Now beneficiaries will be drug tested, how about breathalyzing MPs?

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“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well housed, well warmed and well fed.”
Herman Melville

So the new ruthless crucifixion of those on benefits has been passed into law. The poorest and most vulnerable amongst us must do with less for a global economic recession they had no hand in making.

How many solo mothers were on the phone in 2008 to their Wall street stockbroker buying lite crude in Euros and speculating on the Goldman Sachs derivatives market?

In the words of Scribe, not many if any.

Here is the interview I wish would happen with Paula Bennett…

INTERVIEWER: “Minister, this is all just beneficiary bashing bullshit isn’t it? You can’t directly dog whistle against Maori anymore, so you do it using code and that code is ‘beneficiary’ and you pop out a new hardline angle everytime the Government needs a distraction don’t you”?

MINISTER: “I find that grossly offensive…”

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INTERVIEWER: “What’s grossly offensive Minister is going onto a talkhate radio show like Michael Laws to discuss limiting beneficiary mothers and their daughters from having children. You chose him as a vehicle because you were divisively redneck dog whistling weren’t you Minister?”

…let’s be honest about these draconian welfare reforms. They have NOTHING to do with helping NZers in need. They have NOTHING to do with helping people get back to work. They are punitive public floggings that are being meted out to the cheers of National Party voters on our poorest by a group of Politicians who want government with a microscopic g to shrug off their responsibilities for an equitable society built by redistribution.

Everytime the Government need a distraction, Paula bashes beneficiaries. Under her watch almost 5000 beneficiaries per month for the last 6 month have had ‘sanctions’ placed on their benefits to half them. Paula is throwing the lives of those on the bottom into the mincer of the free market and doing victory lap dances as a result.

Now beneficiaries will be drug tested, how about breathalyzing MPs? What’s more dangerous to NZ? A jobless stoner or a drunk MP?

When will NZers sate their bennie bashing thirsts? Never. For a rump segment of the country, their hatred for those on welfare is the only legitimized bigotry allowed in NZ now and they drink like alcoholics in a brewery to quench their never ending anger.

Because of the neoliberal policies of National in the 1990s, our per hour wage collapsed. Rather than blame National for the pittance they take home each week, the working poor look at the welfare cheque with envy and blame those on welfare rather than blame the National Party for their economic precariousness.

The children in these welfare families are the ones who will be crucified so Rump National Party voters can feel a sense of lynch mob justice.

We are building an empire of suffering from the lives of the poorest NZers so that the frustrations of our own insulated disconnected lonely and desperate existences can be channeled and directed at the ‘other’.

The 270 000 children living in poverty just had their fragile and difficult lives made even more harsh by a redneck sports bar loving populace who despise intellectual explanations of the why and prefer the logic of the whip.

No Government ever lost an election from bashing beneficiaries and that says something terrible and ugly about us as a nation.

May history damn us for the bitter fruit this self-inflicted harvest brings.

11 COMMENTS

  1. This is a requirement by a lot of employers in the work force, so why not when getting paid for seeking work?

    While it is taking peoples free will away from them to be able to choose how they spend their money. Not being able to use the benefit money to buy Drugs, Ciggies and Alcohol would be great for the children in these Families, the money hopefully would then go towards their welfare. and if they cant buy said items, then give them a rise in the money they receive, so they can afford the basic cost of looking after a family, knowing it won’t be spent on addictions.

    Obviously before any of the above is effective, there needs to be support in place, you cant just one day decide to give up an addiction and the next day return back to normal. Recovery is a long road there is no short-cuts and the government must be made to understand that and be aware so the right support can be put in place.

    One last thing…

    Marijuana isn’t a bane on our society, they cant figure out a way to control and tax it, thus concluding it is not legal. The End.

    Focus on the hard drugs the ones that make people run around with swords cutting people’s hands off etc

    • What they could do is make a butter that contains an extract that is a standard level for medical use and other use if people wish to, they could tax that and make it a standard level that would be something trusted to how much to have when making a batch of brownies that would help people that need it for pain relief, and you would not have the medical issues related to smoking it.

  2. So ,we have people running our country after having drugs with their lunch . When do we drug test OUR elected representatives ?

  3. Sadly all true. Especially the ‘envy’ that the working poor and the middle class have towards the recipients of beneficiary cheques. Great quote from Melville. What I can’t understand is why someone of the many who say it is all their fault and the money is sufficient hasn’t written the blueprint of how to live on a benefit, I’m looking forward to reading it. And is dear Paula monitoring those who had their benefit halved so that families do not realllllly suffer. Well she said something like this in the Herald yesterday.

    • I think what she meant by monitoring was “We’re opening up new employment opportunities for sadists. We’ll pay you to watch poor people suffer.”

  4. The story frame is great. The arguments cogent and believable; the anger understandable and real. I might not have risked being characterized as another kind of ‘redneck’ though in the use of the language chosen. It gives facile politicians and other smooth cheeked commentators the opportunity to discount what you say. That would be a shame, cos you are spot on! D

  5. One of the sad things here is that the poor people that only get relief from using Pot to help with their pain because nothing else works will loose their benefits, this is so sad, I know Pot helps me with my gout when its bad, its the only thing that does when it gets really bad. I wonder what will be next, maybe DNA tests, a little bit of Gattcac maybe but why not…

  6. Employer and managerial control within an organization rests at many levels and has important implications for staff and productivity alike, with control forming the fundamental link between desired outcomes and actual processes. Employers must balance interests such as decreasing wage constraints with a maximization of labour productivity in order to achieve a profitable and productive employment relationship.”

    Be well
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