It’s all so predictable. National lashing out at beneficiaries in the runup to an election.
They need someone easy to victimise. Distraction is the key. How else to take attention away from policies which turn millionaires into billionaires and the working class into the working poor.
Find some easily identified victims who have no political voice or access to corporate media and hammer them. Make them the scapegoats for every middle-class ache and pain – someone else is responsible – someone must be held accountable. And who better to deliver the punishment than a died in the wool Tory like Louise Upson – the dungeon mistress thrashing the serfs into submission.
And Louise Upston knows – she KNOWS. She tells us a beneficiary turned up to a job interview in pyjamas – yes PYJAMAS. Have you heard anything more appalling – those vile beneficiaries need a good lashing.
The Pink Floyd Lyrics from the Brick in the wall album give the psychology behind National’s beneficiary bashing.
“When we went to school there were certain teachers who would hurt the children in any way they could. By pouring their derision on everything they did and exposing every weakness no matter how carefully hidden by the kids”
I won’t record the next few lines in the song because they might be too close to the bone for National’s leaders.
But heaven knows National gets off on this punching down. At National Party conferences the biggest cheers come when silver-spoon National MPs attack people on benefits. It’s cloaked in the language of “accountabilities” and “consequences” for those not following the rules but the orgasmic euphoria among National supporters can’t be overlooked. Beneficiary bashing is a replacement for feeding slaves to lions in a Roman arena.
Beneficiaries and people on low-incomes generally are the victims of neo-liberal policies which have made National Party supporters rich from unearned income. Unemployment was driven up and benefits slashed by National in the 1990s to keep wages down and drive-up profits.
The tens of thousands who were driven out of work were then blamed for being out of work. At the same time low-income communities were flooded with pokie machines, liquor outlets, fast-food joints, loan sharks and now vape shops. These communities are now ravaged by addictions as these “parasites on poverty” have been let loose on them with pathetic, unenforced regulations to cover their predatory behaviour. There is no-one left to follow up and enforce them. It took a problem gambler to call out Skycity recently – it was never going to be done by hopelessly under-resourced MBIE officials.
That’s just the way National likes it – steal a burger from your employer and be charged with theft and lose your job – steal wages from your employee and you are effectively untouchable.
So where are the other accountabilities National is so keen on?
Where was the accountability for the super-rich who refused to provide IRD with details of their income as required by law? National has no policy on this.
And where are the accountabilities for employers who abuse and exploit migrant workers? National has no policy to deal with them.
Where are the accountabilities for dairy-farmers who are demanding the rest of us pay for their greenhouse gas emissions? Billions each year excused by National and another five years of free-loading for farmers.
Where are the accountabilities for farmers who refuse to provide their fertiliser use to regional councils as required by law? National has no policy on this.
Where are the accountabilities for the destruction of our waterways, lakes and rivers by farmers taking clean water and returning it filthy and polluted, leaving the rest of us to pay the bill? National has no policy on this.
Yes, we see on Country Calendar each week examples of some farmers doing marvellous work for the environment, but these are a decreasing minority as corporate farming takes over our land and “privatises their profits and socialise their losses” for us to pay? National has no policy on this.
Beneficiaries are National’s target – hammering the victims is such good sport – and the saddest thing of course is that National does it because it works.
We are a little people.
Yes, unemployment is no moral failure, it is deliberately built into Capitalism to put downward pressure on wages and repress workers organisation and fightback.
Open Bennie Bashing has long been supported by the NZ state and a punitive, sadistic welfare system–I still recall the Jenny Shipley “dob in a bludger” TV ads calling on people to effectively be junior Stasi and spy on their neighbours.
It is time to retire the whole rotten welfare system and institute a Basic Income for all citizens.
There are 140,000 unemployed. During this election campaign I don’t recall hearing any politician from any political party talk about this problem and what they would do to create 100,000 jobs and fix unemployment.
The idea that the country just writes off 140,000 people and subject them to the evil of unemployment is now just a shameful given.
What you do with the small number of people who have no intention of working is one thing but forcing them to work for anybody is pointless. They are not going to be productive, turn up on time or even wash. No self respecting employer would want them.
You’re all right jack :-s
You have pinpointed the problem, some people are unemployable for various reasons. While the self-righteous get upset at the idea of anyone getting something for what appears to be nothing they fail to consider that but for the grace of God it could well be them in the same position (anyone with real-world knowledge will know that it is generally not intellectual ability that determines a persons place in the pecking order of life) so providing a safety net for those people actually keeps them from potentially much worse results.
…and those jobs will shortly be done by AI robots anyway.
But I worked hard for my $300k tax free capital gains per house thanks to RBNZ’s scam during COVID not like those bludgers getting a massìve $500 per month in dole handouts (that actually goes to me too in rent). But I deserve it, I am not a poor.
single person 300 bucks p/w if you get that in rent how much disposable income do they have?
I agree absolutely with you Tiger Mountain,
I also remember Shipley in parliament saying ONE beneficiary had 10 children by ten different men.
A bit like chicken licken the sky was about to fall in.
Still it takes our mind away from their nasty policies and lets us focus on the real issues. pjs at an interview.
Great summation JM.
Apparantly benefit fraud is criminal,but tax evasion is ..not..it is addressed under Tax Administration legislation.
And this idiot still trying to win it for National…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/mike-hosking-ardern-mantras-still-rankle-amid-current-malaise/2KU3K2TXINDD7HUCKQXUF34PI4/
Pulling out all stops the media trolls of the right.
Garden shed political alchemy by National, a party that is unravelling before our eyes. After 6 years of being unemployed and the prospect of becoming unemployable if they lose the election, all National have left in the tank now is projection of their flawed lives onto others. Like calling peaceful protestors nazis and then hosting a nazi in your parliament.
So very true, @Ethan.
The nail on the head.
Where is Nationals fiscal plan and why is it being released so late when overseas voting has already started.
And why aren’t our mainstream media calling National out this is not good enough.
There is no fiscal plan, the simple truth is NZ has 95,600 homes over $2 million with only 3,400 sold last year. National is banking on nearly 50% being sold to foreign buyers. It. Does. Not. Add. Up.
There was a past minister who had a gig at a ‘Truckstop’ come massage palour in Taupo and then became the minister of msd too. She to was a national party DPB.
Nasty is alive and well on the left as demonstrated daily on this site.
This site won’t be running the country Bob, what is your point?
Forgive Bob he’s posting from the dementia ward of his rest home.
His point is Wheel that he trolls this site daily, not making any sense whatsoever.
You’d think he’d have something better to do rather than post his feral right wing tripe.
Truth is my middle name NSC.
Truth hurts.
I’m happily at one of my New Zealand residences at the moment some distance from a dementia ward.
Looking forward to the election outcome.
The truth is you’re actually quite insane and I know that truth hurts. One of those residences being the Mason Clinic.
Now get those tablets in you.
Why is anyone still voting mainstream? All globalists operate essentially the same. Not as if there are not new party’s to choose from either.
National’s tax cuts and funding them appears to be an abortion ???
the number of nice middle class people who earn a living fromthe poverty/homelessness industry and the meagre amount of funding that dribbles down to the frontline needs analysis
yep – it’s debased thinking by debased thinkers. Can’t have beneficiaries reminding them of their guilt. They’ll be after academia next, because they’re so stupid.
What a nasty nasty woman Upston is but that is to be expected by the right, as demonstrated on this site daily.
‘…..a beneficiary turned up to a job interview in pyjamas – yes PYJAMAS.’ No that was Janet Wilson who turned up to be in a TV post debate discussion wasn’t it?
National- a party of real estate agents. Some pyjamas are quite trendy, especially the florescent ones.
” Pure class warfare
National unveiled its fiscal policy today, announcing all the usual things which business cares about and I don’t. But it did finally tell us how National plans to pay for its handouts to landlords: by effectively cutting benefits:
The biggest saving announced on Friday was $2b cut from the amount forecast to be spent on benefits over the four-year forecast period.
In 2019, Labour indexed benefits to wages, rather than CPI inflation, meaning benefit levels increase more quickly. New Zealand’s main benefit, superannuation, is indexed to wages too.
National wants to change this back, costing someone receiving the basic rate of jobseeker $33 a week by the end of the forecast period. The benefit payments will still go up, but not by as much.
“Still go up, but not by as much” nicely obscures the fact that this is effectively a cut, made worse by the fact that poor see higher inflation than the rich because of what they buy.
So, National’s plan is to rip $2 billion directly out of the pockets of the poorest kiwis, in order to give that money to rich landlords. There is a name for that: it is pure class warfare.
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2023/09/pure-class-warfare.html
And from the NACT ( nasty arseseole c***s and traitors )
” The ACT Party says its small business policy package will abolish Fair Pay Agreements, put a hold on minimum wage increases for three years, and remove the 2 January public holiday.
The party said the reason for the removal of the public holiday would be to “absorb the cost of Matariki” public holiday, which was first celebrated as a public holiday last year.
Instead of Fair Pay Agreements, which the party’s leader David Seymour called “anti business” policy, it would be “supporting freedom to contract”.
“‘Fair pay’ agreements amount to compulsory unionism that will reduce productivity and make it harder for employers to grow their businesses. ACT will get rid of them immediately. “
morew policies that have failed overseas…why do we keep on doing this???pencil-eye and repeat