Trying to keep up

My shop is going well. I am sketching from 8.30 to 4 daily and the time flies. What was going to be 2 weeks is now 4. We have the Eastbourne Carnival on Sunday and Xmas market December 12. Trying to keep up with my other stuff - welfare, blogging and my other part-time pharmaceutical stock take business - is tricky.

The Welfare Working Group options paper is being released today. I don't have an internet or wireless connection at the shop so I am going to be behind the eight ball. An offer of an embargoed copy late last week hasn't materialised. Neither is it up at the website.

Nevertheless it is good to see Rebstock focussing on young people in her pre-release comments. My presentation to the WWG had the same focus. I was asked to present on , Should NZ adopt the sole parent policies of other countries? My aim was to persuade that teenage birth - Maori in particular - was driving the long-term reliance on the DPB and all of the attendant problems. The teenage birth(s) is usually just the first of more that will produce children dependent on welfare.

My fear is that the paper will recommend more support for teenage parents as opposed to changing the system so as to not encourage them in the first place. After all, NZ does have one of the highest teenage birth rates in the developed world.

Reflecting further on the subject of yesterday's post, the kicking to death of a two year-old child by a gang associate, whose mother was also jailed for assaulting the child, criminals have always had children and always will. That's just the way it is. But if you were going to design a system where they were encouraged to have even more, paying them to is surely it.