The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found that ‘New Zealanders with intellectual or learning disabilities are dying up to 23 years before the rest of the population’.
For a country that prides itself in looking after one another (or at least, we used to), this is a disgrace and something I, as a kiwi, am ashamed of.
This is an issue that has always been the reality, but this should not be the case in 2014 New Zealand. Progress regarding the care support and medical treatment of people with any kind of disability has been pretty stagnant, which is made clear by the fact that simple solutions are still not being practiced, and I have no idea why.
One the cross-government priorities in the 2014-18 Disability Action Plan are to address these pertinent issues. This will be a welcome change but I would like to see action in order for me to believe that they can walk the talk.
The report clearly states that one of the key steps is to include people with intellectual and learning into the decision making process so that they can collectively come up with holistic and effective solutions to this issue of disability care. Including those who will be directly affected by such decisions can never go wrong; to not do so is an insult to the struggles and realities of the community in question, including the disabled community.
“Life expectancy is a basic human right”
At some point the term ‘human right’ seems to have lost all meaning. A human doesn’t have the ‘right’ to live to a particular age, any more than they have a ‘right’ to a particular height, weight or IQ. A human does have ‘rights’ not to be mistreated by people, organisations or governments, and mistreatment can have an effect on life expectancy, but it isn’t the life expectancy that’s a ‘right.’
The more that people declare “Such-and-such-thing-with-nothing-to-do-with-human-rights is a human right!”, the more that declaration will come to mean “Here’s what I don’t like about X!” It doesn’t do actual human rights activists any favours at all.
Knowing that global oil extraction peaked over 2005 to 2008 and that the entire economic-political-social system is being held together by ‘sellotape’ and is now headed for collapse, both as a consequence of declining net energy and various environmental catastrophes generated by burning fossil fuels, as I walk around the city I often look at people with disabilities and wonder how they will survive in the rampantly commercialised dog-at-dog world that successive governments have promoted over many decades.
By the way, there is no such thing as rights. They are an illusion, a short term aberration in the grand scheme of things which were a product of having ‘energy slaves’ do all the hard work.
This item suggests the ‘consensus bubble of belief’ that the present system is benign and sustainable remains unpopped for the moment, even though all the evidence is to the contrary. .
By the way, the graph displayed in this article will take a sharp turn downwards before 2030, and maybe as early as 2020 because the increase in life expectancy depicted was largely due to the exploitation of fossil fuels (and other resources). And we won’t have anything like the current availability for much longer.
The Meadows’ ‘Limits to Growth’ group warned everyone back in 1972 it would all ‘turn to custard’ by 2030 if humanity remained on the same path. And the warning was ignored. Humanity remained on the same path and it is ‘all turning to custard’.
Luckily , I like custard @ Afewknowthetruth . And like A-few-who-think-they-know-the-truth ? Well , they think they know the truth but in reality no one knows what the fuck’s going on .
I do know that Latifa Daud wrote a piece from her huge heart and splitting hairs @ Psycho Milt is not helpful . Semantics is a good word . Look it up .
The cold , hard reality is , as I see it , simply that people who are disabled are not necessarily profitable , are not efficient to run and in fact , can , in some cases , be a cost to society . And indeed , if that’s how society view the disabled , then Fuck Society ! And if society is indeed , fucked . Then , we must remember that we are society .
How do we unfuck society ? Love , understanding and caring for our most vulnerable without the need for them to turn a profit might be a good start .
The Anti-Bennett effect . We could use Bulbous Collins Spray . Give her a squirt and watch her wriggle on the window sill like the old blond blow fly that she is . To stop her and bennett buzzing around the stink of decaying societies .
It’s pompous and arrogant to suggest there’s no such thing as basic human rights , it’s vile to argue that there’s no right to live to an age that might be attainable but for the pit falls and land mines the mentally ill political sociopaths place in the way of those who already struggle .
Here’s a metaphor for ya . “ When poverty knocks on the door , love flies out the window “ .
The more ‘ money ‘ makes itself indispensable within our hearts , hearths and minds the more monstrous we’ll become used to behaving to one another .
Here’s how that works , from what I can tell .
Banks offer debt to anyone but If you can earn a wage you can enjoy life on , never mind just surviving then you’re no friend to the friendly Banksters . We , therefore become a society used to using debt . The lie is that we promise to repay that debt , which of course is the last thing the Banksters want you to do . Because , once you borrow money , they can repackage that debt into other ‘ bank products ‘ which are then INSURED and on-sold .
The lie is that lie we tell ourselves . We lie to ourselves at the cash register that we will repay that money , while just outside ,The Bankster Corportations who now own our basic infrastructure through a tangle of debt , ( for example electricity ) are able to calculate just how much debt society is in so they can very accurately calculate how much of a pinch they can put on us . Had a power bill lately ? That’s why arguing for higher wages is erroneous . We should be demanding lower basic costs of living . In other words , we must demand our stuff and things back !
It’s my view that , that’s what fucks societies and in this case , is what makes people who have a life time to suffer with a disability , suffer more .
So , how do we unfuck things ?
My suggestion would be to sack the Banks . The foreign owned Banks are our mortal enemies and it’s they who are behind all our societal and financial woes .
Then write off mortgage debt . All of it . Fuck it . What have we got to lose ? An horrendous mortgage payment monthly ? On a Bank inflated property ? So they can get us into debt so they can then on-sell that debt to other suckers ?
Ok , So there are some very clever smart arses out there who will be able to poke holes in my argument with a damp , white bread sandwich . But over all how wrong am I ?
Here’s an interesting Sunday documentary for you .
Meltdown .
http://youtu.be/l4XfNiqwQDo
You Go Latifa ! x
I was sent this little Gem . Bona fide too , so I’m told
” Fees suck and fee increases just piss me off . Damn the Nat’s who bring cuts to our education system , make us pay for them out of student loans that will take many people decades to pay off … don’t vote for fuck wits . ”
Paula Bennett , 1996
[ RECLAIM VIC ]
She can get all pro society when it was hitting her in her fat arse pocket .
George Carlin explains it all very well here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9-R8T1SuG4
A favourite uncomfortable dose of reality.
Well said Latifa.
I would say that stress will be a contributing factor here.
The dealing with idiot bureaucrats when trying to get assistance with our disabilities being a major stress area.
Always being picked on and maligned by our govt ministers through their ridiculous money-grubbing polices certainly does not help anyone who is already trying to survive on Invalids benefits.
None of our current lot have done anything at all to assist people with disabilities – all they have done is made everything harder!
Opinion.
Life expectancy in most developed countries will drop after this generation.
“In a “wake-up call” to parents, schools and the Government, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) has worked with the University of Oxford to publish its first ever supplement dedicated solely to coronary heart disease statistics and causes among children and young people.
The study has found that with around 30 per cent of that group being overweight or obese, less than one in five children in the UK eating their five a day, and a minority doing recommended levels of daily exercise, the 50-year trend of reducing cardiovascular disease is set to be reversed.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/unhealthy-lifestyles-will-see-british-children-die-before-their-parents-8757812.html
So called ‘human rights’ have grown over the past 300 years or so at about the same speed as our fossil fuel use, the use graph is a mirror image of your graph. Every improvement in society has been down to the about ‘300’ energy slaves the average person in the developed world has at their beck and call.
The more ‘free’ energy we have been able to consume the more complex society has become, and the higher the expectancies of ‘human rights’
We are now about 35 years past peak per capita energy, and we are fast seeing a reversal of the where we have been.
The days of more and more people getting more and more ‘rights’ are over,
I think Chris Martenson explains growth here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvVFTJMUEj4&list=UUD2-QVBQi48RRQTD4Jhxu8w&index=15
It would be nice to have the ‘human right’ of having leaders that told the truth …… now I feel a beer ad coming on )
@ Robert Atack .
Hahah ! Very good . Very funny actually . And very clever .
However . Forgive me , but I think his views are more than a bit Darwinian .
We human beings , after a long haul , have learned what is generally considered a ‘ human right ‘ . We can apply that concept as a general rule to act as a guide line or a bench mark against which we can lean our society .
Based upon that theory , it’s a bit of a given that it’s a basic human right to not be detained without arrest . To not be tortured at all . To not starve to death in the street , or country side . To not suffer unduly from disease . To not wear acrylics . To not have to watch American informercials .
Sure , there don’t seem to be many Gods or Goddesses to smite us if we contravene a ‘ human right ‘ . There are few , if any , repercussions if some psychopathic nut job goes ape shit on his populace … except that when that is done , we , of a higher level of being , gain a greater knowledge of what is a reasonable expectation of what might be considered a ‘ human right ‘ . ( Pardon the arrogance . )
The charm of the concept of ‘ human rights ‘ is that it’s constantly evolving and as it does so , it forgives itself for being fallible , therefore , it frees itself from criticism to soldier on , to better and better things . Honestly , we humans are not all bad . Some of us are complete cunts , but by and large , we do our best and the pursuit of an ever higher standard of ‘ human rights ‘ is a good example of hope for us yet .
Those morons that have no humanity to suggest their are no human rights are demented idiots and disgraceful human beings.
Psycho Milt,Afewknowthetruth, e-clectic , you clowns.
I would not wish my disabilities on them to make a point how important human rights are when you are ignored by idiot bureaucrats.
But it is a painful fact that some of us that suffer workplace disabilities at the hands of the reckless examples above who don’t think human rights should be considered are part of the problem we incur when trying to seek help for our workplace disability and treated like vermin.
As an expat Kiwi I had a top job in a major Canadian Telecommunications company with glowing reports of my Kiwi charter and work ethic until I was chemically poisoned on the job over six months without ventilation in the construction zone of a large Downtown Toronto building in 1992.
And still today suffer from the accident and the system failed to compensate for the permanent disability caused even though after a seven year WCB case finally found me permanently disabled they found ways to avoid paying disability.
Only Canadian Human Right’s assisted with a minimum monthly pay-out of $100 a week, enough to pay for my medication.
Go where us disabled have been before you callously disregard us once worthy human beings. As for Human rights here in NZ I managed to get my own disability added to the new 2012 brief NZ human rights convention on UN human rights.
So maybe when one of you come down with my disability you can bask in recognition of your disability because those who went before you stood up for human rights.
Well said CleanGreen.
Do people with visible disabilities have equal employment opportunities – no they don’t, because a prospective employer takes one look at you and the job goes to someone more ‘physically appealing’.
Does the drunk, or someone who fell asleep while driving, (this is an example case of reality) who killed half your family, and maimed you, still get to go to work – of course they do! Your life and everything you’ve worked so hard and so long for, wiped out from under you by an idiot useless drunk, or sleepy person. While the useless evil drunk driver or slepy person doesn’t lose a thing, and lives to do the same thing over and over again.
Where has your life suddenly gone? And now while trying to live in your newly disabled and familyless state, the ACC and the WINZ staff, and ministers, fabricate more bullying and intimidating bureaucracy, (in a manner of deliberate deceit), while making you out to be some sort of a bludger on society.
Everything is so very wrong right now.
Only a political revolution will fix this.
Opinion.
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