How human is Michael Laws’?

1. Neither the Cyberlegions nor the Borg would be at all interested in Michael Laws, after all, they actually want human beings.

   • He’s almost evil and selfish enough for the Daleks to give him a look, but they tend to favour things like cunning and strategic genuis when they shop outside Skaro for tools or allies, and he appears to possess neither of those attributes, so he’d probably be out of luck there as well.

     If there’s a suitable villain from the Doctor’s universe, then he’s like a shit version of the Master – one who is only capable of using his mind control on people whose stupidity is so great as to be matched only by their fear and spite. Sadly, it would seem there’s enough of them to keep him at the trough for good. Kick him out of parliament, there’s enough of them to get him into local government; kick him out of llocal politics, and he’s got his rat claws into a DHB. It just never seems to end.

2. Thanks for another great blog, glad you are back. Being a local to Whanganui DHB, it worries me that someone like Michael Laws is not only a board member on the DHB but on the Council as well. Unfortunately there seem to be a lot of people agree with him and want to hurt rather than help. On another note, Tony Ryall has just replaced our very popular DHB Board Chairperson (highest polling candidate) with ex Deputy Mayor to Michael Laws. This person stood for Mayor 3 years ago and did not win and did not put name forward this time for DHB. Locals very disappointed with this Ministerial appointment.

   • WOW why did Tony Ryall appoint Michael Laws? I thought they had to elected by citizens? Please explain as I would think that if someone resigned then the next highest polling candidate would be selected. Not a moron like Laws!

     • Hi Victoria, sorry my comment not very clear. Michael Laws was voted onto DHB Board and Council by the people in local area who agree with his style of politics. The top polling candidate for DHB was the current chairperson of the Board which could be seen as an endorsement of her leadership style. This person stays on the DHB but is no longer Chairperson and Tony Ryall has appointed a person who was Deputy Mayor when Michael Laws was Mayor. This person did not stand for DHB in recent local elections and has no experience in health sector but hopefully will do ok with experience from Council.

3. Laws is definitely an arsehole, devoid of empathy he doesn’t deserve to be called human, perhaps we need to develop a test for empathy and if found to be lacking, abort!

4. That is appalling! The man’s dead from the head down.

5. Good on you @ Frank .

   Tell me , it’s something I’ve always wondered about michael laws ? Does he wear eye liner ? The reason I ask is that the few men I know who dress as women occasionally , or and if you’ll pardon the pun , skirt around the idea are , by and large decent , compassionate people who understand what it’s like to feel marginalized . As , for example some woman might now after law’s cruel and brutal attack on Kirsten Moffitt .

   I think it’s great in a way because now we can clearly see the little spider for what he really is and that’s not much . Did he not get beaten up in a bar not long ago ? Lets hope the trend continues .

   I bet he’s the peep hole into the inner realms of the politically soulless as they rip and tear at each other like wolves which is the sport of it that they enjoy so much .

   What chance then do we soft , pinkish , brownish , little creatures have ?

   Unemployed is the first thing he needs to be .

   • Yes, Laws does wear eye liner. That’s his business and doesn’t hurt anyone, unlike his forays into politics and appeals to the worst of human nature.

6. “What is it about New Zealand politics that seems to bring out the worst in some people?”

   What is it about New Zealanders that they vote for these people

   PS LOVE the Cybermen – no 1 bad guys from 1970s Dr Who, followed by the yeti, and the giant crayfish people

7. What an unbelievable douchebag. I would be sending this exchange to the Whanganui DHB… he is bringing them into disrepute…. Wow, Asshole

   • Hi Matthew… “I would be sending this exchange to the Whanganui DHB ”

     According to comments on the Facebook page (where I sourced this from), several people were prepared to do just that. It’ll be interesting to see what develops from this.

8. Wow. Canada here. There is very little between the idea of testing for Downs and automatically aborting and testing for other conditions. Like other genetic conditions. Like gender. Short-sightedness, anyone? Height? Predisposition to obesity?

   Intelligence?

   Just because the technologies to predict these don’t yet exist doesn’t mean we’re not going to see them, and soon.

   Does the rest of NZ also not want newborns who are near-sighted, not tall enough, or not smart enough? It starts with engineering out Downs syndrome kids, but where does it end?

   What this guy Laws is talking about is Eugenics, plain and simple.

   It would be unfair to call him a Nazi, but he shares with the Nazis their powerful combination of self-confidence, appropriation to themselves of the right to claim to unique knowledge of what “the people” think, and staggering, breathtaking ignorance.

   • @ Lord Byng – the same thoughts crossed my mind…

9. No surprise – I had a similar exchange myself a few years ago about sterilising the underclass people. It became apparent that he is an ghastly angry nasty little sewer pipe and by the looks even more morally corroded now.
   And before anyone says it I know I know sewer pipes have their uses but I could not think of any thing alive to compare him to that was not insulting to that living thing.
   He is high up in my top 20 puke inducing things just behind sliding down a hill face first into a bloated cow corpse.

10. He seems to thrive on the attention of pissing everyone off, what’s he going to be like as a crotchety old man, maybe he is already there. I bet he’ll hassle his neighbours if a twig landed on his property…silly old bugger syndrome. He should retire because he is taking the job a smarter more compassionate person should have. He could use his own words back on himself at the end of the Facebook messages ha ha. Him and Paul Henry must be great mates. Narcissistic celebrities boring everyone with redneck out dated opinions (and books about themselves) we can never get away from them, they will annoy us for their and most of our whole life times. Maybe we should ignore them, don’t in courage it, they might just go away fingers crossed.

11. Laws truly is one of the most ignorant and offensive people in NZ, and he is given air time, media space and a position at the DHB? Man alive, no wonder we have problems.

    It’s fine to have different views, but there are calm, polite and reasoned ways of debating and sharing them. Insulting people, swearing at them, then running off shouting “lalala” with your fingers in your ears is for four year olds. Shame on him.

12. Don’t ‘ encourage’ it sorry..

13. http://www.infonews.co.nz/news.cfm?id=105891

    This gives a transcript of a ‘discussion’ between Laws and the father of a DS child.

    Laws’ original posting was in response to a group who is lobbying against screening for ‘birth defects’ because such screening is accompanied by pressure put on women to terminate a pregnancy based on disability of the child only.

    This group does arguably take a fairly extreme stance. Understandable, considering that due to poor information and scaremongering from medical staff about the disability their child may have, a frightening % of women choose to abort.

    Mr Maynard is not in this group….and attempted dialogue with Mr. Laws…at one stage admitting that he himself … ‘was like you’, before his child with DS was born.

    Laws’ response was truly diabloical.

    The man is beyond reason.

    He is on the DHB….and has sworn to exert his influence to ‘erradicate’ children with disabilities.

    • @ Rosemary – there appears to be precedent in history;

      “In the summer of 1939, the parents of a severely deformed child (identified in 2007 as Gerhard Kretschmar), born near Leipzig, wrote to Hitler seeking his permission for their child to be put to death.[35] Hitler approved this and authorized the creation of the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses…

      [abridged]

      … This precedent was used to establish a programme of killing children with severe disabilities; the ‘guardian’ consent element soon disappeared. From August 1939, the Interior Ministry began registering children with disabilities, requiring doctors and midwives to report all cases of newborns with severe disabilities. Those to be killed were identified as “all children under three years of age in whom any of the following ‘serious hereditary diseases’ were ‘suspected’: idiocy and Down syndrome…”

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_T4

      I wonder if Michael Laws is familiar with this dark part of modern history?

      • I would say it was part of his bedtime reading as a child! lol.

        Laws states repeatedly that he is advocating for women to have screening and the right to choose to terminate.

        He then goes on to repeatedly state that those who choose to continue a pregnancy knowing the baby has a disability are INSANE…his capitals.

        Being insane, or mentally incompetent, was also grounds for being put to death under the Nazi regime.

        Has Mr. Laws got a long term plan here?

        I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those with a media profile who have chosen to highlight this and other instances where people with disabilities are being devalued and marginalised.

14. I much prefer people with intellectual handicaps, like people with DS, to people with moral handicaps, like Michael Laws.

    • Yes the standing joke when I worked at the DPA was the worst disability was a bad personality!

15. Can I just add that the statistic of 90% babies with DS get aborted is false, less than 50% in nz take the test and of those that do, 90% of THEM abort, he has not done his research… This is my understanding…

16. Would Laws’ stance on elective abortion be the same if testing were available to determine the chance of a child under 5 years developing cancer (and therefore being a potential drain on DHB funds)?

    Lucky for his daughter I guess.

    Laws was happy to suck up the empathy and sympathy of others for his family’s (well-publicised) terrible situation when his child was deathly ill, but is unable to empathise with people who relish the joy brought to them from a child who happens to have an extra chromosome. What a sad, selfish man.

17. What a prize pratt. Who votes for these odious figures?

18. Was it not the Hitler regime that killed off the disabled to stop them from contaminating the purity of the Aryan Race? Is that why Michael Laws is so much in favour of aborting unborn babies with such defects? The suggestion that this should be done is despicable and those who advocate it like Laws are inhuman.

19. What a sad bully of a man he is… there really is no explanation for his popularity among the redneck talkback crowd, just a case of say something with enough confidence/malice and some sheeple, somewhere, will start nodding their heads in agreement.

    Reading his bullshit has really made me feel awful. Hope his life as a political/media “personality” gets the ending it deserves.

20. “We likes it raw and wriggling Precious, you can keep your filthy Downs Syndrome!”

21. Laws is full of it and I do not care for him at all but in this case I agree with him. All bringing one of these IHC fools into the world does is cost society at large in the pocket and rob others of their lives looking out for them. To abort should be seen as a duty not a choice.

    • Wow is all I can say to that comment. Speechless.

      • Please breathe I wish you no harm……..

    • I find that comment absolutely tragic. Every human being has something to offer…perhaps you would prefer our kids to be cloned.

      • As long as they are medically sound and not like me!

    • Seeing how you are emotionally handicapped, maybe you should have been aborted too…
      And you know, it’s never too late to do the right thing…

      • Yes, well I was born with Dyslexia which has pissed me off my whole life and did spend 18 years off work due to Spinabifida and have never had an hour of my life without pain, but what would I know? My quality of life is surely marginalized compared to yours. But of course you are right, I have a belief I would have been better off not here but others seem to think they know better.

        • David,
          If you are dyslexic, and if you have spina bifida, then I apologise for my earlier disparing comment regarding your writing competence.

          I say “if”, because in my experience(which is considerable), people with spina bifida are no more or less likely to wish they were never born than any other person.

          So perhaps there is another reason for your negativity.

          But do not, under any circumstances, claim to be a true representation of a person with a disability.

        • I accept that you have the right to feel how you do. I have ms which I was not born with but I do not wish that I had never been born. I also have a son with multiple disabilities and he is the happiest young man you could ever meet. But saying that every child with a disability should never have been born is wrong. You cannot generalise based on your own experience, we are all different.

          • God made man somewhat clever (if you are religious that is) and over time has given us the tools to improve the genetic creation that man is. If we can strain out the flaws in the genetic composition we should, not use these tools to allow total stuff ups to proliferate, it is shear madness! We need to improve man not take the gene stock backwards!

        • “Yes, well I was born with Dyslexia which has pissed me off my whole life…”

          Hmmmm, so who is proofreading your posts, David?

          • Ah, that would be Windows Word……..

    • David,

      Would the seeming inability to construct a grammatically correct sentence be a measure of one’s intelligence?

      Methinks you may be at risk of being terminated…albeit a little late-term.

      • Yes I do suffer from dyslexia and work some normal dull non-academic job and for that matter was never happy when it came to the English lingo, but I think someone might have decided to make me seem more stupid than usual by editing the content of the original message. Look! all in a singe sentence!

    • Well David, I guess we loathe in others that which we fear in ourselves?

      Since you are an unapologetic eugenicist, you presumably agree that Michael Laws’ youngest daughter who suffered from childhood cancers, and costs the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars, should also have been put down?

      I live in Japan, where it is virtually impossible to obtain screening for Downs Syndrome, and I regularly see Down Syndrome children and adults living apparently happy lives, the children bonding with their parents, etc. There is an adult girl with Down Syndrome working at the Starbucks in my building. She always has a smile on her face and gets on with her work.

      It is monstrous to suggest these people should have been aborted.

    • David. What about the people like you who are born with no disability but through life acquire one. I speak of your total lack of sympathy, empathy or care for your fellow man. Most people who have children with a disability choose to look after them themselves. A lot of people with a physical or learning disability go on to live productive lives unlike a lot of others who were not born with a disability.

      I know who I with rather spend time with and it would not be with the likes of you.

22. […] exchange revealed by this blog post encapsulates the sheer inhuman malice of the capitalist system. Michael Laws is calling another […]

23. […] I’ve been checking the draft proposal being discussed today for the Whanganui District Health Board code of conduct to see if there could be any repercussions to Michael Laws extraordinarily insensitive and offensive outburst on Facebook attacking the mother of …. […]

24. ugh. I find this article irritating. Irritating because it focuses on bleeding heart liberal butthurt, when it should really be about who gave this bigot a platform and what are the values of his supporters/constituency. By the number of times he thanks God and properly capitalizes Him, I’d say that he’s a Christian conservative and will, no doubt, be pretty easy to mock when asked about things like whether or not he believes in Noah’s ark and talking snakes 🙂

    • Are you a non-believer then? um……..ya seem to be…….talking snakes, wow love ta see that……….na…….hate snakes, just think he might join the Conservative Party! Oh GOD I hope not……..political snakes on two legs?

25. To describe the nurturing of children as “monstrous” is counter-intuitive to human nature. A mother’s love for her child far outweighs the existential reality of their phenotype, and furthermore, allows children with, in the rawest sense, and extra chromosome to thrive. For Mr. Laws to discredit a mother’s common sense for accepting a child with down syndrome is utterly preposterous. I was under the impression that superficial eugenics died with the Nazi Germany. Under Mr. Law’s view, any baby with the ‘possibility’ of causing “afflictions” to others is rather redundant. Should we test an abort for all afflictions on society? In which case, will there be any children left after such a genetic onslaught? The answer is about as transparent as Law’s arguments. But his genetic ideals are hardly the basis of public outcry. To treat a woman trying her hardest to raise her child in such a way, for merely choosing to keep her child, the expression of her love alive is absolutely despicable. Professionals should act with dignity, not the apparent savagery of a street brawl. Now maybe it’s Laws’ turn to “fuck off” and let great kiwi mothers continue to do remarkable things.

    • Are you for real? Michael needs to what? No I don’t want to assist anyone who in the end deliberately brings into the world something that will never stand on it’s own feet and cost society, try growing up and get into reality, something you seem to know little about!

      • No I don’t want to assist anyone who in the end deliberately brings into the world something that will never stand on it’s own feet and cost society…

        You mean like Stephen Hawking…? One of the greatest theoretical physicists since Albert Einstein?

26. I am embarrassed to say I voted for this heartless bastard. I liked that he brought contentious issues to the forefront, and gave people a voice. But this is personally attacking people and their loved ones. What an ignorant egg. Shame on you Michael

    • He’s a man of self worth/belief and total arrogance; ya voted for him? I never would have although most things he says are in essence true.

      • @ “David”,

        You’ve moved from being someone (13 Dec, 6.53am post) supposedly critical of Laws – “Laws is full of it and I do not care for him at all but in this case I agree with him” – to someone who now sez “most things he says are in essence true” (13 Dec 5.25pm).

        Quite a turn-around in under twelve hours.

        I have no idea about your personal circumstances, “David”. It may be true, or you may be using your supposed disabilities to create a cloak of credibility for yourself.

        But one thing coming through quite clearly is that you’re a supporter of Michael Laws as well as his repugnant views. And make no mistake, they are vile in the extreme.

        • So are we all at times! No, as a person some of what Laws says is repugnant to me. If you are ever unfortunate enough to be in the same café as him at the same time you would think him the most outlandish creation. More than slightly objectionable, but what he say is true most of the time, which should endear him to me but alas does not. U-turn; I think not…..

27. I am a mum with a child with special needs. He is a gift…and a gift to this world. I now know love on a different level than most will ever experience and I am so thankful. It makes me so sad that ignorant, and lets face it, fearful people make assumptions as to what its like or that these beautiful children are less worthy of life than my other kids. Thank goodness that a lot of these ‘little minded’ people who believe all that crap don’t have children with disabilities…they don’t deserve them. I know only a tiny bit about Michael Laws…he knows nothing about my child, and I wonder what happened to him, that he is so bitter, hateful and scared. Meanwhile my son is happy, secure and loved. I know which person I would rather be.

28. It would probably suprise you all, as it did me when I found out that this person who seems to thrive on controversy is actually a very thin skinned man. He hates dissent and can’t handle people disagreeing with him, ask anyone who has day to day dealings with him.
    This is just another self destructive chapter in his life book. We don’t need him in our community, he brings nothing but negativity and spite to our community.

    • Tedd, I had a feeling that might be how he is. A sort of neo-liberal autocrat or maybe rightest-socialist if they exist. Yes I think he does think he is some sort of royalty. King of ‘up-side-down river city’ would do as a title…..Suits?

29. Get rid of this heartless person. Remove him from the D.H.B at once.

30. No confidence in the Whanganui DHB nor any support for them as long as he is apart of it, i desire the chance to protest against MICHAEL LAWS,
    and hugely scrutinize every support person that MICHAEL LAWS has behind him. they who follow this SELFISH, UNPLEASANT, DISCRIMINATING and very HEARTLESS piece of SKID MARK in my undies called MICHAEL LAWS, will never be given the right to feel comfortable walking pass a mum-to-be, have the pleasure of being acknowledged or listened to by any hopeful parent that will not have anything to do with such a test and just wants to take it by chance and just really wanna do it exactly how life intends for it to happen which is HUMANLY. that is the difference between us humans and those supporters of the SKID MARK in my undies and the SKID MARK him self, we are full of love, we have a huge heart that is not afraid to live life as it comes, we are not and never will be ashamed of what the future brings rather then play GOD and try to inhumanly create a future that is meant to be what exactly (perfect). the truth is SKID MARK in my undies, that there is and was no way in hell that you were born perfect, for god sake no one is and no one will ever be. so pull your insensitive stupid inhumanly self out of that delusional SKID MARK wishful thinking of a dreamworld and pick your no good nuts up, for once act like a human being and spend a day in the real world and lets see how easy you think it is to just delete an unborn loved one, imagine that one day your unfortunate partner, girlfriend or wife is impregnated with your unborn child, you be as cruel as u can, send her to get the tests, they come back fine with no worry’s about having a disabled child, only to find out the day after your baby’s born that he/she hugely shows positive signs of being disabled………..WHAT THEN AYE U PIG!!!! going by the words of your disgusting brutal immature attack towards Kristen Moffitt the mother off Facebook, your words has come across as you having the mentality and capability of murder. Your opinions, personality and portraying your self as having no heart what so ever etc.. has given me a horrifying shocking picture of what you”ll actually do if this was ever to happen to you. its simple…. your likely to commit murder against your own child all because your evil selfless wicked soul stands to protest against of being able to have a PURE-HEART. because, MICHAEL LAWS i believe that your SCARED, AFRAID. your AFRAID to FEEL, to FEEL EMOTIONS, to FEEL that you actually might be able to CARE about something or someone. its why you have publicly shown, whether its a write up in the local paper or being online or on TV, that a monster like you don’t have a heart at all, not matter what situation you were in or scenario you created SKID MARK you always made sure you were to be known as a heartless scum. so just imagine if you were to let your guard down one day where their was a slight chance, for that one day you were to FEEL with an actual HEART, maybe that one day you came across someone in need of help or upset, or seeing a child crying maybe. What if for once in your miserable life you felt sorry for anyone of them,(will never happen) you started to feel, that day for the first time u actually cared for someones well being or self…. well that was honestly just my wishful thinking of a scenario for SKID MARK.
    my theory of MICHAEL LAWS of being AFRAID to FEEL could be a possibility. who knows maybe that’s why hes so evil, because he probably thinks it him self that he might actually like himself better with a HEART, but maybe the only way to the top seat is to be a hell of a prick, an asshole or just someone that the people will dislike and not want to follow after awhile, but hay by the time we figure out that this person isn’t the one for the job, to late the damage is done, what ive seen in SKID MARK is that once voted in lets do what the people want, lets listen to the people but nek minute after a few months down the track you have the scum in the top seat not giving a dam about what we want or what we think, as long as they get their pay, their say and most important their way, we no longer matter…. and that’s MICHAEL LAWS(SKID MARK) for ya…….

    thanks for reading me if you did very much appreciated….

    p.s if somewhere down the line of my comment it starts making no sense then i apologize, i was writing this while running around crazy making sure my children were behaving….so im sorry if the story sounds whacked and lost, at least i got to call that scum a few names and label him a few things

31. wow. What a sad sad man. Why is he singling out DS for a start? and does he not realise these tests have potential to be incorrect? I know of three women who have been told the chance of their child being DS was high – but when said children were born they were perfectly healthy?

    Strange man.

32. Laws is shallow and about as competent in defending his crazed opinions as Hatin’ Leighton or Larry “Lackwit” Williams are. Early last year I drew him into my orbit. Sadly, he wasn’t up to it….

    Michael Laws utterly unable to defend his extreme comments
    Radio Live, Wednesday February 22, 2012

    If you were so bored and stupid that you listened to Michael Laws this morning, you may have detected that he was more than a little distracted. Possibly because at the same time that he was raving about the need to sterilize “feral Māori”, he was engaging in an epistolary
    exchange with this writer, i.e., moi….

    1.) 9:36 AM
    Dear Michael,
    Why don’t you provide a lead for the Māori “ferals” and have yourself sterilized?
    Yours sincerely,
    Morrissey Breen
    Northcote Point

    2.) Michael Laws ml…@mediaworks.co.nz
    9:50 AM
    Because i don’t kill my children you wanker!

    3.) 10:03 AM
    Really? You were, and no doubt still are, a vituperative advocate of the mass killing of children in Palestine.
    Yours in honest disclosure,
    Morrissey

    4.) Michael Laws ml…@mediaworks.co.nz
    10:07 AM
    Do you enjoy living on the sickness benefit with your mental condition or are you just FITH?

    5.) 10:11 AM
    Not a clever reply, my friend. No doubt you intimidate lots of people with personal attacks like that, just like you dismissed poor old “Walter” before the News. But back to the point under discussion: how can you pretend to be an advocate for Maori children when you have such a filthy record of anti-Palestinian bigotry? Still waiting for an intelligent answer…

    Laws just got worse and worse and worse. Read the lot here if you can stand it….
    http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-22022012/#comment-439366

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