John Key's crippling of the Welfare State will fuel riots, not prevent them
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well housed, well warmed and well fed."
Herman Melville
Let me get this straight - your 'big plan' National is dog whistling bennie bashing bullshit to stop 16 and 17 year old beneficiaries using their benefit to buy tobacco and alcohol?
16 AND 17 YEAR OLDS CAN'T BUY TOBACCO AND ALCOHOL!
This is supposed to defuse the possibility of riots? This is supposed to deal with 20% youth unemployment? This is supposed to create jobs? This bennie bashing crap won't do any of that - all it does is punish those who don't have work in a 6.5% unemployment environment.
Bennie bashing youth on welfare is as politically easy as screaming 'tax cuts for all', but it's a smokescreen. This is about privatization of social welfare via private companies rather than solutions, the bonus should go to employers courageous enough to offer jobs, it shouldn't go to a private company the Government sub-contracts it's social obligations out to.
Seeing as the ideologically stacked Welfare razor gang had representation from the private social welfare industry (Adrian Roberts and Enid Ratahi Pryor) it is no surprise that they have decided to contract their obligations away to private companies, when even Fran O'Sullivan is dubious of the changes, the sleepy hobbits of NZ should wake up.
In a tactic that National have used again and again, the ideologically stacked welfare razor gang gave the Government the radical policy they needed and managed to add an element so fascist that it made Genghis Khan wince with their 'back to work after 14 weeks' for a second child which allowed John Key to reject it creating the perception that he's moderated what is still a radical attack on society's most vulnerable and weak.
National did it with the mining of conservation land, they put up Great Barrier when they never had any intention of mining Great Barrier so they could remove it from the list to make them look like they had 'listened' and create the perception of moderation.
Key had the audacity to describe the forcing of mothers back after 14 weeks as making him 'queasy' which is funny because his comments that poor people who take food parcels are to blame for their own poverty alongside his claim that if he cut welfare to all beneficiaries then bugger all would starve made me pretty queasy.
The fact still remains - a mother should be with her 1 year old, that 1 year old shouldn't be brought up by the State. What is the point of making those mothers lives unbearable? What weird counter-productive right wing talk hate radio kneejerk are we allowing to happen here?
National's tactic of proposing 100% crazy and selling 80% crazy as compromise is like getting the National Front to write immigration policy and then look aghast at what they come up with while implementing most of it.
Why should the most vulnerable; the solo mums, the sick, the mentally unwell, the disabled, why should they be forced to do with less because of an economic global crises caused by corporate greed that they had no hand in making? As I love to point out endlessly, how many solo mothers were on the phone to their Wall St Stockbrokers in 2007/2008 buying lite crude in Euros and speculating on Goldman Sack derivatives?
It is this Government's economic turbo charged incompetence that has led to the crippling of the welfare state aided by John Key's out of touch bubble world millionaire lifestyle which concludes for him that poor people needing food parcels choose to be poor and that if he cut benefits, bugger all beneficiaries would starve. By subsidizing a tax cut for the rich by increasing GST, the revenue from tax revenue fell by a Billion dollars, a Billion that English said would be made up from social welfare, which is what we are seeing now.
All stick and no play makes little Wiremu a prison statistic and that is all we are doing here. If you want to lift the poor out of poverty in the most real way, spend $20million on feeding the 3 lowest decile schools in NZ.
No matter what bennie bashing bullshit Key in his optimistic little bubble world may think, the reality is you can't teach hungry children, this plan does NOTHING to lift those 210 000 NZ children out of poverty, and that is the great disappointment of this Government.
This will be as much a failure as those bloody boot camps that seem to be only good at producing fitter criminals. Adopting freemarket social policy to combat the effects of freemarket economic meltdown is like using petrol to put out a fire.
posted by Bomber @ 8:43 am
9 comments
9 Comments:
Of course the law that has been mooted thus far cuts out at 18 but that is because those most affected by it can't vote in the coming election. If the Key crims win re-election expect the law to apply to other groups as well.
No doubt just as the winz shopping voucher scheme used to do, this rule will restrict where unemployed and sick, old and indigent can shop, locking the poorest into the most expensive rip of retailers, the supermarket duopoly. Making them the real beneficiary of welfare.
I notice that Herald political editor John Armstrong is right behind Key on this jackboot attitude towards NZ's young people. Armstrong, a foreigner who refuses to take out NZ citizenship, shares the same interests as the foreign owners of the Herald. That is to pay as little as possible in taxes, towards the nation whose population enriches him. A short term goal so that when the NZ society crumbles, just as his greed driven ideas have caused the breakdown in society in his native england, he can move on somewhere else.
Greed-heads are an ugly mob. It is aggravating that no one considers the role of the NZ Herald or that of Fairfax and Murdoch in supporting this corrupt and amoral administration.
The two front men for the Herald, Tony Reilly's kids, have managed to grab NZ's largest daily because when their dad went down the tubes owing hundreds of millions, the Herald and some jaapie fishwrap that cunt Peter Bills writes for, were secured in a family trust. Ya can see why granny herald loves family trusts - the chief vehicle used by rich kiwis to avoid their responsibilities.
The Russian gangster, Alexander Lebedev, who bought the Indie from Reilly for one pound (yeah £1 riiight - sure thing Tony) allowed 'the kids' to hang on to this booby prize, although they NZ Herald is still obliged to show obeisance to his flagship rag the independent. The Indie has been absolutely soulless and thuggish towards the people in england who aren't gonna take it any more, at one stage suggesting the re-introduction of flogging.
We shouldn't be surprised at Armstrong kissing Russian ass after all when the kids screw the pooch just as Daddy did, he will want to be onside with Lebedev, ready to move in whatever 'media market' he is next required to deceive and corrupt.
In light of the adidas tax avoidance (no tax in last 5 years) it would be interesting to know just how much the NZ Herald pays to support the nation it claims to cherish and inform.
This law like just about everything else Key himself moots, is aimed at aiding the short term theft of what is left of NZ's assets. Key will be long gone to New York or Jerusalem by the time the shit hits the fan.
Bomber, though I agree with your segmented approach on this issue, it doesn't address the broader issues and the strategies being played out in our country.
John Key is a master of SPIN. John Key plays to ideological lines and his audience see's a well spoken supposed "Leader" who is catering to the Globalist strategy of a profit's driven secular wealth society by outsourcing NZ's wealth in Resources, Culture, and Social Productivity to the highest bidders.
Our exporters are not returning any of the wealth to our country, they are banking it on Wall Street rather than on main street. An aggressive Ideologically based Social Welfare System that targets unemployed, sick, elderly and students for cut's while selling off the country's Resources and asset's is a VERY dangerous regime that obviously is driven by personal gain and the abuse of power to achieve it!
Those who perpetrate this method of grevious Social program against their own people used to be hung for Treason. Now apparently we reward the undermining of our Society and call it brilliance in leadership. The outcomes are the poor and those targetted to pay for our exporter's selfish neglect and greed in not share our collective wealth to the one's that actually produce it will very soon see the errors of their way's as our people sink into despair and act out accordingly to their situation.
I guess it's ok for John Key to sit and ponder his next steps from his Vernadah in his Hawaaian Holiday home that we all have paid for isn't it?
We certainly don't need a more divided society here as we see in the US, The UK, Israel, and the collective Middle East, but we are headed straight into the bin of destruction as we follow the same patterns of economic's and self aggrandisment and turn our backs on the potential's of a untied society - all for paper wealth to the few. You can't spread Culture, Health, or Mana by withholding money from those affected by further cuts to their ability to survive or earn livings without opportunity to do so. The National Welfare is only maintained through compassion, sharing and leadership. Of which, sadly, I see non on our Aotearoa horizon's. Where do we go from here? I feel it's time for people to wake up and smell the coffee, or the lack of it and come together in fellowship and compassion before the rug is pulled completely out from under our feet and we are sold down the path of poverty by a consciencless few who only see profit through their bank accounts rather than the profits of National cooperation that benefit all through their collective efforts! We can do much better - but will we?
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Reading forums on various newspapers and hearing the feedback on Breakfast this morning, it looks like NZers are very much by and large in favour of National's emerging strategy when it comes to beneficiaries. So much for your much vaunted belief in the egalitarian nature of NZers. It's every man for himself here, just like everywhere else. That's why NZers are emigrating to Australia in record numbers - because they don't give a flying fuck about the fate of the NZ they are leaving behind, only about how they can better THEMSELVES and their families.
The only way National lose this election is due to some sort of major scandal or a complete economic collapse. I wouldn't rely on either as coming to fruition when predicting the outcome.
DebsisDead,
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the affliction being perpetrated on our society! The thing I find the most disturbing is the deafening silence coming from the most affected parts of our society!
Why is there no response in reply coming from our youth and the remainder of us unemployed, under employed, and struggling - now majority?
Is this deafening silence coming from a complicit Ideologically owned media? How will our voices be heard in order to stop this complete madness from destroying our Social fabric completely?
When the NAT/ACTS of this country plunder our resources and destroy our opportunities to achieve a balance in social equality and further restrict Education, Healthcare, Social Economic Wellbeing, and a future based in hope and certainty for our families, how can we make our voices heard? If we have no voice through the media's influences as those who are proposing the draconian restrictions to our ability to prosper, only those voices will be heard?
New Zealand is on the precipice without a Bungy and the next few months will be a critical time for our "National recovery". The war has come to our shores and as "We the people" are herded like animals to the slaughter, it has come to the point of stand up and be counted, or proceed to the Meat Works of Capitalism, selfishness and Greed without as much as a Baaaa in protest!
Is it time to take back the balance through a violent showing of the rage and fear that most of us on the bread lines feel in order to recover our sense of hope and value?
It takes a cause and a social spark to light the fuse to reforms that benefit ALL over the selfish interests of the few.
Labour has been effectively marginalised and sidelined by stealth, dishonesty, perceived dysfunction, and the direct complicity of the media. Is this how it all comes to an end for our freedoms and the abilities for our Country's hard working people to survive and prosper?
I for one am prepared to stand and fight for my Daughter's future - I just can't fight this battle solo! It comes down to a we, and all I can see is the reflection of hopelessness in the mirror. We are being very effectively marginalised and completely sidelined in this battle! It very well may come down to a show of force to overcome the dire threat we face today.
The main problem with force as a social voice though is that only our fellow voiceless neighbor's will bear the brunt of the rage and unrest while the policy makers of this atrocity remain sheltered in the Bee-Hive and their Ivory Corporate Tower's protected by "Share Holder's, Lobbyists and private interest's of Globalistic origins" while the throngs tear their neighbors to shreds as we've seen in the UK. Only by tearing the walls of the Bee-Hive and Ivory Towers down can change come without the expense of further dividing our ranks and diluting the Social values we treasure even further than the current state of Market Driven Political Policies dictate.
so it all comes down to how will this change come about? Will it be through violence and a show of force, or can it still be accomplished through the method of the vote in a true Democratic way?
We are only 3 months away from a social melt-down. If this is going to be a non-violent fight for Social Policy Reform to bring back hope for a better future, the time to act is right now!! The choice is either through our united voice through the vote, or through a means that will further divide us all and create a much worse control mechanism to be put in place that will further prevent the Social changes we so desperately need!
What we need to be doing is creating a public register for all Deadbeat Dads who are not paying their child support.
This people need to be publicly named and shamed so they pay.
This would reduce the benefit spend by the state
The mind boggles that National's welfare crap is the best that they can come up with - and yet the public are thick enough not to see through it...
Key did not enunciate a single plan to create a single job... and yet the public are sleepwalking their way into the Voting Booth to vote for a party is is bankrupt of ideas?!?!
God help us - New Zealand is collectively thick-as-lamp-posts...
Xero was founded by Rod Drury in 2006, who made $65 million in the same year after selling his email archiving system AfterMail.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/5031154/Wellington-web-company-Xero-earns-9m
Xero purchased Australian online payroll company, Paycycle, in July of this year for A$1.5 million.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/21/xero-idUSW9E7GB02520110721
Which begs the question as to why the government has given away $4 million of tax-payers money when the owner is ‘flush’ with $65 million and has enough capital to buy off-shore companies elsewhere.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/5448485/7m-grants-for-Wellington-tech-businesses?
Is this a prudent use of tax-payers’ money, especially when,
* government is cutting back on social services?
* government has cut back on youth training programmes?
* government is borrowing $380 million a week, and telling the rest of us to “tighten our belts”?
http://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/from-nanny-state-to-big-brother/
At a time when government is berrating unemployed 16 and 17 year olds for being on the dole and “smoking ciggies”, instead of providing meaningful training and/or employment, it seems that National is still “picking winners” in the field of commerce.
$4 million could go a long way in providing training, and a future, for many 16 year olds.
It’s a shame they’re not “picking winners” with our unemployed youth.
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