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Being a beneficiary doesn’t mean I don’t still have dreams and a goal of eventually being able to support myself again. I’m never thrilled at the prospect of needing to book an appointment at my local WINZ office. In fact the only time I ever feel like a second rate citizen in my own country is when I’m forced to leave my dignity at the door of WINZ, and join the queue to plead my case for whatever meagre assistance I may be entitled to. Today was one of those days.

In the past week, the options have narrowed for Labour.

The Greens, through motormouth Metiria Turei, have ruled themselves out of the next Government. Labour’s tax proposals, while progressive, are too easily dismissed as complicated and paternalistic. The polls, while probably underestimating the left as usual, give no comfort.

With Labour, 70% of New Zealand families will be better off than with the package National announced in their election year Budget.

National’s tax cuts do nothing to address the failing mental health service, nothing to address the failing public health system, nothing to address the housing crisis or address the chronic underfunding in education; Labour’s Families Package on the other hand provides some real solutions and answers to the major issues in our communities

Election fever is on the rise. Paraphrasing Lenin, elections are those things when every few years we rise up as alienated subjects and entrust our lives to a bunch of the paid servants of capital. That makes us slaves of capital. Bourgeois parliament is a fig-leaf for bourgeois class rule in a state that is the “organising committee of the capitalist class”. Elections therefore only legitimate capitalist class rule in the name of democracy, which, when examined, turns out to be a fraud.

Like a lot of folk, I’ve had the allegations of youthful criminal behaviour by current Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett pop up in my facebook feed. They’re not entirely new and they do seem to confirm what many feel is her character (or, rather, lack of character).

We, as a community and society based on law and the values of justice and mercy owe Teina Pora because Pora was the victim of a racist justice system and we as New Zealanders need to acknowledge that.

Increasing the minimum wage by 75cents an hour would give workers on the minimum wage working a 40hour week an extra $30 in their pay-packets each week.

I know that a lot of my fellow members of New Zealand First agree with me on this (some to the point where they’ve said they’ll resign their membership, which is something I had also previously threatened to do, but have been tentatively convinced to refrain from – for now).

#NeverShane