welfare

A more equitable society

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 1:13 pm, December 11th, 2013 - 53 comments

Welfare benefits and how you provide for the disadvantaged is one of the primary distinguishing features of the difference between the left and right of the political spectrum. Here is a proposal on how to make sure that the wealth of society is better distributed. It would require consensus from most people to implement as it would fundamentally change the fabric of society.

Labour shoot themselves in the foot, again!

Written By: KJT - Date published: 10:13 am, December 7th, 2013 - 247 comments

Just when you begin to think Labour are looking like a Government, one of the has-beens from the Rogernomics era, again! shows that they have NFI how to get elected and they are still clinging desperately to the Neo-liberal paradigm.

Super. Reprise.

Written By: KJT - Date published: 3:50 pm, October 31st, 2013 - 41 comments

The meme of “we cannot afford super, welfare seems to be very powerful. So powerful, that even those who know better have been taken in.

Armstrong on Nat’s attack on wages

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:01 am, October 12th, 2013 - 30 comments

John Armstrong has a good column on National’s attack on Kiwi workers today. Covering off David Cunliffe’s speech to the CTU, Armstrong talks about the way the Nats have been playing small target on their raft of small employment changes that add up to a serious attack on the wages and rights of all of […]

Warfare of welfare

Written By: Bill - Date published: 11:22 am, September 30th, 2013 - 137 comments

3 billion reasons to be…cheerful?

Enough of the Best for All of Us

Written By: notices and features - 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.”

Why I electorate vote Cunliffe: op ed

Written By: karol - 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.

Kiwis say no to welfare-bashing

Written By: IrishBill - 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?”

This gives me heart

Written By: IrishBill - 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.

Outsourcing: Scamming the system

Written By: karol - 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.

Sick bastards

Written By: Anthony R0bins - 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.

Images of our time: ‘shock’ capitalism

Written By: karol - 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.

Advocacy is the core of any charity

Written By: lprent - 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.

The disconnected: the future of the left?

Written By: karol - Date published: 12:30 pm, April 18th, 2013 - 42 comments

The current direction of Key’s government, and the challenging circumstances of the 21st century create a need for urgent attention to the form of a new left politics; one that embraces the working class, trade union solidarity, gender, diversity & the emerging “precariat”.