‘Cos I say so

22 comments on “‘Cos I say so ”

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1. Steve Pierson 1

   26 November 2008 at 10:28 am

   The irony is, National’s education policy – standards in literacy and numeracy (or as Key bizarrely calls is ‘a crusade on literacy and numeracy’) – really is a ‘cos I said so’ policy – no more money, no more resources, just a higher hurdle for kids to jump over.
2. Chris G 2

   26 November 2008 at 10:29 am

   I enjoyed that. Good post.

   “Spokespersons for CO2, CH4 and a variety of other greenhouse gases will not be available for comment.”

   Gold!
3. Ianmac 3

   26 November 2008 at 10:38 am

   Minister of Welfare says “All those on the DPB get to work and all your problems will be solved!” And lo it was so. Before long the were 34,563 new Ministers of Social Welfare. Simple.
   Herald welcomes the drop in DPB beneficiaries!
4. Strathen 4

   26 November 2008 at 11:57 am

   Excellent post!!! I feel that it’s absurd that politicians do not reveal every minute detail in media releases to the public of proposed plans. I expect articles to be at least 24 pages long. In fact I propose we ban overviews in media reports and releases. We should also backdate this mandate 30 years.

   How hard can it be? MP’s obviously write the news articles, and therefore should be held accountable for the lack of information in them. This will also help the media industry to get rid of most reporters on their books. The money saved should then be passed on to the consumers during this credit crisis. I think everyone should receive $50 per week from the media sector through this cost saving venture.

   IB, you’re on to something here my good friend. We should run with it…

   IrishBill: You’re an idiot.
5. Observer 5

   26 November 2008 at 12:05 pm

   Steve
   No problem with the Education Budget. Just stop the meetings to arrange meetings to decide who should attend a meeting to agree the seating for the meeting to decide what the meeting should be about, and enough money will be saved to add 50% to the number of teachers, doctors and nurses in the public service – probably enough left over to give them all a 30% pay increase as well! (The papers on this “Value for money in Education – 2005” and “Eliminating waste in the Health Bureaucracy; 2004” were both protected from dissemination on the basis they were commercially confidential – go figure)

   IrishBill
   I thought that was exactly what the Labour Led Government did, except instead of telling the bureaucrats what to do, they told the tax payers! “use this light-bulb” comes to mind 🙂
6. Quoth the Raven 6

   26 November 2008 at 12:29 pm

   Observer – The nanny state told me to stop using my CFC refrigerartor in the eighties. I told them to stuff it I pay my taxes I don’t need to obey laws. I’m the one laughing now we’ve found out the ozone layer was a fiction created by the communist science lobby group. Ha ha ha.
7. Kerry 7

   26 November 2008 at 1:11 pm

   hehe. Scary thing is I could see people like Matthew Hoooooooten reading that and thinking it was a mighty fine idea….bet hes putting together a paper on it right now for John boy…..dont use big words Matthew….he wont understand!
8. Jum 8

   26 November 2008 at 1:17 pm

   Back in February 2008 a prophetic message was given to Mayor John Banks by a very clued up person – I hope they don’t mind me repeating their words.

   “John, you have to be joking. You say, “Don’t force your views down the throats of other people. “, then we get an article all about your opinions. Your kids don’t get a chance because they have to live your way. You work harder than everybody. You proved two points in the last two elections, the first said they didn’t want you and the second said they don’t want Hubbard. Listen to yourself:
   “We have to be careful with our children that they don’t get everything too easy. My kids work for everything, earning pocket money. Quite a lot about the last mayoral election was about proving a point. No one works harder than me. No one. Most people don’t understand what struggle is. I have a single-minded attitude to having a vision, setting goals and winning. I have never been on a golf course – life’s too short. I go for a walk. ”
   Maybe you should try something like a game of golf and appreciate why some people find it a pleasure. Maybe it would help you if you took time to smell the roses.

   It will be a sad day if too many people with fixed opinions like yours find their way to power! ”

   I think they just have.
9. Tim 9

   26 November 2008 at 2:06 pm

   Sue Bradford was ahead of her time. Stop abusing your kids because she says so.
   Glad to see it worked for Nia Glassie and Jyniah Te Awa.
10. Ianmac 10

    26 November 2008 at 2:25 pm

    Tim: 113 MP’s voted for the Child Protection Act S59 repeal. Bradford had the weight of an Act of Parliament with her. Tony Ryall just says “Cut back the hours you lot, or I will be after you with my big Nanny stick!”
11. Jum 11

    26 November 2008 at 2:34 pm

    Tim

    Sue Bradford helped put in place a discipline for the future treatment of, and equal humanity, for children. Like all Labour and supporting parties’ legislation it’s all long term (smoking legislation being an excellent example of us now breathing fresher air and reducing deaths through lung cancer).

    I’ll use the ‘I told you so’ message on you and mention the history of destroying people’s dignity through job losses and low value attached to the importance of support systems of 10/20/30/40 years ago that drove the Nia Glassie and Jyniah Te Awa tragedies.

    Now Act/National are likely to renew the damage by reversing all the good things Labour have put in place to rebuild damaged psyches. Key has the perfect opportunity to put his “I would love to see wages drop” plan into action in this current environment. I shall watch the New Right’s policy enactments with interest, both the overt and the covert ones.
12. higherstandard 12

    26 November 2008 at 2:54 pm

    Jum you are an idiot
13. Quoth the Raven 13

    26 November 2008 at 3:28 pm

    HS – Take it back to kiwiblog. Where’s d4J? his trolling was far better then yours. His was eloquent and intelligent in comparison to your pathetic, senseless ramblings. You are without a doubt the dullest, most tiresome and idiotic troll to ever inhabit the blogoshpere. If neanderthals had blogs, your trolling would be witless and brainless even by their standards. If there were thousands upon thousands of other intelligent lifeforms in the universe and they all had blogs your trolling would still be the ultimate in idiocy. You should change your name to substandard or better yet stop trolling.

    [lprent: Actually HS was one of the most eloquent of the centre-right earlier this year. However trying to even read the comments here is often a wearing experience. But that is why he gets a lot of leeway from the moderators (and generally isn’t regarded as a troll by me), he has a lot of earned mana for participation.]
14. Chris G 14

    26 November 2008 at 3:35 pm

    na d4j in my brief encounter on here with him he was a right douche.

    HS is way better. However I do disagree with u simply calling jum an idiot. jum made some good points
15. higherstandard 15

    26 November 2008 at 3:41 pm

    QTR

    I suggest you start a club and invite Jum to join.

    You can then both have a bit of a cry and try to appoint blame to anywhere except where it lies.

    Jum is an idiot for trying to pass off the murders of children by sub human scum on anything but the filth that subjected those children to the abuse and murders in the first place.
16. Quoth the Raven 16

    26 November 2008 at 4:02 pm

    Chris G – D4J was like a surrealist poet. HS is just a dull simpleton. When Lyn gets his troll program up and running it will be exactly like HS not D4J. A computer program will not be capable of poetics, but it will easily be able to simulate HS because it will have no intelligence.
17. Observer 17

    26 November 2008 at 4:18 pm

    Jum

    re your
    >
    The history of destroying people’s dignity through job losses and low value attached to the importance of support systems of 10/20/30/40 years ago that drove the Nia Glassie and Jyniah Te Awa tragedies.
    >

    Doesn’t seem right somehow. The parents involved would have been between nine and twelve years old ten years ago, so their entire political experience as thinking people was under a Labour Led Government, that never required them to learn. The consequences are there in today’s news for you to read! Based on its instructions from various ministers over the last nine years, the MinEdu wants to eliminate topics in the new curriculum that are too hard for some pupils to pass. It seems we now live in a world where everyone has to rank as ‘achieved’ or everyone else has failed! Shame no one told the two failed applicants for a job with me that failure was possible, or the Black Caps that achievement was a requirement – eh!
18. Ianmac 18

    26 November 2008 at 4:24 pm

    higherstandard: I was struck by something that I think Gordon Campbell said the other day. (Paraphrased.): We feel for those kids who are treated so badly. Yet at some point the survivors cross-over and may become the perpetrators as adults. Our sympathy for them turns into regarding them as “filth.”
19. Tim 19

    26 November 2008 at 4:35 pm

    Jum, you can believe what you want, as can I.

    In the Nia Glassie case at least these people are proof of the failures of welfare dependency fostered by Labour. They have no compulsion to get jobs so they spend all day getting drunk and stoned and looking for something to do. Unfortunately in this case the something was abusing a little girl and ultimately killing her.

    So it is I who get to say “I told you so”. Not that I told you, but I told lots of other people even before this case came to fruition, much like I told people the same about the Kahui twins. Yes, I know, my foresight is awesome. But it’s not hard to see what is going to happen when you have generations of these people who live on welfare and have low motivation and low self-esteem.

    Regarding wages, say an employer had worked out he could afford $60/hour in wages to employ staff in his business, would it be better for the workers if he employed 6 people at $10/hour, 5 at $12/hour. 4 at $15/hour, 3 at $20/hour, 2 at $30/hour or 1 at $60/hour? Would it depend at all on the productivity of the employees?
20. QoT 20

    26 November 2008 at 5:35 pm

    Darn straight, Tim. We should ignore the actual realities of poverty in this country, or the fact that Nia Glassie’s mother was in work, and just let the filthy underclass starve until they get motivated properly.

    “Welfare dependency” doesn’t happen because you have welfare. It happens because a class of people are told they are useless and predestined to be criminals anyway. Especially in times of “delusionally” low unemployment, where are these hundreds of jobs for poor unqualified (and especially brown) people that the right wing seem to think are just sitting in the Situations Vacant column waiting to be filled?
21. Rex Widerstrom 21

    26 November 2008 at 6:49 pm

    Spokespersons for CO2, CH4 and a variety of other greenhouse gases will not be available for comment.

    By the looks of the volumes of heat and hot air this debate is generating, it seems the spokespersons were all busy at The Standard 😀

    I’m sometimes accused of being a bleeding heart when it comes to the underclass, and I admit I tend to favour measures such as a liveable minimum wage, truly “sensible” sentencing with emphasis on rehabilitation and restorative justice etc etc.

    But I’ve also been poor. So poor that, as I’ve admitted elsewhere, I had to resort to petty theft of milk and bread (home delivered in those days, so I wasn’t holding up gas stations). So poor that I’ve stood there in the morning going through all my jacket pockets hoping to find enough extra change to send one of the kids down to the dairy for a toast loaf so they had breakfast before school.

    I don’t gamble, I don’t smoke, I don’t take drugs and I don’t drink when I can’t afford to… it was simply that raising four kids on a benefit was – at that time, I have no idea about now – one hell of a stuggle.

    The stress of living that way saw me see-sawing between despair, hopelessness and anger.

    My partner (the kid’s mum) grew up in a dysfunctional Maori family where drunkeness, violence and sexual abuse all occurred. According to the likes of Gordon Campbell, then, she was a sitter to grow up and start being an abuser.

    Yet the worst I’ve ever done to my children was an open-palm smack on the bottom when they did something really bad – usually to a sibling. That occurred maybe half a dozen times, across all of them.

    To the best of my knowledge my (now ex) partner never laid a hand on them. She told me, in fact, that what she’d seen as a child meant she never would. That’s a choice anyone else is equally able to make.

    So exuse me if I call bullshit on the right wing idea that welfare dependency is an indicator or even cause of an abusive person’s behaviour, and draw the same conclusion about the commonly held leftist belief that it’s all because these hapless souls had their egos dented by some heartless supposition that they’re criminals, or destined to be poor.

    They are criminals, of the lowest kind, and they’d be so whether or not they received 10 times the amount they get on a benefit. They deserve our contempt, and a punishment befitting the crime.

    Meanwhile the rest of those on a benefit are decent people doing the best they can for their children, with perhaps some mistakes along the way, simply because they’re human. They deserve our respect, and the greatest possible level of assistance to better their lives.
22. lenore 22

    26 November 2008 at 10:52 pm

    Then Jon Key will go on to “rid the world of all known diseases” or else! Actually Monty Python have the answers. Check out:

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