NZ Herald makes stuff up

Today's NZ Herald op-ed about the proposed reserved Maori seats today contains a lie;

Ever since the rush-of-blood decision to exclude Maori, Mr Key has, quite correctly, been seeking to fashion a compromise.

Maori are not excluded just because reserved seats are not allocated.

Hell, it's not even as if they had reserved seats and their removal has been proposed.

Why has this business become so convoluted that a lie is now propagated as the truth in New Zealand's major newspaper?

Last week I was invited to a Barnardos organised Every Child Counts conference in Auckland. Very unusual. It'll be harder for me to get there than some of the other participants because I live in Wellington. In fact, the cost of an airfare could even be prohibitive. But I am not going around saying I have been excluded from participating.

That would be a lie.

Ever since the rush-of-blood decision to exclude Maori, Mr Key has, quite correctly, been seeking to fashion a compromise.

A compromise? How about inclusion on the same terms as everyone else.

Rodney Hide - a rare politician

While cooking tea last night I received a call from Radio New Zealand. Nothing unusual there. Except they didn't want to know what I thought about anything to do with welfare. The reporter wanted to know what I thought about Rodney Hide's latest position. Apparently he is not only saying he will resign as Local Government Minister but will quit all his other portfolios. I asked why she was asking me. Because you are an ACT member? No. I resigned. I was a candidate. I would be happy to comment described as a former candidate but not as a member. She was still keen.

Of course I support what he is doing. It's hugely important to him because it is hugely important for the future of New Zealand. We can't progress under different democratic rules. That will do nothing for the relationship between Maori and Pakeha or Maori and any other minority.

Do you think other ACT members support him? They should. ACT philosophy is about individual rights yet this is an example of the collective demanding privilege. Maori should have to fight for seats along with everybody else.

What will it mean for ACT's relationship with National? How would I know. You would have to ask the Parliamentary representatives.

That's the guts of it. But I should add that thank God we have a politician prepared, as Lou Taylor wrote yesterday, to put his balls on the line over an issue.

Here's the RNZ item canvassing various views.

Goodbye Your Majesty

When I was seven I felt sure the Queen would want to know that I was about to leave her kingdom. And so I wrote to Her Majesty informing her of my impending departure for a country as far away as I could go - New Zealand. I told her I was unconvinced that a ship of that size would stay afloat but hopefully I would be proved wrong. Because it was an official missive I used the name that appeared on my birth certificate (but my contrary mother never used.)

Here is her reply;

NZ judge pushes for same-sex/de facto adoption

NewstalkZB reports;

Judge pushes for gay and de-facto adoption

His call is all very well but surely gay or de facto adoption is a moot point. There are sadly hardly any babies available for adoption anyway. From a high of almost 4,000 adoptions in the early seventies there are now only between 100 and 200 each year (77 non-family adoptions in 2008 according to the Adoption Trust). CYF counsels young mothers to keep their babies and go on the DPB.

Lumping Maori and Pacific people together

It is often the case that people quoting statistics will lump Maori and Pacific people together. I was guilty of doing the same thing when I first began researching welfare.

The practice often does a disservice to Pacific people. It has intrigued me for some time that Pacific people are not over-represented in the welfare dependence statistics to the degree that Maori are. And on combined sickness and invalid benefits, not at all.

For instance, currently the Pacific unemployment rate is slightly higher than Maori. But their share of unemployment benefit is 10.6 percent whereas for Maori it stands at 32.8 percent.

So why is this? I can only speculate but primarily I believe it is because the Pacific family is stronger and the family is a source of support. Religious institutions also play a part in providing services. Perhaps too Pacific unemployment is shorter term hence the opportunity or need to go on the dole is lesser.

Another important reason Pacific people are more independent is that they are not in grievance mode. They see life in New Zealand as offering opportunities whereas some Maori, including Maori leadership, are more concerned with blame, resentment and languishing.

Here are the percentages of total caseload for each benefit (followed by Maori). The population shares are lower than total population shares as Pacific and Maori both have very young populations;

18-64 year-old population share 5.5 (12.5)

Unemployment 10.6 (32.8)
DPB 10 (41.4)
Sickness 6.3 (21.7)
Invalid 4.8 (21.5)
All main benefits 8.1 (31.5)

What religion tree-huggers?

Down our road there is a tree. It is a very big tree. A Norfolk Pine - one of four. It is near a dead-end so not much traffic passes it. A couple of boys whose house is next to the tree decided to mount a basketball hoop upon it. They didn't have a facility or the space on their own property to throw hoops. Seemed like a good idea. Goodness knows, we hear enough about getting kids active.

But no. Very soon a letter arrived in their postbox telling them to remove the offending hoop or a fine would be forthcoming. The council said it is a protected tree. Never mind that at Xmas they hang lights all over other local trees of the same species; that they regularly lop big branches off to accommodate powerlines; that our coastal windy Wellington weather frequently gives them a good working over. A ball shall not be thrown at or near this lump of wood.

As I reflected on this, when walking past the tree today, I wondered what religion, if they aren't one in their own right, tree-huggers most resemble. Catholicism perhaps? Rules-bound beyond common-sense? Intolerant, uncompromising, can't see the forest for the Norfolk Pines perhaps? Or am I being too hard on tree-lovers?

Driven to distraction

A comment by PC over at Kiwiblog on the matter of banning the use of cellphones while driving prompted a trip down memory lane for me.

The last car accident I had the misfortune of experiencing involved a young man who did not have a hands-free pie-eating device installed.

Having purchased his pastry at the dairy, he was unable to curb his impulse to consume it immediately. So absorbing was this exercise that he forgot to check his side mirror and proceeded to make a hasty u-turn across a busy road. Thus he collected the back end of my car, just missing the door behind which my 2 year-old was seated. (My car was also not fitted with a hands-free pie-eating device, so I suppose I was equally culpable under today's share-the-blame-if-you-don't-embrace-the-policy religion.)

The pie was delicious. So much so that the young man got out of his vehicle and proceeded to haul the badly damaged bumper off his vehicle with the right hand, all the while continuing to convey the pie to his mouth using his left.

Now when I think about it I too have been guilty of eating a pie while driving. Not being quite as ambitious as this young man, who was attempting to eat a hot mince pie, I contented myself with a cold pork one. Of the kind purchased from the M1 Services. When I had to break suddenly (altogether expected on a British motorway) the large book I had resting on my knee to collect any greasy crumbs from said pie, shot forward and down and virtually guillotined me at the ankles. Very painful, very distracting.

So like PC and DPF, I look forward to the list of accident-causing activities that Mr Joyce is going to ban. I promise never to eat, operate audio equipment, mediate between arguing children, check a pimple in the rear vision mirror, or even think about anything but driving again - so long as he passes a law compelling such.

Sue Bradford rejects inconvenient truth about DPB

Media Release
Sue Bradford rejects inconvenient truth about DPB
Monday, August 17, 2009

Green MP Sue Bradford is refusing to accept that the DPB is now responsible for violence towards women.

Quoted in The Epoch Times, 8 August, 2009, Ms Bradford said, "To remove it [DPB] would be one of the most evil things we could do to our women and children." It would mean a return to times when women " were dependent on men often (suffering) humiliation and physical violence."

Bradford was responding to a proposal contained in a report, Maori and Welfare, published by the New Zealand Business Roundtable last month.

Lindsay Mitchell, author of the report, said that Ms Bradford was ignoring aspects of the DPB that actually increased women's vulnerability to violence.

"Giving young women, in particular, a long-term secure income and home, makes them attractive to men who have no desire to raise and support a family themselves. Men who want a roof over their heads, sex on demand and another source of money when their own dries up. Men who want to control women physically and financially."

"This life style was acknowledged by the 1996 Ruka Ruling in which the Court of Appeal agreed that a woman who was living in a de facto relationship featuring violence and a lack of emotional or financial support from the partner, should be entitled to continue receiving state support - usually the DPB."

"Sue Bradford just doesn't want to accept that the DPB is no longer primarily about leaving violent relationships. It is about encouraging and staying in them."

"If, on the other hand, assistance became temporary only, the recipient stops being the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg. Women would make far more cautious choices about partnering and deadbeat men would cease to have their exploitive expectations met."

Reiterating the central message in her paper, Mitchell said every year thousands of uneducated and unskilled teenagers enter the welfare system that then traps them. "So long as the present rules continue, the benefit system is condemning many young mothers and their children to the very lives Sue Bradford likes to think it frees them from."

Teaching lies

How ironic such an inversion of reason should come out of a school principal.

The state school system relies on redistribution of wealth. The poorest school gets double the funding of the richest school. The 'rich' are robbed to pay the 'poor'.

When that fails to happen (or to a lesser degree at least) the Principal cries out;

"It seems that we're robbing the poor to pay the rich," said Mr Gall, who is also president of the Secondary Principals Association.

That's plain wrong. What kind of lesson does it teach to young minds? No wonder we are experiencing an epidemic of entitlement.

Most New Zealanders, it would appear, are prepared to live with some degree of socialism. But let's at least have it properly understood, and honestly and accurately represented.

FIPS

Family Intervention Projects is the latest UK initiative to try and improve the lives of children living in families where crime and violence are not uncommon.

A newspaper report;

THOUSANDS of the worst families in England are to be put in “sin bins” in a bid to change their bad behaviour, Ed Balls announced yesterday.

The Children’s Secretary set out £400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes.

They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.

Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction.

Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far.

I did a little further searching and found some information about the types of families in the programme. No surprises.

69 percent were headed by a lone parent and 61 percent were receiving out-of-work benefits.

Products of the modern welfare state.

The early results from those families that have completed the intervention show some improvement - more so for children - better school attendance, less anti-social behaviour orders received, less trouble with housing authorities, improved health. Interestingly this mirrors the Christchurch EarlyStart programme which is improving outcomes for children but not for adults to the same degree.

And are the families less state-dependent? Barely.

Once a perkbuster...

What fun. ACT's leader, Rodney Hide, is back banging the bust-the-perks drum;

His Act colleague Sir Roger Douglas used his 90 per cent discount to fly himself and his wife to Britain to visit family, but Mr Hide scoffed at claims from former MPs that it should remain.

"If you're an ex-MP and you've got the perk, of course you'd love it. But it was another time in New Zealand.

"It's hard to believe we ever did that, but that's how things used to operate. There were always perks in doing jobs and now there aren't perks.

"That goes right across New Zealand, and Parliament should be the same," Mr Hide said.

Claims the travel subsidy was part of the employment package at the time and compensation for accepting lower salaries were rubbish, he said.

This is pure, unadulterated, put'em up Hide. It is also damage control. Douglas' attitude towards his perks has detracted badly from ACT's core ethic. Hide's workload is doubled by not just having to work to build support but work to hang on to it.

Meantime another intransigent trough snuffler, Sir Douglas Graham, has some advice for us;

"You better keep paying your taxes".

Excuse me waiter, is that the calories or the price?

Apparently United States legislators want restaurants to start menu detailing of calorie counts on their meals.

From the USA Today;

This is another pointless and expensive federal proposal that will lead to cookie-cutter menus and will actually retard our incentive to think for ourselves. Do politicians really think that people don't know that a salad has fewer calories than a cheeseburger?

And how long will it be before this asinine idea comes to a country near you?

Questions that have occupied me

Why are the proposed emission reductions benchmarked to 1990 levels, almost 20 years ago?

Why won't the husband and wife directors of KidsCan disclose their self-awarded salaries?

Will Sir Roger Douglas be joining the 'Hands off our perks' campaign?

How big is Adolf's sample?

Forced donation to telethon

So even if you had decided not to support the weekend's telethon because you prefer to support other causes, because you believe that more handouts only create more dependency, that kind Mr Key decided he would do it for you.

The sickening monotony of it

As sure as unspeyed cats will have kittens another child will be assaulted and killed.

There is nothing new to say about the rate of child death due to intentional injury. I wonder if the referendum papers were on the bench of her home waiting to be filled in?

Live blogging from the cat delivery suite

Daisy has gone into labour under the desk. Poor little thing.

Stand by.





2 so far....





Three... mother's doing great.



I think that's it. One tabby, one black and white and one black.
Lovely.

Uh oh. Wrong. After mother appeared to settle down to rest another black one popped out. Running late on time.

No, the second black is actually a dark tabby.

All done.

Words of little worth

Trevor Mallard giving David Garrett advice is like Oprah Winfrey giving guidance to Kirsty Alley.

Another hike in dole numbers

According to National;

As at 31 July, there were 55,272, working aged people (18-64) receiving the unemployment benefit. Overall unemployment benefit numbers are up by 34,726 (169%) since July 2008.


Up from 50,855 at June 30, 2009. That's difficult for National who have been insisting that Labour's claim of 1,000 people a week losing their jobs is an exaggeration.

Of course some of the new unemployed beneficiaries will be people returning from overseas or even dropping out of education.

It would be interesting to know how the other sometimes pseudo-unemployment benefits are bearing up.

Free speech petition?

A petition, sparked by the actions of Paula Bennett, has been set up as per the following;



It is all about free speech apparently.

I am very much for free speech. What I am not for is free lies, or free half-truths.

If the Minister had released information that did not pertain directly and only to that already released by the protester I would also be up in arms. As it stands there is already enough legislated protection of privacy so I do not feel a need to add my signature.

23,400 teenagers did not lose their jobs

According to the NZ Herald;

The latest household labour force survey, published yesterday, confirms young people are bearing the brunt of the downturn, with a net 23,400 teenagers losing their jobs in the past year.

This claim is spurious. But it makes for good copy. Unfortunately thousands of people will read it and believe it.

How does it come about.

First of all the government, through Statistics New Zealand, conducts what they call a Household Labour force Survey every three months. There are 16,000 households on it at any given time but it is a changing group as new participants are rostered on and old rostered off. Each participant spends 2 years in the survey (I have been a participant).The information is gathered and extrapolated across the population.

The tables produced breakdown the employment data gleaned in various ways.

In June 2008 146,900 15-19 year-olds were employed. In June 2009 the number had dropped to 123,500. The difference is 23,400.

At June 2008 the majority of employed teenagers would have been 19. By June 2009 they would no longer be teenagers. They didn't lose their jobs. They stopped being teenagers.

Yes, there are certainly more unemployed teenagers than there were a year ago - 9,800 according to the survey because employers are not taking on young people to the degree that they had been.

Two-thirds of the 18,200 lost jobs in the past year were in retailing and wholesaling, with the next biggest losses in farming, forestry and fishing, transport, storage and communications, and manufacturing.

Now the 'lost jobs' are less than the numbers who apparently 'losing their jobs'.

But wait...

A massive 43,000 people under 50 lost their jobs, but there was a net gain of 24,400 jobs for people aged 50-plus.

Again, 43,000 people under 50 did not lose their jobs. We don't know how many people lost their jobs. If there is a 'net' gain to older age groups there is a strong possibility some of the difference is due to people ageing and holding their jobs.

In June 2008 there were 2,189,000 people employed - in June 2009 there were 2,169,000. Therefore there were 20,000 fewer employed people - based on a household survey. That's all that can be said with absolute certainty.

If Paula Bennett is releasing benefit data today, that will tell us more about how many people 'lost their jobs'. But that information is still not definitive given many people losing jobs are not entitled to a benefit.