used to waste their money in getting drunk were now saving it, giving it to help their churches, buying clothes and food for their families. And not only drunkenness, but stealing and other offences grew less and less so that often a magistrate came to court and found there were no cases for him"

Whatever could have happened?

mlk wrote "I suggest you check this out with a Family Law solicitor"

mlk are you describing practice and procedure using reported case laws or witnessed what goes on the ground on a daily basis in family court...its two different things...reported case laws is 'looking-good' pr work put out to the legal and public by court...

but in practice...yes child usually appointed an independent solicitor...usually legal aid...whom more often acts for the mothers interest...so the father faces legal team of woman and child against him...this 2 v 1 allows family court to circumvent judicial process and give orders the mother wants...

to dv orders...the judicial principle used is 'unreasonable risk'...and which only requires an 'allegation' to have legal weight for protective orders...usually remove father...then if the evidence ever gets 'tested' and found say unsubstantiated...months to years later...mother already has dominant control over child and starts controlling child behaviour to disrupt and severe fatherchild relationship...that is the daily reality...go follow cases for your self...its a public court so anyone can sit in...

Sam

“bleatings”, “skewed experience”, “get real”, “Go back to your padded cell”, “neanderthal”, “silly silly person”, “morons”, “little pee pees”

In a court of law, all the above could be regarded as being verbal abuse and probably emotional abuse in a domestic situation.

We are not in a court of law, we are talking on an internet forum where if you do not like the conversation or feel uncomfortable you can just go click and it's all over.

The Access Economics survey has been around for some years and was discussed at length on OLO. There were a lot of reservations about it including the very broad definition of DV and other limitations of the survey.

Here is the previous OLO thread:

www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3538

The survey report can be found here:

www.accesseconomics.com.au/publicationsreports/showreport.php?id=23%20&searchfor=2004&searchby=year

The survey was a political master-stroke by the Office of Status of Women (OSW), ensuring continuing government funding for it and for a burgeoning DV industry. Regrettably though, through reducing the causes of violence to gender and the patriarchy, it managed to bury the disease model of violence, thereby sucking resources away from needed programs such as family counselling and initiatives to reduce alcohol and drug dependence.

Romany, "We, as a society, have to start holding bullies down and Warrigal is the only man on this thread so far who has been strong enough to suggest ways of doing this"

Not quite true. I've suggested saying no to all DV, and pointed out that a significant proportion of DV is two way hitting. A proportion of that is female initiated so in those cases the woman faces less chance of getting hit if she is not doing hitting.

I'm of the view that the men who are still initiating physical violence in the home are just not getting the message. They are the ones with significant personal issues, maybe cave man like in some attitudes. No single strategy will stop this. We need to attack DV at every place, we need to stop the genderised portrayal of the issue and make it clear that no DV is OK.

Image the government spending millions on campaigns against female initiated child abuse and neglect, article after article suggesting that women need to stop hurting kids and almost nothing dealing with male abuse of children. I can't imagine that many women would be overly thrilled at that.

There are no magic bullets, there are a range of strategies and one of them is to resist those who portray the issue in a genderised manner. We can work at freeing men from societies imposed gender expectations. We can encourage women to value "nice guys" more highly than "Bad boys". Plenty to do and I still don't understand why anybody who actually cared would continue to want to see the issue misrepresented in a manner that leaves not only men but also women exposed to DV that we can stop.

R0bert