Written By: - Date published: 8:29 pm, February 8th, 2012 - 87 comments
Publicly attack an All Black and loving father for how he chooses to raise his child. This isn’t about the rights and wrongs of breast vs formula vs expressing. I can’t speak to the science of that. But I’ll tell you that La Leche, Plunket, and the Council of Midwives have done massive damage to their own cause with this PR fiasco. Just pure, arrogant stupidity.
Written By: - Date published: 7:31 am, November 10th, 2011 - 52 comments
How many children is 200,000 in the context of New Zealand’s population? Statistics New Zealand says between June 2008-2011 around 62-64,000 children were born each year. So 200,000 amounts to every single child born in this country since National came to power three years ago, plus another 10,000 or so.
Written By: - Date published: 7:42 am, November 8th, 2011 - 272 comments
Labour released its excellent children’s policy yesterday that will lift 150,000 children out of poverty and enhance families’ quality of life. The Right is wailing. Fuck ‘em. They’ve turned a blind eye while 32,000 more kids have fallen into poverty. Only a Labour-led government will have the policies for a truly brighter future for all Kiwis, especially our kids.
Written By: - Date published: 10:29 am, October 13th, 2011 - 8 comments
We’d been missing the Dimpost lately but it seems there was good reason for Danyl abandoning his blog – as of Sunday he’s a dad! Congratulations to Danyl and Maggie from all of us at the Standard – hopefully the months of sleep deprivation you’re about to endure won’t blunt your political satire
Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, June 2nd, 2011 - 16 comments
It’s great to have North Shore candidate Ben Clark writing for us here at The Standard. This is a Guest Post from brother and Dunedin North candidate David Clark (a dynamic duo indeed!). David writes about the just released government report on the early childhood education sector…
Written By: - Date published: 6:43 am, April 5th, 2011 - 41 comments
Under Key’s government we are seeing an escalation in violence committed by children. Why? TV and media violence hasn’t noticeably step-changed in the last year. More likely it is a symptom of the stress that families are under. Children are the canaries in the coal mine…
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, March 18th, 2011 - 57 comments
I was going to have my first post on the economy, but that will have to wait until the weekend as I’m all inspired after hearing Judy Bailey give a Brainwave Trust presentation this week. The incredible importance of providing the best possible start to our children in those very early years was good to have reinforced…
Written By: - Date published: 9:02 am, March 4th, 2011 - 44 comments
John Key has tidied up the confusion he caused yesterday and says that the quakes will cost the government $5 billion in rebuilding and $5 billion in lost revenue over the next 4 years. Big bikkies but easily covered by an emergency levy and canning the white elephant motorways. So, why are the Nats obsessed with tinkering with Working for Families?
Written By: - Date published: 9:34 pm, March 2nd, 2011 - 76 comments
English on Working for Families cuts: “around 1,000 families earning over $100,000 receive WFF, and payments to those families total only $1.1 million … Taking higher-income families out of WFF saves very little money …
In this uncertain economic climate, we want to give all families certainty about their incomes”
Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, February 23rd, 2011 - 182 comments
The Welfare Working Group wants to get poor women to breed less by giving them free long-term contraception. Sure, this is all an ‘Overton window‘ exercise but eugenics? Seriously? Trying to stop one ‘undesirable’ strata of society from breeding is one step from forced sterilisations. Has the Right reverted 80 years?
Written By: - Date published: 10:44 am, January 26th, 2011 - 20 comments
Good news for families of the Pike River miners. The Police have shown them video proving their mens bodies are still intact. It raises questions about the government’s actions. Why was this footage previously withheld? Why were the Nats spinning that there was nothing left to recover? And why was the recovery really abandoned so hastily?
Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, January 21st, 2011 - 9 comments
The UN committee on the rights of the child has had some harsh things to say about New Zealand’s performance in looking after our children, especially on our infant mortality and childhood poverty rates. With National cutting ECE and lowering criminal responsibility and Labour proposing longer Paid Parental Leave and increased support for children under-5 and their families, will this please become an election issue?
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, January 15th, 2011 - 113 comments
Like smiling and waving, frowning and looking sombre, is easy. But satisfying the expectations you create can be hard. This is where Key consistently fails. He has failed again over Pike River. The sudden and inadequately explained end to the recovery operation is bad enough. Lying about the promises he made is gravely insulting.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, December 15th, 2010 - 205 comments
Child poverty is on the rise again. My question to the National government is simple. What are you going to do to reverse this trend and lift children out of poverty? It’s your watch. What are you going to do?
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, December 2nd, 2010 - 11 comments
The recommendations of the Nats’ welfare working group are, predictably, good old fashioned Tory welfare bashing. In contrast a report released last week by the Anglican Social Justice Commission shows just how misguided the ideology underlying this attack on welfare is.
Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, December 1st, 2010 - 52 comments
The Nats’ stupid slash and burn approach to early childhood education (ECE) is about to hammer families. And once again Anne Tolley is in complete denial about it.
Written By: - Date published: 11:42 am, November 22nd, 2010 - 20 comments
It can only be an unthinkably tough time for all Pike River miners, their families, and the communities on the Coast. I’m sure I speak for all The Standard writers and contributors when I say that our thoughts are with them. Despite all the dire news so far three days after the explosion, we simply don’t have the full story till the rescue team get down there and try to bring these guys back to the surface. Till then, we can only hold on and hope.
Written By: - Date published: 5:02 pm, November 20th, 2010 - 37 comments
The news coming out from the Pike River mine disaster is not sounding good. Spare a thought tonight for the miners and their families.
Written By: - Date published: 1:57 pm, October 28th, 2010 - 30 comments
The last Labour government introduced 20 hours free early childhood education. It’s a resource that many parents have since come to rely on, taking some pressure off household budgets as every other cost seems to keep on going up and up. But now we have the latest in a series of indications that the Nats are going to cut the programme…
Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, October 17th, 2010 - 56 comments
The Labour conference this weekend is expected to release new “policy directions”. One of them is out already — and it’s good. What could make more sense than putting children first?
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, October 9th, 2010 - 56 comments
Here’s a compilation from TV7′s Russell Brown from April this year, highlighting the value for money taxpayers get from paying Breakfast Bigot Paul Henry $300,000+ per year: ridiculing the appearance of guests whose opinions he disagrees with, ridiculing deaf people, women, and the disproportionate rate of infant deaths in developing countries – “but they’ve got …
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, August 20th, 2010 - 12 comments
Sir Peter Gluckman wants more investment in early childhood. $1 invested in young children now gives $13 in adulthood, but his day-trader DonKey’s short-termism sees only cuts and short-change for our greatest resource.
Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, July 9th, 2010 - 47 comments
According to the headlines “Inland Revenue is owed more than $1.8 billion by parents who have shirked their financial responsibilities”. Dig a bit deeper and the picture is not as bad as it looks. “Absent dads” don’t need to be demonised by the likes of Bob McCoskrie.
Written By: - Date published: 6:41 pm, July 7th, 2010 - 3 comments
Stuff reports that under Minister Phil Heatley, Housing NZ will manage additions of only 275 houses for each of the next two years. Under the previous government 8000 state houses were added between 1999 and 2008. In a recession, with household budgets stretched, state provision of high quality, affordable housing is even more important for …
Written By: - Date published: 3:26 pm, July 4th, 2010 - 9 comments
A thought provoking piece from Bryan Caplan ponders “”Having kids—what’s in it for me?” An economic perspective on happiness, nature and nurture provides an answer: Parents’ sacrifice is much smaller than it looks, and much larger than it has to be.”
Written By: - Date published: 2:47 pm, May 8th, 2010 - 27 comments
Today, all the Herald’s political commentators talk about Key’s decision to come back from his Middle East trip after the ANZAC Day helicopter crash. My immediate impression was that it was right for the Prime Minister to come back after a national tragedy. But the revelation that Key’s return meant Tim Groser had to stay with the delegation despite his mother’s death changes things.
Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, April 28th, 2010 - 42 comments
Not content with raising the cost of living through a GST increase, the Nats are clearly planning another blow to young families. In a move that breaks yet another election promise, Bill English is preparing the ground for the axing of 20 hours free early childhood education.
Written By: - Date published: 2:58 pm, January 18th, 2010 - 14 comments
At the end of the month the new kindergarten year begins. Reading this article in the SSTimes from yesterday reminded me of just how hard the question of childcare is for many parents: The Kiwi tradition of sending pre-schoolers to kindy is losing favour, as growing numbers of parents seek all-day care for their children.The …
Written By: - Date published: 4:20 pm, July 20th, 2009 - 47 comments
Labour leader Phil Goff has called for a temporary relaxation of the rules for getting the dole. Too many Kiwis on low and middle incomes are losing their jobs but are not able to get any assistance from the Government (despite having paid taxes for years) because their partner has a modest income. John Key …
Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, July 20th, 2009 - 6 comments
Missed this from a couple of days ago: For the first time in 25 years, the incomes of those in lower brackets grew more quickly than those on higher incomes, the Household Income Survey by the Social Development Ministry found. It credits Working for Families with the turnaround and says it also helped avert a …
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 8 comments
A recent piece in the New York Times highlights the absurdity of going backwards with the apparent reorganisation of the Families Commission around nuclear families. Gender involves a lot of gray area. And efforts to legislate a binary truth upon the wide spectrum of gender have proven only how elusive sexual identity can be. The …
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