Raising the drinking age is fixing the wrong problem

We have a problem with alcohol in this country.  We drink too much, too often, and we do stupid destructive things when we drink, to ourselves and to others.  The costs of this problem are significant. 

It seems to me that the problem is actually "how we're drinking", to quote ALAC (of whom I am not the World's Biggest Fan).  The how seems to be that we binge drink, i.e. we drink a lot, quite quickly, and we do that often.  Surely the question that flows naturally from that is why we are drinking in that way.  Why do people feel the need to get really drunk, frequently?

I don't understand why people actively want to get totally blitzed, not really, because I've never been drunk.  I'd be interested in your feedback on reasons in comments.  Your experience will probably be vastly more informative than mine.  My teetotaller stance isn't something I intend to go into in this post (although I think we could probably benefit from some research on why people choose not to drink, and/or not to binge drink), but it's not based on religious or health grounds and I have spent a lot of time in the company of drinkers.  My friends started to drink when I was about 13, the usual North Shore stuff I expect.

How does shifting the purchase age for alcohol back and forth between 18 and 20 actually address the key issues of how and why people are drinking as they are? Because it's not as if it's only 18 and 19 year olds who are drinking in harmful ways.  

I understand that there is research that shows that any alcoholic consumption before the brain is fully matured can do damage.*  But there's no suggestion that the purchase age be based on whether or not someone's brain has finished developing.

I understand the concept of "bracket creep".  The theory is that because people will start drinking younger than whatever the purchase age actually is you need to increase the legal age to increase the actual age.  Kind of like the idea of always asking for more than you want at negotiations, because then you have some wiggle room to come down to your real bottom line.  But this isn't a case of negotiating pay or conditions or something else, this is supposedly a health issue, at heart.  And again changing the purchase age seems to me a very crude way to try to change the age people actually start drinking at. 

I also understand that the drinking habits we establish as youngsters are important indicators of how we will (ab)use alcohol throughout our lives.  But again, that's not something the purchase age directly addresses.  Given that most people drink prior to whatever the legal age is, often at the behest of their own parents, the drinking habits conversation is actually one that needs to happen with older adults, to get them thinking, and changing, the way they view alcohol and the way they role model their own drinking habits to others.  Jacinda Ardern outlines this well in a post at Red Alert. Queen of Thorns also makes some excellent points on this part of the equation.

Further on that last point, by way of example, I remember when I was about 15 I was around at a friend's house (she was the same age as me) and her father gave her 13 year old brother a beer so they could drink together while watching something on TV.  The father absolutely refused to give his daughter one.  She was outraged at this sexism (which was an ongoing issue with her father in a whole range of areas) and it seemed to me incredibly strange.  How could it be healthy to encourage a 13 year old to drink and unhealthy to do the same for a 15 year old?  Do penises somehow work as magical wards against alcohol-related harm?  Weirdness. 

When we had this debate back in 1998/1999 I was firmly against lowering the drinking age to 18.  I was an elected representative of an organisation that did support changing the age, so I shut up about my personal views in public fora and accurately represented the views of members.  And since then I've totally changed my mind.

At 18 we are adults.  We should be treated like adults who can make our own decisions about our bodies.  If the health concerns are the real motivator behind having this debate, yet again, then wouldn't it make more sense to look at some of the measures taken to reduce tobacco smoking?  After all the purchase age for smoking is 18 too...

How about instead of endlessly wringing our hands about 18 or 20 we actually think about some of the other measures Alcohol Action NZ proposed.  There were five more, not that anyone seems to remember:

• Raise alcohol prices
• ...Reduce alcohol accessibility
• Reduce marketing and advertising
• Increase drink-driving counter-measures
• Increase treatment opportunities for heavy drinkers

And perhaps we could start thinking about why people drink the way they do.  What is it that is so attractive about being out of it?  No doubt there's already some excellent research out there that delves into just that.  I hope some of it gets a run on the opinion pages and on our current affairs TV sometime soon.


*If anyone has any links to this I'd appreciate the sharing, as it's something I heard quoted often many years ago and while the idea stuck the source didn't. 

New feminist group in Auckland

The excellent Auckland Women's Centre are starting a new AWC Feminist Group, open to all women and coming up soon.

Details:
When:  Wed 8th Sept, 7pm - 9pm
Where:  Auckland Women's Centre, Warnock St, West Lynn
What:  "We envisage that this group will meet monthtly and possibly organise relevant forums and acting on particular topics.  These are our initial ideas - what we do will be decided by the women who turn up."

Check out www.awc.org.nz for more info.

Many thanks to Leonie for the info.  I shall try to be at the October meeting.

who's doing research for ACC

i received a link by email to this article in the sunday star times which covers research by dr felicity goodyear-smith commissioned by ACC, and apparently used to develop the policy implemented last year which restricted access to counselling for victims of sexual abuse. excerpts from the article have been copied below, but i'd strongly recommend reading the whole article. luddite journo wrote about this last year in august, and again i'd recommend reading the post & comments (note that the "julie" commenting there is not our julie).


LAST OCTOBER, ACC changed the rules governing the support available to victims of sex crimes, introducing a heavily criticised new regime that severely restricted access to counselling....

During the eight months following the clinical pathway's introduction, ACC paid out $7 million less to 2889 fewer claimants than it had over the same period a year previous. Approved new claims, running at 1313 in the eight months prior to the pathway's introduction, subsequently dropped to 240 over the same length of time. Among the hundreds to have their claims denied were two women believed to have later committed suicide....

The scheme's many detractors were primarily concerned by a new requirement that, before they could access ACC counselling and support, claimants had to be diagnosed formally with a mental injury as defined by the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV). Whereas previously, ACC might have accepted a GP or counsellor's description of symptoms such as flashbacks, panic attacks or nightmares resulting from a sex crime, now a formal diagnosis of a mental illness such as post-traumatic stress disorder was needed.

It's unclear exactly why. Nowhere was a DSM-IV mental illness diagnosis specified in the so-called "Massey guidelines", the widely accepted 2008 best practice manual which ACC had commissioned from Massey University researchers, and which it cited as having guided the formulation of the pathway....

ACC now admits it got it wrong and earlier this month announced that sexual assault victims are now automatically entitled to 16 sessions of counselling. "We moved too quick, and left a bunch of people with nowhere to go," says ACC spokesman Laurie Edwards....

Like others in the sexual abuse care sector, [Kyle MacDonald & Barri Leslie] fear that Goodyear-Smith's research has fed into the pool of information that guides decision-making around sensitive claims policy, influencing the creation of higher hurdles for victims, and a more disbelieving regime around claims of sexual abuse in general.

ACC denies any link. Asked by the Sunday Star-Times last October about the relation of Goodyear-Smith's research to the newly unveiled clinical pathway, ACC responded in an email that it had not commissioned her 2005 research, and eventually refused to answer further questions. This was untrue. ACC spokesman Laurie Edwards said this month that the public relations staffer responsible had made a mistake, but could not account why.

Earlier this month, after communications staff were directed to evidence that it had commissioned the paper, claims management general manager Denise Cosgrove admitted the corporation had funded the research, but maintained it had played no part in the development of the pathway....

The fact that it appeared in both Goodyear-Smith's paper and the clinical pathway, despite not being found in the Massey guidelines, reflected the fact it was "best practice", although on what authority this was claimed he was unable to clarify.

An ACC-commissioned 2003 review of the sensitive claims process said the corporation had adopted the DSM-IV as a diagnostic tool to establish – as it was required to under the 2001 Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act – whether a mental injury had occured as a result of a sex crime. But there is nothing in the act that specifically mandates the DSM-IV as the necessary diagnostic tool.

Talking about food

Maia's post below has a go at both my food blog post "Not Fit to Eat" and the Child Poverty Action Group's Facebook page response to it. There's some serious wire-crossing going on in what she and some of the commenters say.
I hadn't seen the CPAG promo for my post and I think the wording isn't the best, because it can seem to shift the focus away from the main point. But a group that works so hard just to get a better deal for kids doesn’t deserve condemnation over this either.

The problem that I and the woman who sent me the info have with a dairy marketing the pack of food shown as a "school lunch" has nothing to do with "promoting a diet mentality", nor with “seeing food in terms of morality”.

The point here is how commercial interests - from giant Coke Inc to the corner dairy - make it so easy and (apparently) cheap to buy food and drink which does not meet kids' needs even on one school day (as Maia agrees), let alone lots of days. And how even the very modest moves by the previous government to do something useful and non-parent-blaming about school lunches have now been scrapped. (Read Carol’s comment on Maia’s post – thanks, Carol.)

It was in that context that I headed my post, "Not fit to eat", and I stand by it: as a school lunch, this pack is not fit for kids to eat.

There’s plenty of useful debate to be had around this issue, but the trouble with the “diet mentality” and “food morality” labels is that they rule out even raising it. And that’s exactly what those who profit from making and selling such packs want. I hope no astute marketeers have found Maia’s post or some of the comments below it, because it's a textbook example of the best way to silence any objection whatsoever to what they're doing.

It’s brilliant PR. Just tell people that there's absolutely nothing wrong with any kind of food, ever. Anyone who tries to say otherwise is either a foolish tool of the meddling nanny state, or an anti-feminist diet freak hellbent on taking all the fun of food away and insisting that no one should ever eat Oreos, only oranges.

Yes, cheap calories are better than no calories. But this is New Zealand, and no or not enough calories is not the main problem. Coke is cheap because it’s incredibly cheap to make – the main cost is making sure as many people as possible keep drinking more of it. And don’t tell me that this insults consumers, by seeing them as helpless sheep at the mercy of advertisers. The campaigns run because they work – but only because they’re combined with cheapness, especially where food money is scarce.

Reading Maia’s post, I kept seeing an odd parallel with the arguments against hiking the price of “liquor” (there’s no catchall word that doesn’t sound wowserish, is there – why is that?). It’s one of the main things the recent commission recommended, along with curbs on promotion. But the industry has lobbied tooth and nail to stop those two things happening, just as Coke and Co lobby tooth and nail to stop anything effective being done about kids’ food. And the government has fallen obediently into line.

Something is at least being done about strongly alcoholic, ready-to-drink lolly-water. Or is this move too, as I’m sure the industry wants us to think, just another dreadful example of finger-wagging do-gooders intent on “seeing food in terms of morality”?

Fit to eat

If you're anything like me you would have had lots of friends liking Child Poverty Action Group recently. I was all prepared to join in, until I saw they were promoting this post with a cheerful "What are our kids eating? And what is our government doing (or not doing) to encourage them to choose an orange over an oreo?"

First it reminded me of the endless ridiculous games of substitutions that you see in women's magazines and "healthy food" (Next time you feel like eating chocolate try a tin of tuna instead). Which made me think of Sarah Haskins, swapping a six pack of beer for a fifth of whiskey:

So I was happy for a while. But when I recovered from my distraction I was still grumpy. Why should children be choosing Oreos over oranges - why can't they have both, and lots of other food as well? Why is an anti-poverty group calling on the government to promote a diet mentality among kids?

The post they linked to was called "Not Fit To Eat"* was talking about a $2.50 pack sold in a South Auckland dairy, that contained Oreos, two packets of chip like things, and an orange drink. I agree that that is not an adequate lunch, but each of the individual components, and the pack of the whole, is totally fit to eat.

What I found most ridiculous about the response to this pack, was the emphasis on how cheap it was - as if that was a bad thing (someone made their horror at this food being cheap explicit in the facebook thread). I do not understand how anyone concerned with poverty could ever have a problem with any food being cheap. I have so often heard people tutt-tutting about the fact that a litre of coke is cheaper than a litre of milk - as if it is the cheapness of the coke that is the problem.

The person who had found this pack asked the dairy owner "aren't you ashamed to be selling this?" Why is it more shameful to be selling this for $2.50 than anything else? Dairies make their money through high margins - if their is shame in their trade - surely it is selling food for more, rather than selling food for less.

You know there was a time when calories weren't as relatively cheap as they are now. Cheap calories can give people the ability to stay alive, and they're fabulous. I understand being angry at the expense of other nutrients, such as milk, vegetables, fruit, meat and whittakers dark almond chocoalte, but why is this so often discussed as if the cheapness of other fooods is the problem?

This seems to be my week to be grumpy about how people on the left talk about food and bodies.** But I think it's really important. It is totally possible to talk about food and poverty, without buying into a worldview that fetishises food and buys into an ideology that sees food in terms of morality. I really should write a grand theory post about why this is bad one of these days - but the really short reason is that one of the purposes of this ideology is to blame individuals for the effects of poverty. This is not something we can co-opt - it is something which will co-opt us.

And because no post like this would be complete without it, here is a link to the fat nutritionist's If only poor people understood nutrition.

* I think it is written by my co-blogger AnneE - so I'd be interested in hearing her perspective

** Who am I kidding, every week for at least the last five years has been my week to be grumpy about the way some people on the left talks about food and bodies.

Adventures in icing plus ewok cupcakes!

Found here, which is worth a visit for a close-up shot of Akbar and Leia down on the ice, and links to more pics of the Star Wars themed wedding the cakes were created for.

Friday Feminist - Barbara Kingsolver

Cross posted

If the working-class women of my mother's generation had been born in any other time, they would have led other lives - not necessarily better or worse, but definitely other. A decade earlier, they might have built airplanes and let the devil and Hitler take the daily dusting. Ten years later, they could have had Ph.D.s in aeronautics. Women, unless they were quite wealthy, have always worked: in the house and out of the house, on the farm, in factories, sometimes caring for other people's kids, often leaving their own with the family herd under grandma's practiced eye. I've read that early in this century, when desperate families flooded into cities seeking work, leaving their rural support systems behind, female factory workers had to bundle their toddlers up on boards and hang them on hooks on the walls. At break time they'd unswaddle the kids and feed them. I like to mention this to anyone who suggests that modern day care is degrading the species.

Barbara Kingsolver, "The Household Zen" in High Tide in Tucson, New York: Harper Collins, 1995

Laydee Flu

I'd never had the flu until last week.  It's awful.  I won't describe it to you, cos that would be pretty icky and you probably already know what it's like anyway. 

What has surprised me, apart from the awfulness and just how really really sick you feel, is how I've had to explain, frequently, no it's not a cold it is actually the flu.  People seem to hear "flu" and translate to "cold."  Colds are very different, and although I kind of knew that before, I definitely know it now.  Even with a bad cold I tend to maintain some low level of functionality, like reading or watching television.  Flu is not like that at all.


My great triumph with this flu is that I appear to have not given it to a single other person.  Neither my partner nor Wriggly have caught it, which is just as well as I'm still a bit too poorly to look after them if they do go down with it.  I've hardly left the house for over a week, which would normally mean lots of blogging, so I guess my blog absence is a clear sign of the virulence of this illness.  And this post is hopefully a sign of the beginning of the end.

To anyone out there thinking about getting the flu jab, especially if you have a compromised immune system in some way e.g. existing medical condition, pregnancy, elderly, etc, it seems to me, in hindsight, that it's probably worth it.  I was going to get it this year, for the first time ever, but got a cold and then was too busy.  Instead I got the flu for the first time ever.  I know which one I would rather have had!

Safer Communities Together

Years ago, I heard a story.

A young, and new, constable was posted to Rotorua in the 1980s (yeah it's not a happy story). I don't know why he became a police officer, or what he wanted to do, or anything about him or his life. What I do know is his fellow police officerswould collect the names of single mothers - vulnerable women who would be home during the day alone - knock on the door in uniform and demand sex.

The young constable didn't like this, but he couldn't stop it, or maybe he just didn't know how to stop it, or wasn't prepared to do what it would have taken to stop it. But he couldn't be around these men, knowing what they did, and having to be an accomplice. So he left the police force.

Rape and abuse of power wasn't just something Rotorua police officers did in their off time? It was something that required structural support, and structural cover up. It required a widespread mentality that women didn't matter, and other police officers had a right to abuse them.

Dave Archibald was still operating under the 'bros before hoes' mentality when he used his position as police officer to get access to information in the hope it'd help his rapists mates.

Now he is in charge of training new police officers.

I'm reasonably clear that I don't think the police can be reformed, that I think the problems that come from the sort of power that they have are unavoidable, that their job, and the job of the criminal (in)justice system is to maintain the status quo not create safer communities together (see here).

But for those of you who have some faith in the police, who think the culture of rape and abuse is extinguisable, how is that going to happen? Maybe you think our young constable would have made a good constable, that he could have made a difference, but that difference he could have made was the reaosn he couldn't stay in the police force. Those who stayed, are those who could stomach, or turn a blind eye, to what was going on, they're the people who are training new police officers and choosing who gets promoted. How can you believe in reform?

It Never Stops

I went to the Fairness at Work rally on Saturday. It was a beautiful day in Wellington, and pretty amazing to see so many people. When I first got there I spent a good ten minutes wandering round. Then I settled down to listen to the Brass Razoo solidarity band play Solidarity Forever in the sun (which is one of my all time favourite things to do).

Despite an awesome beginning, I have some reservations about the Fairness at Work approach, and different reservations about other proposals to fight back against these laws. But rather than throw my hat in the ring for that debate, I'm going to have say something I totally didn't expect to have to say.

One of the undoubted problems of the day was the sound system. You had to really try to hear what was said, and from many parts of civic square you couldn't hear a thing. However, from reports of those who heard some of the speeches, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Michelle A'Court was MCing the demo.* In her very first little spiel thing she said something like this (I didn't hear it myself, I didn't hear anything more than a phrase the entire time, but this is from a friend):

So there are sausages over there. You should eat them, because I don't like skinny people.

This is a bit off topic, but I really don't like skinny people. A friend of mine is friend's with a skinny person, and she introduced us, but I knew right off I didn't want to be friends with her. I mean what would we do all day? Not eat?

So anyway eat the sausages.

Except she went on like this a lot longer than that.

You know, I wanted to go on a protest. I wanted to have my say, stand together with a whole bunch of other people. Meet up with my friends, snark on some banners and leaflets - normal protest things.

I wasn't really prepared to get my angry feminist on. I think you have to try quite hard to bring policing women's bodies into a protest about work rights, but apparently it's possible.

There are different ways I could take this post from here.

I could write about humour - and the massive gulf between humour that laughs at structures of oppression and structures that laughts with them (This is an excellent post on just that divide). To the extent to which there was a joke in what Michelle A'Court said (and I'm dubious) it was ha, ha people's bodies

Or I could write about my school friends who join facebook groups called things like "Curvy women are sexier than skinny women". Policing and judging thin women is not revolutionary, it is not a blow for fat women everywhere. It's all part of hte same project, of making sure no woman can ever feel OK about her body. Acting as if thin people can and should control their bodies (the eat a sandwich, or in this case a sausage roll school of social commentary), upholds the idea that fat people can and should control their bodies.

I could point to this story of a woman who can't afford food because the government benefits are at starvation levels. And point out that skipping meals is not always a fucking choice. Let alone something to judge people on.

But I just don't see why I should have to do any of this. I don't think a work-rights demo should be a feminist mine-field. I think the basic principle shoudl be that everyone is welcome, without any part of their bodies, their minds, their lives, being subject to ridicule or mockery.

* I loved Michelle A'Court when I was a kid. I thought video dispatch was amazing, and that she was fabulous. I have a soft spot for her even today, and have really appreciated some things she's said. She had an excellent rant about tertiary education policy on the panel recently as well. I think that makes me even more frustrated with what passed for 'comedy' at this rally.

a rose by any other name...

so i'm listening to radio nz in the afternoon as i'm in the car, and i hear jim mora read out some emails of people's experiences of their parents giving them wierd names (sorry, not online). the only example that i can really remember is of a family with a surname of "bear" who decided to call one of their children "teddy" and another "polar". apparently a true story.

anyway, one of the emailers writes in to say that many people have been traumatised by the nasty teasing they had to endure as a result of an odd name. and heaps of opprobrium was of course directed to the terrible parents who would inflict such a name on their helpless offspring.

the problem i have with this is that there was absolutely no ire shown towards people who would be cruel or thoughtless enough to be teasing people with wierd or funny names. i hate that we accept that children will be cruel, accept that other adults will be cruel and advocate conformity & diminished individuality as a response to this. surely our effort and energy should be going towards creating a society where people can exist without having to suffer for something as trivial as a strange name. in fact they shouldn't have to suffer because of any physical or psychological trait that is deviant from what is currently decided to be the "norm" - too fat, too thin, too "effeminate" for a boy, too "masculine" for a girl, wrong colour, wrong race, wrong religion etc etc etc.

i mean really, are we aiming for a society where everyone must fit into a narrow band of what is considered acceptable, and anyone who happens to fall outside that - whether by their own choice or not - can be expected to face harassment for it? how is it that we never even consider the possibility that parents should be able to give their child whatever stupid name they want, and no-one would even bother to make a comment about it? i think i'd much prefer to live in a world like that, rather than one where everyone had predictable and boring names.

What the Welfare Working group report really says

I've been away in Australia for most of this week. But before I went, I wrote a "Letter from Elsewhere" for Scoop about the report of the Welfare Working Group.

Did you know, for example, that the report takes care to quote New Zealand's largest provider of casual labour criticising the minimum wage, the absence of youth rates and the personal grievance procedures? Or that it repeats the statistic about 170,000 people of working age being on a benefit for five years or more no less than six times? Despite also noting, in passing, that New Zealand already has the highest rate of workforce participation in the OECD?

You can read the whole piece here. It ties in with Maia's and Julie's posts last Tuesday.

Australian general election live-blogging over at IaSL

Deborah has undertaken to update throughout the day sporadically and more frequently during the evening as results come in more clearly, so I suggest you head over there to partake of the goodness.

NZ Local bod nominations - discussion thread

Yesterday nominations closed and were disclosed for the hundreds of elected local body positions all over Aotearoa NZ. While there's been immense media focus on the race for just one of those spots, that of the new Auckland Super Mayor, there's a lot more to it than that, including community boards, licensing trusts, health boards, councils, and many more mayoralties besides.

Running my eye over the Auckland-related nominations*, cos that's where I live and have the most interest, there does seem to be the usual dominance of male candidates. Based solely on names they also look to mainly be Pakeha. As more information comes out about candidates I guess we shall see if the candidate pool looks more diverse than in years gone by.   If I get a chance I might run some numbers on it later in the week.  If anyone has links to candidate nomination lists in their area do feel free to share them in comments too.

What do the nominations look like in your neck of the woods?  Are there any candidates you are particularly excited about, or someone who's success you dread?

It's been surprising to see up here a few people come out of the woodwork like Sir Barry Curtis seeking one of two Council seats for Manurewa-Papakura.  As previous Mayor Forever of Manukau he'd have to be a certainty.

There's a profusion of confusing (to me) new tickets with names that don't really say much about their politics or affiliation (I particularly love it when people say they are on a ticket that uses Independent in the name - I saw one called Proudly Independent on the list somewhere this time!).  As things unfold where these tickets sit will become clearer I hope, although that will rely heavily on local media doing that work and communicating it effectively to voters.  Everything in Auckland seems to be contested, with the possible exception of a few of the licensing trust spots.

There's going to be an enormous number of people participating in the democratic process around the country over the next six weeks; as voters, as candidates, as supporters of tickets and individuals, as local community people highlighting their local issues, as media, and as a combination of several of these things at once!  Please show some patience and compassion for those out there seeking your votes for themselves or others - you might think they are wrong but clearly they don't, and putting your name and time and at least a little money on the line should get them a bit of respect for their efforts (for the first 30 seconds anyway ;-).



*And yes, my name is listed as standing for the Local Board in my area. I won't be campaigning on this blog, that's not what this space is for.  I have no idea what my chances are, but I imagine reasonably low given I haven't run before and a number of other factors at play locally and personally.  I'd love to serve my community on the Local Board - time will tell if I get that chance! 

How dare we lose what they have won*

Here's one reason (of many) why you should go to the rallies being held aroudn the country this weekend:

Auckland
1pm, Saturday 21st August
QE2 Square (bottom of Queen St, opposite Britomart)

Wellington
1pm, Saturday 21st August
Civic Square

Christchurch
1pm, Saturday 21st August
Cathedral Square

Dunedin
11am, Sunday 22nd August
Assemble at Dental School, Great King Street
March to rally at the Octagon

* From Bring out the banners

Friday Feminist - Louisa Lawson

Cross posted

The sun rose on the morning of the sixteenth upon the greatest day that ever dawned for women in Australia for, apart from the privilege of exercising the just privilege so long denied her, that of taking an active and direct part in the election of lawmakers, she had also the blessed satisfaction of being seen as she is - not through the glasses of those interested in her suppression. It has been admitted by Press and people that her attitude upon polling day came as a surprise, and ought to be the means of making her reckless critics exercise greater care as self-appointed judges of what she would or would not do under certain conditions. At present they have and will have in future to speak for themselves, as women now have the opportunity of doing.

Louisa Lawson, editorial in The Dawn, January 1904

is nowhere safe?

i was really saddened to hear the news this morning (radion nz, morning report, 8.50am) of a blenheim resthome worker who has been sentenced for sexually abusing vulnerable elderly women. what was particularly sad is that all of these women had physical or mental illnesses, and their ages ranged from 57 to 96. many of them weren't able to communicate what had been done to them.

the only reason this case came to light was through an anonymous complaint to the CEO of the group that owns this resthome. he says in the clip that he can imagine many such complaints being ignored, and it was just a matter of luck that this one was taken seriously.

the police are now calling for elderly victims of sexual abuse to come forward. unfortunately many of them just won't be physically able. i now know that there is such a thing as gerontophilia, though i wish i didn't.

it seems that there is no age and no place that is safe. there is so little that women can do to protect themselves when a perpretrator is bent on abuse.

update: an interview this morning with a daughter of one of the victims (radio nz, nine to noon, 9.25am) brings out the fact that complaints had been made prior to the anonymous letter by a staff member to the CEO. these complaints had not been acted upon.

Benefit below subsistence level

This story in the Herald today horrifies me:

...Sara, a 35-year-old West Auckland mother in her second year of an applied science degree at Unitec, gets $517 a week in welfare but needs $668 a week to pay rent, drive to her classes and run a home for herself and her 12-year-old daughter - a shortfall of $151 a week.

Her doctor advised her to go to the Waitakere office of Social Development Minister Paula Bennett because her weight had dropped from 59kg to just under 50kg since early last year as a result of her not being able to afford food.

Ms Bennett's office made an appointment for her with Work and Income's Westgate manager, but the agency could come up with only an extra $4 a week.

She cannot use her surname in print because she is afraid of a violent ex-partner. But the Herald supplied her full details to Ms Bennett and to Work and Income's head office in Wellington, which confirmed that she is receiving her "full and correct entitlement".

Beneficiary advocate Pam Apera said cases like Sara's were common and she was fielding a growing number of calls from beneficiaries who could see no way out except suicide...

Click through for the whole thing.

I don't have time to write about it properly, so hope one of the others will if they can, but in the meantime check out Idiot/Savant's post about how this goes back to the benefit cuts of the 1990s which deliberately went 20% below subsistence level.

So farewell, Heather Roy

You'd have to be pretty politically disconnected to have missed the news that Heather Roy was ousted as Deputy Leader of ACT earlier today.  John Boscawen, a first-term ACT MP, and heavy investor in the ACT Party as Idiot/Savant points out, replaces her.

Rodney Hide's refused to be drawn on why precisely Roy was rolled, with Stuff reporting it thus:

But Hide today refused to explain why Roy had been voted out of her role.
Free and frank discussions in caucus should not be dragged out in to the public, Hide said. 

Given that Roy's demotion within her caucus also means she had to tender her resignation as a Minister don't we, the public, deserve a bit more transparency and explanation about why she went?

Remember, we still don't know why Richard Worth was stripped of his ministerial warrant, all those months ago.  Key refused to say at the time and doesn't appear to have been seriously questioned about it since. I don't think this is good enough, in a transparent democracy.  When Ministers go we need to know why.  

Of course, all the speculation is that Roy went because last year she mishandled a coup attempt against Hide, when she was backed by Roger Douglas to confront her leader about his travel perk problems and see if caucus would wear a co-leader arrangement between them.  This failed miserably*.  But why move against her now?  And why not, as Russell Brown tweeted, also move against Douglas, who after all was widely known to be behind it?

Roy's now on two weeks' leave, sent home by her leader to reflect on her future.  In an everyday employment environment this'd be referred to as suspension, usually.  If Roy decides her future lies outside ACT then assumedly the next List MP, Hilary Calvert of Dunedin, comes in to replace her, keeping ACT's gender ratio at 20% female (1 out of 5).  Hide and Douglas will then be the only ACT MPs who have been in Parliament before 2008.  Interesting times ahead. 

Update:  Seems The Herald's John Armstrong also thinks the lack of explanation around Roy's rolling is unacceptable.


*  First rule of politics:  learn to count.  When you only have to count to 5 it really shouldn't be that hard to get it right.

Income splitting for sole parents not so hunky dory

Emmerson in this morning's Herald points out that income splitting won't help sole parents at all:

Anna wrote a post about income splitting, point out its shortcomings as a policy solution, back in 2008, and Anjum wrote about it again earlier this year, specifically making the argument about the discrimination against sole parents.

Update:  Check out this great post at The Standard which actually quantifies how many families will count, and how many won't (hint:  the latter is larger than the former), under Dunne's proposal.  

Comment policy changes

We've been having a bit of a behind the scenes discussion about comments, particularly but not exclusively in light of recent difficulties on abortion-related threads. Moderation here has evolved quite a bit since the comment policy was written, and although we have kept within the spirit of it it seemed timely to consider some new ways to handle comments given the larger numbers and the sensitivity of some of the topics under discussion recently.

Specific page for debating the morality of abortion
This is not up yet, but will be sometime soon. Some commenters want to turn every post about abortion into a discussion about morality, when that isn't necessarily the point of the post itself. So there will be a specific page on the site with links to some of our posts addressing the moral dimension of abortion and allowing comments there on that topic. It's not that we don't want to discuss morality, or that we think there's no moral case for abortion, as we do (and there'll be a statement to that effect on the new page), just that we are getting a bit fed up with having to have the same argument over and over again, sometimes in multiple threads simultaneously, and we think many readers are too.  New posts on abortion and morality may be written, and it'll be up to individual authors whether they want comments on those posts on the morality issue, or whether they want comments made at the new page.

Comment direction at the end of posts
Authors will also now be adding comment directions at the end of their posts, when they want to.  This might be something like "Feminist-friendly comments only" or "Please stick to issue X with your comments."  Comments which don't abide by the comment direction of the author may be deleted, at their discretion.  I did this on Friday with the post sharing my presentation on why abortion needs to be legal, to give you an example.


Anonymous comments will need a handle
Comments should be accompanied by a name, or a consistent internet handle. In general, people using the 'anonymous' comment function should sign their comments with a consistent handle (e.g. put an initial/name at beginning or end).  There are times when people wish to share experiences anonymously, and we will respect that anonymity.  However, anonymous comments which are not anonymous for reasons of personal privacy may be deleted.  This is at least partly because it gets difficult on threads with multiple anons to respond to the right person.

---

As I work through updating the blog over the next week or so some other changes, to help with this and for other reasons, will become apparent too, and at the end of the reconstruction the comment policy will be updated in full. For now I'll just be adding a link to this post on that page.

Hopefully this will decrease moderation for us and increase the value of the discussions in comments for all!

Some reconstructing underway

Some tinkering will be occurring over the next wee while, starting v shortly, so please bear with us if anything breaks.

Feel free to let us know about anything that's not working, or which you'd like to see improved, in comments on this post.

We'll basically be shifting to a new template, which will probably look quite a bit like the old one in the short term at least, although we'll be setting up Pages for some of the bits which have been  in the side-bar and stuff like that.

Thanks in advance for your patience!

I see your pro-choice t-shirt

up at LadyNews,

and I raise you a pro-choice Onesie:

Found via a friend's Facebook feed. Sorry I can't remember whose!

Friday Feminist - Sarah M Grimke

Cross posted

There is another way in which the general opinion, that women are inferior to men, is manifested, that bears with tremendous effect on the laboring class, and indeed on almost all who are obligate to earn a subsistence, whether it be by mental or physical exertion -- I allude to the disproportionate value set on the time and labor of men and of women. A man who is engaged in teaching, can always, I believe, command a higher price for tuition than a woman -- even when he teaches the same branches, and is not in any respect superior to the woman. this I know is the case in boarding and other schools with which I have been acquainted, and it is so in every occupation in which the sexes engage indiscriminately. As for example, in tailoring, a man has twice, or three times as much for making a waistcoat or pantaloons as a woman, although the work done by each may be equally good. In those employments which are peculiar to women, their time is estimated at only half the value of that of men. A woman who goes out to wash, works as hard in proportion as a wood sawyer, or a coal heaver, but she is not generally able to make more than half as much by a day's work. The low remuneration which women receive for their work, has claimed the attention of a few philanthropists, and I hope it will continue to do so until some remedy is applied for this enormous evil.

Sarah M Grimke, Letter VIII: On the Condition of Women in the United States, 1837

Abortion - why it needs to be legal (A Presentation)

Please find below (indeed below the Read More) the presentation I gave today on why abortion needs to be legal, and why we need a pro-choice law change. Many thanks to Kristy, Alana and Soraiya for organising it, and Nicole for pressing buttons, and everyone for coming along. Especially Nikki for being my friendly face in the crowd, and also big thanks to Deborah for proofing it from afar.

As you read please bear in mind that I was writing it to speak to the slides (which I've inserted as pics above the section of the speech that goes with them), and also that I've never done that before.

Here goes...

some movement on ACC funding for sensitive claims

a glimmer of hope:

Extra support is being made available to survivors of sexual abuse, ACC announced today.

From Monday 16 August, people with a new ACC sensitive claim, or with a new claim already in the system but awaiting a decision, will be able to access up to 16 hours with a counsellor, to ensure their safety and wellbeing.

“ACC has listened to concerns expressed by several groups that more support is needed. Those groups included the public, the sexual abuse treatment sector, and the independent panel appointed by the Minister to review the sensitive claims pathway,” said Denise Cosgrove, General Manager Claims Management.

It is envisaged that these support sessions will, in fact, be sufficient to meet the needs of many people, who will therefore not go on to require ACC cover or ACC-funded treatment.

However, for others who do demonstrate signs of a possible mental injury arising from sexual abuse (as specified in ACC legislation) the sessions will also be used to gather information to help ACC make a cover decision.

While these changes do not alter the process of deciding who qualifies for ACC cover, or how they will subsequently be helped, the changes do ensure everyone has support while their status and needs are assessed.

i guess in this current environment, any movement is a good thing. but it's so much less than what should be in place. hat tip to kyle macdonald who has been blogging on this issue for a while now.

on not putting your money where your mouth is

i'm busy at work so don't have time to cover this issue properly, but here is gordon campbell on the post on the government's decision to not pay compensation to women who were raped & abused by police officers:

Once again, the Key government has shown it doesn’t give a stuff about issues that primarily affect women. Cabinet has rejected an official recommendation to compensate the victims of a rape culture that existed within the Police It has also shown no interest in taking action to address gender pay inequities. In addition, its welfare working group has stigmatized women on the DPB despite the fact that most women are on this benefit for a relatively short time....

To many though, the decision to reject the rape compensation will be particularly galling. Barely a fortnight after Police Minister Judith Collins blamed the media for the growing lack of respect for the Police among the public, Cabinet has decided to abandon a group of vulnerable women that Police officers had preyed upon. According to Attorney- General Finlayson, there is no legal basis for such a payment. Well, duh. That’s why the forum set up by the Clark government to liaise with the victims had recommended to government that an ‘ex gratia’ payment should be made, given the circumstances. That’s what ex gratia payments are. They are made when no official avenue exists to address a clear moral obligation.

please do go and read the whole thing. and also this post at the standard, especially comments relating to hon mr finlayson's "floodgates" response. i can't even begin to express how sickening this decision is. it means a lack of any kind of justice for victims or responsibility by the crown. after all that these women have suffered, and the bravery of engaging in this process, it's a very cruel result.

moreover, this is a government that has spewed out so many words about the importance of victims rights, yet when the chance comes to do something simple and concrete, they don't want to spend the money.

Housing report ignores research

There's an excellent article on the housing group report in this morning's Dom-Post by Prof. Phillippa Howden-Chapman, director of Otago Uni's housing and health research programme. She points out that we have only 6% of hosueholds in social housing here, compared with 18% in England. She also notes the conflict of interest when businessmen, developers and small religious housing charities predominated on the housing group. It also ignored the Otago research, which shows that moving into a state house lowers the rate of avoidable housing-related hospital admissions.

 The fact is that if you're on a low wage or a benefit - or get repeatedly shunted between the two - you can't afford to buy or maintain a house (or at least not in a place that also has jobs), and you can't afford decent housing at market rents either (even with the landlord's subsidy, otherwise known as the accommodation supplement).

(The middle class rush to buy up cheap housing as an investment for their old age is partly to blame for pushing up prices and rents, but hey, what else were they supposed to put their savings into - finance companies?)

So what are you supposed to do? The "state house for life" argument is just a red herring - transience is a much bigger problem, as people try to solve the enough jobs/enough beds/affordable rent conundrum. If affordable smaller homes could be provided in every neighbourhood, there'd be no problem getting older people to downsize and free up their state house for a new family.

also asking the wrong questions

following on from julie's post about the welfare working group asking the wrong questions, i'd have to say that the housing shareholders advisory group which reported on state housing reforms is also taking the wrong perspective. they focus on the "housing for life" issue, which they seem to think is the main reason for the increased demand on state housing.

i don't suppose this group looked at issues like:

1. the average wage, the minimum wage, in fact wages in general which are no longer sufficient for many people to afford their own housing. how about recommending positive strategies that will ensure people get fair pay for their labour.

2. housing speculation, which has pushed up the price houses and therefore rents, as highly-geared speculators try to meet their mortgage payments.

3. the much reduced stock of state housing, and to which has never recovered from the major sell-off from last decade.

not surprisingly, the group wants to see more subsidies to landlords via more accommodation supplements, rather than a building up of the state housing stock so that those supplements don't have to be paid. but they ignore the wider economic issues that lead to the demand for housing.

Abortion and the Ick Factor

I had the misfortune on the weekend to need to wade through the July 2010 Your Views forum on abortion at the Herald website. I don't recommend you read it, as with over 160 comments from about 140 different people only 3 were stories from women who had actually had abortions and many were really awful women-hating diatribes from people with little compassion. Big props to our regular commenter A Nonny Moose for engaging in the thread.

What astonished me was the lack of simple biological knowledge that many arguing against abortion displayed. Things like the so-called fact that a fetus at seven weeks' gestation (i.e. roughly 5 weeks after conception) is a fully developed human being. Stuff about embryos and very early fetuses having baby-like faces and being able to scream. Someone else reckoned, from her own experience of pregnancy, that when she pushed her belly she got pushed back quite deliberately, and also when she played music there was in utero dancing going on. Wishful thinking, all of it, and Just. Not. True.

But it does rather serve to increase the Ick Factor, doesn't it, and thus to make people feel uncomfortable about advocating for abortion access. It justifies the "baby-killer" moniker, to make it seem as if embryos and fetuses are like babies in appearance and development when they really really aren't.

If some women decide to think about their pregnancies as involving a fully developed human being with rights equal to their own then that's fine by me.  They should make their choices about their bodies, and their pregnancies, based on those views, if that's what they want to do.  But to insist that all women share their views, when they are simply not based on biological fact, and then to restrict the rights of all women to control their own bodies as a result of these erroneous ideas...  well that's not OK with me. 

And then to go a step further and actively lie about what's going on in the uterus, as some do, is unacceptable;  to promulgate doctored pictures of aborted fetuses, to make misleading claims on internet forums about how fetuses can consciously smile when they can't, to publish spurious captions to inappropriate photos used to accompany news stories. 

Making mistakes and repeating misinformation you've been told by someone you trust I have a little sympathy with.  But lying to deliberately drive up the Ick Factor and shut down reasoned debate I can't stand.  If your argument is any good then you shouldn't need to lie to make your point.

Asking the wrong questions

The Welfare Working Group has a discussion document out today (links to what they've released) and it shows they are still asking the wrong questions.

Paula Rebstock and co are very concerned, as the Government asked them to be when the WWG was established, about long term welfare dependency.  They've found, unsurprisingly given their brief and the backgrounds of WWG members, that the welfare system as it stands is out-dated and unsustainable.

Seems to me that they are looking at this the wrong way around.  All of the effort is going in to looking at the supply side of welfare - how people access benefits - as opposed to examining the more useful demand side - why do people need benefits in the first place.

If we look at the why then surely we will find that what is in fact out-dated and unsustainable is our approach to paid work, in particular the way we structure our society to make part time work impractical for many individuals and employers.

Sadly it seems the WWG will continue down the wrong path, and possibly enable this Government to make changes that take us in the wrong direction to resolving these issues.

Update:  For more nuanced analysis, rather than just my grumpiness, Idiot/Savant has excellence. 

we shall overcome

a few weeks ago, i was talking to someone about my love of bruce springsteen songs, which started when i was about 18 years old. of course it was him looking & sounding totally hot in the song dancing in the dark which first caught my eye, but from there i went on to discover his earlier music, which meant that i became and have stayed a fan ever since.

the thing with mr springsteen is his ability to tell working class stories, in a way that's accessible. i'd be hard-pressed to pick a favourite song cos i haven't anything from him i didn't like, but my favourites tend to be the slower songs like atlantic city, racing in the streets, the river, independence day. my favourite album of his would be the river. i'd have to credit mr springsteen with raising my consciousness for working class issues, because i have never actually been a working class person nor have i had to face the struggles around poverty and unemployment that he sings about. i am one of the privileged, and he brought that home to me in his lyrics about broken dreams and empty futures.

another thing about mr springsteen is that he has never sold out. throughout this decade, i've watched him campaign for mr kerry and mr obama, and he continues to highlight issues of social justice and poverty, and the struggle of those at the bottom end of society. i don't think you could beat this man for sheer decency & integrity. i remember seeing an old interview from back in the late 70s i think, and a reporter was almost outraged at him singing about the broken american dream, when he happened to be the living embodiment of said dream. she demanded an explanation of what she seemed to think of as hypocrisy, without seeming to realise that while that dream had come true for mr springsteen, there were millions of others for whom it hadn't.

so anyway, i was talking to someone about some of this, and he lent me a copy of the album we shall overcome: the seeger sessions. it's an album full of american folk music, including "freedom songs" sung as part of the civil rights movement, anti-war songs and union songs. i've had it playing in the car over the last few weeks, and just love it.

tonight i thought i'd find out more about the history of the songs, and have spent the evening reading up about them. and it seemed to me, as i read, that in this day and age we don't seem to have that sense of a "movement" - a collective struggle for social justice. when i look at the movements that some of these songs represent, i think that somehow we've lost the plot or maybe lost the will to fight? have we lost the passion and the commitment that earlier generations, particularly in the twentieth century, were able to bring to their struggles?

i guess we saw a glimmer of it recently in the march against mining on conservation land. but in the minds of many people, past battles are over and we have apparently reached equality now. even though there is plenty of evidence to show otherwise. we know that many battles won in previous decades have since been lost (remember the 40 hour working week, overtime, compulsory breaks?), others have never been won (pay equity, discrimination) although some things have improved considerably.

maybe it's a sense of powerlessness that stops us, the fear that our efforts will be fruitless or that those ideals can never be achieved. who knows. but i have to say that i was inspired by the commitment of pete seeger and his band, who travelled around his country raising consciousness through music. and i love that mr springsteen puts these memories and issues back in front of us in a way that continues to inspire.

so here's my favourite song from the album, with bruce springsteen and the seeger band playing live with conan o'brien on his late night show:

Friday Feminist - Christine de Pizan

Cross posted

"My lady, I greatly admire what I have heard you say, that so much good has come into the world by virtue of the understanding of women. These usually say that women's knowledge is worthless. In fact when someone says something foolish, the widely voiced insult is that this is women's knowledge. In brief, the typical opinions and comments of men claim that women have been and are useful in the world only for bearing children and sewing."

She answered, "Now you can recognise the massive ingratitude of the men who say such things; they are like people who live off the goods of others without knowing their source and without thanking anyone. You can also clearly see how God, who does nothing without a reason, wished to show men that He does not despise the feminine sex nor their own, because it so pleased Him to place such great understanding in women's brains that they are intelligent enough not only to learn and retain the sciences but also to discover new sciences themselves, indeed sciences of such great utility and profit for the world that nothing has been more necessary.

Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405

For the chop

Swiped from the Fairness At Work facebook page.

I'm working on a post about the employment law changes National has proposed, and in particular their possible impact on women, which I hope to get up sometime next week.

Some midweek My Little Pony silliness

From here (and there's many many more) and via Amanda's FB feed.

Twenty-seventh Down Under Feminists Carnival

The Twenty Seventh Down Under Feminists Carnival is up, at my other place.

Gender pay gap still widening

Just a quick bit on this, no time for anything meatier from me tonight sorry. This is from a media statement from Sue Moroney (Labour) today:

“Labour's comprehensive plan to reduce the gap saw it close to 11.94% in March 2009, but since National closed down the Pay and Employment Equity Unit in June 2009, the pay gap has opened to 12.81% in just one year,” Sue Moroney said.

And here's a bit from the Greens' release:

“In June the Minister of Women’s Affairs tried to claim that the gender pay gap had narrowed since her Government took office. These numbers clearly show that the gap is as wide as ever,” Green Party Women’s Affairs Spokesperson Catherine Delahunty said.

The Quarterly Employment Survey, released today by Statistics New Zealand, includes measures of the average hourly wages of men and women. Comparing the two shows that women earn on average 12.81 percent less than men, up half a percent since March. 

October will be crunch time for the Minister, Pansy Wong, as that's when the NZ Income Survey comes out.  And that's the source she used back in March to try to show that the gender pay gap had lessened under National.  As I wrote at the time:

Fair enough. Even if the period she is crowing about was almost half under the previous Government, and not her National party, and even if by the end of the June 2009 quarter any new policies National had put in place on pay equity would not have had much effect. Oh but wait they didn't put any new policies on pay equity into effect, they just abolished efforts the last Government had made. Nevermind all that.

So Wong is safe, for now, with her statement, because she has compared apples with apples, even if it is not an apple her Government grew. It shall be interesting to see in October whether the NZ Income Survey ending June 2010 backs her up.

All the indicators to date are for a bigger gap in October.  While I don't really want a bigger gap, because what it means is that women are being paid even less than they were, in comparison to men, I would like to see this Minister held to account for her inaction.   And exposing her on the basis of statistics she used to mislead back in March sounds like an appropriate first step. 

On being believed

The similarity between a current Shortland St storyline and the Clayton Weatherston case didn't occur to me until I read the LadyNews post on the weekend. Steph's right of course, there has been far too much focus on Sophie Elliot's appearance, as if it was at all relevant to the harassment, stalking and murder she suffered.

I guess I missed the stark resemblance because I was too wrapped up in the astonishing sight of Sophie McKay (the Shortie character being stalked by her ex-boyfriend and tutor) being believed.

Every character that I've seen Sophie interact with about her issues with Ash (the tutor) has told her to trust her instincts that there is something wrong, and has supported her to protect herself.  Which is great.  I hope that it continues this way as the storyline plays out.

And I wish it was how this stuff plays out in real life. I'm really glad Shortie is portraying this in such an aspirational way; making it seem like it is the default position to believe a woman when she says she feels unsafe. Because sadly that isn't what happens for many.

My own experiences (two of them, neither involving tutors I should say) were that it took months for anyone to take my worries seriously. It didn't help that I started to think I was the one in the wrong, not the guys, and that figures of authority in one case completely ignored something really obviously happening right in front of them.

I started to wonder where the lines were. If I didn't kick up a fuss about this thing on this occasion then was I tacitly consenting to it happening again? I was so frightened and confused and felt guilty, as if it was my fault, and it would never have occurred to me to be as assertive about it as Sophie McKay has been to date. Perhaps if people around me had supported me I might have, instead of questioning myself constantly.

My observation of people under stress, and some reading on the topic, has led me to agree with the conclusion that when stressed we tend to revert back to flight, fight or fright (aka freeze).  I have seen it in my work;  when faced with a disciplinary meeting with no prep or support a worker will usually either freeze and not say anything or absent themselves, often by taking sick leave for stress-related troubles.  Fight is a response I've seen more rarely in my work, and I think that's partly a gendered thing, as I've mainly dealt with women workers.  Certainly my own response, when faced with the stress of harassment, was to freeze most of the time, flee most of the rest of the time, and fight very rarely (and usually with such a bad outcome that I didn't try it again for a long time, if at all). 

In the end in each of the two cases I've experienced myself it was the support of others that shifted things for me.  In the first instance I was unable to get support from the person who would have been my natural ally until they started doing to her what they had been doing to me for months.  Suddenly she saw the light and things started to change.  Part of the reason I'd thought I must be in the wrong was her lack of support in the past.

In the second situation a group of friends suddenly changed their view from "oh look, it's cute that he has a crush on her, it's so never going to happen, but it's so cute" to "ok this shit is getting freaky and she's terrified, how did I not notice this before".  Once they realised, the behaviour stopped very quickly, as the person in question got told in no uncertain terms, by people he respected, to leave me alone entirely.

Good on Shortie St for showing how it should be. I hope life imitates art very soon indeed.

taking the "service" out of public service

f***ing IRD. a few years ago, this used to be a good government department to work with. i say this, of course, as a chartered accountant who doesn't have to go through the normal public channels. we have dedicated tax agents lines which used to get straight through to a human being within 2-3 minutes, 5 minutes at the most . the person at the other end was friendly and helpful, and most times it was a positive experience.

which is not to say they were perfect - but at the basic level of managing clients day-to-day tax issues, they did well. not anymore. over the last two years, dealing with the IRD has become extremely frustrating. now they have voice recognition software, which i hate. when we ring, before they even put the call through, we have to enter the client's IRD number, the firm's IRD number & pin code, and the firm's telephone number. if you're lucky, you get connected to the next stage of the system, which means you can leave a request for someone from the IRD to call you back. if you're unlucky, you get told that the line is overloaded and disconnected.

still, last year you could expect to get a call back within half an hour. now, they won't call back before 45 minutes and sometimes it's even longer. aside from the fact that it's disruptive to be putting files back and having to pick them up again when you're in the middle of something else, it has also become really difficult if you work part time. when they call you back, they ask for your firm's name and firm's telephone number, even though you've already entered the information when you went through the tedious process of booking the call back

i put in a call at 1.45pm last week. i didn't get a call back til 2.55pm. the matter wasn't quickly resolved, and at 3.02 i said that i had to leave to pick my kids up from school. do you think the young man on the other end of the line was friendly, helpful and understanding? tui ad.

i was basically told that if i hung up, the matter wouldn't be resolved and i'd have to go through the whole process again. no, he couldn't call me back because call centre staff are not allowed to make outward calls, and no he couldn't resolve the matter without me hanging on the other end of the line, even though there was nothing that i could actually do about it and i had given him all the information i needed. it was just so bizarrely stupid.

i can't imagine what it must be like for the general public to deal with IRD. but i got a taste of that last week, when i tried to call from home on the general phone line, on behalf of an NGO. the phone book says that the call centre is open til 8pm every day. well i called the business line about 30 times last friday between 4 -8 pm, and i couldn't even get to the stage of being put on hold. i was disconnected every single time, on the basis that the lines were overloaded.

now it seems to me that this is false advertising. if they say the call centre is open, then you should be able to get through. if this was a private company, there would be any number of avenues to make a complaint, the last resort being "fair go". but where do you go to complain about a department that is now severely understaffed, and is no longer providing the service that it is supposed to provide? hon peter dunne? tui ad.

Recent comments working again

Just so's you know.

Thanks to those who made suggestions for fixing - I tried one and sadly it didn't work, and before I remembered to try the others it fixed itself - hurrah!

Even when the research comes out pro-choice the Herald tries to make it anti-choice

There was an excellent NZPA summary of new research out highlighting the issue of waiting times for abortions in Aotearoa, which the Herald picked up here.  It's well worth a read, and you can also peruse the original journal article reporting the research at Reproductive Health Journal.

The problem of waiting times is not insignificant, as the later an abortion is left the more complicated it becomes, in terms of both the medical process and the mental health issues for the woman concerned.   The Silva et al research shows that the problem is partly women waiting to seek a termination (maybe if it wasn't so stigmatised to get one they'd go earlier) and partly having to jump through big hoops to get one (which is of course a strong argument for law reform, especially getting rid of the need for permission from two certifying consultants). 

Sadly though someone at the Herald couldn't just let the NZPA story stand on the facts, oh no they had to accompany the online story with a "smiling fetus" image which is just utter rubbish.  Ask any parent of a baby when that kid first smiled and they'll probably furrow their brow a little while they think and then come up with an answer between a month and six weeks after birth.  I remember vividly when Wriggly first smiled; I was changing his nappy and he was about six weeks old.  I love his smile still, even when he's being cheeky and trying to convince me that he can't have been naughty because he's just so adorable.  As special and intelligent as I think my son is, there's no way he, or any other child, was smiling before about four weeks old.  So smiling fetuses are just a myth.


I've sent the below letter of complaint to the Online Editors:

Kia ora,
I have just been reading the NZPA supplied story titled "Women feel wait for abortion too long" at this link:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10660777

I am flabbergasted by the incredibly misleading photo and caption used to accompany this story on your website. The caption states:
"A still from a still 4D ultrasound of a 29 week old foetus smiling and moving inside the womb. Photo / Supplied."

It is a well known biological fact that smiling is not possible until four to six weeks after birth. Here's but one of many websites to state this:
http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/development/babysmileexpert/

I am curious to know who supplied this photo, and how the caption was afixed to it. It is blatantly misleading and, given that abortion is such a controversial subject, it is disappointing to see the Herald failing to do a very simple fact check on this matter.

I look forward to your response.

If you feel so moved as to raise an objection to this also, then you can do so here.  I'll let you know if I get a response. 

Update: Victory! The All Smiling All Dancing All The Time Fetus picture and caption is now gone, replaced by a pic of Steve Chadwick with a caption referring to her possible Bill. I haven't had a response to my complaint email, but the main thing is that it's been changed, and hopefully this won't happen again. Thanks to all who pointed out the ridiculousness of the original pic!

New laydee plus new pro-choice group

Sophia presents the very wittily named feminist foodie blog In The Gateaux.

And there's a new pro-choice group around, Mothers For Choice, which some of the writers here are involved with (including me).  There's a Facebook supporters page plus a twitter feed, and here's a little run down of what the group is about:

Mothers For Choice is a group of women from Aotearoa NZ who are mothers and hold a pro-choice position on abortion.

We include amongst our number mothers who have one child, several children; are single, married, in a civil union, in a defacto relationship, widowed, separated; have had fertility problems, have suffered miscarriages, have had unplanned pregnancies, have had abortions; are step-mothers; are religious, are atheists, are agnostic; and hail from a variety of different cultures and backgrounds.

We define a pro-choice position on abortion as: respecting the right of individual women to choose for themselves whether or not to continue a pregnancy, without the need to seek permission from anyone else for a termination.

As always, if you have any links to NZ women's blogs (on anything, and they don't need to be feminist) that you want to share, including your own, do indulge in comments.