Blonde joke

An old, blind Marine Gunnery Sergeant wanders into an All-Girl
Biker Bar.

He finds his way to a bar stool and orders a shot of Jack Daniels. 

After sitting there for a while, he yells to the bartender,

'Hey, you wanna hear a blonde joke?

 The bar immediately falls absolutely silent.

 In a very deep, husky voice, the woman next to him says, 

 'Before  you tell that joke, Marine, I think it is only fair, given 
that you are blind, that you should know five things:

 1. The bartender is a blonde girl with a baseball bat.

 2. The bouncer is a blonde girl with a 'Billy-Club'.

 3. I'm a 6-foot tall, 175-pound blonde woman with a black 
belt in karate. 

 4. The woman sitting next to me is blonde and a professional weight lifter.

 5. The lady to your right is blonde and a professional 
wrestler. 

'Now, think about it seriously, Marine.... Do you still wanna tell 

that blonde joke?'

The blind Marine thinks for a second, shakes his head and mutters, 'No...

not if I'm gonna have to explain it five times............

Ministry data: It's NOT official!

Paula Bennett keeps insisting there is no official measure of child poverty in New Zealand. This tack hasn't worked well for her.

In any case there is a measure produced by her Ministry.

The 2011 Household Incomes Report summary says:

Child poverty rates were the same in 2010 as in 2009 using both the fixed line AHC measure (22%), and the 60% AHC moving line measure (25%) 

There is much more detail following this statement including a table that shows the change since 1998.

Just over an hour ago a rattled (IMO) Bennett released another statement:

‘’Following recent debate on the issue, I have been misquoted in various media as saying there is no poverty line, or it’s been reported that I don’t acknowledge that a poverty line exists.

‘’What I’ve actually said is that there is no official measure of poverty in New Zealand, and that is correct." 

So her Ministry spends money exhaustively examining, analysing and reporting on poverty but the results are not official. Bizarre.

If I was using the MSD report I would  certainly feel justified in describing the data as 'official'. Would you?

Ill-disciplined MPs

Gareth Hughes, on Frogblog, has a post about the behaviour in parliament yesterday. Kudos to him for not posting the rest of the speaker's comment directed specifically at the Minister for Social Development. I wouldn't have heard about it myself if it hadn't been for a caller to talkback describing the look on her face.  Like Hughes, I don't care for the petty, juvenile behaviour of some MPs - a prime example is my own, Trevor Mallard. So I don't tune in any more.

Maggie Barry in danger of patronising

National MP Maggie Barry is opposed to voluntary euthanasia.

Ms Barry said many advocates of euthanasia were unaware of the world-class palliative care available in New Zealand's 35 hospices, palliative care homes, and in hospitals.

I am not one of them. I am aware of the care available. But being knocked out on opiates and blown up from steroids is still something one should be free to choose to avoid. I've seen it and it didn't strike me as a peaceful exit.

Back to Maggie Barry's assertion. Grey Power members are amongst the strongest supporters of voluntary euthanasia. They more than most will have had the experience of watching a slow death. Claiming they may be ignorant of palliative care is patronising if not insulting.

My advice to Paula Bennett re breaching privacy

Don't do it again.

Next time a Domestic Purposes Beneficiary starts to publicly complain about unfair treatment,  motivated either as an individual or by political activists, challenge them to disclose their full circumstances and income.

They don't need to be put under threat of exposure from the Minister. But they do need to know that they will be loudly challenged by you through newspapers, radio, television and social media.

You have the mana. You have the media pull. You can set up the platform. Use your power well. Use it to elicit the truth.

Call their bluff.

Jacinda Ardern contradicted by FVDRC

Criticising the Green paper submission summary released today Labour MP Jacinda Ardern says:

“Research shows that poverty and income inadequacy are key drivers of poor outcomes for children. Ms Bennett’s Green Paper ignores this with systemic issues like poverty barely rating a mention in the summary.

Yet the Family Violence Death Review Committee (FVDRC) included the following statement in its submission:

Low socioeconomic status (typically defined as family income below the poverty line, under-employment, and low education) is one of the major environmental conditions associated with child maltreatment. However, while the research shows an association between physical abuse, neglect and poverty, it is not a causal pathway. The majority of families living in poverty raise their children well.

Amen to that.

Being lightweight isn't going to do Labour any favours.

Submissions to the Green Paper on Vulnerable Children on-line and summarised

Submissions are now available on-line from MSD .... that is, those from NGOs and organisations. Those made by members of the public (like me) are not available.

Scanning through the lengthy summary paper via various searches I can only find a small number of references to benefit dependence playing a role in child abuse and neglect. One is a paragraph titled "Blaming Communities".

Blaming communities: A small minority of submissions suggested the problem of vulnerable children lay with particular sorts of people or communities. These submissions argued the culture of that group is the problem rather than the solution. Groups who featured in these kinds of arguments were Maori, DPB recipients, beneficiaries in general and absent fathers.  A related theme was the argument that vulnerability has arisen from a breakdown in family values, such as marriage, within communities.

(In 172 pages the DPB is mentioned three times.)

Anyway I searched "blaming" and "blame" . Guess what? The above reference is the only one. There is no mention of submitters blaming poverty; blaming colonisation; blaming systems or blaming inequality.'Blaming' is code for (as the summary authors see it) unfairly and prejudicially judging individuals.

Here is another brief allusion to welfare:

Benefits encourage poor parenting: A small minority of submissions argued the benefit system encourages and enables people who cannot parent properly to have children.

So a handful submitters have made the connection.   But the observation is pretty well buried under an avalanche of apologism for what is generally, at the core, an abrogation of parental responsibility.

(My submission was published here in February.)

Truth column August 2

My August 2 Truth column is now on-line.

Shortly after Labour’s Bill to extend Paid Parental Leave (PPL) from 14 weeks to six months emerged from the ballot, a poll of 16,000 votes showed 60% of respondents thought National was right to promise a financial veto against it. 

Frustratingly, this doesn’t indicate whether people were against the extension in the current economic climate, against an extension at any time, or against the entire scheme.  I fall in the last category.

More

Other Truth columns here

Taking on the Treaty

This is probably a coincidence but Rodney Hide and John Ansell have both launched into the Treaty of Waitangi today.

Rodney serves it up to the Tribunal:

The Waitangi Tribunal is our Babylonian priesthood. Its members spend their days poring over a tatty old text seeking guidance for modern-day government.
The funny thing isn't that they do it. The funny thing is that anyone takes them seriously.

More

While John writes:

TREATYGATE
Wake Up New Zealand, We’re Being Conned!

 More

Importantly, John Ansell has also worked out a practical way in which other New Zealanders can join him to stop the "TREATYGATE CON".

Shearer should reaffirm Labour's commitment to making work pay

Today's DomPost editorial points out the obvious. God knows why last year's Labour couldn't see it.

Given that the last Labour government had nine years to upskill, educate and nudge, the public could be forgiven for assuming that under Mr Shearer Labour has nothing new to offer.
Of one thing voters can be sure: extending the "in work" tax credit used to compensate low-wage workers for the extra costs associated with work, to beneficiaries, as proposed by Labour last year, will not solve the problem. It will only further reduce the incentives to seek paid employment.

The IWTC is an incentive to work. Effectively remove it and the incentive disappears. Shearer should publicly reaffirm Labour's commitment to making work pay separating himself from the lame duck period under Goff and King.

Doctor and academics slate Mayor's excitement over private sector job creation

Lower Hutt Mayor Ray Wallace has been lambasted on the DomPost's opinion page. Below is a letter from a local GP and a further featured letter from University of Otago academics appeared today. My response to the first follows:

 

Dear Editor

Unlike Dr Susanna Kent (Letters, August 9) I wasn't "appalled" to see Lower Hutt Mayor Ray Wallace recently launching a refurbished cigarette factory in Petone. Tobacco is still a legal substance. While this remains the case we may as well have the jobs here. At least the usual outcry  over unemployment caused by manufacturing jobs being lost overseas is avoided. Of course, criminalising tobacco would also create jobs. For illicit growers, black market racketeers,  police, court personnel, prison officers, etc. The unstoppable cannabis industry proves the point.

Acts of heroism

I feel terribly sad about the seeming loss of three lives in New Plymouth yesterday. When you have a child who could easily fit the bill it hits home more sharply perhaps? But there is something I wanted to say. While it may have been the wrong, and eventually tragic call to climb yesterday, the instructor lost his life trying to save the boys. It reminds me of the teacher in the Mangatepopo Gorge tragedy, who strapped one of the youngsters to his back but neither made it out. Makes me weep.

Maori and Pacific unemployment drop

Statistics NZ has just released the June HLFS. Overall unemployment is up slightly (6.7 to 6.8 percent) but Maori (13.9 to 12.8 percent)  Pacific (16.0 to 14.9) and Asian (9.4 to 8.2) unemployment are all down from March, though all figures are still slightly higher than June last year.

A new table (15) has been added. It shows the NEET percentage (aged 15-24 Not in Employment or Education). That stands at 13.1 percent.

Internationally NZ is ranking 14th in the OECD. We have steadily fallen in the rankings since around 2006. The OECD average is 7.9 percent.

Anyway, generally not much to write about that gives cause for optimism.

Kiwiblog: Labour soft on fraud?

David Farrar has a post regarding an exchange David Shearer had with a constituent about a neighbour being on a sickness benefit while he was up painting his roof. Shearer empathises with the constituent about the unfairness of the situation. Then Farrar points out the hypocrisy of this as Labour has opposed every National reform measure to reduce fraud. The implication is that Labour is soft on benefit fraud.

The statistics don't support this however.


table IS.1: Fraud and abuse investigations and reviews completed, and overpayments identified¹

Financial year2	Number of investigations and reviews completed	Number of overpayments established	Value of overpayments ($)
2006/2007	39,141	7,084	41,935,634
2007/2008	26,736	4,407	33,702,275
2008/2009	26,400	3,327	33,780,453
2009/2010	19,935	2,996	39,336,133
2010/2011	16,266	2,424	39,838,760

table IS.2: Fraud prosecutions completed

Financial year1	Number of prosecution cases of benefit fraud completed
2007/2008	1,028
2008/2009	735
2009/2010	789
2010/2011	690

Quote of the day

From Walter Williams here:

"One does not have to be in favor of death camps or wars of conquest to be a tyrant. The only requirement is that one has to believe in the primacy of the state over individual rights."

"ACT brand has been irredeemably damaged"

I am not a fan of Richard Long. In today's Dominion Post he writes as if an expert on ACT's history but can't get the ex-president's name right. However, the title of his column is wholly correct in my humble opinion.

Former ACT president Catherine Isaacs took the political gold at the weekend for making a sensible, coherent case for charter schools. But, alas, it is all too late to save her party.

More

Unpalatable choices in public health provision

A disturbing example of the difficult choices that will increasingly face public health rationers.

From Scotland:

A GOVERNMENT adviser and leading surgeon has suggested that NHS funds would be better spent on providing surgery for morbidly obese patients than on palliative care for the terminally ill.

More

Truth Column July 26

My July 26 Truth column is now on-line.

Every day across New Zealand thousands of heroin addicts are given legitimate doses of a heroin substitute – methadone – by their local pharmacist.

While the programme purports to wean people off with reducing doses, more often it’s a maintenance scheme which keeps the addict  stabilised, functioning and free from crime. 

This is a prime example of harm minimisation in practice. It represents an acceptance that people either want or need to use recreational drugs and making criminals out of certain users only creates additional harm.

Contrast this approach with the recent news that police have arrested over 2500 people in cannabis operations over the past six months. 

More


Other Truth columns here

Does Sam win ... yes she does!

Erin Simpson Show Next Fashion Icon

 

Sam  was the winner of a trip to the NZ Fashion Weekend in late September. I watched the show on Friday heart in mouth despite knowing the outcome (she arrived back at Wellington airport with a beautiful bunch of flowers). She was thoroughly surprised when the judges said her name, and suitably humble I am happy to report. Her model was also a Year 9 girl, but 5' 11" and in (ginormous!) heels and they look adorable together - very much the long and the short of it.

The On Demand replay is here

And, from Sam, thanks so much to all of those people who voted her into the Top 25. You made it possible.

Remand population grows significantly

I wouldn't agree with Kim Workman's philosophical approach to crime and related matters but his statistical stuff is sound. Yesterday he delivered a submission to the Law and Order  select committee containing the following:

“In the last ten years, the sentenced prisoner population increased by 33.7%, while the remand population increased by 116%.” Said Mr Workman, “Around 56 percent of those remanded in custody did not go on to serve a custodial sentence. We remand offenders in custody at a rate higher than other comparable countries, with the exception of the United States.
“Maori defendants are nearly twice as likely as their European counterparts to be remanded in custody. The unanswered question is whether this discrepancy occurs because of differential offending patterns by Maori, a lack of cultural responsiveness, or the negative impact of laws, structures, processes and decision making criteria. There has been no in-depth research on this issue since 1973, and it is a matter of urgency.”

Following the link to his full submission was unsuccessful but it did take me to Rethinking's website. My first visit. It's a well designed site. Just a quick excerpt which describes Maori offending in a way I haven't seen before;

 At every stage in the criminal justice process, the outcomes for Māori are generally more severe than they are for Pakeha. Māori are less likely to receive diversion or cautions and are more likely to be sentenced to prison. Although New Zealand's imprisonment rate is 199 people per 100,000, the rate for Māori is closer to 700 per 100,000. Māori make up over 50% of New Zealand's prison population and over 60% of its female prison population.