How stupid is this white cis male?
Raising grandson easier than negotiating ‘minefield’ of social services
A retired man unexpectedly thrust back into parenting claims he was told to “toughen up” when he questioned his 20-day wait for a meeting with Work and Income.
The agency has denied such language was used, but has apologised for not considering him for emergency assistance.
Peter Sargent, 68, didn’t think twice when he stepped up to become the primary carer for his 11-year-old grandson in late March.
Navigating the needs and emotions of an adolescent doesn’t faze him, but the struggle to get the attention and support of social services, in his pursuit of an unsupported child’s benefit, has left him stunned and worried about other grandparents in similar scenarios.
The reason why the Government just set up a one sheet form to gain access to money over Covid and the reason why Farmers get social welfare brought to them was to eliminate as much contact between real people and Government welfare bureaucracy as possible.
MSD and WINZ are purposely obtuse so that they can catch beneficiaries out and make them debt slaves for ‘welfare fraud’.
You used to hear about how cruel these arseholes were all the time, but because many of the worker work for social media Comms now, we gloss over their abuse of vulnerable people.
What this silly white cis male has found out is that the service is malicious and not fit for purpose, read this clanger…
Unfortunately other emergency assistance that may have been available to Sargent was not discussed.
“We apologise that Mr Sargent wasn’t given an earlier appointment and that emergency assistance was not considered.”
…oh it’s always the case isn’t it?
MSD and WINZ do everything to not inform people of what they are actually entitled to on purpose until they get caught out doing it.
Look at how our welfare system enslaves beneficiaries into debt slaves…
Māngere mum faces crippling debt after flooding ruins her state house
A mother of four has been plunged further into debt after her government-provided home was ruined in the Auckland floods.
Jayde Jones’s Kāinga Ora home was built on a flood plain, and lifted off its foundations when a historic deluge swept across the city.
Jones believes the state housing agency should pay to replace her belongings; Kāinga Ora says that’s the responsibility of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD).
MSD coughed up just $500, and while Work and Income did provide another $6000, that’s money Jones will have to pay back – adding to her already sizeable Work and Income debts.
There is a deep cruelty built within our user plays welfare state.
When beneficiaries are in need beyond the meagre crumbs they are paid as a benefit, they can ‘borrow’ the money from MSD (who charges interest).
This is nothing more than debt slavery. MSD use their opaque rules to catch people out via ‘relationships’ and have access to mass surveillance tools to hunt these supposed enemies of the state.
Making the poor borrow money for a flood through a State House is a special kind of malice isn’t it?
What makes it so much ore offensive is that it is being done under a Labour Government.
Carmel Sepuloni, who has been an appalling failure as Minister to people in need, should be forced to explain why debt slavery to a cruel welfare ministry with an appalling track record of abusing vulnerable people, is a successful social policy from a Labour Government.
Every Kiwi should feel ashamed that we are driving State House Tenants into debt to buy the basics because of flooding they had no hand in generating.
How have we become this cruel and spiteful to one another in need?
Where is our basic humanity?
We need urgent solutions to the billions in debt that many have with the State, be it student loan, fines, tax debt, benefit ‘fraud’.
We are facing a Black Swan economic event, forgiving debt could be an easy means to alleviate immediate relief.
The problem is that MSD and WINZ see that debt as an asset and use it that way on their balance sheets.
They see enslaving the poor into debt as a means of total spectrum dominance on the under class to ensure total subservience to the State.
Fuck that!
The mistake this grandfather made was expecting NZs neoliberal welfare experiment to give a fuck.
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There are also good caring individuals who serve the public.
Good fortune is a real thing. Luck is a real thing.
However, relying on luck and good fortune help very few who are in need.
We deserve better. And the response is….. more communications people to do what exactly? Corrupt the few good caring people who serve the public?
COMPUTER SAYS NO……
lets hope that because he is a white male this story gains traction…..MSD must train their staff in how to be obstructionist bastards….management must go.
Talked to an older woman who used to be government official in the Justice Dept. The needy who are young are their own worst enemies according to her – drugs, choosing not to work but to get social welfare when there are hundreds of unfilled jobs on the internet. A closed downward-looking face, full of judgment, uninterested in the problems; having to pay to go to polytech as a debt incentive, well her children had to do that and soon got into jobs, paid it off. An answer to everything, and people are to blamed, not the system. No wonder we can’t go forward in this self-satisfied narrow-minded, shaming not improving system. Never give a needy person a good word, a beggar a coin, or useful policies a thumbs up, and behind it there is so much negativity, one can see why NZ is a dour place, judgmental, punishing, and without empathy for fellow human beings (instead thinking – who aren’t just like me, as I am so good. Or the alternative, I have had a bad timem, why sould others not have to suffer as well.)
yes grey and how many of the listed jobs are ‘ghost jobs’ designed never to be filled but merely mining CVs…we don’t know and counting ‘listings’ is pointless….IRD know how many people start jobs..and let’s not even factor in how many are low pay part time ‘gig’ jobs
Yes tried to bring some clarity into the statement, but merely repeating the lines parrot-wise seemed enough for this lady. Give me Sirocco any day, a determined bird, knows what he’s about and ever hopeful. Does my heart good thinking about him.
But in any event, Gaga what you say above is a phenomenon that has been with us for a good 20 years now. But I think what Grey is talking about is more about how moribund things in NZ have become especially amongst millenials.
‘NZ is a dour place, judgmental, punishing, and without empathy for fellow human beings’
100% GW.
My late in life child (17) displays all these traits and the rest of us dont know where to look half the time. The other thing that is typified by them is a lack of practicality and a complete disconnect between where the money comes from, civics, the importance of family etc, nz and world history.
We have tried as parents to provide context but gave up by age 15 because any comment not wholly supportive of the Tik Tok view being espoused was viewed as tyranny. We love her but it is like having a cuckoo in the nest. Not because she and we are politically opposed but because her only focus seems to be a combined victimhood and entitlement.
I keep wondering about the conspiracy theories about the ‘breakdown’ of the family being a NWO goal and sometimes it feels like that. As someone said the other day it’s like living with the Cultural Revolution generation.
On a personal level its pretty sad but I keep hoping real life will intervene over the next ten years and that she will re-evaluate when she figures out its an unsustainable way to live. Very hard to see how our country can flourish in the face of such destructiveness though.
Not too sure if rolling back the clock to the 1950’s is the answer, but that’s just me.
Millsy I agree with everyone saying that we have become a dour, judgmental and punishing social community, but I don’t think the 50’s were as bad as that. We were more resourceful in that post-war period when so many norms had been dislocated.
In the early 50’s we still had rationing of basic commodities – butter-eggs- in order to provide poorly nourished Brits with good food. My mother routinely baked cakes in the square tins which were then lidded, and posted off to the Uk, my father gave sugar bags of coal and potatoes to a neighbour. Family visiting was accompanied by vegetable gifting. We drove to the freezing works for cheap meat and the butchers gave all the kids free saveloys to eat on the way home- at least some supermarkets are now providing free fruit for children instore.
Rock’n’roll hit the social scene, there were Saturday night socials and dances in parish halls all over the country, with local bands, girls in pretty frocks which they made themselves, no crap television, in fact no television at all. Radio provided family entertainment with folk grouped around the wireless listening together. For many of us it was a world of books in a way which it isn’t now where very small kids are glued to iPads watching cartoons and Disney fantasies.
The ogre of end-of-year School Cert and UE exams was actually a useful focus and provided a practical goal to work towards. Those who made it to Uni were allowed to disagree, and we did, and it was ok then, with little personal animosity- we were all united in being permanently skint. Routines like church going, uptown on Friday nights to girl or boy watch, Saturday afternoon cinema visits, also provided useful social patterns. Girls didn’t really drink alcohol or go into pubs or get drunk, unless by accident.
The rot set in maybe in the late 60’s, and social cohesion has certainly lessened. The deliberate dumbing down of the education system hasn’t helped, nor has governments’ divide and rule scenarios, but rubbish entertainment has probably contributed to the sense of entitlement and unreasonable or unrealistic expectations. The killing off of our European cultural heritage is perplexing, and bad.
God you are such a prude. So if females drink. Why dont you move to Saudi Arabia. Women are kept in their box there,
Millsy Get a brain check, I never said females shouldn’t drink. We are the teachers of drinking. We nourish babies pre-natally, and we feed them mother’s milk when they are born, which is more than what you do. But we all know about the sort of boys who like drunk girls and you sound awfully like one of them. Shame on you.
At least I don’t beat them like you obv do. Fucking old gammon.
Breakdown of the family unit is actually. The less people who parent with their fists, the better.
Agree with just about everything you say. Victimhood is the currency of the woke, unfortunately, from dimwit Prince Harry to Elizabeth Kerekere whinging about how colonialists stuffed up her ancestors’ sex lives.
We are living in a cultural revolution and breakdown of society. I didn’t know that the boys from Davos were aiming for the breakdown of the family unit, but it doesn’t surprise me, because families are a major stabilising factor in society, and societal instability is needed to obtain social control. The WEF reset of not even owning places to call home, is where they really come unstuck, because they’re unable to present reasonable or stable alternatives or the ownership of such.
Having survived parenthood with a few scars, one thing I do know is that peer influence is a biggie, and in a pallid little society like ours, for your youngest offspring to survive she has to conform, probably consciously and unconsciously. A woman up the road said “Just remember when you’re at home worrying about them, they’re out there enjoying themselves.”
I dont think you have a right to tell people who they can and cannot sleep with, love, marry or form a family with.
People like you just want to shoe horn people into arbitary living arrangements, regardless of wether or not its good for thier wellbeing,
Millsy. If you’re referring to me, I do and did not tell people who they can or cannot sleep with, love, marry, or form a family with.
Nowhere do I want to “shoehorn people into arbitrary living arrangements” etc nor try to. I rather think that your imagination may be running away with you here.
I value your perspective Snow and you are right of course. This stuff all comes from woke teachers and peer pressure (The Holocaust was not about race, Trans rights must be protected over women’s rights and the latest, euthanasia should be extended to mercy killing because its kinder).
The pressure of ‘there is only one right way’ does play a part especially if you believe as part of that, that opening yourself up to other POV’s is unsafe. Also, most of her peers are from single parent families with Mum’s working long hours to scrape a living and thus maybe not paying attention to what views they are forming. I didnt even know it was going on and it took me 2 years to realise, it wasnt some wierd phase and that she was forming these instransigient views.
As for Millsy, I am convinced he is a professional troll. If you look at his posts, they rarely engage with an issue justsarcasm and ad hominem stuff.
Fantail I gave $20.00 the other night to a sullen, despondent, depressed- looking girl of about 13 who was delivering junk mail at dusk, which I didn’t think was all that safe. Had a daughter doing the same thing at a slightly older age, but some of the time she was able to rope other family members, and in any case, there would have been no stopping her. They can be secretive, even for quite innocent reasons, but if they have each other as social support, it’s good.
I don’t know how single mothers manage, the dynamics are demanding for parents on their own, apart from the financial pressures and stressors – the nuclear family is hard enough, but little fragmented sub-units with teenagers are not as socially stabilising as that 50’s era which that troll abhors. Even then, there were single ladies, widowed and unmarried casualties of WW2, in dreary ill-paid work, no DPB, leading quietly heroic lives at a time when there was a prejudice against single women which doesn’t bear thinking about. Men don’t generally experience life in that way; good luck to your daughter and the other girls in this messy complex milieu we’re living in.
( Thornton Wilder’s haunting “ Bridge of San Luis Rey“ can be a touchstone for mothers with complicated daughters, one narrative being of a mother poignantly spending her life trying to understand her rejecting daughter; it’s hard not to do, but too much thinking, can be too tough too.)
Seem to me you are a far right racist who opposes LGBT rights and wants a theocracy
You carry on about the so called ‘breakdown of the family unit’, I think you are being completly hysterical, Like all socially conservative reactionaries.
MSD workers are prime candidates to be replaced by AI, along with many other bureaucratic gatekeepers.
Looking forward to the day!
“What this silly white cis male” did was start parenting his grandson. I get the humour but let’s use a term like “Real Man” He’s earnt the respect.
He should try ringing MSD, I spent 1.5 hours on hold recently and eventually talked to some overseas contractor taking calls on behalf of the agency. What are we paying the public service for, to have some faceless dummy in another country snigger over our personal records and situation? Get fucked, these people are lunatics, glorified dole bludgers and small town gossip trash projecting their pathetic lives onto others and pretending they are making a difference. And sitting on this giant shit pile is Sepoluni, drawing down the biggest benefit of all.
We hear you Jody and most of us concur.
I bet because he’s a) white, b) male, c) older they discussed his case and said screw him, he doesn’t need help. Sadists.
Martyn your moderation software sure is odd in what it won’t let through.
Does it filter out comments with swear words?
I see many people with long comments get through, but mine don’t.
I was going to donate but wtf bother if I can’t even have a proper say here.
Let’s test this – fuck, wanker, scum (as in MSD, OT etc)
Odd, that got through.
Everything I have seen this current Labour government in consortium with the Green Party is to get as many people as possible in as many possible combinations of the following (and it’s clearly a global movement since I didn’t need to edit this list from what I grabbed from a website):
Unmarried
Childless
Medicated
Drunk
Fat
Without Religion
Unarmed
Out-of-Work
On Welfare
Genderless
Obsessed with Race
You make it sound like half these things are *bad*
What is wrong with unmarried, childless, and without religion? Do you really want a theocracy in this country?
And if we didnt have welfare, this country would just be another third world sweatshop hell hole.
Gosh that has a lot of words with -less at the end. Bit depressing, but just a thought that crossed my mind – the rainbow people seem to have a lot of spirit and togetherness. If they stepped back from their rigid stance on some things and apply the consideration that they are asking or demanding from those with the old styles they might be a force for better. Then things might end in -ness not -less. Just a ponder.
Accurate list Nitrium.
We already have an acronym for the arguments “modern woman” called SIGN language.
Shame
Insult
Guilt
And need to be right.
Those are modern woman debate tactics.
Sargent should go to IRD, which is probably worse than MSD in terms of getting anything out of them, and get the family tax credit for his grandson.
I personally know someone who was a similar situation as him, and that is what they end up getting.
At least he is on the pension and owns his own house, so he is in a better off situation. Still suck though to have that dropped on you.
MSD could and should have shared that with him and helped him to get the help that he and his charge are entitled to without delay.
I recommend always surreptitiously recording conversations with government officials.
Andrew I’ve been advising people for years to always have a support person present when speaking with WINZ or police. No need to record surreptitiously either, it can be done openly, saying,” You don’t mind if I record this do you?” Perfectly legal. They record too, and it can be handy being able to refer to that, including retrospectively.
Had this grandfather said that he was transgender, they may have been more helpful. I’m now pondering saying I’m transgender if I meet with police in unfavourable circumstances, and I suggest that everybody consider doing this, especially if they are, or look vaguely like women, more so in Auckland.
Many call centre staff work from home, and they can have other distractions which may delay answering calls. I dumped Telecom or Spark after a difficult call with a lady in the Philippines whose baby was crying. Census staff have been working from home, and mine seemed please to receive a call at home alone, and we chatted amicably about the deteriorating postal service and his car problems, but it’s hard on them too, isolated on their own, when they get stressed or abusive callers.
Does anyone know why it’s call end the ministry for social development? What does it develop? Shouldn’t be called ministry for cruel and callous minister of ministry?