Saturday 4 May 2019

Wheelers Corner 24, May 4th 2019Government makes a belated move to assist the poor...yeah right



 "The welfare expert advisory group says too many people are leading desperate lives with seriously inadequate incomes - and that's causing toxic levels of stress. It’s made 42 recommendations, but the government says it can’t implement them all at once". Checkpoint RNZ. Tell me something new!!!



This from No Right Turn: Still the best blog in my neck of the woods:

Friday, May 03, 2019



Removing WINZ's boot from people's necks
 
If you've ever had to interact with New Zealand's welfare system, then you'll know that its a punitive nightmare. Beneficiaries are kept on benefits deliberately set at below starvation levels, with punitive clawbacks preventing them from supplementing their income or moving into the workforce via part-time work. Meanwhile, a Victorian definition of relationships that is inconsistent with all other law on the topic (and internally inconsistent in whatever way benefits WINZ) turns WINZ into a Saudi-style morality police snooping on the sex lives of its victims. All to satisfy the cruelty and viciousness of the rich, or those who have a little and lack the imagination to consider that they or their families might ever suffer misfortune (or simply be a student).
The Greens demand an inquiry into this punitive system as the price of support for a Labour government, and they got it. Now it has reported back, and there will be change:

The Government will remove a benefit sanction which saw solo mothers who did not name their child's father penalised up to $28 per week and increase the amount that beneficiaries can earn through employment before their benefit is cut.

Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced the changes on Friday in response to a report from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group.

The report warned urgent and fundamental change was needed to redress a level of financial support so low in New Zealand that too many were living in desperate situations. It stated the current system no longer met the needs of the more than 600,000 Kiwis it was supposed to support.

However, Sepuloni said the Government had decided against a recommended move to increase benefit levels by up to 47 per cent immediately so Kiwis could "live in dignity", and was instead "looking at a staged implementation" of change.

This is going to make a difference, and a big one. And while the timing of the report's delivery relative to the budget cycle basicly rules out an immediate increase (the budget having been nailed down months ago), I hope they'll be moving on that soon. Because while removing WINZ's boot from people's necks is good, fundamentally what beneficiaries need is more money, so they can meaningfully participate in society. And in Labour wants to plead poverty on that, maybe they should have implemented a capital gains tax (or one of its alternatives e.g. a land tax, or an outright wealth tax) so we can afford the sort of society we want, rather than being constrained by self-imposed austerity". [NRT blog comment ends].


Ian Ritchie had this to say about the RNZ Checkpoint statement:

My experience includes that of a Ministry whose staff ignored court decisions against them.
It is not just the detail that needs changing but the culture and the attitudes. We have been  waiting a long time for this to happen. Ian

Thanks Ian, I too would love to see an attitude change in WINZ... the blame game is out dated and stupid if the real goal is to help those who need help. But it worries me that Labour appears to agree with the present state of affairs but are being held back by their neo-liberal history that was installed by Roger Douglas that great helper of the needy...yeah-right.

2. From the Pen of Richard Swainson: its well worth a read:

Any argument for New Zealand as a 'monoculture' is naive nonsense


Destiny Church senior pastor Derek Tait reaches out to a member of the Muslim community during the call to prayer and peace vigil outside the Masjid Al Noor Mosque.
JOSEPH JOHNSON/STUFF
Destiny Church senior pastor Derek Tait reaches out to a member of the Muslim community during the call to prayer and peace vigil outside the Masjid Al Noor Mosque.
OPINION: There's a lot of talk these days about the "monoculture". That sense of a truly communal experience. The feeling of being part of a societal whole. 
Sure, the vast majority of us stood with Jacinda Ardern after Christchurch, our empathy for the victims and their families sustained by that sense of shared humanity. 
But at the same time, if you were a middle-class Pākehā, brought up to observe religion in the breach, inclined toward Friday night drinks, not pray sessions, you were just as aware of points of difference. 
It's true that we are all immigrants in this country, but it's equally certain we live in a time of heightened sensitivities, where one's gender, one's ethnicity, one's sexuality, one's religion or lack thereof, assumes an importance that threatens to overwhelm that which we have in common. 
READ MORE:
Destiny Church members reclaim Christchurch 'for Jesus'
Kiwis encouraged to wear headscarves to support Muslim community
Super Rugby: Crusaders name change will be 'particularly challenging': expert 
A community gathers at the clock tower in Feilding, Manawatū, to show their support, love and unity for the people of Christchurch following the mosque shootings.
DAVID UNWIN/STUFF
A community gathers at the clock tower in Feilding, Manawatū, to show their support, love and unity for the people of Christchurch following the mosque shootings.
The idea we are "one people" is politically charged, meaning one thing out of Ardern's mouth and quite another when pronounced by Don Brash. In the case of the latter, laws suits are apparently pending.

George Orwell said: "We are are all equal, but some are more equal than others." The line resonates louder every day, a rallying cry for both Left and Right, the perpetually offended signalling their virtue, the entrenched old guard smarting at the new truths of the whippersnapper generation.

The old adages we once thought defined us as a nation today seem at best reductive, gross simplifications that covered up a vast array of different cultural practices and allegiances. 

 "Rugby, racing and beer" has a strong, masculine ring to it, but I fear the teetotalling strain has always run just as strongly through our history, just as gambling was never everybody's cup of tea and plenty of working-class folk have always had a greater affinity with league than union.  
Even wars and rugby tours, the type of experiences that supposedly bound the country together, excluded plenty. 
Conscientious objectors, indigenous mindful of Treaty betrayal, proto-feminists aghast at the injustices of the patriarchy, sensitive artistic types indifferent to sport, outright Leftists who damn rugger as "bread and circus" entertainment for the masses, all sat on the outside. 
Gallipoli and Monte Casino meant little to them. The Invincibles' unbeaten run and the great triumph over the Boks in 1956 left them cold.
Brian Tamaki's self-serving brand of Old Testament bollocks seems almost quaint in this context.
"The Apostle" insists New Zealand is "a Christian nation". He seeks to reclaim Christchurch "for Jesus".  Given the tragic history of the city in the last few years, does he assume Jehovah's boy has been absent and that as a consequence Satan has run amuck? 
Or was it God Himself who sent the earthquakes, the inclement weather and the Australian gun man, a Sodom and Gomorrah judgment upon the wicked and the sinful? 
Religious logic is well nigh impossible to fathom, but one aspect tends to transcend denomination or faith – the deity is invariably praised for the good stuff and gets let off the hook when it comes to the rest. 
The gross insensitivity involved in Tamaki ramming his profit-driven pronouncements down the throats of the recently bereaved is hard to square with New Testament ideals of loving one's neighbour as one's self. If Christianity means trumpeting the superiority of your belief systems, of kicking the other guy when he's down, we are all much better off without it.

Moreover, I don't think New Zealand can be defined by its past flirtation with faith, however much vestiges remain in the likes of the national anthem and our court and legislative system. That's not to say there were not once a great many New Zealanders who believed, rigorous observation of the Sabbath and lip service paid at weddings, funerals and school assemblies. 
In the same manner that "rugby, racing and beer" falls short though when it comes to describing our essence, so the presumption of widespread Christianity is difficult to square with generations of non-believers, not to be mention those who worshiped something else entirely, be it the oval ball, Phar Lap, or Allah.
I fear the monoculture has always been a myth. We are creatures of more localised community. 
John Lennon once noted, accurately if sans modesty, that The Beatles were "more popular than Jesus". 
If the Fab Four's moment has now passed, I would say that the concluding episodes of Game of Thrones will attract more punters than Destiny Church, even in a city that bears Christ's name.
Richard Swainson is a Stuff columnist

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