In many countries around the world, statistics about things like the rates of unemployment or crime are used by the government of the day to demonstrate changes in those areas. In New Zealand, by contrast, changes in statistics (as in, changes in what the statistics actually represent) are used instead to obscure a lack of improvement in same.
Brexit has shone daylight on a crisis that’s been brewing for several decades. The utopian proclamation by Francis Fukuyama about the ‘end of history’, in the heyday of globalisation, has succumbed to the reality that paradigms come and go.
In August 2015 I sat through a whole day of hearing in the High Court on this sad case. What a convoluted sets of arguments were expounded to justify the punitive approach taken by the Crown. That was the latest court event in a 15 year saga in which an unwell beneficiary is being pursued for the repayment of $20 a week.
THE MAGNITUDE OF THE CRISIS now overtaking Britain is difficult to exaggerate. A society obsessed with class has somehow to deal with the impossible fact that those on the bottom have over-ruled those at the top.
My position on Brexit was that workers should have abstained in a dispute between their bosses over how to make workers pay for their crisis.
The Indonesian Government has developed strategies for avoiding international criticism over its appalling human rights record in West Papua. One strategy is to keep the outside world out and ensure that approved visitors such as journalists and diplomats are carefully guided and get to meet with the ‘right’ people.
Why is it such a struggle for New Zealand to provide a safe haven to refugees in need yet we have to fight to clean up our tax haven laws? These two issues offer an insight into the values (or lack thereof) of John Key’s Government.
Sue Moroney, the Labour Party MP who has tirelessly pushed for an increase to 26 weeks paid parental leave has a majority in Parliament to get the Bill passed, and yet the Government have managed to claim that because the law will cost too much, they can shut it down regardless of the Opposition managing to get a majority.
…if you voted National, this is on you now. This inequality and poverty is on you. This Government who don’t give a damn is on you. This Government who are more focused on smearing people actually working on the housing crisis than deal with the housing crisis is on you.
…the top 10% own half the wealth while the bottom 40% hold less than 3% of the wealth. How this horror story has been allowed to occur in a nation that once prided itself on its egalitarianism is the real issue here, this is the true legacy of 30 years of neoliberalism.
