National aren’t dog whistling get tough on crime bullshit, they are canine trumpeting.
The dark place National want to take NZ this election is by playing to our worst angels and draconian social policy to make prisoners suffer despite the counter productive outcomes that spite generates is all the rage.
50% of all prisoners come from the lowest 20% of the social economic spectrum, 60% have literacy and numeracy lower than a 16 year old and within 2 years 61% reoffend and 40% are back in prison. Solutions to that cocktail of damage don’t include creating more punitive conditions.
National have announced a vast wave of civil rights erosions from prisoners to gang members to beneficiaries. This isn’t election rhetoric, National is promising to repeal the civil rights of others and if they manipulate the #MeToo zeitgeist and the current growing lynch mob smouldering over the Grace Milane case, National could easily win wide support from an angry public.
No matter the cost.
The latest attempt at eroding prisoners civil rights are National’s calls for forced labour camps. What National are ignoring is NZ is signed up to International Labour conditions that specifically ban forced prison labour.
National’s willingness to contravene International Law to score get-tough-on-crime brownie points from a vengeful domestic audience is ugly politics.
As clearly demonstrated by for profit prisons in the USA. Taking away prisoner rights is a terrible bloody idea.
China wants lebensraum…
And Simon will oblige. Probably part of the talks with the CCP heads he and Bozo Brownlee had the other month.
“National want forced labour prisons”
Tremendous idea. Now, lets put the fuckers in it and make them work for those in poverty whom they created.
And if you still think wee winnie’s a shining star? Read this.
This, is what I mean when I express deep concerns for winnie’s cred.
He smells like ol’ liz warren
The key note here is the vital statement.
To stave off revolution.
If there’s a devil incarnate it’s old liz warren.
The Guardian.
“From the beginning, there were good reasons for progressive leftists not to trust that Elizabeth Warren was on their side. For one thing, she had spent much of her career as a Republican, and only recently become a champion of progressive causes. Warren worked at Harvard Law School training generations of elite corporate lawyers; did legal work for big corporations accused of wrongdoing; collected donations from billionaires; held secret meetings with investment bankers and major Democratic party donors; and stood up and applauded when Donald Trump vowed that America would “never become a socialist country”. Even at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her most prominent initiative on behalf of ordinary borrowers, Warren brought in former Wall Street bankers, tasking financial foxes with guarding the henhouse.
Progressives, trust your gut: Elizabeth Warren is not one of us”
Nathan Robinson
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/24/elizabeth-warren-not-progressive
“National want forced labour prisons”
Tremendous idea. Now, lets put the fuckers in it and make them work for those in poverty whom they created.
—————————–
Yup.
Another slightly oldie but goodie from Bryan Bruce….
Who Owns New Zealand Now?
https://youtu.be/HzSAmOQuyjU?t=581
Never let up throwing this sort of thing in the neo liberals face, and never get sucked in by them now, – one of the main reasons we have such a high incarceration rate was because of Labour’s Roger Douglas and his traitors. And his buddy Ruth Richardson of the National Bolger govt. Crime stats a few years after the neo liberal wreckers changed this country , – spiked massively. As did people leaving the country in droves and the number of homeless, foodbanks, and those who became redundant.
Theres your neo liberalism right there and what it produces.
Now we have idiots like Simon Bridges trying to lecture us all about crime and what should be being done about it who were in nappies and getting their bums wiped by their parents when my generation took the full hit of that treason.
Take a hike and grab a history lesson , Simon.
Wow! he (soimon) is like an every ready battery he keeps on and on and on and as we get nearer to the election he is spewing out more and more vile geez what the fuck is matter with this dick head
Michelle – I think he’s a bad man, worse than Key – and that’s saying something. He’ll be representing the wishes of the National Party, and Nat voting neighbours have previously told me that he’s the best of a bad bunch.
I don’t know how accurate Martyn’s prisoner literacy rates are either, they might be worse. I was involved in donating books to prisoners, and it was dispiriting. If Bridges had useful grey matter, he’d be stepping back and saying these are the things which we need to try harder at fixing, but he’s not a fixer, he’s looking more and more power crazy.
His dumping on Maori is terrible, because its the last century’s way of trying to make oneself look good by dragging other people down – he’ll have been brought up that way. A good man, a man with vision, looks to elevate everyone – and heaven help us all if his pollsters are telling him that’s not what folk want. He has to go.
Yes Snow White he (soimon) is horrible to his own people. And he does not care about us Maori people he cares about himself and power and if people can’t see this they are blind.
According to recent polling, most NZers don’t want to help people worse off than themselves, so maybe the Nats are right? I am hoping that’s not really the country this place has turned into.
Alan Where did we go wrong ? What’s happened to us ? I was shocked when a rellie – only by marriage, thank God – said that they really hated beggars. I am a little more circumspect with the local beggars now, but in discussing this with my kids, I’ve always said, better to err on the side of caution – even if they’ve got a jag parked out of sight around the corner.
(Sat in a plane once, offshore, when a very bossy Indian lady got on and my heir turned to me accusingly and said, “You paid her airfare…”)
I’m not going to blame Key and the Nats, it could have started before then, I don’t know, but they certainly worked diligently at demonising the poor, discriminating against the sick and disabled, and exemplified the mantra, “Greed is good.”
Looks like we need a few more Maori values, but not the values of dreadful you know who.
… ‘ I’m not going to blame Key and the Nats, it could have started before then, I don’t know, but they certainly worked diligently at demonising the poor, discriminating against the sick and disabled, and exemplified the mantra, “Greed is good ”…
1984 is the year you are looking for.
That year should be burned into every citizens mind as the year when this country plummeted into the abyss.
National wants ‘slave labour now.’
I see National don’t care about the Palmerston North area cause they have a boy representing them and as for Jo hayes what does this say about her ability when she got done over by a 17 year old boy not even old enough to vote or drink yet.
I guess they want to emulate the U.S. where the slave labour of prisoners has eroded the ability of the lowest paid workers to improve their working conditions and remuneration rates.
This is much worse than it looks. If Bridges were successful in applying league tables to the judicial system, then good women and men, people of integrity, are likely to decline to work as judges under classic neolib kps’s which do nothing for quality or substance – or justice. This is truly the stuff of nightmares.
The sort of judges we are likely to get, willing to work under these sort of constraints, are the worst of people to be doing the job. And if Bridges wants free labour to help his money-making mates, and to keep wages down, they’ll give him what he wants.
It’s time to be scared, and doing whatever can be done to ensure that Simon Iscariot Bridges collects his 30 pieces of silver and buggers off as far away from politics as the voters can boot him.
Some good points there tbh,… its scarier than it looks.
We have the second or third highest incarceration rate in the OECD. Someone might want to fact check that, but we are certainly up there.
Prison is an interesting concept. I believe the early Hebrews didn’t have traditional prisons – the early Americans didn’t have prisons either, until the Quakers established them ..
I think we should move away from this British, corporate, prison state mentality. Obviously I’m not suggesting stoning or anything so draconian, but perhaps we could research how the Hebrews and early Americans did justice and give it a modern twist ??
Also .. Simon is a dickhead !!
Zack -“Simon is a dickhead!!” Admit it Zack – he’s a lot worse than you ever thought he was. He’s certainly much worse than I suspected.
And maybe best not to think of him as Maori – or Pakeha. Just Mongrel. If he’s running around saying all this extreme sort of stuff just to impress the OAP’s who apparently listen to talk-back radio, he’s wasting his time; half are deaf, many have terrible memories and forget things within 5 mins, and all the old ladies like Winston. I had quite a tough job (misguidedly) trying to get them to vote Green last time.
There are alternatives to prison, and some are being explored by police and Maori bodies, but the “prison state mentality” people – and Simon- wail ‘soft on crime’ to try and scare everyone.
I know two people who work in the Northland prison and who are involved with “rehabilitation”. They tell me that the prisoners they deal with don’t care. For these prisoners it seems prison is way of life and if they get out and get caught again and sentenced once more, they don’t care. So what. They get meals every day, TV, no rent to pay and whatever other goodies on offer. It’s an accepted way of life.
Helena – Perhaps the people doing the ‘rehabilitation’ aren’t suited for the job. Other prisons do have success rates with achieving all sorts of things which are often done by dedicated volunteers. Your friends may be better replaced, who knows.
But people applying to the many, what may apply to a few, have a loser mentality – could drown in negativity if not careful.
That some people may become institutionalised is just another symptom of what Bill English rightly called the moral failure which our prison system is. Best thing that Bill ever said. But do not for one moment presume to think that prison is cushy for everybody, or for their families. Nothing is that simple.
Its an accepted way of life for some Helena not all and you may find the ones that do think like that have no where else to go
Exactly right, Michelle. They don’t have anywhere else to go. And this, imo, is exactly how both major political parties have organized it.
@ Helena. That is quite sad. Obviously these people find incarceration a form of security. They don’t have any self worth. For them, prison is perhaps the only home and comradeship they have known in their lives.
Forced labour will give prisoners more reason to think less of themselves and definitely will not equip them for the outside world.
Instead of forced labour, a solid education with set targets is a far better and practical solution, focused on skills which will be valuable to the prisoners and the community post release, particularly for those prisoners who have missed out on basic learning prior to entering prison. They need something to work on which raises their self respect, as well as respect for society.
Your last paragraph is the key.
There would be a fair few that would accept advancement / education, something positive that they could own as theirs. And why not?… skill in the trades or prerequisite training for further enrollment once leaving prison. Why just punish people and then give them nothing, take them nowhere ?
Then bleat about the state of things?
If Bridges want to go back to the 1930’s, let him. Just make sure he’s voted out and remains alone with his dreams. Forced labour camps , what a drongo.
That’s what Simon doesn’t get. There are no downsides for the people he is referring to from his policies. There is an increasing group of people in NZ who are disconnected from society. For them there is no upside in playing by the rules. The rules don’t even register. All these policies are going to lead to is huge monetary cost for the rest of New Zealand and even more broken people.
He does get it. He is not that dumb
That is what makes him a cynical arsehole.
Yes, Peter. Could be worse than a cynical arsehole, he could be a plain bad little man. I think he’s bad – that’s how he got to lead the NP – and his 2 IC is likely no better.
Just taking away prisoner rights wouldn’t stand up against an appeal that levies disproportionate jail sentences an inccinetivieses jailing innocent people. That’s before we start taking away non-prisoner jobs.
Modern day slavery is bad. Don’t do it National.
Sure it’s an accepted way of life Helena. Just as your attitude is the accepted way of life for you. It’s how you think about life and the criminals; it’s how they manage their lives and the way that the others including you think about them. They have learned how to be since they were little. So have you. Try changing your ideas, and get another view on life and on their position, and then come up with some idea that has more success than the one your acquaintances are using. People can learn how to converse and understand gorillas, different though we are in so many ways. Some of those people in Northland can be reached with the right methods. Try looking up Denis O’Reilly who has a Catholic background and has been involved with Black Power gangs for some time.
Here for instance: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/08/black-power-member-denis-o-reilly-gang-members-don-t-need-life-made-harder.html
Yes its a case of bad and worse. Think I’ll be staying home this election.
We might go all moral and regard businesses that continue trading when they are insolvent, delaying the payment of workers wages and using their money as easy credit to be criminal – that is immoral. What about prison and hard labour for their soft hands. If they keep their backyard tidy, they probably use an electric blower, no workman’s implement like a yardbroom would raise a tiny blister on their pudgy fingers..
Why punish the prisoners just to be vicious; keep them busy, make them work at thinking, teach them how to deal with anger, give rewards for success, try to get them to earn an NCEA credit for something useful – not safecracking! Then release them to a halfway house with time rules. Help them to be strong and respect and like themselves so they don’t reach for alcohol and drugs. Teach them to play an instrument, and sing. Help them find their souls. The loss of finer feelings, is rampant in our society. Too near Brave New World for my comfort.
Bridges is pandering to his rat population. They love this kind of get tough talk. It’s a proven vote puller for the brainwashed. Enough good folk will vote against these bastards, IF they get out and vote.
If there were any friggin talkers in gummint for reality… Otherwise all the wised up laugh and National’s 5-10 % ignorami spotted in focus groups swallow whole. Of course if enough belly laugh National will retreat with the veritable egg on their face. Despicable gamble.
I despise playing on the weakest’s ‘faults’ . After 34 years. I didn’t include a swear word. All we who grew to adulthood under demo-cracy, at least the best of us, will not settle for the ‘settlement’ of 84. Metaphorical bed-bugs.
Simon is pulling our leg, pushing emotional buttons while pulling the wool over our eyes. The Nats had 10 years to get tough on crime or do this or that, but really only pulled ponytails. Pull the other one Simon.
They pulled more than ponytails Popeye have you had you spinach ?
Censorship again, as so often.
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