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Sunday, September 16, 2012

Paula Bennett plays hunger games with Child Poverty



I'm waiting for Paula to say, "You know who else probably had an arrest warrant, high on drugs without enrolling their kid into 15 hours of early childhood education whilst on a benefit"?

"Karl Marx"!

Paula Bennett's 'social obligations' are apparently new rules which only apply to beneficiaries. What happens to a worker who doesn't enroll their child with a GP or 15 hours of early childhood education? Do they lose their working for families tax credit for breaching Paula's social obligations?

No, they don't.

I was surprised how quickly child poverty was replaced by news Apple are launching a new toy this week. When did the iPhone 5 become more important than 270 000 children in poverty? Are the kids not aesthetically pleasing enough?

#iShame

Pretending everyone on a benefit today would still be on a benefit when they die to manufacture the $78b to frighten voters is a new insult by Bennett but the eye watering consultancy cost of $800 000 was the injury.

How much more will National cost us in consultants over the lifetime of beneficiaries?

The next announcement will be the private company razor gangs who will be spun as 'employment consultants'. These 'employment consultants' will be paid a bonus for removing a beneficiary from welfare by either getting them a job, or use the new range of disqualifications outlined by Paula.

Finding work in a 6.8% unemployment environment is hard, so expect bonuses to be paid for finding reasons to disqualify beneficiaries.

Welcome to the new socio-economic Darwinism.

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7 Comments:

At 16/9/12 5:33 pm, Blogger Draco TB said...

Finding work in a 6.8% unemployment environment is hard,

And it's even harder at 9% with 9% under-employment as well.

 
At 16/9/12 7:36 pm, Blogger Zoe Black said...

There are JOBS it's just they are unappealing. Why take a job that is mindnumbing and/or slightly dangerous, with tyrant of a boss and bitchy co-workers and be financially worse off to boot? Fuck that. I wouldn't.

There is an alternative that I don't see written much about. The smart thing to do would be for MSD to fund more business start ups. They used to but it seems very few if any are approved these days.

It would certainly help solve the "there are no jobs" issue I read you whining about. As a nice added bonus our tax system favours those with small businesses and with virtually brainless accounting software (NOT MYOB!!) such as SmartPayroll and SmartBooks combined with Xero most people can easily handle a small business set up.

Find a service you can see people need and taking control over your own destiny is far preferable to sitting with a placard for hours on end begging for a job. How vile.

 
At 17/9/12 9:18 am, Blogger countryboy said...

@ Zoe Black . Control . It's all about control . Low paid employment and a benefit less than a beggar can live off is about control . It's about controlling the masses . Keeping the ordinary man and woman buried down in a pit of hopelessness .

A hopeless job for hopeless money working for a meaningless company and without a future worth jack shit . ( pardon the use of American English . )

Audlus Huxely explains ;
' The price of freedom is eternal vigilance ' .

http://youtu.be/3TQZ-2iMUR0

Now , here's an idea . I have them from time to time because , not only am I hung like a horse and a big horse at that , have the talent of Michael Angelo , have Brad Pitt call me for handsome lessons and I upload porn when I'm not practicing brain surgery between lecturing on Rocket Science and quantum mechanics , I have ideas .

Micro economies ! Encourage city people to move to the land ( Instead of forcing people from it is that not so roger douglas ) and in case you hadn't noticed , we have a quite a bit of it .

Our Gold Tie wearing Prime Mincer could instruct his leather faced minion and servant to The Great Dollar little billy english to create urban tax havens in dying rural towns to encourage people to move from the slums to take up growing and producing agrarian goods for sale and exchange . I bet my designer britches with the extra crutch space that spending a year caring for animals and growing the greens for your dinner... ( In case you're one of the 270 k starving kids reading this ; ' greens ' are vegetables . Vegetables are edible plants that only TV personalities and politicians can afford to buy to eat and you know they eat well because they always look radiant and beautiful . Not like you poor and over weight people living on plastic food peddled in super markets owned by psychopathic agri-chemical pimps . ) ... would fix your anger , self loathing and anxieties in one healthy heart beat .

Tim Shadbolt is an unsung NZ hero and he deserves the award creey Niggle Latta got . He's a fantastic fellow and Invercargill has him to thank for it's fantastic-ness . He had the idea to create a free polytechnic there and I saw , first hand at how that simple idea saved Invers from going down the gurgler . And long before Cowsploitation came along I might add .

I live in a small town where the QV on my beautiful one hundred year old house is $57,000 . My rates are $2042.00 plus another $80.00 for regional rates . I live 11 KM from a sizable town on SH 1 yet we have no public transport and no central government initiatives to populate an area that's been culturally stagnant for years yet is in the very heart of our most lauded and heavily marketed Heart Land .

Why ? Why is the QV so low and yet rates so high ? Ask yourself ? Do those figures and statistics make you want to move to a country town ? I didn't think so , so there's your answer . The local council argue that the reason for rates being so high is that the population is so low therefore it costs more per household etc . Bulllllll Shit ! ...rinse and repeat . The logic behind such statements belongs to the ACT party .

Shit wages and piss poor , worthless jobs are our future cities .

And why the fuck is there no investigative journalist sniffing into this . Given my above credentials I should be taken seriously !

There's a massive story to be told about the rural / urban battlefront . A story so big , it'd turn our entire society on it's ear .

 
At 17/9/12 10:04 pm, Blogger i-like-to-moonwalk said...

I am petrified about the outcomes we will see in regards to cutting benefits of tested and proven drug addicts or halving the benefits if they have dependent children.
(which would only leave enough for realistically: rent, rice and $10 gas)

After spending many years growing up and being fully immersed in the underbelly of NZ's drug culture, and documenting it through film for years, i can assure you:

Just because somebody has no money, does not mean they can quit their addiction.
Drug dependency has been left to fester for too long in NZ. One can not dramatically remove money from the equation and expect to see positive results.

Not to mention the CADS (community alcohol and drug services) branches of each DHB - are full.

actually, already so heinously understaffed and the rehab & detox centers so underfunded that the caseloads are over-flowing. and the policy is not coming in until next year.
WE SIMPLY CANNOT HANDLE THIS! Not right now anyway.

I see Paula is showing her lack of experience in policy hindsight and integration here.

I would LOVE to know if she was coming through her own past addictions, (true story) solo parenthood, and education NOW, as opposed to 20 years ago, if she could get to her current position and handle her current policies had somebody else implemented them.

She means well, but really..

It is only going to hurt the people that need help the most.

Sigh.. anyway I'll be here with my camera on recording to preserve the stupidity of financial hierarchy once again.

Until then,
hope to see you all on the streets of South Auckland helping us feed, focus and inspire our youth. our future.

If i don't, and youre reading this from your 600pw lounge, on your $5k mac suite, rubbing your lambs wool socks on your Armenian rug and think youre feeling the burn of Nationals policy?

Shut the fuck up.

 
At 17/9/12 10:06 pm, Blogger i-like-to-moonwalk said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

 
At 18/9/12 11:15 am, Blogger countryboy said...

@ I like to moon walk .
All illegal recreational drugs should be legal .It's that simple . What should be illegal is paula bennett . She's monstrous . Her poisonous retheric should be debunked as bizarre and anti-human . It's that simple . I try to imagine our society if we all woke up one morning to discover that all drugs were suddenly legal and what that might mean in the short term , and the long term .

Short term . Everybody might go straight to the chemist . E , Meth , LSD etc etc . It'd all run off the shelves and drug related crime would instantly stop . There'd be stoned people wandering here and there . Some would get run over by other stoners driving . Others still would think they could fly and leap from tall buildings flapping and briefly happy .
Bottles of booze would stop selling and get dusty on supermarket shelves . Liquor store owners would just shut the doors .
There'd be a cue for any available psychotherapist and / or funeral director for a while but we'd get past that .

The long term might be a slow down-change in the way we , as humans function . We'd come to realize that the pursuit of money for money's sake was the mental illness it is since the very best about our lives are free . Fresh air . Free . Open spaces . Free . Climbing hills for the view . Free . Sleeping in . Free . Making love . Free . Being in love . Free . Making babies . Free Having a pet . Free . Growing a pretty garden . Free . Growing vegetables . Free . Having friends with whom you can have fun times with . Free . Thinking . Free . Laughing . Free . Smiling at a stranger and that stranger smiles back . Free . Being shown kindness . Free . Being forgiven . Free . Finding out you're an artist and not the unhappy accountant with bowel cancer . Free . Telling Christians to fuck off from your door and to take their fear peddling and Hate mongering with them . Free . Force feeding every National Party MP LSD then making them spend a day in a tropical forest ... Priceless .

We need to get past this shit . Human beings ARE a drug culture . We've always been a drug culture . Do you honestly think that the great cities of Italy , France , Spain etc etc were born of sobriety ? And I don't mean the filthy ethyl alcohol . Everybody was off their tits I bet . Moroccan Hash , Afghani opium , Indian hemp , Colombian cocaine . Nothing new there . What is new is our fucked up , fear filled , angst ridden , greedy , power-freak psychotic Western ' Culture ' parasitized by God Botherers who just can't help but try and fix a thing that aint broke .

 
At 18/9/12 11:21 am, Blogger countryboy said...

Further more ;
Go here . This is kind of interesting and relevant too .

http://youtu.be/B0W9sSqeJnA

Just in case some big burly DEA trained NZ Drug cop takes umbrage at what I write .

Prof ' Pinker tackles everything from the fallacy of the blank slate to the psychology of indecent proposals and why he's catching flack for arguing that violence is decreasing.

In one particularly interesting bit he makes the case for defending the rights of dissenters as a way to help avoid "collective delusions," such as Hilter's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union or the European witch hunts which tortured to death 150,000 woman who were suspected of causing ships to sink and crops to fail by casting spells.

Here's Pinker:

"You look at them retrospectively and you wonder, 'How could everyone have been so mad?' On top of being evil these ideas seem patently ludicrous. How can you have a collective delusion overtaking an entire society? And it looks like one of the answers is that if dissenters are punished and can anticipate they're going to be punished, then you might have a situation where no one actually believes something, but everyone else believes that everyone else believes it. Therefore no one is willing to be the little boy that says the emperor is naked. And this 'pluralistic ignorance' as it's sometimes called is easily implemented when you have the punishing or censoring of unpopular views."

 

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