How much do we love to hate beneficiaries?

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keep-calm-and-hate-the-poor

The horror double standards that Catriona MacLennan highlights in her column are sickening…

Inland Revenue has wiped $5 billion in tax debt since 2008. This includes money owed by property developers who continue to live ostentatious lifestyles, despite failing to pay money owed to the Government, as well as 720,000 companies with unpaid taxes. On top of that, more than one million New Zealanders have had their tax debts written off in the past six years. In the past year alone, the Government has cancelled $930 million in tax debt owed by individuals.

That can be contrasted with the punitive way in which mothers who owe benefit debt are pursued for the rest of their lives – even if it is plain that they will never be able to repay the sum.

The complex equations WINZ use to catch people out if they are in a  relationship or not and the cruel manner in which they imprison and then chase the debt would be a national crime if it wasn’t aimed at women in poverty. Our love to hate beneficiaries has created a sick culture of punishment, why the Christ imprison these women and then chase the debt? Many will have been over paid without even knowing that they had breached the WINZ rules!

We have created an industry of misery where welfare is a joke run by a Department more focused on criminalising women in need than actually helping them.

Welcome to Planet Key.

11 COMMENTS

  1. Can I ask a question ?

    A few big, handsome, round bottomed, grotesquely over-paid fellow-me-lads playing with an odd shaped ball can pack an otherwise useless structure full to it’s roofless roof on a cold day to induce that crowd to rant , scream , leap , bellow , wave flags and scarves , hug , caress , become tearful and hold their man-friends in warm embraces if those aforementioned big, handsome, round bottomed, grotesquely over-paid fellow-me-lads playing with an odd shaped ball win their silly game .

    If however those same big, handsome, round bottomed, grotesquely over-paid fellow-me-lads playing with an odd shaped ball should lose at their silly game ?

    The Earth stops revolving . The sky darkens, dogs bark, children run to their mothers . There are brawls and unspeakable violence both general and domestic . There’s binge drinking to calm the savage breast then more punch ups in the pub car park followed by sympathy roots with the missus .

    And yet this Post will generate not one jot of passion from the followers of the round bottomed fellow-me-lads .

    My question is ; why is that ?

    You’ve read ‘Dirty Politics’ . Are senior WINZ staff enjoying the suffering they cause to the helpless and those rendered vulnerable just because they were born ?

    Where does paula bennett live ? Perhaps we can pop down her way and ask her over a cuppa ? I think she may have some answers . Seriously . Very seriously ; lets ask her . Lets go and find her and ask her . When does she sit in parliament ? Where’s her office ? Where does she go to dinner ? Where does she exercise ( Oh, wait … hahahahahahahahaha a ! ) Where does she shop ? Can we make an appointment to meet The Honourable Minister ? If you see her out and about ? Don’t be shy , go up and ask her your questions . She’s there for you after all . You pay her to be there for you . Remember that . So, go on . Ask away .

    • Bread and circuses, mate. Keep the peasants entranced with meaningless spectacle, and they’re too distracted to acknowledge the fact that you’re robbing them blind and damning them to a future of miserable penury.

      “The only thing mankind ever learned from history is that mankind never learns anything from history.” — Hegel

  2. The purpose of this persecution is to active the System 1,(i.e. the instinctive – for a better explanation See Daniel Kahneman “Thinking Fast and Slow”), reaction of humans to group together in defence when threatened. This is particularly strong when the threat is perceived to come from “others”.
    This tactic has been used by nationalists, racists, dictators and more benign leadership since we first started to compete on the plains of Africa.
    The neoliberal thinkers and their plutocratic paymasters have been effectively using this tactic in conjunction with a constant glorification of the wealth creator and self aggrandisement to maintain their control and expand their share of wealth.

  3. Yes, they have done an “effective” job, the nasty ones that have for years stigmatised and attacked the poorest of the poor and the weakest in society, looking for every opportunity to find fault and to lay blame on them. Shame on these hate merchants, now firmly on the treasury benches again, supported by that little wannabe man from Epsom, whose party got stuff all votes, but who got “helped in” by John Key and the Nats’ campaign.

    What made my eyebrows rise today, was the media reporting on the death of a child left in a car by a health worker outside Whanganui Hospital. It was presented as a tragedy, and appeals were (probably rightly) made to not lay blame on the mother.

    I was asking myself though, what would our dear “MSM” have reported, what would Whanganui MP Chester Borrows have commented, had the child be one left in a car by a beneficiary mother?

    We do not need to guess much, it would have been a major CRIME, such an incident, and all kinds of blame would be laid on that “irresponsible” woman living off the taxpayer’s “generous” support.

    But here, no such condemnation, it was a “working person”, like a kind of “knighted” worthy person, who may have due to stress forgotten about her child, and the heat, and thus left her child there, to finally die.

    Over the years I have followed media reports on various matters and incidents, and beneficiaries are always treated differently, and always judged much more critically and harshly, no matter what they do, whether they try or not so much, whether they lost control of their lives due to stress, poverty and social stigmatisation and worse.

    So here we go again, Catriona MacLennan at least knows what goes on, and dares to raise the issues we have in society, and how WINZ treat people. I am surprised this was still published, given the lack of time the MSM usually has for the poor, especially those dependent on WINZ support.

  4. When anything goes wrong, it’s usually someone else’s fault and the poor are convenient scapegoats who are unable to fight back. A symptom of a failed state.

  5. It is really striking the treatment we are seeing of the Wanganui mother who left her baby in the car. While it is a terrible event we are also seeing very little information coming out, and indeed it has been given a name that is new to me – “Forgotten Baby Syndrome”.

    I shudder to think how the MSM would’ve dealt with this had the mother been poor and or brown, which of course is what everyone expected at the beginning.

    • “Forgotten Baby Syndrome” you are correct if the shoe was on the other foot they would have been branded as, ” Bad unfit mothers”. How could anyone forget their children? The poor mother must have a hard time at work for her to forget to drop off her child .

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