THE LABOUR PARTY has never been very tolerant of dissenters. It is, therefore, unsurprising that very few within its ranks have reacted positively to my recent posting on The Daily Blog. No matter how many private reservations Labour supporters may be harbouring about Grant Robertson’s “fiscally responsible” economic policies, they would rather his critics refrained from giving public voice to their concerns.
I can remember many years ago being told my one of my senior academic colleagues that I should not be so impatient for women’s equality – that it would come, but probably take about 25 years. Well, 25 years has been and gone and progress have been sporadic and regression all too common. In particular, men are still mostly in charge of things. In the private sector and the state, most CEOs are men, most board chairs are men and most of the voices heard are males.
I think Mike appeals to those who already have and his quaint musings on working hard and not helping beneficiaries because that only enables them when you feed them slips effortlessly into the cultural norms rich people convince themselves of when they have to step over beggars to get into Louis Vuitton stores.
The NZ Drug Foundation has published its Briefing Document on Drug reform for the incoming Parliament. The indications are that its approach is one that the Government might favour because while it argues for decriminalisation to remove the worst aspects of our demonic cannabis laws, it also recommends heavy regulation of “production, consumption and sale”.
One of the clear threads is the move to a greater reliance on the complex stigmatizing regime of supplementary hard to access add-on means-tested assistance. Core benefits are not enough to live on and low wages are far too low.
IT’S OFFICIAL – there is now no prospect of this government living up to its promises of introducing “transformational” change. Thanks to Grant Robertson, the Labour-NZ First-Green Government will, with one exception, be fundamentally indistinguishable from the Clark-Cullen ministry of 1999-2008.
The frigates Te Mana and Te Kaha are a huge drain on the taxpayer. They cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year in running costs and regular upgrades. The current electronics upgrade is now priced at a whopping $639 million.
When I look at the horror our mental health system, prison system & welfare systems have become for the most vulnerable via chronic underfunding & indifferent staff – I fear how euthanasia will mutate in that cruel environment.
Good news! The Labour-led Government will introduce legislation to “legalise medicinal cannabis”, this side of Christmas. Bad news! Based on early hints about the content of the reform, patients are fearful about whether the changes will go far enough and whether they will have to continue to resort to criminal activity.
There’s been quite a lot of mainstream media attention on the Bitcoin phenomenon recently. And while any amount of prognostication about whether its runaway increases in value represent a bubble can be found pretty much wherever one cares to look, there’s one aspect of the present Bitcoin boom that I think’s been somewhat under-discussed.