"How to rip off WINZ"

Should I be angry or pleased about an article in Salient, "How to rip-off WINZ"?

The more exposure this crooked, corrupt system gets the better I suppose. But encouraging people towards the lowest common denominator behaviour is not going to make things better. Its the old, if you can't beat 'em you may as well join 'em trick.

The article, published this week , detailed ways for people to get the most out of the Work and Income system – including cell phones, clothes, abortions, vasectomies, dental care and furniture.

Salient editor Steve Nicoll said the article was factually correct and not misleading anybody.

"We are providing a service, telling people about what Work and Income offer. We don't advise anyone to do anything that is against the law," he said.

It may be legal but it isn't ethical. I know it's supposed to be funny but it's not funny when this is what we are telling our supposed 'best and brightest'.

A job for you

Jim Hopkins at his brilliant best. A must read.

In fact cut and paste the url and send it to Hodgson and Maharey just to ensure they get the message. I'm going to.

Pissed off (but not pissed) worker

This just arrived in my in-box;

I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to earn that pay cheque, as I work in heavy industry , I am required to pass a random urine test, with which I have no problem (in passing) .

What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test. Shouldn't one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare cheque because I have to pass one to earn it for them??

Please understand – I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet.

I do on the other hand have a problem with helping someone sit on their arse drinking piss & smoking dope all day .

Could you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a DPB cheque?????

Please pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don't.

Hope you all will pass it along though, because something has to change in this country, and soon!

It's like blackmail

What took Sue so long? I've been expecting this for days;

"When the overarching goal of the benefit system is that people on the DPB, invalids and sickness benefits should aim to get into the paid workforce as soon as possible - and case managers at Work and Income actively pursue this strategy - mothers will sometimes feel impelled to go out to work, and may end up at times leaving their children with people who may not provide the best possible care for the child."

Now it's our fault the mother left her child with a bunch of untrustworthy people. Negation of responsibility never ends in Sue Bradford's world. It's societies fault that people do not take advantage of the education they are offered. It societies fault they then can't get jobs. It's societies fault they have kids they can't afford to feed. So society better cough up and pay these people for the ills it has visited on them. And it better keep paying them because otherwise children will be maimed.

Breast feeding bunkum

This business of enshrining in law the right of mothers to breast feed in public is just foot stamping to the nth degree. It's an issue driven by obsolete feminists who haven't got anything substantial left to bitch about.

Steve Chadwick is just the most infuriating woman. With her droll tones she tells Kaye Gregory that human rights trump property rights. Yes. It's all about a babies right to nutrition. Bunkum. It's about militant women's rights. The right of a business owner to treat his premises as private is non-existent.

A babies right to nutrition, my arse Steve.

Messy

The major coverage of what John Key did and didn't say about the trans-Tasman therapeutic deal is in the Herald.

The DomPost has it on A8 with the role of the Australian Commissioner as a focus. But the PM has also waded in contradicting Key's claim that National were not consulted. She personally talked to Murray McCully to make an "eleventh hour plea for compromise.". Here's what Helen Clark says about Key;

"I think this guy [Mr Key] has got a problem with the truth: BP [David Benson-Pope] swung for less."

Very messy. And uh-oh. More bad timing. On the eve of National's conference the DomPost has John Key now saying (confirming?) no personal tax-cuts till 2010.

Domestic violence is two way

The focus on men as the only or major perpetrators of domestic violence is wrong.

There are many, many studies that disprove this.

Here are the results of just one New Zealand survey.

Has any partner EVER actually used force or violence on you, such as deliberately hit, kicked, pushed, grabbed or shoved you, or deliberately hit you with something, in a way that could have hurt you?

Sample of 2526 ever partnered women 21.2 percent
Sample of 1721 ever partnered men 14.4 percent

This initiative to screen all women entering hospital is unjustified.

And here's a thought. As with my other speculation about unthinkable unintended consequences (below) there are some men who are sadistically and pathologically jealous and violently controlling. If such a man knows his partner will be questioned in hospital won't he act to prevent her ever getting there?

What if?

I had a dreadful thought. I was mentally replaying a conversation I'd had with a woman yesterday. We were talking about the Rotorua incident. She was very scathing of Bradford's bill asking, as others are, why didn't that stop them? These groups aren't connected to society, I responded. They aren't interested in the law. They aren't interested in gaining society's approval. In fact, the very opposite applies. They enjoy society's disapproval. They provoke it.

Then I stopped in my tracks. What if this horrible business is the very result of not smacking the child. Imagine for a moment a bunch of stoned or drunk people gleefully thumbing their noses at the anti-smacking bill. They didn't say we couldn't hang her on a clothesline eh? They didn't say we couldn't put her in a tumble-dryer eh? They didn't say we couldn't put her outside in the freezing cold or on the roof eh?

Some hold that these types are so disconnected they wouldn't have known about the bill. I very much doubt that because the TV rarely goes off. When they've run out of money for DVDs and X-box games they have to watch something. If I was anywhere near the truth there would at least be some reason behind such senseless acts.

BENEFITS BACKGROUND CHILD NEGLECT AND ABUSE

Media release
BENEFITS BACKGROUND CHILD NEGLECT AND ABUSE
Tuesday, July 31, 2007

In response to the latest high-profile child abuse incidents, a number of politicians and commentators have told New Zealanders they all bear responsibility for what is going on.

"To a point this is true. Most of us pay the taxes that fund dissolute and destructive benefit lifestyles." According to welfare commentator, Lindsay Mitchell, "Like it or not we fund the system that over-produces dysfunctional and violent families."

"Not since 1996 has research been conducted into which families are over-represented in notifications to Child, Youth and Family. It was discovered then that children in welfare-dependent families are 4 times more likely to be reported as in need of care and protection. This needs to be acknowledged and, if necessary, the research should be updated, published and, this time, acted on."

"If the majority of notifications relate to children with benefit-dependent parents the association should be cause for alarm - not routinely ignored. Much domestic abuse is alcohol or drug-fuelled. Most people drink, many use drugs. But they control their consumption because they have jobs to hold down and children to care for. Others, who receive a weekly 'pay' cheque regardless of whether they work or tend to their families, spiral out of control."

"As members of the larger society we are all responsible for allowing the continuation of such a flawed social security system. We cannot keep turning a blind eye to what backgrounds the high incidence of child neglect and abuse. It's degenerate lifestyles accommodated by benefits."

Whacko

We need a laugh. Get these flakes. Vegansexuals who won't have sex with meat-eaters because their bodies are made from carcasses. Good god. I might be a necrophiliac.

Explosion in reporting

This is rather astonishing;

Dr Wills expected 2500 Hawke's Bay youngsters would be referred to social welfare services this year, 300 of them by the hospital.

2,500 children represents around 15 percent of the children living in the Hastings and Central Hawks Bay district. If that percentage were extrapolated across the country we would be looking at over 130,000 children being referred to social welfare. To put that into context as it stands last year around 16,000 children were receiving social work services.

Hawke's Bay health board's development of a strategy to tackle the region's high rate of child and domestic violence had worked so well that levels of reporting had rocketed.

But how many of those reports are substantiated? The level of reporting on its own says nothing.

The strategy, called the Hawke's Bay Family Intervention Programme, had proven so successful it is to be launched nationwide tomorrow by the Health Ministry.

So this scheme is being rolled out nationwide and we will measure its success by sky-rocketing reports. But where the heck are the resources coming from to deal with all these reports? DHBs are constantly stretched, there is a shortage of social workers and GPs and fosterers. The courts are stretched. The jails and youth lock-ups are full.

Success should be measured by a reversal of all of these, not sky-rocketing reports.

Labour MP says he knew Bradford's bill was a waste of time

Just listening to Labour MP Dover Samuels calling in to Radio Live and vigorously regaling Jackson and Tamihere with his thoughts about these latest atrocities. He says he and a lot of other MPs knew that Sue Bradford's bill would make not one iota of difference. There are no academic solutions. There are no do-gooder solutions. And the Maori Party and their 'aroha' can go jump. There you go.

A few words on the current 'crisis'

What we are seeing at the moment is not new. 'Battered Child (or baby) Syndrome' was first discussed in the 1960s. From Family Matters by Bronwyn Dalley;

New Zealand medical practitioners and paediatric radiologists took a central role in the dissemination of awareness of the syndrome; staff at Wellington Hospital noted the large number of 'injury' cases with a suspicion that was often confirmed when X-rays revealed earlier healed fractures.

Many cases of abuse investigated "displayed an intergenerational pattern." So the abuse stems back further still. The distressing number of young Maori children who died at the hands of their young mothers who had themselves been state wards is commented on.

For a long time associated factors have been known. Unmarried parenting, very young parenting, and a personal parental history of neglect and abuse. Add to these increased misuse of alcohol and drugs and benefits that pay emotionally and financially bereft people to become parents and it is little wonder what problem already existed has worsened.

I have little time for calls for a review into causes or even more state money going into groups working with at-risk families (who were grown on the back of state money anyway). The families you can get into aren't the worst. They have asked for and admitted you. As a volunteer I don't get paid for what I do and wouldn't do more if I was paid.

All the hand-wringing and knee-jerking going on over the past few days, on TV and radio, is rather wearing me out and I have no more to add except the thoughts of Lewis Anderson who was Superintendent of child Welfare forty, yes FORTY, years ago;

Anderson took the brutally realistic view that no matter what staff did or how extensive their supervision or services were, children would still suffer or be killed at the hands of their parents or caregivers. He repeatedly pointed out that child welfare officers were 'not clairvoyant', that is was inevitable that children would be killed by their parents, and that there were abused children about whom the Division had no knowledge until it was too late.