Written By:
KJT - Date published:
9:43 am, August 9th, 2017 - 5 comments
Categories: Abuse of power, accountability, benefits, colonialism, democracy under attack, feminism, Maori Issues, Metiria Turei, poverty, socialism, welfare -
Tags: the guardian
For Tories, read the New Zealand Government, National and Labour, and their supporters.
minotaur 2d ago
“Here’s a new idea for the Tories: Why not ask a simple question every time you propose a course of action: Is this morally just?
When Mr d’Ancona uses phrases such as “the strain on the NHS and crumbling infrastructure” surely he should ask why they are in such a parlous state in the fifth richest country in the world? Anything to do with er Tory policies? The fact is the Tories, cheered on by Mr d’Ancona, instituted 1930’s economic policies based on nostrums long discredited by Keynes.
There is a view that somehow if only the Tories understood how much damage they were inflicting on the poorest and weakest in society they would somehow desist; I take the view that they are moral scumbags who know exactly what they are doing. Their view is that anyone who is poor is at fault for being poor and the best way to treat them is to make them poorer and “incentivise” them to work by doing so.
This of course is the exact opposite of the way they treat themselves and their chums, who must always be given shedloads more money to add to the piles they already have, in order to encourage them to work. There are huge numbers of Tory MP’s who who worship at the altar of the divine Margaret while thinking she was far too soft and left-wing for their tastes. They don’t want to take Britain back to the 1950’s (when social security meant what it said) but to the 1850’s when the state scarcely existed.
They loathe every single piece of progressive legislation that has ever passed: particularly they hate the NHS, council housing, any employment legislation, the Health and Safety Act, the Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information Act, etc. These are not people who need new ideas, they have all the ideas they want thank you. They are our political equivalent of the Taliban.
After the war and the development of “Butskellism” there was a feeling that, with the exception of a few economic loonies like Enoch Powell, these people had been largely extirpated from mainstream politics. Now they are the mainstream. Even under Thatcher we didn’t have food banks.
However, not only do Tories not see food banks as anything to be nationally ashamed of, they are the precise expression of their ideas that poverty can be dealt with best not by the “state” but “charity.” But just remember, in order to go to a food bank you must first be given a piece of paper allowing you to do so. In order to receive that paper you have to prove your poverty and dire need, in other words undergo a “means test.”
This is exactly the same as the processes that people had to undergo to receive Poor Law assistance. Given that I suspect it unlikely Mr d’Ancona will ever need the services of a food bank I doubt that one of the “new ideas” he will suggest to the Tories is that food banks are a moral outrage”.
And so is making people so desperate they have to lie, steal, cheat and prostitute themselves to survive.
This is why Metiria Turei will never be forgiven. Because she made the Government of New Zealand, and many voters, look at their own moral failure.
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Showed it to the whole world in fact, showed how the whole system has been purposefully broken so as to enrich the already rich.
The Romans could tell them – If they martyr her they’ll wish they hadn’t.
This also from the coment stream further down and also by Minotaur
“I detest the Tories as a political force, I loathe them with every fibre of my, currently extant, being. But they are not ‘evil’ in the religious sense that means. Many are extremely clever, Dominic Raab for example, and they have positions that they can ‘intellectually’ argue. But they can only argue them by dismissing, and ignoring, Keynes; this they do religiously, they worship Smith, Friedman, Hayek, Rand and Thatcher.And when I say worship I do mean that in a religious sense.
So they do not see the ‘evil’ they do as being ‘evil’. As I said earlier, they believe ‘charity’ should replace the state because the state is always ‘oppressive’, whereas charities are always ‘benign’; anyone who has read the history of the 1920’s and 1930’s, not to mention the Oliver Twist,, knows that ‘charity’ comes with demands, hoops that the poor have to jump through in order to ‘receive’ the charity.
Forget the fact that nursery care simply does not exist for children under 4 unless you are staggeringly rich, it is the idea that you ‘farm’ your children out to someone else simply so you can ‘work’ and be a ‘productive’ member of society. Screw child rearing as ‘productive’.
That is what Cameron and Osborne wanted us to be returned to. Before them New Labour under Blair talked about “responsibilities rather than rights”; i.e. the poor had responsibilities in exchange for “rights”. So my “responsibility” was that I would, as a single parent return to work when my son became nine years old. That was subsequently reduced to when a child was 5. Now I believe it is when a child is 2.
My mum brought up six children as a single mother,she would save 5p a week (A shilling in old money) to buy something, but she was NOT REQUIRED TO SEEK WORK UNTIL HER CHILDREN REACHED 18.
When they reached that she became a chambermaid. Her life was hard but now at 83 she is just about ‘head above water’. If she had done what she was advised to do and dumped all of us into social services and children’s homes we would have cost the state millions of pounds.”
Pretty much says what we already know that paying a solo parent to stay at home is the cheap option and most effective so all the hate directed at Turei from the ‘Tories’ is really unnecessary.
But then I suppose if you are making money from the prison system, you need to future proof it some how. Couldn’t go lowering the prison population now could we?
Good analysis of Conservatives! Basically still indicating that capitalism and society are incompatible. I liked this comment from further down:
“The problem is the conservatives continually say one thing and then do another.
Rigged markets not free markets, house building programs that build no houses, fair reward for working by reducing workers rights, wages and conditions of employment etc etc etc.
The only reason they get away with it is people believe what they read in certain newspapers, never questioning how ridiculous the articles are.”
this system reawards people to stay solelow it is not right children need a mother and father grandpearents as well to give them a prosperies life we have to reward two pearent families as the state would save money in the long run i no some people bring up children by them selvies but its a 24/7 responcabilty some one said you get 200 a week to look after a unseported child my responce was thats one day pay what about the over 6 days.
I take my hat off to Metiria and the people that bring up kids by them selvies