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Dickens: 'Toughen up snowflakes' - nothing wrong with Shortland Street episode

Author
Andrew Dickens,
Publish Date
Thu, 2 Aug 2018, 12:05PM
In the episode Zoe is struggling with the news that she's possibly pregnant with a child with Down syndrome.

Dickens: 'Toughen up snowflakes' - nothing wrong with Shortland Street episode

Author
Andrew Dickens,
Publish Date
Thu, 2 Aug 2018, 12:05PM

I suppose with Leighton on holiday you could say we’ve all had a break from being told that resilience is something modern New Zealand lacks. So maybe it should fall to me to hand out some resilience calls. A little bit of 'harden up snowflake and stop moaning' stuff.

Firstly, the Shortland Street Down’s Syndrome plotline stoush where supporters of Down Syndrome children are upset, particularly with the distressed mother character who in a moment of fear and emotion wails about the possibility of having a munted child. Now it’s confronting, for sure, but it’s the reality. It is absolutely part of the process and the thinking that happens when you first learn your child has an issue to deal with.

To depict the situation as a happy uplifting experience and to block any discussion of the possibility of abortion would do a worse disservice to people trying to understand what parents go through. Ask any parent who discovers an in utero defect in their child and dealing with the initial anger is part of the process. I know one couple where the mother railed about her deformed child to be but found the will to carry on. That child is now in their twenties and is well loved and wanted.

This is an ongoing plotline and we’ll wait to see where the parents go with the process. By the way, soap operas are not just television. They are life writ large which is why they’re so popular and why the best plotlines are mired in real life and real emotion.

On the furore of Winston Peters saying “Kick Fatty Out” about Gerry Brownlee in the house yesterday. Well, it deserves a tut-tut for the Acting Prime Minister to use such language in the house but to get all up in arms about sizest language is a little rich. Winston and Gerry are grown up people who are more than capable of sorting things out amongst themselves if Gerry took any offence. It’s not on to call a fatty, fatty if you don’t know them. And it’s none of your business if someone calls someone they know well Fatty.

And one other point on resilience. Yesterday we were talking about the woes of the construction industry and there was considerable moaning about the growing Health and Safety industry and imposts. I asked the question whether it’s any worse or better in other countries as they mostly appear to have better safety records than New Zealand. Well, I had a number of replies overnight saying the same thing. It’s more stringent overseas. One writer said that we’re 5 years behind Australia and I quote “Almost every site you walk on in Auckland would almost certainly be shut down if we were in Aussie.”

We have a very vocal sector of society who moan. Harden up. Deal with the Health and Safety issue, reject mad claims, but stop moaning, because it’s not going to kill you. Unlike the accidents that killed 40 people at work last year

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