Chose a brighter future?

Written By: - Date published: 1:19 pm, September 6th, 2011 - 63 comments
Categories: class war, john key, poverty, welfare - Tags: , , ,

Once again recent headlines prompt me to ask if in 2008 we really chose a brighter future after all.

NZ’s brown poverty ‘a timebomb’

A child advocate says New Zealand is sitting on a Polynesian timebomb if it does nothing about Maori and Pacific poverty levels.

Lobby group Every Child Counts has commissioned a report which says the country is “developing a brown social underclass”. It says of the 200,000 New Zealand children living below the poverty line, more than half are Maori or Pacific.

A Nat would tell you that you can’t fix poverty by “throwing money at it”.  A superb piece by Tapu Misa addresses this.

Tapu Misa: Cuts hurt kids instead of making parents work

Why is the idea of helping poor children so difficult to sell in a country with a supposed “socialist streak”? …

But child poverty advocates must wonder what it will take to get those hearts on the side of the 200,000 children growing up in poverty, as yet another dire report on child poverty is added to the growing pile, this time focused on Maori and Pacific children.

The second of two reports commissioned by the lobby group Every Child Counts, it arrived with a warning that New Zealand was sitting on a “Polynesian timebomb” that threatens to explode into the kind of violence seen recently in Britain.

Perhaps fear is a better motivator for action, though I somehow doubt it. Should we prefer the economic arguments? There are plenty of those in the Infometrics report, 1000 Days to Get it Right for Every Child, which argues for increased public investment in children’s early years, and estimates the economic cost of child poverty at about $6 billion a year, or 3 per cent of GDP.

The report counters an oft-heard line, repeated by John Key in the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children, that good outcomes for children have defied massive public investment. That makes it sound as if more money couldn’t possibly help.

In fact, we spend less than half the average in the OECD on our children, and our poor ranking for child outcomes (28th out of 30) reflects that low investment. Countries that throw the most money at children tend to get the best results. …

So, we don’t just spend our money badly. We skimp on our children.

Poverty.  More cuts and beneficiary bashing.  Youth unemployment.  Little reason to hope for the future.  Where is all this leading?

Teen suicide pact fear

Wairarapa teenagers are feared to be involved in a mass-suicide pact.

After the sudden deaths of four teenagers, authorities and community groups are clamping down on frenzied social media messages which make claims of a pact among some teenagers to end their lives, and identify – often falsely – teenagers who have killed themselves and ways they have done it. …

Senior Sergeant Warwick Burr was aware of rumours of a suicide pact and said police were ready to take urgent action if they believed someone was about to commit suicide.

As a publicity stunt before the 2008 election Key pretended to be interested in “the underclass” for a bit.  His message now is that the government has done as much as possible (bollocks).  Where’s the brighter future John?

63 comments on “Chose a brighter future? ”

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  1. tc 1
    6 September 2011 at 1:35 pm

    He is interested in the underclass……so he can keep it where it is.

    • mickysavage 1.1
      6 September 2011 at 7:47 pm

      Aye TC

      This was Key’s ultimate attack on Labour.  Say it was not doing enough.  This broke all the rules in the book because he was essentially advocating a left wing position.

      He was never going to do anything.  He just wanted to use it as a weapon and confuse the left.  He succeeded.

      Given power he has done exactly nothing to address the problem.  He never intended to.

      Labour need to do the same by attacking Key’s economic competence which is undoubtedly his weak point.  It needs to point out that he does not have a clue. 

  2. Policy Parrot 2
    6 September 2011 at 1:38 pm

    We didn’t. Well, I did, but too many others didn’t vote the sane [same-freudian] way so we lost government, thus enabling the current situation.

  3. bbfloyd 3
    6 September 2011 at 1:49 pm

    the brighter future is to be found in the halls of kings college… for a short time anyway…..for the rest of us, we can look forward to years of revisiting the “good”old days when the answer to social and economic problems was to press gang the unemployed into slave wage jobs… to knock drunken sailors on the head, and when they wake up, to cheerfully inform them that they have been “recruited” into the navy…

    we don’t need to kidnap sailors, or soldiers now, but the press ganging of the unemployed into humiliating, subsistence level wage work is alive and kicking…

    look around you when you go into the city while the world cup is on… see all those people walking around picking up rubbish? those people are being forced to work 12 hour days, 7 day weeks at 75cents above the minimum wage to do that… all of them unemployed…. all of them with no choice whether they do this or not….. or if you prefer, the “choice” they have is to do the job, or join the other 7000 success stories johnny sparkle was bragging about weeks ago… as in finding a spot in myers park to sleep where you won’t get stepped on by your neighbors…

    looking forward to espiner, campbell, sainsbury, holmes, garner et al making loud cheering noises regarding the drop in dole numbers that will show up just before the election…

  4. Psycho Milt 4
    6 September 2011 at 2:06 pm

    Many of these children would be a poor investment. If you’ve got people working flat out making a useless product no-one wants, it doesn’t make sense to fund an expansion programme – you want to be arranging your resources to discourage further production, not increase it. Once you’ve sorted that out is the time to put more money in, otherwise you’re just throwing good money after bad.

    • NickS 4.1
      6 September 2011 at 3:19 pm

      Where’s your cost/benefit analysis then?

      Because the last 5 years have seen the same results emerging over and over again that under investment in child care/education/health carries with it higher costs in later life, ranging from physical and mental health issues, to unemployment, to incarceration costs…

      • Psycho Milt 4.1.1
        6 September 2011 at 3:54 pm

        Every Child Counts did the cost-benefit analysis, and found that kids with various risk factors are the ones most likely to saddle us with the higher costs later in life. Their proposed action is to fling even more taxpayers’ money at such kids, but without taking some steps to minimise the production of them you’d just be subsidising that production.

        • mik e 4.1.1.1
          6 September 2011 at 4:07 pm

          Psycho abusing milt. haven’t you seen the cost of doing nothing $6billion a year .Education is the best contraception . Not redneck ignorants weve exported all the low wage jobs overseas of any meaning we need a plan not some dipstick rant.

          • Bazar 4.1.1.1.1
            6 September 2011 at 5:01 pm

            But this isn’t about education, this is about child welfare.

            Psycho Milt’s points still stand, regardless of how you want to ignore them.

            Problem children are problematic. That you both seem to agree on, what you’ve ignored is the fact that by easing the burden of children, you effectively subsidies them.

            What good is fixing a problem child, when you fund the factory that will most likely produce more.

            I’ll go further to the point and say that i think we do have a cultural problem, in that we have low income families, and they are also large families. And its the government that’s expected to pick up the tab for these large families, since they obviously aren’t self-sufficient.

            I’d like some left-wing to explain the logic of that.
            Why we aren’t addressing that issue, but instead look to cure the symptoms rather then the cause.

            LW Mantra: “But if we threw money at those families they’d go on to live productive lives and the cycle would stop”. Yeah right, what actually happens is those children get raised in a family/culture where welfare is both acceptable and the norm.

            The childen run off, find partners, and quickly create more problem children that need to be subsidized, and the cycle both grows and continues.

            Point of interest, i actually do work for a abuse center for families, and the topic came up what would the staff think if under-privledged parents got a lump sum payout if they got sterilized.
            Coming from what i expected was a labour dominated industry, the result was surprising, the suggestion got met with celebration and cheers.

            These were front-line workers mind you.

            Of course the issue isn’t new, i think this site probably discussed it breifly a year or so ago as well, and the result was nieve. Alone the lines of
            LW Mantra: “How can the government tie welfare payments into removing a natural right to have kids. Its totally immoral.”

            Yeah… Meanwhile the problem literally grows.

            • McFlock 4.1.1.1.1.1
              6 September 2011 at 6:05 pm

              I recall at the Child Wellbeing Health Forum in wellington a week or two back one of the speakers reported a CBA on childhood intervention of 1:(6-14). i.e. in the long term an early intervention of $1 saves ongoing costs of between $6 and $14 (depending on the study and intervention). 
                
              Investment in vaccines and healthy homes prevents respiratory illness hospitalisation. Investment in education and social work prevents imprisonment and a career in crime. 
                
                
              That’s what tories don’t get – even from a purely self-interested point of view they save more money from intervention than from budget cuts. But their greed is only matched by their lack of impulse control – they want gratification now, and assume they’ll be invited to the randian paradise when atlas shrugs.
                 
              But for some reason they don’t want to move to Somalia. Must be the climate.

            • mik e 4.1.1.1.1.2
              6 September 2011 at 8:12 pm

              Not true Rednecks stats world wide prove that education lowers the birth rate Bazaar don’t lump me in with someone else’s comment and continue your redneck rant.

              • Bazar …
                7 September 2011 at 9:31 am

                I love how you equate social welfare with education level…. As if they are the same thing.

                That if we force feed welfare to the lower income families, that we’ll have well versed educated generation spring up from under them…

            • Colonial Viper 4.1.1.1.1.3
              6 September 2011 at 8:26 pm

              Point of interest, i actually do work for a abuse center for families, and the topic came up what would the staff think if under-privledged parents got a lump sum payout if they got sterilized.

              I reckon you should just treat these families like farmyard animals, maybe go so far as to offer them a $100 grocery voucher to get spayed but nothing more.

              They’re fucking liabilities to the tax payers of this country after all and the last thing we need is encouraging them to breed like dirty rodents.

              Point of interest, i actually do work for a abuse center for families

              You get paid to abuse these fucking useless families? Right on, that’s my dream job too.

              • Bazar …
                7 September 2011 at 9:46 am

                I love how every time you make a post viper. You without fail, manage to either ignore, or be obvious to the actual point being made, rallying against something beside the point, followed up by name calling and ad hom attacks.

                But to carry on and see if there is any spark of intelligence in that thing you carry on your shoulders, if the government offered such families $1 million each to get sterilized, would you change your tone?

                If the fact that the receiving family wanted it, that the government wanted it, and that stats showed it’d be a long term cost savings. Would your tone change?

                I understand that these are people, i also understand that in many cases they are having children that they can’t support themselves.
                I’d love to see how you can justify people placing a burden on everyone because they won’t keep their legs closed.

                These are people, not animals. And it is because they are people, and not animals that they should be expected to take responsibility for their actions.

                • Blue …
                  7 September 2011 at 10:39 am

                  I suspect Viper is simply confounded by the sociopathic thinking displayed by yourself and Psycho Milt.

                  It’s difficult to know what to say when confronted by such gems as Milt’s statement that killing tens of millions of people during the Holocaust and the two World Wars made no difference at all, or your own commoditisation of poor people, referring to them as ‘factories’ and children as ‘products’.

                  The idea of increasing access to birth control for people who do not want children, and would not take very good care of them if they did have them, is not the problem. It’s the attitude that you bring with it. You appear to think that these people are some form of sub-human scum to be eradicated.

                  The left’s thinking on the issue is that poverty is not a genetic disease. Just because someone was born into a poor family does not automatically make them unwanted. It does not make them incapable of being educated. It does not make them predestined to grow up to be criminals or ‘factories that produce more problem children’.

                  We believe that a child has the potential to grow up to be anything, depending on how they are treated while they grow up. It’s why we think that ‘throwing more money’ at services that help children is a good thing.

                  Of course, it is easier to just take the sociopath’s route and kill the underclass, or sterilise them. Thankfully that sort of thinking still belongs to the minority fringe-dwellers such as yourself and Milt.

                  • Bazar …
                    7 September 2011 at 11:32 pm

                    “I suspect Viper is simply confounded by the sociopathic thinking displayed by yourself and Psycho Milt.”

                    I think hes just an idiot, i’ve not once seen any critical or interdependent thinking from him. If labor said the sky was purple, i can believe he’d start correcting me anytime i said something was blue.

                    But moving on to more intelligent topics, Its actually easier to preach how the underclass [always] needs more money. That’s the easy part, because its always true. Now more then ever.

                    “We believe that a child has the potential to grow up to be anything, depending on how they are treated while they grow up”

                    I also believe that to be mostly true, but that throwing money at such children won’t solve what is a cultural welfare problem.

                    Ensuring that the children are well cared for by the state, does nothing to stop irresponsible mothers from having more children. In fact it’d only encourage more children.

                    I guess it takes a right-winger to understand this point.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      7 September 2011 at 11:41 pm

                      Ensuring that the children are well cared for by the state, does nothing to stop irresponsible mothers from having more children. In fact it’d only encourage more children.

                      I guess it takes a right-winger to understand this point.

                      Ah, the Right Wing patriarchal state, bringing those wayward slutty little hussies into line and teaching them how to leep their legs crossed in a bit of self discipline.

                      Looking forwards to dishing out the lessons eh mate?

                      But moving on to more intelligent topics, Its actually easier to preach how the underclass [always] needs more money. That’s the easy part, because its always true.

                      And fuck off losers like you are always preaching on behalf of your wealthy masters, preaching how multi-millionaires [always] deserve more money, more handouts and more free rides.

                      What an a-hole.

                    • Bazar …
                      8 September 2011 at 2:51 am

                      ‘Ah, the Right Wing patriarchal state, bringing those wayward slutty little hussies into line and teaching them how to leep their legs crossed in a bit of self discipline”

                      Is that sarcasm or did you actually just commend the right wingers?
                      Because if its sarcasm, you’re defending the lifestyle and actions of irresponsible parents.

                      “And fuck off losers like you are always preaching on behalf of your wealthy masters”

                      And there’s the vipers trademark ad hom attack. Because you can’t argue with logic, you goes straight to the name calling and strawman tactics.

                      /golfclap

                    • rosy …
                      8 September 2011 at 3:53 am

                      Bazar – you do realise that more equal societies have fewer social problems… Including less crime, fewer teen parents and better educational performance?

                      So yes, throwing money at the poorest might just work if it’s done with a bit of thought. Money to create jobs and provide the best health and a decent education for the poor might just reduce the issue of those least able to afford children having more children. A dose of gender equality for those at the bottom of the economic ladder might help as well.

                      And Psycho Milt – You’re also aware that wealthier countries and more equal countries also have the lower birthrates overall, yes? e.g. Central/Northern Europe and some of the richer Asian countries? No need to kill poor off… just make them richer (comparatively) and the a side-effect could be lower birthrates.

    • Colonial Viper 4.2
      6 September 2011 at 3:44 pm

      Hey is Psycho Milt treating the children of NZ as business chattels?

      If you don’t expect to get expect to get a return on investment on your business chattels you won’t bother to maintain or spend money on them and just let them deteriorate or maybe just bin them?

      You’re a fucking psycho, as your name suggests.

      otherwise you’re just throwing good money after bad.

      Money is easily printed, but apparently you consider human life easily disposable.

      • Psycho Milt 4.2.1
        6 September 2011 at 3:59 pm

        I think you’ll find if you look into it that money isn’t made simply by printing it.

        • Colonial Viper 4.2.1.1
          6 September 2011 at 4:15 pm

          Indeed, you can also credit an extra zero or two to an electronic account. No printing presses, paper or linen required.

          (That is exactly how the privately owned Federal Reserve loans tens of billions to the US Government).

          • Bazar 4.2.1.1.1
            6 September 2011 at 5:11 pm

            Because NZ runs exactly how the US does, and that the US is a bastion of economic strength.

            I could enlighten you as to how stupid and inaccurate that is, but i really can’t be arsed.

            Instead i’ll just link this here, and assume you can’t/don’t read it because it has words longer then 7 letters.

            http://economics.about.com/cs/money/a/print_money.htm

            • Colonial Viper 4.2.1.1.1.1
              6 September 2011 at 8:30 pm

              US has been printing massive amounts of money way in excess of their actual productive economic growth, and they have been doing it for a couple of decades now.

              You have a problem with that?

              I’ll give you a clue: every movement of the gold price in the last ten years has mirrored pretty much exactly the debasement of the USD.

              Shit, I’m sounding like Rusty now.

              • rosy …
                6 September 2011 at 10:16 pm

                Shit, I’m sounding like Rusty now.

                You could tell him that, but I’m not sure that Rusty has been back since Puddlegum took up the challenge to engage with him on his ideas. I’ve been sort of waiting to see his response to an interesting deconstruction of an economic view of human organisation.

              • Bazar …
                7 September 2011 at 10:09 am

                “You have a problem with that?”

                I thought that’d be obvious with how i mentioned that the us is a bastion of economic strength… I’ll add that’s a sarcastic remark….

                But to carry on..
                The US government can’t print off money, because they don’t actually own their own currency.

                So its not applicable to NZ, or i expect the rest of the world.
                NZ owns its own reserve bank and currency, if we wished to, we could.

                Of course that is counter productive in large due to the reasons i linked.

                As for gold, i could hardly care what conspiracy you have about it, although its a known fact that china is backing gold, which probably has a large part to do with whatever you’ve perceived.

                • Colonial Viper …
                  7 September 2011 at 11:47 pm

                  The US government can’t print off money, because they don’t actually own their own currency.

                  gawd man get a brain and come back when you understand how the Federal Reserve and the Treasury co-ordinated to produce and exchange hundreds of billions in new Treasuries between the two of them.

                  And how the Fed having bought them then used those Treasuries as collateral with which they leveraged off to lend trillions of USD produced out of thin air (bank cash produced ex nihilo and given to the so-called primary dealers to pump into the financial economy (i.e. these injections of printed money are the main reason stock markets have been going up in the last 3 years), during the programmes known colloquially as ‘QE1’ and ‘QE2’.

                  Fuck I hate how Lefties have to explain the monetary ABCs to ignorant Righties.

                  As for gold, i could hardly care what conspiracy you have about it, although its a known fact that china is backing gold, which probably has a large part to do with whatever you’ve perceived.

                  LOL

              • aerobubble …
                7 September 2011 at 10:11 am

                Yes. Its about trust and integrity. Started with Reagan and Thatcher throwing
                out the book, or burning it, to the cheers of many people who should of
                known better and many who didn’t. But in many ways was inevitable
                since the Arabs Oil families are too stupid (or afriad of American forces),
                probably both to have argued for higher oil prices to ween the west
                off the oil addiction sooner. But its not too late.

    • Vicky32 4.3
      6 September 2011 at 6:01 pm

      Many of these children would be a poor investment. If you’ve got people working flat out making a useless product no-one wants, it doesn’t make sense to fund an expansion programme – you want to be arranging your resources to discourage further production, not increase it. Once you’ve sorted that out is the time to put more money in, otherwise you’re just throwing good money after bad.

      I had refrained from comment because I thought you were being sarcastic – but I see from your comment below that you’re serious! You chose your nick well…

  5. Ianupnorth 5
    6 September 2011 at 2:06 pm

    The whole ‘let’s consult, do a green paper and find out what to do’ is a sham; everyone working in the areas of child health, education, social services, the justice sector, etc all know exactly what is impacting on kids and on families. Rather than listening to the facts we have a series well meaning gestures that apease the electorate and give the impression of caring.
    If they did genuinely care they would be acting, they would retracting the tax breaks, they would be creating training programmes, etc. If anything the greens seem to be the most outspoken on this.

  6. kriswgtn 6
    6 September 2011 at 2:24 pm

    Disgusting

    There should be no hungry kids in this country.And in times of a recession more so..
    If they can waste tens of thousands of tax payers $ helping a fraking Emperor Penquin from Antarctica,you can feed these kids…………………

    • Psycho Milt 6.1
      6 September 2011 at 2:44 pm

      If they can waste tens of thousands of tax payers $ helping a fraking Emperor Penquin from Antarctica,you can feed these kids…………………

      We already spend millions of taxpayers dollars to feed these kids – you could chuck another few tens of thousands on top I guess, but it wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket. Not to mention the fact that the money we spent on the penguin won’t result in more penguins.

      • Colonial Viper 6.1.1
        6 September 2011 at 3:47 pm

        A few tens of thousands?

        No, I think we’ll redistribute one to two billion per year from the wealthy and target help to the under tens with it.

        Not pussyfooting here.

        We were happy to do it for SCF bondholders weren’t we.

        • Psycho Milt 6.1.1.1
          6 September 2011 at 3:57 pm

          As a means of dramatically increasing the number of under-tens in need of such assistance, this would be a great winner. The thing is, we don’t want more of them, we want fewer. Is it such a hard concept to grasp?

          • Colonial Viper 6.1.1.1.1
            6 September 2011 at 4:18 pm

            Psycho Milt’s two child policy for NZ then?

          • mik e 6.1.1.1.2
            6 September 2011 at 4:24 pm

            Psycho ignorant abusive logic controlled, emotional vacuum brained idiot I spend a lot of time helping these people and have studied psychology at great length to help me help these children[one thing is that people who can’t relate emotionally to children and their partners are the sort of people who by and large cause these problems they are the abusers are just like you can’t relate emotionally . Its a mental illness you can get treatment for it but knowing you you will probably join Act it is a club of vacuous emotional people who only think logically and numerically, thats why there are so many bean brained bean counters in those emotionally dry parties.].200,000 children live in poverty in this so cold 1st world country. I see it as an untapped resource that could make this country very rich. the estimated cost to fix this $6billion dollar a year problem $360 million a year With a rapidly aging population we need these people returning a good income to keep the country afloat Milt.

          • Ianupnorth 6.1.1.1.3
            6 September 2011 at 4:40 pm

            I find it interesting that you use the logo of punk band Crass and then spout an ideology far removed from their anarchist beliefs – just saying!

            • Psycho Milt 6.1.1.1.3.1
              6 September 2011 at 4:46 pm

              I’m as anti-authoritarian as the next Crass fan. There’s also nothing particularly anarchist about wanting the govt to step in and run people’s lives for them – which is effectively what these ass-clowns are demanding.

              • AAMC …
                6 September 2011 at 6:57 pm

                Anti Authoritarian, and here I was, reading your comments and thinking, perhaps he’d rather a train with which to transport all of the poor to a gas chamber “to discourage further production, not increase it” cause after all “we don’t want more of them, we want fewer.”

                • Psycho Milt …
                  6 September 2011 at 9:20 pm

                  “we don’t want more of them, we want fewer.”

                  By using the term “we” I was doing others on the thread the courtesy of assuming none of us actually want an ever-increasing number of children living in poverty. Apparently I was wrong.

                  …and here I was, reading your comments and thinking, perhaps he’d rather a train with which to transport all of the poor to a gas chamber “to discourage further production, not increase it”

                  Yeah, because the only alternative to just giving people money is killing them.

      • Carol 6.1.2
        6 September 2011 at 7:28 pm

        Not to mention the fact that the money we spent on the penguin won’t result in more penguins.

        You reckon?

        http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/176156/happy-feet-his-way-home

        “He probably needs to go a little bit further south to catch up with a few penguin buddies and he’ll stay in this area until about this time next year when it’s time to start heading back to Antarctica to find a mate and start breeding.”

        • Psycho Milt 6.1.2.1
          6 September 2011 at 9:28 pm

          I pity the female penguin that mates with him – the bugger couldn’t even swim off by himself without ending up on a different continent. Clearly, penguin wives have as much to put up with as human ones.

    • Vicky32 6.2
      6 September 2011 at 6:11 pm

      .And in times of a recession more so..
      If they can waste tens of thousands of tax payers $ helping a fraking Emperor Penquin from Antarctica,you can feed these kids…………………

      Exactly! $87,000 for the penguin… which is absurd. It’s a freaking bird, who on earth cares? People matter more than animals.

      • Psycho Milt 6.2.1
        6 September 2011 at 9:34 pm

        8 billion humans, 58,000 Emperor penguins. If there’s one species of mammals on the planet of which you can kill off a few tens of millions without even making a dent, it’s us. We should know, we did it in the thirties and forties and no, it didn’t make much difference.

        • AAMC 6.2.1.1
          7 September 2011 at 12:26 pm

          “We should know, we did it in the thirties and forties and no, it didn’t make much difference.”

          I rest my case.

  7. tsmithfield 7
    6 September 2011 at 3:00 pm

    Most New New Zealanders seem to think their futures are getting brighter considering that consumer confidence is at a seven month high.

    • Colonial Viper 7.1
      6 September 2011 at 3:48 pm

      And what about citizens’ confidence in the Government?

      Oh yeah, thats still going down the tubes.

      • tsmithfield 7.1.1
        6 September 2011 at 3:53 pm

        CV “And what about citizens’ confidence in the Government?
        Oh yeah, thats still going down the tubes.”

        LOL!! You are joking, right? It looks to me like confidence is growing because the chance of Labour winning the election is getting less and less likely. That seems a fairly reasonable assumption given the growing margin between National and Labour in the polls.

        • muzza 7.1.1.1
          7 September 2011 at 4:28 am

          Without wanting to assume anything other than your words in the email I am replying to, you sound as though it matters who the government of this country is, and it also sounds from your words that you might be one of those types who feels that that they are “winning” if their vote ends up on the team who controls government.
          If this is the case then you and your ilk can take a hike because until people can see past the rediculous political paradigm, we all continue to go down the sink hole the same way!

          Oh and poverty in NZ will not be solved by any political party, and in particular reference to the money put at it, why in the case of Maori suffering are the tribes who received treaty settlements not taking responsibility for their own people? I am not for one minute saying that maori should be not be included in any potential government help, because all children deserve every & any opportunity of help to move out of poverty, it was just an observation that perhaps indicates the solutions or at least the complexity of the problems might run deeper than the standard commentary we all see , hear and read will uncover?

          NZ has become a disgrace of a country in the way it treats its vulnerable regardless of age, race etc. Decades of politicians are removing my pride in being a Kiwi and that is not one bit ok with me!

    • AAMC 7.2
      6 September 2011 at 7:00 pm

      Whether New Zealanders think their future is going to get brighter or not has no bearing on whether it is in fact going to get brighter. If a few of them switched from the RWC circus and NZ’s next top model, they may see the global economy is imploding.

      Just as having confidence in your Government doesn’t in fact have any real bearing on whether or not they are up to the job.

      Just as the musician with the top selling record, may not in fact be the most inspired musician, or McDonald’s the best burger.

  8. Bill 8
    6 September 2011 at 3:32 pm

    Re- the suicide pact link.

    How the what the?

    Some body care to explain to me how this stuff gets credence and traction in the mainstream etc?

    Sure. A cluster of suicides. Sure. Some kids shit stirring. And maybe some other kids getting a bit freaked by believing the wind-up.

    And the way to tackle it is to lend it an air of credibility through headlines like the one in the link? And giving the impression that social service workers, police etc are throwing up their arms in angst ridden horror?

    If they are reacting like that, then they ought to be fired from their jobs. Immediately. That kind of shit is the first step along a path of hysteria where next we’ll be hearing that the pact originated in a deal with the devil and anyone ‘named’ who doesn’t follow through will die at the hands of the boogie man or some such. And one or two more uncertain and gullible kids….their gullibility fed by the caring liberal professional’s ‘buy in’ to the whole jamborree… will attempt fucking suicide.

    • thejackal 8.1
      13 September 2011 at 9:46 am

      I think you’re reading too much into the article there Bill. The police etc are simply saying that its a huge problem and they will do their best. It’s a problem that is getting worse under National. Personally I think an open discussion about the high suicide rate in New Zealand is required. I know it’s an emotional topic, but do try to stay reasoned. You come across as a bit of a crack pot otherwise.

  9. Adrian 9
    6 September 2011 at 3:52 pm

    TS. Not one of the numerous Consumer Confidence surveys of the last 3 years has been shown to have been correct. The expectations have ended up falling short by a huge margin. Obviously they have been asking treasury officials, car dealers and real estate agents who when arse deep in alligators will claim that they are making real progress in draining the swamp ( or building the cycleway ).

    • tsmithfield 9.1
      6 September 2011 at 4:05 pm

      Note that the survey is by Roy Morgan who a lot of lefties on this site seem to cream themselves over.

  10. higherstandard 10
    6 September 2011 at 4:17 pm

    The solution is obvious we need to immediately limit the number of whiteys immigrating from countries such as Southern Africa, USA and the UK.

    • mik e 10.1
      6 September 2011 at 4:29 pm

      Lowering the Standard again you need to live with another race for a week.I thought the better educated you were the less racist you are supposed to be. Well the stats say that. you must be a nb exception to the rule white rule of course.

    • tc 10.2
      6 September 2011 at 4:31 pm

      Come on HS that’s lazy even by your own ‘standards’…try again.

    • Ianupnorth 10.3
      6 September 2011 at 4:41 pm

      Trolling again…..

    • higherstandard 10.4
      6 September 2011 at 5:09 pm

      Oh dear, what a humourless bunch you are.

      • Hanswrst 10.4.1
        6 September 2011 at 9:13 pm

        Sometimes the degree of humour displayed is proportionate to how funny the statement is.

      • tc 10.4.2
        6 September 2011 at 9:25 pm

        Not at all HS it’s just very unfunny, and hardly original got some decent material like repealing s59 and EFA, closing the gap with Oz, or the hilarious cycleway whilst loving to see wages drop to solve our employment issues. Bring it on, promise not to heckle.

  11. Afewknowthetruth 11
    6 September 2011 at 10:18 pm

    Now there’s a comment worth repeating. Thanks AAMC.

    ‘Whether New Zealanders think their future is going to get brighter or not has no bearing on whether it is in fact going to get brighter. If a few of them switched from the RWC circus and NZ’s next top model, they may see the global economy is imploding.

    Just as having confidence in your Government doesn’t in fact have any real bearing on whether or not they are up to the job.’

    Let’s face it, the vast majority of New Zealanders are:

    1. uninfomed

    2. deluded

    3, distracted

    The world economy is indeed imploding, and the rate of implosion is accelerating. The last thing the mainstream media want is for people to realise times are going to get extremely tough soon: they might start thinking before spending.

    By the same token, the last thing the government wants is for people to become informed and start thinking for themselves; they might reject the nonsense the government churns out. Hence the great distractions of RWC and NZ Top model to keep the populace distracted and entertained (well that portion of the populace stupid enough to fall for it) while ‘the ship goes down’.

    Anyone who is the least bit interested in the REAL future (as opposed to the fantasy future promoted by the government and the mainstream media) need only check the Peak Oil item which has been on TS the last couple of days.

    The only brighter future we might see is that caused by the drop in pollution levels in the atmosphere [due to the fall in economic activity] which will allow more sunlight to reach the Earth. And that won’t be a particulalry good thing, since UV levels will increase and there will be a corresponding increase in skin cancer rates a little later.

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