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.
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?
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.
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.
The howls of outrage from the Right elite were predictable. Robertson and Cunliffe promising a living wage for all government workers, are they crazy? Decent pay for cleaners? That’s not what their granddaddies fought for. It was predictable but it still makes you angry. These are the same people who cheered when the elite got billions in tax cuts. These are the people we have to throw out of power.
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.
If you invested in Mighty River, you’ve lost 13% of your money so far. The word is the current plunge is prices is institutions selling off in order to force the Meridian listing price lower and Mighty River has a long way to fall yet. But the lower it goes, the less likely ordinary people will be to risk their savings on another privatised power company.
David Shearer is not the only one to lose his job this month. It’s quite a list, when you add it up…
We know that only 2.5% of Kiwis bought shares in Mighty River Power. English now talks of ‘tens of thousands’ buying Meridian shares. This ain’t no widespread ownership – it’s the few buying and the many losing ownership. So far, we’ve paid at least $100m for these sales. Yesterday, Key added $40m in interest-free loans to Meridian buyers.
The Nats’ PR-managed conference stifled democratic debate & bright ideas, and diverted from significant issues. Armstrong attempts to talk it up, while exposing Key’s win-at-all-costs ruthlessness. Meanwhile: speakers announced for democratic meeting to Kill the GCSB Bill [Updated – Hagar also speaking]. [Update: Gordon Campbell – ‘Nanny National‘]
So, let me see if I have this right: National’s big announcement on affordable housing was the increase the income and house price limits for getting the Kiwisaver First Home Deposit Subsidy. In other words, pour more money into the over-heated housing market. And do that by giving cash to people previously considered too well-off for the subsidy.
In an otherwise typically dull piece in The Herald recently, Bob Jones finished up with a typically blunt assessment of the impact of Labour and National governments on the economy. It seems that Jones can acknowledge the truth that most right-wingers try and deny.
It has been obvious that some people live in a different world than the rest of us. One where Chicago school economics, work! […]
I know many of the liberal left don’t like or can’t accept the thought that banning non-residents from speculating on residential property in […]
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.
It is a national evil that any class of Her Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions… where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad and the bad by the worst; …
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.
The Employment Relations Act Part 6A ensures that jobs are transferred to a new contractor, on the same terms, if a firm is restructured. Naturally the Nats plan to abolish it.
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”.
The Government has been warned that the Employment Relations Amendment Bill is likely to breach ILO conventions. Bridges has responded by saying that the breaches “may not be significant”. Why is it that the Government gets all hard core when dealing with beneficiaries legal obligations but is so casual when it deals with its own obligations?
Yesterday The Herald ran two pieces on the latest Ministry of Social Development’s report on household income. They have very different conclusions – Brian Fallow’s Rising inequality largely a myth and Max Rashbrooke’s Rich get richer. The poor? Have a guess. So who’s right?
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.
A visiting Professor of Economics says he was bullied by Bill English when they met between their respective Q+A interviews. His crime was to point out that National are governing for the rich. Seems English can’t handle the truth.
Sweeping changes to NZ’s Social Security system begin today. This is a major shift from the the 1938 Social Security Act: a shift from support of those in need, to treating them as potential criminals, self-serving addicts, and malingerers. Shame on John Key & Paula Bennett! [Update: RNZ & BAF & AAAP]
A UK study has found that public perceptions of key issues that the Right tries to win votes on are vast exaggerations of reality. What this shows is that Rightwing politicians are succeeding in whipping up false perceptions as a way of wedging working people against each other and against their class interests, and the Left is ceding the ground.
It seems that the Sky City Bill means pokies in Auckland InterCity bus terminal. So much for monitored and controlled environments. Those MPs who vote for this legislation are voting for more social harm, including more suicide. Contact them – ask them not to create more pokie victims.
Multiple reports on Twitter that Key’s grubby Sky City Bill will be a conscience personal vote. If true, I guess we get to see if any Nat MPs have a conscience.
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.
US social critic, Phillip E Slater (1927-2013), lived anti-materialistic, anti-individualistic, community-based ideals: 60s-70s, middle-class, US-based counter-culture values, with limited political activism and focus. Admirable cultural values, lacking the politics to challenge global “neoliberal” elites. What can the NZ left learn from this today?
Labour Minister Sim0n Bridges has been trying to justify the latest round of attacks on workers’ rights by saying the law currently requires workers to be union members for the first 30 days on a new job and that people ought to have choice. That’s a lie. The law Bridges wants to throw out says new workers can’t be paid less than union rates, not that you have to join the union.
Despite the heroic efforts of National’s spinsters the economic “recovery” remains anemic. We’re still behind 2007, and what recovery there is seems to be largely driven by another property bubble, and captured by a few. All National have managed is to hold us back for four years.
An interesting couple of interviews. Jamie-Lee Ross admits he took advice on strikebreaking from the Ports of Auckland Ltd, and Darien Fenton makes it clear what National are up to, and (note to Labour’s press team) shows why she should be fronting serious media more often.
Many business people say that a country should be run like a business. Maybe they are right. It should be run like a SUCCESSFUL business. It is appropriate for Government to take lessons from business success, and the reverse. But when it comes down to details, right wing Neo-Liberal business do not want Government and country they govern to become too successful or democratic…
I/S at No Right Turn is on a roll today. Here he is on the gambling amendment.
Blame beneficiaries, blame the young, blame the old, blame the boomers, blame Maori, blame Pakeha, blame granny, hell, why don’t we just blame […]
