Ms King’s apology for being a woman is “insulting” because not all women are so forgetful, our Prime Minister says.

“It’s a pretty silly comment from Ms King,” said Mrs Tubb.

“The problem isn’t being a woman, the problem is if you’re a forgetful woman, and I think it’s a bit insulting to imply that all women are forgetful.

“A small group are, and they need to change their behaviour or be held to account,” Tubb added.

The predominantly feminist-leaning Labour Pains Party leader, made the apology at a baby in the bath symposium today, where she also pledged to invest an extra $60 million into the removal of baths from the family home, to ensure mothers did not have to suffer any grief or shame as a result of the behaviour of naughty bath tubs.

She spoke of the “bullshit, the deep-seated aggression against bath tub mothers” still prevalent in New Zealand.

“This ‘Bath Tub’ culture has to stop,” she said.

“I don’t often say it – I’m sorry for being a woman,” King said, “because intolerance of bath tub mothers is overwhelmingly perpetrated by women, and any shaming of women is totally unacceptable. We will not be victims.”

The symposium was held following the Government’s newly announced initiatives aimed at making New Zealand homes safer for children.

About 50 per cent of child mortalities in New Zealand homes are the result of bath tub tragedies.

Social Development Minister Paula Plug said the Government has already spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” on the ‘Be Safe In The Home’ campaign and our initiatives already cater for forgetful mothers.

“One off forgetfulness is rare, so we do need to look more closely at those that are reporting.” said Plug.

The Government this week announced a variety of measures to curb household tragedies, some directed at forgetful mothers.

These included GPS monitoring of forgetful mothers, to ensure that an alarm would ring in the local police station if a mother left her bathroom while her baby was in the bath.

However Father’s For Bath Tub Tragedies spokesman Johnathon Tapp has expressed concern that the initiatives would still only cater for those mothers who were known to have been previously forgetful.

“There’s a lot of unreported forgetfulness out there, you know. It could be as high as 80%” said Tapp.

The Society For The Protection of Bath Tubs in the Family Home also expressed concern.

“We need to speak up for our bath tubs.” said Mrs Soapolda.

“We fail to see how the Labour Pains initiative addresses the needs of those home owners who don’t have a baby using their bath. We feel that asking mothers to accept responsibility for their behaviour is a more appropriate way to deal with this.

We don’t accept that in New Zealand we have a Bath Tub Culture that unfairly blames mothers whose babies die unattended in the bath.”

Political party representatives spoke today about their ideas and initiatives ahead of the September 20 election.

King criticised the Government’s approach, saying the suspension of gathering of information on bath tub owners by police pointed to a lax leadership response and put women at risk.

“We have shockingly high levels of aggression against bath tub mothers, not only from other women but through the shaming of the court process, and at the same time the rate of voluntary surrender of bath tubs druing the last White Towel initiative was shockingly low.

It’s an unacceptable situation, and if elected I will turn the office of Prime Minister into a cross ministry headquarters to ensure the removal of bath tubs from every house in New Zealand.” said King.

Satire – first it should make you laugh, then it should make you think.

Mother of drowned toddler ‘simply unlucky’

I’m thinking the toddler was a lot unlucky.

Final name suppression was granted “by the slimmest of margins”, Justice Ronald Young said.

Interesting

“If we are honest, [mothers] have all put babies in the bath and walked out and got away with it.”

Really?