Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, October 10th, 2013 - 8 comments
Cunliffe’s CTU speech is significant, rousing and inspiring, laying out a shift “from a cost-based to a value-based” strategy- for an inclusive society and one that provides a good life for “all” Kiwis, with opportunities for all. Video of the speech is a must see. And social security? [Update: Gordon Campbell] & Turei’s speech
Written By: - Date published: 1:13 pm, October 2nd, 2013 - 15 comments
“I just utter one fear…”
Remember that?
Written By: - Date published: 11:22 am, September 30th, 2013 - 137 comments
3 billion reasons to be…cheerful?
Written By: - Date published: 10:11 am, September 23rd, 2013 - 41 comments
Ed Miliband got the idea of pre-distribution from Jacob Hacker. Cunliffe has followed. Can “pre-distribution” underpin a new direction for the left in NZ: one relevant to the challenges of the 21st century, especially in countering the too wide inequality gap & re-instating social democracy?
Written By: - Date published: 3:27 pm, September 18th, 2013 - 17 comments
What seems to be the defining feature of this government is in providing corporate welfare to incompetents who underbid their competition for government work or want bigger subsidies at the taxpayers expense. Give them the vaguest excuse and Key or Joyce will wilt like a flower in a desert and throw money at companies who […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, September 16th, 2013 - 22 comments
Today is the 75th Anniversary of the 1938 Social Security Act, one of Labour’s finest achievements that shaped our modern society. As Michael Joseph Savage said during the passage of the Bill: “There is enough of the best for all of us, and I want to bring about security for everyone during illness, whether it be temporary incapacity due to accident, or anything else. I should think it was the inalienable right of every person to be secured against distress of any form.”
Written By: - Date published: 1:18 pm, September 13th, 2013 - 71 comments
Auckland Action Against Poverty did 3 days of advocacy action in New Lynn. Their press releases & videos show the struggles of low income Kiwis to survive in John Key’s corporate-loving NZ. The tales tell of a need for real social security legislation & a more client-friendly WINZ.
Written By: - Date published: 4:47 pm, September 9th, 2013 - 8 comments
Last December I reported on the Auckland Action Against Poverty, Advocacy Activism in Onehunga. There’s another one happening this week in New Lynn – starts tomorrow at 9am outside the WINZ office. [Update:] Press release from AAAP. Tales of despair: from the streets of New Lynn.
Written By: - Date published: 10:41 am, September 9th, 2013 - 160 comments
John Key honed his skills as a speculative banker. As PM, this casino capitalist has undermined democracy, & promoted international corporate interests, while beneficiaries & workers are brutalised, inequalities enhanced and NZ’s economy & sovereignty damaged. Does one Labour leader contender have his number measure?
Written By: - Date published: 9:34 am, September 6th, 2013 - 168 comments
Cunliffe & Robertson stress the need to improve employment laws, jobs, wages, the economy, workers’ rights. Cunliffe invokes Savage-like social security & the need to end the Nats beneficiary bashing. Wider community pressure is needed for there to be real political change away from the destructive neoliberal scam.
Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, September 5th, 2013 - 232 comments
The concept of UBI has a long history in New Zealand.
Of course, we already have a UBI for those over 65. Which has been extremely successful at eliminating poverty amongst the elderly, at a very moderate cost by international standards.
Written By: - Date published: 11:06 am, August 30th, 2013 - 77 comments
TV3’s Mind the Gap documentary (Bryan Bruce) is very important because it put before the general population the damaging impact of income inequality in a clear and and straightforward manner. The solutions? Ideas from academics, journalists, campaigners & opposition politicians/parties.
Written By: - Date published: 10:20 am, August 27th, 2013 - 94 comments
Dunne’s proposal for flexible superannuation is a U-Turn for Key, while he hides behind it being a Dunne and flexible initiative & good for low income people. Sue Bradford argues against Dunne’s initiative, saying it will benefit those on higher incomes. She prefers better and universal benefits.
Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, August 23rd, 2013 - 138 comments
I wasn’t going to express my opinion on the upcoming Labour leadership selection process. However, the usual right leaning MSM hacks seem to have been following the current Labour caucus leadership in naming Robertson as the frontrunner. This is my op ed testimony for my frontrunner, the MP for my electorate: Cunliffe.
Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, August 16th, 2013 - 4 comments
Percent of Auckland City Mission food recipients who are working: 25%
Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, August 16th, 2013 - 22 comments
Stuff’s polls aren’t usually known for their left-wing bias. Indeed there’s a tendency for them to pitch the other way. Which is why I clicked on the results button for their latest (self-selected) poll with some trepidation. after all the question was “Should doctors be encouraged to question unemployed patients on their career goals?”
Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, August 14th, 2013 - 31 comments
The IRD writes of penalties and interest on tax debt almost as standard – along with a chunk of the actual tax. MSD will pursue you beyond the grave to get back loans because you can’t cover your living expenses. Why are we treating people and debt so differently?
Written By: - Date published: 8:12 am, July 30th, 2013 - 61 comments
The Herald is reporting that more that 51% of Kiwis are in favour of giving beneficiaries with kid the Working for Families tax credit.
That’s right, just over half of New Zealanders polled wanted to give beneficiaries more money despite twenty years of active demonisation of beneficiaries by the right.
Written By: - Date published: 6:59 am, July 26th, 2013 - 144 comments
The Nats have created a beneficiary bashing culture so rigid and so nasty that crazy stuff happens. They cry some crocodile tears about it – but only for cases publicised by the media.
Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, July 25th, 2013 - 87 comments
UK children born on the same day as the new prince will get a silver penny: but their lives will be vastly different. Left foot Forward spells out the inequalities between these new born. John Key gushes over the new prince, while his government slashes, burns and fuels inequalities.
Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, July 22nd, 2013 - 36 comments
The Nats used to make a career out of faux “nanny state” hysteria. Now they want to ID number and track beneficiaries’ kids in pre-school. Paul Little warns of “the surveillance state that we are becoming”.
Written By: - Date published: 9:32 am, July 19th, 2013 - 23 comments
A new report on the UK government’s outsourcing of public sector work is damning. Necessary and basic work to fulfill individual and social needs, (eg social security, unemployment, health care, education) is being “gamed” and scammed by monopolistic private contractors. Key’s government favours outsourcing to private profiteers.
Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, July 18th, 2013 - 69 comments
The Nats resent every cent spent on welfare. They want our consent to keep “culling” people off it as fast as they can. They hope that they can get our consent by re-framing New Zealand’s social safety-net as – quite literally – a dangerous addiction. It is a ludicrous framing, equivalent to blaming the bandage for the wound.
Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, July 7th, 2013 - 121 comments
The MSM coverage of the Labour Party remit, led by right wing propagandists, is riddled with sexism and the same traditional masculinist values that marginalise the poor and those with least power. I repeat my post that critiques a speech on gender & politics at the 2012 Labour Party Conference.
Written By: - Date published: 3:04 pm, May 30th, 2013 - 35 comments
Go check out a good post from Julie at The Hand Mirror – “A response to the Can’t Feed Don’t Breed Brigade”.
Written By: - Date published: 11:03 am, May 30th, 2013 - 87 comments
As Naomi Klein said in the Shock Doctrine documentary, disorienting natural and economic shocks result in the wealth being shifted from “public hands” to the wealthiest. The wealth gap, and extent of poverty in NZ is increasingly & devastatingly marginalising good Kiwis. Meanwhile, Peter Jackson is flying high.
Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, May 27th, 2013 - 161 comments
John Key has been shamed by Hone Harawira’s “feed the kids” private members Bill. Key’s approach to child hunger is a sly use of Dickensian-type PPPs & charities to absolve the government of responsibility, while falsely presenting a caring face.
Written By: - Date published: 5:26 am, May 10th, 2013 - 35 comments
Yesterday’s NZ Herald editorial gave a hard-line conservative view of what a charity should be. Charities should and must deal with ills of society on a person by person basis without attempting to fix the causation. That sounds more like a parasitical “charity” like the workhouses of the 19th century or the adoption factories of the 20th than anything that a person of goodwill would choose to support.
Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, May 5th, 2013 - 45 comments
John Key promised a “brighter future” – “wave good-bye to higher taxes not your loved ones”; a higher standard of his MPs, and honesty for the PM. John Key’s NZ is actually one of callous entitlement of the elite, and dis-entitlement and Struggle Street for battling Kiwis.
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