Ouch…
…the Mike King fiasco highlights all that is wrong in NZ politics.
Mike is hated by the Wellington Bureaucracy for highlighting their incompetence and making them look like the callous wankers they are.
Mike is offering counselling services at a fraction of the price that the Wellington Bureaucracy offers and because he’s done such an excellent job of exposing their vested interests, he will never ever receive any money for his proposals because that’s what happens when you cross the Wellington Bureaucracy.
Labour are gutless cowards and have no capacity to force the Wellington Bureaucracy to engage meaningfully with Mike because they are too frightened to bring tasers to the sensitive parts of the Wellington Bureaucracy to compel them to be transformative.
If Luxon wants to win the 2023 election, he simply needs to hold a press conference with Mike, tell the Press that the first thing his National Government will be doing is force the Wellington Bureaucracy to give Mike a contract and watch Labour scream in vain.
The fundamental difference between Labour and National is that National MPs are all management psychopaths who excel at bullying others for results where as Labour wants to give everyone a cuddle at a hui with a vegan menu in Te Reo and side-order of pronouns.
The public service fear National, they don’t fear Labour and so when Labour pour billions into the Wellington Bureaucracy, they laugh and use it for more glass palaces.
The vast chunk of Labour/Green activists are placed and work within the Wellington Bureaucracy either with NGOs, Unions or State Agencies and their own sense of righteousness never allows them to consider if they are the baddies.
The way the Twitter Woke shit all over Mike whenever he righteously calls their Wellington Bureaucracy to account is proof positive of that.
The horror of our suicide rate gives us a glimpse behind the ‘she’ll be right’ facade of our culture and the dark torment of an alpha male macho mental landscape that is terribly fragile.
Our under funded social infrastructure, our ‘me first’ consumerism, our 30 years of neoliberal mythology, our disconnection from one another, our untreated pain, our lack of hope from grinding poverty in a first world country, our damaged masculinity, the intergenerational consequences of colonialism, our unspoken rage culture, our inability to express emotion beyond anger – all of this demands questions we don’t want to hear as a society and the shame of suicide continues to hide and smother any healing.
In a society that has no religious faith and all the cultural maturity of a can of coke, the bonds which keep us attached are frail and disconnected. In our fetishisation of individualism we have lost the central part of the human condition – connection.
We have traded in our interwoven threads of whanau, friendship and kin for a race where no one wins.
The reason we can’t talk about suicide is because we can’t stand to talk about the dark treacle of self hate and loneliness at the core of consumer culture. We don’t dare confront the hollowness of our existence on these far flung crags of rock for fear of what we will reveal about ourselves.
Damaged individuals competing for a self identity too fragile for the storms and tempests of life.
Thanks to neoliberalism, we are further from each other than ever before.
Look at the manner in which our suicide rates jumped after the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, where we moved away from the communal towards the individual…
…we huddle frightened on these lonely rocks at the end of the world and slowly one by one slip off into the swallowing dark. Until we are prepared to confront many of the individualism-over-all myths and rebuild our tattered communities, our suicide rate will remain reminding us of our whispered deceptions.
We refuse to ask the why of suicide because we are too frightened to know the answer is a reflection of the shallow and lonely community we have become. Instead we reel off a list of phone numbers whenever we dare mention suicide as if that means a fucking thing.
We are broken and no one wants to admit that.
Mike King swims in this pain constantly and it has hurt him as much as it has hurt us which explains his anger at the Wellington Bureaucracy.
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Wow! Just wow!
You’re right Martyn: This is indeed dynamite.
Labour won’t help Mike because he’s not one of their inner circle of useless academic luvvies.
I don’t think they are “academics” as such, although they might have uni degrees
Anker Agree. By and large, govt departments are the last bastion of the grads who fail to cut it out in the real world. The whole system needs re-structuring.
So true Pip I’ve experienced these people and it’s not pleasant.
They speak in riddles which they think makes them smart when it displays they have nothing constructive to say.
Andrew. Yes. Kia kaha Mike King, and thanks for helping our kids.
Neoliberal government dislikes real academics thus have put the business people and networkers to run and staff the universities to destroy the institution from the insides out.
They also made professor wages so low for research that real and qualified scientists can’t do it long term as a career – then networkers and richer students get the money instead.
Mike King is a national treasure isnt he.
So much truth in what you have written about the Wellington bureaucracy Martyn, they are the best argument against big government in my opinion, having previously been more a statist myself, I now recoil from giving these unaccountable all powerful woke government troughers a single cent more.
A major purge of the public service is going to be beautiful thing with the change of government.
That King receives no funding is a travesty when this government gives millions to gangs as alluded at the end of his letter.
It’s probably Kings fault for not being trans, a gang member or a Mahuta.
Keep calm “Mike Kings fault because not trans, a gang Ora Mahuta member”
Argh many a true word spoken in jest
Mike King for PM and Bradbury in new priority heavy weight portfolio: Fortress NZ!
king though I find his ’emotional’ approach a worry has really got the shitty end of the stick for actually caring.
Agreed gag
Gagarin. Maybe better emotional than a cold fish – Greeks – Italians – Mediterranean folk – the odd Arabian – can get a bit emotional at time – there’s no recipe book – yet – for how public personas should present. At least he opens his mouth when he speaks, unlike that dog man pollie.
serious questions need to be asked about why Ormsby got money for suicide prevention when he has no background in mental health.
I am also suspious of sucide prevention campaigns, cause although we all want to lower the rates of suicide, not much works except removing access to the means of committing suicide. e.g when they changed toxic home supply gas, the rates when down because it was no longer a quick immediately available option.
@Anker grift and family favours?
I’m not sure whether Ormsby himself was involved in suicide prevention but the Twitterer who exposed Mahuta’s conflicts also claimed he had a conviction (or perhaps had been brought up on sexual assault charges and found guilty of a lesser charge). So if he was involved, you would have to ask yourself what process was followed. I thought people had to be vetted for work for vulnerable young people.
Scream shout from the sideline Labour and the Greens but once in power make everything worse.
Bunch of incompetent nit wits full of woke meaningless jargon.
Mike King has been run over by this far from kind Labour Government.
Bob
Someone here would call it Brilliant Leadership.
Yes JK I know who you mean.
Really Bob…make things much worse. Despite Martyn’s view that National would somehow sort out the Wellington Bureaucracy I beg to differ
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/comedian-mike-king-quits-govts-suicide-plan-deeply-flawed/ICYFK4UXUNEKMIR26JPKHXZ6D4/?c_id=1&objectid=11856284
Free to do so Wheel I appreciate a reply that doesn’t resort to silly insults.
Wheel – you’re right. No party has much credit when it comes to mental health. Interesting though in the article that you link are the following comments from Julie Genter of the Greens and Jacinda Ardern:
The Greens health spokeswoman MP Julie Anne Genter said King had done “his utmost” to put this issue at the forefront of public and Government attention.
“For him to step away from this shows the utter frustration over the lack of forthcoming action on suicide and a Government missing in action on mental health.”
She called for an urgent full inquiry “to get to the bottom of how future interventions can be the most effective.”
Labour deputy leader Jacinda Ardern said King’s resignation should be a “major red flag” for the Government.
“Mental health is reaching crisis point in New Zealand after years of National’s $1.7 billion worth of cuts to health.
“It’s clear the Government’s approach is, sadly, now driving away some of the people who can do important work in this area.
So Ardern said the government was driving away people like Mike King who can do important work in this area but her government has done nothing to get him back. If she considered it to be a major red flag for the government then what does she think it is now?
I’d consider that the wokeness of those parties is contributing further to mental health and suicide issues e.g. the fiasco with Martin Devlin. Calling people “rivers of filth” is also not conducive. It’s time all MPs took this issue seriously.
The Twitter Woke have extra venom for Mike King when he criticises Labour because he is worse than an opponent (the Greens) or the enemy (the Nats). He’s traitor.
Mike King is considered a traitor because he is Maori AND he’s criticising Labour.
The Twitter Woke think he should be in the tent, at the iwi consultation hui, and waiting silently for a contract.
Absolutely Ada.
It would be very different if Mike was related to Mahuta.
Mike King, a fine gentleman, not asking for money but for answers.
Ouch indeed.
How National wins is the same dim vanilla they did in 2009. Hilarious we’re doing these old rhythms into the mouth of hell. Congrats, Lab and Nat activists.
A small example of high-minded superiority and patronising. I had been a literacy tutor when I had more time, and had some success. I felt I understood the clients. I saw a book at the library which would be useful I thought and bought it. The woman at the agency,who looked and spoke like a university grad, turned it down explaining that only new books were provided, being a good change as ‘they’ had never had anything new .
While this was a good thought it was also a patronising one that took away the clients’ agency. ‘They’ might have liked to have this graphic book with interesting pictures and text together if offered for their opinion.
The middle class go in for zero targets and best practice and well-printed brochures, and projects approved by other entities. Simple and plain and effective doesn’t cut it.
Grey.W. Hopefully not a grad – they buy the treasures from the Op Shops. I bought two good old NZ history books from a V de P shop. The man who served me was chuffed because he said that his manager told him he was not to put out books published before 1989, I think it was. I wanted to weep.
Your instinct with your literacy clients would have been spot on, because you knew them personally. Good on you. The agency woman didn’t know them, her decision was based on the half-baked policy of the young-and-know-it-all’s.
Oh oh oh. I may be age-ist or something. Oh oh oh the Kidman might get me.
Interesting Martyn that the standardised rates per 100,000 by 2015 were 16.4 for males and 6.1 for females. I am not sure if that is a reflection of progress compared to the end of the 90’s; a more accepting attitude by society in general to “differences” in how people chose to live; a change in overall population mix; or a bit of everything. In any case clearly way too many people see a tragic early end as the answer
Well put Wheel.
Tragic early end as you put it.
The graph is really interesting but it would be helpful to see what has happened over the last 25 years. On the graph as presented the huge increase in suicides was mainly men whereas the female suicide rate remained relatively stable. The question needs to be asked why the difference and can men learn from how women appeared to be coping.
As I say without up to date figures there is not much to be taken out of this graph but I suspect rates for both men and women have increased since 1999.
Can someone provide a more up to date graph.
Pat agree, thats why I included the 2015 numbers. They were the most updated I could find ( at least from the MOH). Those numbers show that particular metric has improved since 1999 (at least to 2015)