benefits
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- welfare (366)
Bennett and Key at odds?
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, August 19th, 2011 - 60 comments
Bennett and Key are divided in their opinions and their stats, but at least they’re united in their state of denial.
Surprising opposition to food stamps
Written By: - Date published: 6:31 am, August 18th, 2011 - 77 comments
Who said: a payment card for people on a benefit that forbade alcohol and tobacco purchases would require moral judgments by the Crown, would be highly intrusive, would rob individuals of freedom of choice, and would impose an enormous administrative burden on Work and Income, and there was no need to change the way in which welfare is paid or assessed?
The Pernicious Food Card
Written By: - Date published: 6:05 pm, August 16th, 2011 - 72 comments
Or how the food card will inevitably push beneficiaries into all types of deeper strife.
The cartoon (since it doesn’t show up clearly and you might be wondering) is a lifebelt being thrown in the “Welfare” cell and a book titled “Learn to swim” being thrown in the second “Welfare Reform” cell.
Chart o’ the day: when doing something is doing nothing
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, August 16th, 2011 - 34 comments
Epic fail
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, August 16th, 2011 - 64 comments
Like most of us, Fran O’Sullivan was expecting so much more from the Nats at their conference…
Daddy State vs Youth
Written By: - Date published: 2:06 pm, August 15th, 2011 - 72 comments
National aim to score political points by attacking a small number of 16 and 17 year-olds, and taking away their autonomy. But they’re missing the real-world point – of the tens of thousands of young unemployed who need the jobs that National aren’t providing. That’s the real crisis.
Key fiddles while our youth burns
Written By: - Date published: 1:27 pm, August 14th, 2011 - 329 comments
Like the UK, we have a crisis in youth poverty. We don’t have riots, yet, because we lack the population density. There’s no jobs. Increasingly, no hope. Key’s solution? Tinkering. A bureaucratic, easily beatable system where young people on benefits get food stamps and basic costs paid directly. Where are the jobs, Key? Or have you given up?
Compassionate conservatism
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, August 13th, 2011 - 12 comments
Fran O’Sullivan reveals her softer side today. No, she’s not against National’s benefit cuts for the unemployed, the sick, and invalids. Nor against cutting the wages of the 103,000 working 15-19 year olds on the half-baked premise that will create more jobs. But leave single mums alone, she says, because she had one. It reminds me of something I saw on the Daily Show.
Welfare fraud and reform
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, August 11th, 2011 - 58 comments
National will keep demonising the most vulnerable members of society for electoral gain, while turning a blind eye to much bigger problems.
Future focus fizzer
Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, August 9th, 2011 - 31 comments
Nats are skiting at getting some people off the dole. But what really happened. How much was really saved?
Breeding for a business?
Written By: - Date published: 9:07 am, August 1st, 2011 - 76 comments
A typical shock horror headline on Stuff in the weekend – “Pre-teens dream of kids and dole”. So what’s going on here, and is it an argument for “welfare reform”?
Too many hungry kids
Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, July 27th, 2011 - 180 comments
Making sure that children don’t go hungry is not the responsibility of charity, it is the responsibility of all of us, of society. It is the responsibility of government. The National government is failing.
Yet more dodgy Nat numbers
Written By: - Date published: 6:56 pm, July 18th, 2011 - 61 comments
If you’re a blogosphere regular, you’ll have noticed that recently every monkey with a copy of the Fountainhead and a crush on John Key has been spouting the line that the top 10% of taxpayers pay 71% of net tax. Sounds incredible, eh? That’s because it’s not credible. It’s more cheap tricks from the Nats.
Experts warn Welfare Working Group
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, July 11th, 2011 - 12 comments
Paediatrician Professor Innes Asher has written an open letter to the Welfare Working Group lauding their aims, but warning that their recommendations will harm children. Child Poverty Action Group and Every Child Counts have endorsed the letter, bringing with them a considerable number of academics and other experts in the fields of child health and […]
Dimpost: reality TV concept
Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, June 11th, 2011 - 12 comments
More incisive hilarity from Danyl: “It works like this: Paul Holmes gets to live in a state house for a year with a one year old baby, surviving on only the $288 dollars/week allocated to beneficiaries on the DPB, and at the end of the year Paul gets to decide whether he chooses to ‘breed for cash’….”
Bradford and the Greens
Written By: - Date published: 6:25 am, June 8th, 2011 - 69 comments
Is it just me, or is Sue Bradford working harder, and getting more media coverage than all of the Greens put together? She’s not just campaigning for beneficiaries. Yesterday Bradford came out with a strongly worded attack on the Greens’ positioning for the November election.
Nats testing the waters on eugenics
Written By: - Date published: 8:50 am, June 7th, 2011 - 217 comments
John Key “thinks” that parents on the DPB are “breeding for a business”. Now his government is testing the waters for a eugenics program, to single out these undesirables and forcibly control their fertility.
Campbell on welfare reforms
Written By: - Date published: 2:54 pm, May 31st, 2011 - 61 comments
Good old fashioned benefit bashing. Another electoral battle line has been drawn – arm yourself with the facts!
Simplest way to get 100K off the benefit
Written By: - Date published: 6:35 am, May 31st, 2011 - 87 comments
Elect a Labour-led government. Create 100K jobs.
Just like Ruth, Jim and Jenny
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 pm, May 30th, 2011 - 131 comments
Having wrecked the economy and put tens of thousands of workers on the dole queue John Key is now planning to give them another kick in the guts by cutting their benefits.
And of course that’ll help drive wages down too.
To anyone that lived through the 1990’s this bullshit should be very very familiar by now.
TV3 on the cost of living
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, May 14th, 2011 - 43 comments
Over the coming week Campbell Live will be highlighting the rising cost of living, falling wages, life on the pension, and so on. In short, exactly the sort of stuff which should be front and centre of any budget, and any election campaign.
Beyond the welfare stereotypes
Written By: - Date published: 6:58 am, May 9th, 2011 - 124 comments
An Australian report sets out some common myths about beneficiaries, and the facts that disprove them. I have no doubt that a similar pattern of unjustified myths would be found here. Starting with our PM.
Paula Bennett – Out Of Touch
Written By: - Date published: 4:04 pm, April 27th, 2011 - 21 comments
“Make The Politician Work” is a new “reality” series from TVNZ, with its first episode on Easter Sunday. I don’t particularly like the premise, as the vast majority of our politicians work very hard. But despite that, and the shonky reality stylings, the first episode with Paula Bennett was most enlightening. Bennett, about to help […]
No plan, no worries?
Written By: - Date published: 12:55 pm, April 5th, 2011 - 9 comments
A unemployment disaster is slowly unfolding in Christchurch. For now, the tide of job losses is being partially held back by wage subsidies supporting nearly 70,000 workers, but those will be phased out by June. Then, all hell will break loose. The Government has no plan for this and, according to Key, hasn’t even bothered to understand the scope of the crisis.
Key’s kiss of death for Chch workers
Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, March 29th, 2011 - 60 comments
The $6.8 million package for businesses offered last week by the government was an insult: business mentors and export junkets – just what people who aren’t allowed to access their businesses need. Now, Key and Bennett have announced they are slashing wage support and and the job loss payment. It will hammer the Christchurch economy.
Three Wise Men of Kurow
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, March 18th, 2011 - 16 comments
Well-known Wellington artist Bob Kerr has produced a series of paintings on “The Three Wise Men of Kurow”, Davidson the teacher, McMillan the doctor and Nordmeyer the clergyman; three friends whose conversations in the small South Island town in the 1930’s laid the foundations for New Zealand’s welfare state. They are on brief show at […]
Tapu Misa: Right On
Written By: - Date published: 1:12 pm, February 28th, 2011 - 129 comments
Tapu Misa’s latest piece in the Herald is just so right I can’t really add anything to it. She nicely sums up the Welfare Working Group’s message: “We’re not saying it’s your fault you can’t get a job. We’re just saying you’re a malingering freeloader who’s not trying hard enough.”
Welfare reforms will drive wages down
Written By: - Date published: 3:58 pm, February 27th, 2011 - 28 comments
The coming welfare reform is less a welfare policy and more another industrial relations policy in drag.
That’s because it won’t just be beneficiaries that suffer under this new regime but the majority of Kiwi workers too.
Everything is a lie
Written By: - Date published: 7:16 am, February 24th, 2011 - 158 comments
There’s a hard truth to NZ politics at the moment. It’s not one people like to think about.
But it helps to be reminded every now and then: everything is a lie.
Welfare Working Group promotes eugenics
Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, February 23rd, 2011 - 183 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?
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