I have a boyfriend (please leave me alone)
Yes I am totally mentally distraught about this pregnancy and would get lots worse if I had to continue (please give me an abortion)
No extra flatmates (please give me enough resources to support my whanau)
It's not you, it's me (please let me go)
I'm driving tonight (please don't spike my drink)
Maybe, I'm not sure, but perhaps we could do it this way? (please listen to my excellent idea)
No I don't mind you asking me if I'm having more kids, it's okay (please don't get angry with me)
Sure I can work late (please see my worth)
Oh yes, baby is a great sleeper (please think I'm a good parent)
Thanks, you look great too (please stop talking about my appearance)
---
We live in a society where women often need to lie to get by. Honesty is often the preserve of those who have a high level of safety and comfort. May we live in a world where we don't need to lie to get by. We don't live there yet.
Showing posts with label social justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social justice. Show all posts
Tuesday, 8 August 2017
Friday, 25 January 2013
Living Wage opinion piece, and the responses
Last Friday the Herald published an opinion piece I had submitted arguing for a living wage. It was my 2012 aim to submit an op ed and I finally managed it, albeit two days into 2013 ;-)
TLDR; the main point of my argument is surely no one's labour is worth less than it costs them to produce that labour (i.e. to live). In the many comments on the article and conversations I've had with people online and off on this matter I have never encountered a proper refutation to this; indeed it's almost always ignored. Take for example this opposing opinion piece published in the Herald three days after mine.
It's been an interesting experience, writing for a different audience from The Hand Mirror and watching how the response has been almost completely divorced from the blogosphere. Not a single murmur on any blog that I've seen about the living wage discussion which has taken place quite heatedly on the Herald website across two opinion pieces now. I've had people take the effort to ferret out my council email address and send me their thoughts, and contact from people I haven't seen for years except vaguely online telling me their mother told them about it. Quite a different experience from the often hyper-critical environment online.
Finally, I want to give a big thank you to Deborah Russell of A Bee of a Certain Age and The Lady Garden, who inspired me to do this. I will be trying to do it again.
TLDR; the main point of my argument is surely no one's labour is worth less than it costs them to produce that labour (i.e. to live). In the many comments on the article and conversations I've had with people online and off on this matter I have never encountered a proper refutation to this; indeed it's almost always ignored. Take for example this opposing opinion piece published in the Herald three days after mine.
It's been an interesting experience, writing for a different audience from The Hand Mirror and watching how the response has been almost completely divorced from the blogosphere. Not a single murmur on any blog that I've seen about the living wage discussion which has taken place quite heatedly on the Herald website across two opinion pieces now. I've had people take the effort to ferret out my council email address and send me their thoughts, and contact from people I haven't seen for years except vaguely online telling me their mother told them about it. Quite a different experience from the often hyper-critical environment online.
Finally, I want to give a big thank you to Deborah Russell of A Bee of a Certain Age and The Lady Garden, who inspired me to do this. I will be trying to do it again.
Wednesday, 4 July 2012
Thursday, 19 April 2012
Stinky stinky Sky City
This Sky City deal just keeps getting stinkier and stinkier. The revelation yesterday was that the Prime Minister himself appears to have suggested the trade-off to Sky City; build us a new convention centre and we'll get you a law change to add more pokie machines to the hundreds you already have sucking money out of the community. I'm sure the conversation didn't go quite like that, but that seems to be what it boils down to. There are new developments happening several times a day as the right questions are finally being asked and unravelling the unhealthy level of influence it appears that Sky City has on key political figures.
My particular concern in all of this is the insidious impact that pokies have. They exist to take money out of the pockets of those who play them and give a tiny proportion back in winnings, and a tiny proportion to the community by way of grants. The vast majority of what goes in to a one arm bandit goes to the owner of the machine. And Sky City runs over 1600 of them in its Auckland casino already. Pokies are particularly appealing to women, according to research reported by the Problem Gambling Foundation, summarised in their useful fact sheet.
Auckland Council is yet to adopt a sinking-lid policy on gambling machines, despite John Key saying that'll deal with Sky City getting up to 500 more*. The former Waitakere and Manukau City Councils had sinking-lid policies, and so those still apply in those areas, but crucially Auckland City, where Sky City is located, do not. I can't speak for other Local Board areas, but in Puketapapa we have included in our Local Board plan that we want to advocate for a sinking-lid policy that does not allow for relocating of machines. Yet we don't seem to have yet had an opportunity to do this, or to adopt such in our own area, beyond me writing letters to the Herald and doing the occasional media interview on the matter. Oh and ranting about it on social media.
Sky City argues that pokies are a worse problem in pubs and sports clubs and therefore it is ok to have more at their casino. We can actually multi-task and address the problem wherever it occurs, rather than having to pick and choose. It's worth noting that casinos are much lower contributors back to the community via funding, as a percentage of takings, than community venues are. Personally I'm not so interested in that argument, but I know it is the one used most often by those advocating for more gambling opportunities; what about all the community funding that will be given out. I'd far rather that we help people to keep their own money for use in their own community, instead of inefficiently funnelling it through a third party (who takes a very large chunk) back to different parts of the city.
Even by the time I push publish on this post the situation may have moved on, so fast is it changing. I'm really hoping that the final outcome is one that minimises the harm of problem gambling.
If you are interested in more information on the social cost of gambling, then please check out the hash tag #socialcost on Twitter today, as the Problem Gambling Foundation will be tweeting research all day that specifically addresses this.
* How realistic would this be even if it were the case? Magically 500 machines come out of other venues at the exact same time as they go into Sky City? Weird.
My particular concern in all of this is the insidious impact that pokies have. They exist to take money out of the pockets of those who play them and give a tiny proportion back in winnings, and a tiny proportion to the community by way of grants. The vast majority of what goes in to a one arm bandit goes to the owner of the machine. And Sky City runs over 1600 of them in its Auckland casino already. Pokies are particularly appealing to women, according to research reported by the Problem Gambling Foundation, summarised in their useful fact sheet.
Auckland Council is yet to adopt a sinking-lid policy on gambling machines, despite John Key saying that'll deal with Sky City getting up to 500 more*. The former Waitakere and Manukau City Councils had sinking-lid policies, and so those still apply in those areas, but crucially Auckland City, where Sky City is located, do not. I can't speak for other Local Board areas, but in Puketapapa we have included in our Local Board plan that we want to advocate for a sinking-lid policy that does not allow for relocating of machines. Yet we don't seem to have yet had an opportunity to do this, or to adopt such in our own area, beyond me writing letters to the Herald and doing the occasional media interview on the matter. Oh and ranting about it on social media.
Sky City argues that pokies are a worse problem in pubs and sports clubs and therefore it is ok to have more at their casino. We can actually multi-task and address the problem wherever it occurs, rather than having to pick and choose. It's worth noting that casinos are much lower contributors back to the community via funding, as a percentage of takings, than community venues are. Personally I'm not so interested in that argument, but I know it is the one used most often by those advocating for more gambling opportunities; what about all the community funding that will be given out. I'd far rather that we help people to keep their own money for use in their own community, instead of inefficiently funnelling it through a third party (who takes a very large chunk) back to different parts of the city.
Even by the time I push publish on this post the situation may have moved on, so fast is it changing. I'm really hoping that the final outcome is one that minimises the harm of problem gambling.
If you are interested in more information on the social cost of gambling, then please check out the hash tag #socialcost on Twitter today, as the Problem Gambling Foundation will be tweeting research all day that specifically addresses this.
* How realistic would this be even if it were the case? Magically 500 machines come out of other venues at the exact same time as they go into Sky City? Weird.
Monday, 27 February 2012
We need to talk about jobs
 |
| Red pen about to start circling the Job Opportunities in the paper |
Last year I attended the Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture and this time it was all about full employment, and delivered by Professor (of Economics) Paul Dalziel who has been doing a whole heap of research on the matter at Lincoln.
One of the key ideas he talked about, from Jesson's writings, was that when the welfare state was established in Aotearoa New Zealand, all those decades ago, it was set up to work in complementary fashion with full employment. This muddled along ok, with direct state job creation in lean times and state support for private job creation in the good, until the two concepts were separated under Rogernomics and thoroughly divorced during Ruthanasia.
Nowadays apparently some people think that not only is it Not Cool for us to collectively support each other in the hard times through a welfare system, it's also totally naff to even consider any Government planning to ensure we have career pathways and actual jobs; so that we can get the things made that we need, access the services we require, and also be employed in ways that work for modern life.
Sadly many of the people who hold this view, that Government's role is severely limited and The Market Will Provide, are currently in positions of power in our society. In particular they seem to populate Cabinet, and those who don't have Ministerial chairs to sit in appear to be given taskforce and directorship and whatnot roles by their mates who do.
It's awfully convenient, to blame people for being reliant on a state benefit AND blame them for the inability to get a job that suits the way their lives have to be lived. It let's the Government totally off the hook. What a coincidence.
Let's not forget that the type of work you need when you are the sole parent of a child, whatever the reason for that, or struggling with your own ill health or that of another in your household, is not 9-5 (plus travel) Monday to Friday away from home and with only 5 days of sick leave a year. We have a huge shortage of affordable quality childcare - and not just for pre-schoolers but crucially for before and after school too (and during the school holidays). Sure a child may be at school from 9am to 3pm, once they turn 5, but how many jobs do you know of that go from 9.30am to 2.30pm in four convenient ten week blocks a year? Teacher aide jobs would sound ideal, except that there is a lot of competition for these and the pay is ridiculously low for the level of skill and responsibility often required.
We don't have enough jobs that meet these needs already. Creating a whole new phalanx of people who need these jobs, in a time when casualisation is increasing and job cuts just keep coming, will suit employers just fine, as it will make prospective employees desperate. Desperate to get a job, desperate to keep a job, and that is an incredibly vulnerable place to be in, as a worker and as a human being.
Do we actually want to make people more vulnerable than they already are? Why?
Thursday, 6 October 2011
over the balcony
yesterday some dude decided to give everyone in parliament a scare by climbing over the balcony, presumably in an attempt to jump down. in the process, he was heard to be shouting out some grievances he had with the minister of social development and with the system. perhaps he was also upset at the prime minister.
there is a narrative running on several blogs that the person is, you guessed it, "crazy" or a "madman". perhaps he has a mental illness, i really don't know. no doubt it will come out soon enough. but even if he does have one, should that mean that we ignore anything he has to say.
the thing is that no-one seems to be clearly reporting what he actually did say. some lawyer that helped try to stop him says "[he] was making noises about various injustices". i can understand that, being busy with physically trying to stop the man might have been a hindrance to paying full attention to what he was saying. but someone nearby must have heard it. and surely the man himself could be interviewed further?
of course if he is discredited enough as a "madman", then no-one needs to take seriously what he has to say. yet there are certainly some issues issues in his life, issues regarding WINZ and social policy that are directly impacting his life, that motivated his actions. i believe it's important for us to know what those issues are, and why they made him feel so desperate. to continue to ignore those problems, which will no doubt be shared by many people across the country, is to ignore a ticking time-bomb.
but what irks me most, as i've mentioned above, is the notion that if he is "crazy", he has nothing useful to say. or nothing that we should be paying attention to. as if people with mental illnesses have no rights, no needs, face no injustices, and simply don't matter. ugh.
there is a narrative running on several blogs that the person is, you guessed it, "crazy" or a "madman". perhaps he has a mental illness, i really don't know. no doubt it will come out soon enough. but even if he does have one, should that mean that we ignore anything he has to say.
the thing is that no-one seems to be clearly reporting what he actually did say. some lawyer that helped try to stop him says "[he] was making noises about various injustices". i can understand that, being busy with physically trying to stop the man might have been a hindrance to paying full attention to what he was saying. but someone nearby must have heard it. and surely the man himself could be interviewed further?
of course if he is discredited enough as a "madman", then no-one needs to take seriously what he has to say. yet there are certainly some issues issues in his life, issues regarding WINZ and social policy that are directly impacting his life, that motivated his actions. i believe it's important for us to know what those issues are, and why they made him feel so desperate. to continue to ignore those problems, which will no doubt be shared by many people across the country, is to ignore a ticking time-bomb.
but what irks me most, as i've mentioned above, is the notion that if he is "crazy", he has nothing useful to say. or nothing that we should be paying attention to. as if people with mental illnesses have no rights, no needs, face no injustices, and simply don't matter. ugh.
Monday, 12 September 2011
after the world cup
a quick link to an excellent piece by marama davidson on what happens for maori after the rugby world cup. below is an excerpt, but i really recommend clicking through and reading the whole piece:
I come from a long line of avid rugby supporters. My father, brother and sister have all played to respectable levels and my three and five year old sons play every Saturday morning. A love for theatre and performance also courses through my veins thanks to being born into ‘the industry’ and lastly I claim lineage to the longest line of Ngāpuhi/Te Rarawa and Ngāti Porou upstarts. On Friday night I watched gloriously as my rugby fanatic, drama loving, tāngata whenua staked backgrounds all melded effortlessly. Let me be clear – I was a proud Kiwi that night.
I come from a long line of avid rugby supporters. My father, brother and sister have all played to respectable levels and my three and five year old sons play every Saturday morning. A love for theatre and performance also courses through my veins thanks to being born into ‘the industry’ and lastly I claim lineage to the longest line of Ngāpuhi/Te Rarawa and Ngāti Porou upstarts. On Friday night I watched gloriously as my rugby fanatic, drama loving, tāngata whenua staked backgrounds all melded effortlessly. Let me be clear – I was a proud Kiwi that night.
But what happens when the world is no longer watching?
We will still be left questioning the partnership and sovereignty guaranteed under the Treaty of Waitangi and further advocated for in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Where is that sovereignty given the loud and clear opposition from members of Te Whānau-a-Apanui, Ngāti Porou, Taranaki and Taitokerau Iwi to fracking, mining and deep sea oil drilling? I am not proud of my country for this.
That same partnership can be called into question around the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011. There is not much to be proud of either in the final Act that was passed or in the race relations damage that fell out of the discourse around the Bill before it was passed.
We will still be left with the questions around justice and a damaged Crown/Tuhoe relationship thanks to the Urewera raids of 2007. I am not proud of our country for that.
Thursday, 8 September 2011
the indian anti-corruption movement
generally i tend not to write about indian politics, because i don't follow what's happening there and don't even really understand the political system beyond the fact that there are state & federal governments and it's a republic. i know some of the political parties and some of what they purportedly stand for, but really don't understand the details and nuances.
which means that i'm hardly qualified to discuss what i'm about to discuss, but that doesn't stop many people, so let me forge ahead anyway.
so there's this dude in india who went on a fast. not the ramadan kind of fast that muslims do, but the political protest kind of fast that was done by gandhi amongst others, and more commonly know to us as a hunger strike. the thing that our current protester, anna hazare, was fasting about was corruption and the need to end it. mr hazare is not the only one on hunger strike in india at the moment, but somehow his protest caught on and caused huge outpourings of support across the country.
there are several reasons for this. one is that he is supported by a highly organised and well-funded team, a team that is in fact known as "team anna". there have been allegations that some of this funding has come from america, through the ford foundation as well as a couple of other organisations. more of it has come from large indian corporations. while there were promises to provide transparency around funding, i can't find any evidence of this actually happening. they promised to put financial information on this website, but it has no search function and i don't have time to trawl through it.
team anna appears to have some pretty good media networks and connections. or perhaps it's that the media jumped on the bandwagon when it saw the protest gathering support. regardless of how it has happened, the protest has had a very high level of coverage in all media.
while the motives seem to be very noble and worthy of support, i've been having some issues with this protest movement. the first thing that bothered me was the nationalistic fervour that underpinned the protest. i'm not a supporter of nationalism at the best of times, and it seems to me that an anti-corruption movement should be able to seek support based on the principles of justice, without having to resort to any kind of national pride. however, this piece raises more serious issues about the way the issues are being framed:
Never in India’s history, not even during the freedom movement or war-time, has such aggressively patriotic fervour been unleashed. Mahatma Gandhi never used portraits of a tiger-riding Bharat Mata, and Bhagat Singh’s battle-cry was not Vande Mataram. In their own distinctive ways, the three major streams of our freedom movement, Gandhi, Netaji and Bhagat Singh, reflected the respective beliefs and ideologies, and competed in the philosophical space of nation-building....
So here is the quibble. Once you produce the national flag, and Bharat Mata, all arguments cease.... In effect, if you then disagree with me, you are unpatriotic, and your arguments are immoral, pro-corrupt. A democratic movement has to give space for disagreement, argue with those who have a different point of view, not wave the national flag and shut them up.
more than that, nationalism is frightening in any context because it is destructive to minorities, and to anyone who doesn't conform to the nationalists' definition of what constitutes the ideal patriot. the terms "unamerican" or "unaustralian" are predominantly used to stifle any kind of dissent, and to push for a conformity that is destructive to individual identity.
to add to this concern is the possibility that team anna has links to the RSS, a right-wing nationalist organisation that is linked to some violent stuff. mr hazare himself denies any personal political affiliations, which may be correct. but if members of his team are aligned to the RSS, then his own personal affiliation is of little importance.
on top of all this, the protest seems to be a very middle and upper class one - a movement for those who can actually afford to pay the bribes and who are personally affected by them. and while that certainly has some merit, it's not a movement that seems to deal with issues of poverty and social justice. it's not a movement that will really help those who are most in need of support in that country.
finally, i'll quote arundhati roy who has come out strongly against team anna for various reasons. the basic point is that the solution to corruption posed by team anna is a pretty dangerous one:
While his means may be Gandhian, Anna Hazare's demands are certainly not. Contrary to Gandhiji's ideas about the decentralisation of power, the Jan Lokpal Bill is a draconian, anti-corruption law, in which a panel of carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won't have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one.
Whether it works or not depends on how we view corruption. Is corruption just a matter of legality, of financial irregularity and bribery, or is it the currency of a social transaction in an egregiously unequal society, in which power continues to be concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority? Imagine, for example, a city of shopping malls, on whose streets hawking has been banned. A hawker pays the local beat cop and the man from the municipality a small bribe to break the law and sell her wares to those who cannot afford the prices in the malls. Is that such a terrible thing? In future will she have to pay the Lokpal representative too? Does the solution to the problems faced by ordinary people lie in addressing the structural inequality, or in creating yet another power structure that people will have to defer to?
the worst case scenario is that this nationalistic protest movement will lead to a nationalistic right-wing government lead by the BJP. not only will this be bad for communal tensions in the country, but it certainly won't help those who struggle with poverty. and i can't imagine they will do anything significant to reduce corruption.
which means that i'm hardly qualified to discuss what i'm about to discuss, but that doesn't stop many people, so let me forge ahead anyway.
so there's this dude in india who went on a fast. not the ramadan kind of fast that muslims do, but the political protest kind of fast that was done by gandhi amongst others, and more commonly know to us as a hunger strike. the thing that our current protester, anna hazare, was fasting about was corruption and the need to end it. mr hazare is not the only one on hunger strike in india at the moment, but somehow his protest caught on and caused huge outpourings of support across the country.
there are several reasons for this. one is that he is supported by a highly organised and well-funded team, a team that is in fact known as "team anna". there have been allegations that some of this funding has come from america, through the ford foundation as well as a couple of other organisations. more of it has come from large indian corporations. while there were promises to provide transparency around funding, i can't find any evidence of this actually happening. they promised to put financial information on this website, but it has no search function and i don't have time to trawl through it.
team anna appears to have some pretty good media networks and connections. or perhaps it's that the media jumped on the bandwagon when it saw the protest gathering support. regardless of how it has happened, the protest has had a very high level of coverage in all media.
while the motives seem to be very noble and worthy of support, i've been having some issues with this protest movement. the first thing that bothered me was the nationalistic fervour that underpinned the protest. i'm not a supporter of nationalism at the best of times, and it seems to me that an anti-corruption movement should be able to seek support based on the principles of justice, without having to resort to any kind of national pride. however, this piece raises more serious issues about the way the issues are being framed:
Never in India’s history, not even during the freedom movement or war-time, has such aggressively patriotic fervour been unleashed. Mahatma Gandhi never used portraits of a tiger-riding Bharat Mata, and Bhagat Singh’s battle-cry was not Vande Mataram. In their own distinctive ways, the three major streams of our freedom movement, Gandhi, Netaji and Bhagat Singh, reflected the respective beliefs and ideologies, and competed in the philosophical space of nation-building....
So here is the quibble. Once you produce the national flag, and Bharat Mata, all arguments cease.... In effect, if you then disagree with me, you are unpatriotic, and your arguments are immoral, pro-corrupt. A democratic movement has to give space for disagreement, argue with those who have a different point of view, not wave the national flag and shut them up.
more than that, nationalism is frightening in any context because it is destructive to minorities, and to anyone who doesn't conform to the nationalists' definition of what constitutes the ideal patriot. the terms "unamerican" or "unaustralian" are predominantly used to stifle any kind of dissent, and to push for a conformity that is destructive to individual identity.
to add to this concern is the possibility that team anna has links to the RSS, a right-wing nationalist organisation that is linked to some violent stuff. mr hazare himself denies any personal political affiliations, which may be correct. but if members of his team are aligned to the RSS, then his own personal affiliation is of little importance.
on top of all this, the protest seems to be a very middle and upper class one - a movement for those who can actually afford to pay the bribes and who are personally affected by them. and while that certainly has some merit, it's not a movement that seems to deal with issues of poverty and social justice. it's not a movement that will really help those who are most in need of support in that country.
finally, i'll quote arundhati roy who has come out strongly against team anna for various reasons. the basic point is that the solution to corruption posed by team anna is a pretty dangerous one:
While his means may be Gandhian, Anna Hazare's demands are certainly not. Contrary to Gandhiji's ideas about the decentralisation of power, the Jan Lokpal Bill is a draconian, anti-corruption law, in which a panel of carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won't have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one.
Whether it works or not depends on how we view corruption. Is corruption just a matter of legality, of financial irregularity and bribery, or is it the currency of a social transaction in an egregiously unequal society, in which power continues to be concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority? Imagine, for example, a city of shopping malls, on whose streets hawking has been banned. A hawker pays the local beat cop and the man from the municipality a small bribe to break the law and sell her wares to those who cannot afford the prices in the malls. Is that such a terrible thing? In future will she have to pay the Lokpal representative too? Does the solution to the problems faced by ordinary people lie in addressing the structural inequality, or in creating yet another power structure that people will have to defer to?
the worst case scenario is that this nationalistic protest movement will lead to a nationalistic right-wing government lead by the BJP. not only will this be bad for communal tensions in the country, but it certainly won't help those who struggle with poverty. and i can't imagine they will do anything significant to reduce corruption.
Monday, 8 August 2011
Observations
I get really fed up with the narrative that seems to go with child poverty, as exhibited by the number of kids going to school without breakfast, that seeks to blame the parents. When food is short in a household often mum is the first to cut her rations. This is not a situation where there are gluttonous parents hoovering up all the food and not caring that their kids are hungry. It is a situation where there are families in our society who cannot afford to buy food. By framing it as the former we can Otherize it - it's Their fault, they are not like me/us, and it's therefore Someone Else's Problem. To accept it's actually the latter I guess we may need to step up and recognise that our society is something that we can have some say over - we make choices, particularly political choices, that have consequences for others. To change society is daunting, but shouldn't the systems we live in serve rather than hinder?
Observation the Second - There are not enough jobs
There's been multi-purpose whining about how the youth unemployment rate is a direct result of the abolition of youth rates. Employers are supposedly giving jobs to older people instead of youf because they can't get away with paying less than the adult minimum wage for young workers. Older people are competing for places that traditionally went to the young uns because they are losing their own jobs, or their financial situations have changed resulting in the need for second and third incomes. I really noticed over the weekend the high number of shops shutting, empty commercial spaces for lease, and a large number of retail sales that looked like the immediate precursor to closing down (shelves emptying out, no new stock coming in, quite big discounts on everything). I also spotted a lot of older workers in the kind of retail jobs that used to be predominantly filled by those in their teens or early twenties. The layoffs, public and private, don't seem to be getting much media but they are real, and it's definitely a buyer's labour market at the moment.
Observation the Third - A lot of people are moving to Australia for better prospects
In the 90s most of my friends were people I met through university, where we were studying together, and so hardly anyone I knew shifted to Australia. Then in the 00s a lot of my peers did the OE thing, and some have not come back, but very very few actively moved across the Tasman as a result of a failure to find work here. Lately week after week I feel I'm hearing of a new acquaintance, relative or friend who is making the shift. Then there was the woman on Nat Rad from Christchurch last week who sounded very bitter about the lack of support for her family to stay.
What is this Government actually doing about job creation? Whatever happened to whatever mysterious wondrousness came out of the Jobs Summit? The Market is not providing; for kids, for their parents, for young, for old, for inbetween. When do we start asking questions about the system we live in, not the individuals caught in it?
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
the usefulness of gift duty
gift duty is set to be abolished later this year. the due date is 1 october, but with all the fluffing around & the various issues to be considered, it's looking likely that there will be a delay.
i tend to assume that people know what gift duty is & how it works. but just in case you don't, basically a person can only gift $27,000 a year in cash or forgiveness of debt before a 4% duty kicks in. these days, so many people are transferring their major income-earning assets to a trust (big mistake for most people, but that's a story for another day). so the trust owes them back the value of the assets they've transferred.
this isn't helpful, especially if you want to protect your assets from resthome subsidies, spouses, creditors, people who are suing you for negligence or the like. so people gift off their loan to the trust, so they can personally become asset free and their assets are protected. gift duty has meant that they can't gift off the loan all at once, but have to do it in chunks of $27,000 if they want to avoid the duty.
the thing with trusts, though, is that people tend to manage them so badly and seem to immediately forget that assets belonging to the trust are no longer actually their own. they behave as though they still own the assets, which makes them very vulnerable to trust-busting by creditors, the IRD, and other beneficiaries. and there are a heap of cases going through the courts. so removing gift duty is not necessarily going to mean much, if your trust isn't run as a totally separate entity from yourself.
but there's one thing that has really been bothering me today about the removal of gift duty, and it relates to elder abuse. i know that some of our senior citizens are treated horrendously and can be put under enourmous pressure to part with their finances. gift duty is a actually a protection for them - it's much more difficult to force (or nag or push) them into gifting off huge chunks of their wealth when there is tax to pay. they have the protection of the law as a reason to not gift off any more than that amount.
when it comes to decisions about tax, it's disturbing that some people only look at the economic and legal implications, but not the social ones. i'd actually like to see a social impact assessment done for most major tax changes. because the effects on people's lives will often go way beyond the economic.
i tend to assume that people know what gift duty is & how it works. but just in case you don't, basically a person can only gift $27,000 a year in cash or forgiveness of debt before a 4% duty kicks in. these days, so many people are transferring their major income-earning assets to a trust (big mistake for most people, but that's a story for another day). so the trust owes them back the value of the assets they've transferred.
this isn't helpful, especially if you want to protect your assets from resthome subsidies, spouses, creditors, people who are suing you for negligence or the like. so people gift off their loan to the trust, so they can personally become asset free and their assets are protected. gift duty has meant that they can't gift off the loan all at once, but have to do it in chunks of $27,000 if they want to avoid the duty.
the thing with trusts, though, is that people tend to manage them so badly and seem to immediately forget that assets belonging to the trust are no longer actually their own. they behave as though they still own the assets, which makes them very vulnerable to trust-busting by creditors, the IRD, and other beneficiaries. and there are a heap of cases going through the courts. so removing gift duty is not necessarily going to mean much, if your trust isn't run as a totally separate entity from yourself.
but there's one thing that has really been bothering me today about the removal of gift duty, and it relates to elder abuse. i know that some of our senior citizens are treated horrendously and can be put under enourmous pressure to part with their finances. gift duty is a actually a protection for them - it's much more difficult to force (or nag or push) them into gifting off huge chunks of their wealth when there is tax to pay. they have the protection of the law as a reason to not gift off any more than that amount.
when it comes to decisions about tax, it's disturbing that some people only look at the economic and legal implications, but not the social ones. i'd actually like to see a social impact assessment done for most major tax changes. because the effects on people's lives will often go way beyond the economic.
Thursday, 21 April 2011
cameron on immigration
as per a request from deborah, i'm cross-posting this piece from my own blog. i feel a little nervous about putting up certain issues here, especially around areas where i feel vulnerable. but here it is. on another note, i'll be appearing on Q & A this sunday morning, talking about religious issues which will be linked to the afghanistan situaion and religious violence in general, as well as a couple of other topics.
david cameron has been making a lot of noise about immigration of late. in that it's all bad, of course, and the narrative is the usual stuff we hear from the right: that immigrants are parasites who are a drain on the nation and suck all the nation's resources or steal all "our" jobs while giving nothing back in return.
of course he doesn't attack all immigrants, just the non-integrating kind who won't learn english. nice coded language, with the dog-whistling very thinly disguised. it seems mr cameron is following the john howard policy of out-pauline-hansening pauline hansen. in mr cameron's case, it's the BNP he's emulating, knowing that attacking a particular class of people will guarantee votes and increase popularity.
but it's more than that. mr cameron is using underlying racism and hatred as a cover for massive cuts in welfare. he's trying to soften the electorate for cuts by linking it to hatred of certain types of immigrants. UK wouldn't need these immigrants, he says, if only the welfare system wasn't so generous. by changing this, locals would be forced to do the work currently done by immigrants. more than that, people are apparently immigrating to UK because the welfare system is so good, therefore it should be made less good in order to remove that incentive.
as always, missing from the right-wing narrative are the real benefits that migrants bring to the country. given the way immigrations laws are in most countries, immigrants will be highly educated, but more than that, highly motivated to succeed. i doubt they migrate to end up on welfare. listening to the stories of migrants, and i've heard many, they have dreams of success for themselves and their children and a drive to achieve that success.
also missing is the realisation that these cuts to welfare translate into misery and hunger for a large number of people. people who have often landed up on welfare because of failed economic policies, because of the fraud and gambling of the finance sector, and because of the global recession which resulted. those on welfare are being asked to pay the price for the failure of others, and immigrants are to take the blame.
david cameron has been making a lot of noise about immigration of late. in that it's all bad, of course, and the narrative is the usual stuff we hear from the right: that immigrants are parasites who are a drain on the nation and suck all the nation's resources or steal all "our" jobs while giving nothing back in return.
of course he doesn't attack all immigrants, just the non-integrating kind who won't learn english. nice coded language, with the dog-whistling very thinly disguised. it seems mr cameron is following the john howard policy of out-pauline-hansening pauline hansen. in mr cameron's case, it's the BNP he's emulating, knowing that attacking a particular class of people will guarantee votes and increase popularity.
but it's more than that. mr cameron is using underlying racism and hatred as a cover for massive cuts in welfare. he's trying to soften the electorate for cuts by linking it to hatred of certain types of immigrants. UK wouldn't need these immigrants, he says, if only the welfare system wasn't so generous. by changing this, locals would be forced to do the work currently done by immigrants. more than that, people are apparently immigrating to UK because the welfare system is so good, therefore it should be made less good in order to remove that incentive.
as always, missing from the right-wing narrative are the real benefits that migrants bring to the country. given the way immigrations laws are in most countries, immigrants will be highly educated, but more than that, highly motivated to succeed. i doubt they migrate to end up on welfare. listening to the stories of migrants, and i've heard many, they have dreams of success for themselves and their children and a drive to achieve that success.
also missing is the realisation that these cuts to welfare translate into misery and hunger for a large number of people. people who have often landed up on welfare because of failed economic policies, because of the fraud and gambling of the finance sector, and because of the global recession which resulted. those on welfare are being asked to pay the price for the failure of others, and immigrants are to take the blame.
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
wages for housework
i was directed to this article by silvia federici, which discusses the concept of paying wages for housework, and other issues around the structure of society. it's quite dated now, and i think feminists have been grappling with some of the issues she accuses them of ignoring for some time now. it's a pretty long piece, but i do like the points she puts in favour of wages for housework.
anyway, here is an excerpt:
We believed that the women’s movement should not set models to which women would have to conform, but rather devise strategies to expand our possibilities. For once getting a job is considered necessary to our liberation the woman who refuses to exchange her work in a kitchen for work in a factory is inevitably branded as backward and, beside being ignored, her problems are turned into her own fault. It is likely that many women who were later mobilized by the New Moral Majority could have been won to the movement if it had addressed their needs. Often when an article appeared about our campaign, or we were invited to talk on a radio program, we received dozens of letters by women who would tell us about their lives or at times would simply write: “Dear Sir, tell me what I have to do to get wages for housework.” Their stories were always the same. They worked like slaves with no time left and no money of their own. And there were older women starving on Supplementary Security Income (SSI) who would ask us whether they could keep a cat, because they were afraid that if the social worker found out their benefits would be cut. What did the women’s movement have to offer to these women? Go out and get a job so that you can join the struggles of the working class? But their problem was that they already worked too much, and eight hours at a cash register or on an assembly line is hardly an enticing proposition when you have to juggle it with a husband and kids at home. As we so often repeated, what we need is more time, more money, not more work. And we need daycare centers, but not just to be liberated for more work, but to be able to take a walk, talk to our friends or go to a women’s meeting.
Wages for housework meant opening a struggle directly on the question of reproduction, and establishing that raising children and taking care of people is a social responsibility. In a future society free from exploitation we will decide how this social responsibility is best absolved and shared among us. In this society where money governs all our relations, to ask for social responsibility is to ask that those who benefit from housework (business and the state as the “collective capitalist”) pay for it. Otherwise we subscribe to the myth-so costly for us women - that raising children and servicing those who work is a private, individual matter and that only “male culture” is to blame for the stifling ways in which we live, love and congregate with each other. Unfortunately the women’s movement has largely ignored the question of reproduction, or offered only individual solutions, like sharing the housework, which do not provide an alternative to the isolated battles many of us have already been waging. Even during the struggle for abortion most feminists fought just for the right not to have children, though this is only one side of control over our bodies and reproductive choice. What if we want to have children but cannot afford to raise them, except at the price of not having any time for ourselves and being continuously plagued by financial worries? For as long as housework goes unpaid, there will be no incentives to provide the social services necessary to reduce our work, as proved by the fact that, despite a strong women’s movement, subsidized day care has been steadily reduced through the 70s.
anyway, here is an excerpt:
We believed that the women’s movement should not set models to which women would have to conform, but rather devise strategies to expand our possibilities. For once getting a job is considered necessary to our liberation the woman who refuses to exchange her work in a kitchen for work in a factory is inevitably branded as backward and, beside being ignored, her problems are turned into her own fault. It is likely that many women who were later mobilized by the New Moral Majority could have been won to the movement if it had addressed their needs. Often when an article appeared about our campaign, or we were invited to talk on a radio program, we received dozens of letters by women who would tell us about their lives or at times would simply write: “Dear Sir, tell me what I have to do to get wages for housework.” Their stories were always the same. They worked like slaves with no time left and no money of their own. And there were older women starving on Supplementary Security Income (SSI) who would ask us whether they could keep a cat, because they were afraid that if the social worker found out their benefits would be cut. What did the women’s movement have to offer to these women? Go out and get a job so that you can join the struggles of the working class? But their problem was that they already worked too much, and eight hours at a cash register or on an assembly line is hardly an enticing proposition when you have to juggle it with a husband and kids at home. As we so often repeated, what we need is more time, more money, not more work. And we need daycare centers, but not just to be liberated for more work, but to be able to take a walk, talk to our friends or go to a women’s meeting.
Wages for housework meant opening a struggle directly on the question of reproduction, and establishing that raising children and taking care of people is a social responsibility. In a future society free from exploitation we will decide how this social responsibility is best absolved and shared among us. In this society where money governs all our relations, to ask for social responsibility is to ask that those who benefit from housework (business and the state as the “collective capitalist”) pay for it. Otherwise we subscribe to the myth-so costly for us women - that raising children and servicing those who work is a private, individual matter and that only “male culture” is to blame for the stifling ways in which we live, love and congregate with each other. Unfortunately the women’s movement has largely ignored the question of reproduction, or offered only individual solutions, like sharing the housework, which do not provide an alternative to the isolated battles many of us have already been waging. Even during the struggle for abortion most feminists fought just for the right not to have children, though this is only one side of control over our bodies and reproductive choice. What if we want to have children but cannot afford to raise them, except at the price of not having any time for ourselves and being continuously plagued by financial worries? For as long as housework goes unpaid, there will be no incentives to provide the social services necessary to reduce our work, as proved by the fact that, despite a strong women’s movement, subsidized day care has been steadily reduced through the 70s.
Sunday, 8 August 2010
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:
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:
Monday, 5 July 2010
Why versus How
The National-led Government is looking at the kind of restrictive measures that would have got the Tighty Righties crying "OMG Fascist Nanny Statism" a few years ago, for example making it harder for young people to buy knives and alcohol.
What strikes me as short-sighted about this kind of thing is that it looks solely at the How, rather than thinking about the Why. Why do some people walk around with knives in their pockets? Why do some New Zealanders drink until they pass out, every weekend?
If we spent some money, even taxpayers' money (which I understand is convertable on a $1NZ=$1NZ basis), on finding out why these things happen then we would surely be better placed to make effective restrictions, if necessary, that actually delivered results. Given that there are academics and indeed Government bodies that have already done some of the work, maybe those could be dragged out from The Place Where Well-researched And Informed Analysis That Disagrees With Current Govt Thinking Goes To Rot.
We might even find that the answers to these societal problems lay not in restricting access to the objects that we see as the convenient cause of the problems but instead in addressing the behaviours that lead to stabbing other people or binge-drinking. Stuff like anger management, feeling disempowered and isolated, emulating poor behaviour in role models, poverty, and lacking effective communication skills.
But looking at Why is a much longer term project than a 3 year parliamentary term allows for. So we remain stuck tinkering with the How.
What strikes me as short-sighted about this kind of thing is that it looks solely at the How, rather than thinking about the Why. Why do some people walk around with knives in their pockets? Why do some New Zealanders drink until they pass out, every weekend?
If we spent some money, even taxpayers' money (which I understand is convertable on a $1NZ=$1NZ basis), on finding out why these things happen then we would surely be better placed to make effective restrictions, if necessary, that actually delivered results. Given that there are academics and indeed Government bodies that have already done some of the work, maybe those could be dragged out from The Place Where Well-researched And Informed Analysis That Disagrees With Current Govt Thinking Goes To Rot.
We might even find that the answers to these societal problems lay not in restricting access to the objects that we see as the convenient cause of the problems but instead in addressing the behaviours that lead to stabbing other people or binge-drinking. Stuff like anger management, feeling disempowered and isolated, emulating poor behaviour in role models, poverty, and lacking effective communication skills.
But looking at Why is a much longer term project than a 3 year parliamentary term allows for. So we remain stuck tinkering with the How.
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Diana Crossan in Papakura to talk about retirement savings
What: Why Should I Save for the Day I Retire? Talk by Diana Crossan, Retirement Commissioner
When: 7.30pm, Thursday 8th April
Where: Salvation Army Centre, 87 Clevedon Rd, Papakura
Message from the organisers:
Diana will inform you on what can and is making a difference as she speaks to New Zealanders in schools, tertiary institutions and the workplace also to those already retired. She is also being invited to take her message internationally. So don’t miss the chance to ask the questions you’d like answered while she visits our locality. Young or mature you can always improve your options, Come and find out.
Gold coin donation (to NCW for expenses). Light refreshments available after the presentation.
Organised by the Papakura/Franklin branch of the National Council of Women
When: 7.30pm, Thursday 8th April
Where: Salvation Army Centre, 87 Clevedon Rd, Papakura
Message from the organisers:
Diana will inform you on what can and is making a difference as she speaks to New Zealanders in schools, tertiary institutions and the workplace also to those already retired. She is also being invited to take her message internationally. So don’t miss the chance to ask the questions you’d like answered while she visits our locality. Young or mature you can always improve your options, Come and find out.
Gold coin donation (to NCW for expenses). Light refreshments available after the presentation.
Organised by the Papakura/Franklin branch of the National Council of Women
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Putting big holes in the safety net
One of the things that I like about the concept of a proper welfare state is the idea that no matter your circumstances if you need it you can get support from your government. Currently in New Zealand if you can't get/do paid work you can get a benefit, with the idea that plans and methods to turn that around will be available when practical. Personally I think the benefit levels are far too low, an injustice exacerbated by Ruth Richardson, Jim Bolger, Jenny Shipley et al in the early 1990s and never re-dressed since. But that's an issue for another post.
On Tuesday when he opened Parliament for the year, our Prime Minister, Mr John Key, mentioned some significant changes to the benefit system that his Government intends to make in 2010. And they look to me like opening up some very significant holes in the safety net approach we've historically had to welfare.
If these changes do go through then there will be people out there, perhaps people like you and me, perhaps even you or me, who cannot access any financial support whatsoever from our government in times of difficulty.
Here's thenice, friendly, beneficiary cuddling awful, mean (in both senses of the word), beneficiary bashing bit that honestly scares me:
I couldn't do paid work for three years, through no fault of my own. And even if it had been my fault, even if I had screwed up big time, wouldn't you, as a fellow human being, rather I had enough funding to feed and clothe myself, to keep myself in decent housing, to provide for my child, than have nothing at all? Because it could be any of us, anytime, and we should never forget that.
And that's why what our Government is planning to do is so wrong. It is a total and utter failure of compassion; it reflects a world view that blames those in a bad place for it and actually seeks vengeance against them for it by withholding support when it could be given.
You don't have to be religious to see that this is immoral. And I don't know if we can stop it.
On Tuesday when he opened Parliament for the year, our Prime Minister, Mr John Key, mentioned some significant changes to the benefit system that his Government intends to make in 2010. And they look to me like opening up some very significant holes in the safety net approach we've historically had to welfare.
If these changes do go through then there will be people out there, perhaps people like you and me, perhaps even you or me, who cannot access any financial support whatsoever from our government in times of difficulty.
Here's the
Although Ms Bennett said final decisions had still not been signed off by Cabinet, this is expected to mean implementing National's election promise to make unemployed people reapply for the dole after a year and "do what it takes to secure employment"."This may include practical training, attending a basic skills course or attending drug and alcohol rehabilitation," the policy said.
"After that, they will be required to actively look for a job, to go to any job interview they are referred to, and to accept any offer of suitable employment, whether fulltime, part-time, temporary or seasonal.
"If they do not comply with these obligations, they will have their benefit reduced in the first instance, then suspended and then cancelled." [my emphasis]
This is freaky stuff. This is leaving people out there potentially with nothing if they don't accept whatever is offered.
And this is a Bad Employer's field day - accept my awful pay offer, doing work you would hate and which would destroy you, and put up with my sexual harassment, or no more dole for you. Oh and by the way, I can fire you within 90 Days for no reason at all and then you're even more poked.
I couldn't do paid work for three years, through no fault of my own. And even if it had been my fault, even if I had screwed up big time, wouldn't you, as a fellow human being, rather I had enough funding to feed and clothe myself, to keep myself in decent housing, to provide for my child, than have nothing at all? Because it could be any of us, anytime, and we should never forget that.
And that's why what our Government is planning to do is so wrong. It is a total and utter failure of compassion; it reflects a world view that blames those in a bad place for it and actually seeks vengeance against them for it by withholding support when it could be given.
You don't have to be religious to see that this is immoral. And I don't know if we can stop it.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
ACC march next week in Welly
What: ACC march and rally
When: 12noon - 2pm, Tuesday 16 February
Where: Parliament, Wellington
Spiel from the organisers:
ACC is not just about people who have car accidents or get their necks badly crunched at rugby. It covers all sorts of accidents, including those that happen in the workplace and as a result of crimes. The system may not have been perfect as it was two years ago, but it was better than it is now, and far better than where it seems the Government wants to take it next. If you are in Wellington on the 16th, and able to attend, you'll be standing up for something important. Best wishes to the organisers for good weather and a big crowd.
When: 12noon - 2pm, Tuesday 16 February
Where: Parliament, Wellington
Spiel from the organisers:
One of the most infuriating actions of the Government during 2009 was its attack on New Zealand's priceless accident compensation scheme. A sustained campaign of misinformation and questionable accounting culminated in the ACC Bill which will pave the way for privatisation of the scheme. This will be the death knell for universal no-fault accident compensation. If the Government succeeds in destroying ACC it will be back to exorbitant private insurance and wasteful legal action.One of the odious components of the changes so far has been the treatment of "sensitive" claims, i.e sexual abuse, rape, that kind of thing. We've written a fair bit about this in the past (you'll have to scroll down a little, for some reason the first few posts are totally not about ACC).
Help put a stop to the destruction of one of New Zealand's most vital public assets by turning out at the rally at Parliament on 16 February. Unions, health practitioners, claimants' organisations and ordinary people will be out in force to show the Government that we are totally against the unjustified attack on ACC and the programme of unjust cuts to entitlements. And we will be joined once again by the bikers who took 9,000 people to Parliament in November. They are coming back because they know it's about more than just levies, and because nobody is fooled by the predictable ‘concession' of reducing the planned increase to motorbike charges.
This is the time to show the Government with a big turnout that New Zealand doesn't want to see ACC dismantled and sold off to Australian insurance companies. If you can't go yourself, get your family and friends to go along because the Government's cuts will affect them too. ACC is for all Kiwis. Let's keep it that way.
For more information on how the Government is trying to discredit and dismantle ACC go to fairness.org.nz/ACC .
ACC is not just about people who have car accidents or get their necks badly crunched at rugby. It covers all sorts of accidents, including those that happen in the workplace and as a result of crimes. The system may not have been perfect as it was two years ago, but it was better than it is now, and far better than where it seems the Government wants to take it next. If you are in Wellington on the 16th, and able to attend, you'll be standing up for something important. Best wishes to the organisers for good weather and a big crowd.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Bullies and how people enable them
I don't like bullies. I don't like adults who threaten and yell and generally throw their toys to try and get their own way, who belittle others to wield power over them, particularly when it is their default setting in life to operate that way. I guess that's one of the reasons Paul Henry's behaviour bothers me so.
The big problem with bullies is always how to deal with them effectively. When I'm talking to someone else about how to deal with a bully the first step I always suggest is to get together with anyone else who is being bullied, or who may not support the bully. Bullying works on the basis of isolating victims from each other, encouraging people to keep their heads down so that they will avoid the unwelcome attentions of the bullies. If you can overcome the isolation you are halfway to winning. At least you can bitch about the bully with someone else, and acknowledge between you that it is bullying, and take a bit of the power back.
Personally I'm a big fan of naming stuff what it is. I remember pointing out to someone once that they were trying (somewhat ineffectually) to bully me. She was outraged and proceeded to prove that she was not bullying by standing between me and the door, in a small space, hectoring me with her finger, leaning over me and yelling. I believe there may have been spittle. Major not-bullying FAIL.
Right now I have a problem with a bully, and it's got me musing on the theme.
I should start by saying this is not a work-related issue. It's not my workplace and it's not anyone else's either.
The Bully has a long long history of this behaviour. She goes straight to the Yelling Place, and I have literally had to hold the phone away from my ear more than once. She once wrote another target of her bullying a twenty page letter outlining all the times she had been sinned against by this person. Who has time to write a twenty page letter about anything, unless they're being paid to write it, or maybe it's about love. Or like your first novel or something. Anyway, the point is that twenty pages of hate is pretty hard to sustain, for most people.
The Bully in this case has basically burnt off almost everyone else. There's one person staunchly in her corner, two people pretending this is all Someone Else's Problem,* and then me and one other who reckon the bullying sucks. So we have one Bully, one Bully-supporter, two Bully-enablers (by refusing to take any responsibility and looking away), and two Bully opposers. For those yet to be rescued by National's Crusade For (Literacy &) Numeracy, that's four versus two. Not looking good for the Bullying Must Stop camp.
And there is one other person in this equation too, who is in a leadership role, and it's their special brand of enabling that is really getting to me.
To my way of thinking leaders, whatever their actual title, have an obligation to ensure the good running of whatever group they lead. Implicit in that should be to deal with any bullying amongst the group. But too often leaders too get bullied, and to make it worse they don't see that's what's going on, because then they'd have to do something. So they pretend, to themselves and everyone else, that they are just being neutral and rising above a spat between those they lead.
This approach solves precisely Nothing.
It undeniably hard for leaders to deal with bullying, especially when they too are suffering from the Bully's activities. It's even harder when a leader is in denial, and just avoiding confronting the Bully about anything, even when the Bully does stuff that really is beyond acceptable. Contact the Bully makes with the leader only serves to reinforce the Bully's view that they are in the right, because the leader says soothing things to avoid being bullied themselves. Stuff like "of course I can see that you are both coming to this with Good Intentions and think you are doing the right thing" and "it's my role to remain neutral and not get involved in disagreement between you people down there."
So what do you do about a leader who abdicates their responsibility in this crucial area? Who is okay with giving power up to the Bully rather than confront behaviour that is unacceptable and should be dealt with?
Today I'm at a loss.
* Props to the irreplaceable Douglas Noel Adams.
The big problem with bullies is always how to deal with them effectively. When I'm talking to someone else about how to deal with a bully the first step I always suggest is to get together with anyone else who is being bullied, or who may not support the bully. Bullying works on the basis of isolating victims from each other, encouraging people to keep their heads down so that they will avoid the unwelcome attentions of the bullies. If you can overcome the isolation you are halfway to winning. At least you can bitch about the bully with someone else, and acknowledge between you that it is bullying, and take a bit of the power back.
Personally I'm a big fan of naming stuff what it is. I remember pointing out to someone once that they were trying (somewhat ineffectually) to bully me. She was outraged and proceeded to prove that she was not bullying by standing between me and the door, in a small space, hectoring me with her finger, leaning over me and yelling. I believe there may have been spittle. Major not-bullying FAIL.
Right now I have a problem with a bully, and it's got me musing on the theme.
I should start by saying this is not a work-related issue. It's not my workplace and it's not anyone else's either.
The Bully has a long long history of this behaviour. She goes straight to the Yelling Place, and I have literally had to hold the phone away from my ear more than once. She once wrote another target of her bullying a twenty page letter outlining all the times she had been sinned against by this person. Who has time to write a twenty page letter about anything, unless they're being paid to write it, or maybe it's about love. Or like your first novel or something. Anyway, the point is that twenty pages of hate is pretty hard to sustain, for most people.
The Bully in this case has basically burnt off almost everyone else. There's one person staunchly in her corner, two people pretending this is all Someone Else's Problem,* and then me and one other who reckon the bullying sucks. So we have one Bully, one Bully-supporter, two Bully-enablers (by refusing to take any responsibility and looking away), and two Bully opposers. For those yet to be rescued by National's Crusade For (Literacy &) Numeracy, that's four versus two. Not looking good for the Bullying Must Stop camp.
And there is one other person in this equation too, who is in a leadership role, and it's their special brand of enabling that is really getting to me.
To my way of thinking leaders, whatever their actual title, have an obligation to ensure the good running of whatever group they lead. Implicit in that should be to deal with any bullying amongst the group. But too often leaders too get bullied, and to make it worse they don't see that's what's going on, because then they'd have to do something. So they pretend, to themselves and everyone else, that they are just being neutral and rising above a spat between those they lead.
This approach solves precisely Nothing.
It undeniably hard for leaders to deal with bullying, especially when they too are suffering from the Bully's activities. It's even harder when a leader is in denial, and just avoiding confronting the Bully about anything, even when the Bully does stuff that really is beyond acceptable. Contact the Bully makes with the leader only serves to reinforce the Bully's view that they are in the right, because the leader says soothing things to avoid being bullied themselves. Stuff like "of course I can see that you are both coming to this with Good Intentions and think you are doing the right thing" and "it's my role to remain neutral and not get involved in disagreement between you people down there."
So what do you do about a leader who abdicates their responsibility in this crucial area? Who is okay with giving power up to the Bully rather than confront behaviour that is unacceptable and should be dealt with?
Today I'm at a loss.
* Props to the irreplaceable Douglas Noel Adams.
Monday, 23 November 2009
social connectedness vs social justice
i was at an interesting talk on sunday by a manager of mental health services*. he talked about social connectedness and it's effect on well-being. he referred to the MSD's 2009 social report, which defines social connectedness [pdf] as "the relationship people have with others". it goes on to say:
Relationships give people support, happiness, contentment and a sense they belong and have a role to play in society. They also mean people have support networks in place they can call on for help during hard times...
Several studies have demonstrated links between social connectedness and the performance of the economy and positive outcomes for individual health and wellbeing.
Social connectedness is fostered when family relationships are positive, and when people have the skills and opportunities to make friends and to interact constructively with others. Good health, employment, and feeling safe and secure all increase people’s chances of developing positive relationships.
the speaker mentioned that well-being actually leads to good health, then went on to talk about aspects around social connectedness. one example he gave was of the roseto effect, which is basically the study of an isolated but close-knit community in america that had much better health stats than the average even though lifestyle factors such as employment, diet and exercise were pretty much the same as everyone else. the factors that explained this unusual health outcome were said to be communal rituals, social support and cohesion, shared values, a common aim, family meals, and a lack of uncertainty.
there was plenty more to the talk (including a mention of the roots of empathy thing), and it was really interesting. but the thing that struck me most is that, as an activist, the one thing you do is go against prevailing values and customs. because your views or your activities are designed to change the status quo, you often face hostility and lose that social connectedness. which, according to the above, will have negative consequences on your well-being and general health.
i did ask the speaker about this, and how to deal with it. i wasn't entirely satisfied with his answer, though it was pretty good. he said something along the lines of treating the people you want to change with respect, recognising that you yourself are not perfect just as they are not perfect. that i agree with, in the sense that i always think you kill more flies with honey ie i prefer to bring people along incrementally than to be confrontational and challenging. having an inherent respect for the people you're interacting with will always show in the way you behave and the words you choose, and is more likely to get them listening.
but. often the change that is required of people will mean that they are potentially less well-off, at least in the short term. in being an activist, you are actually challenging the power structures of society and seeking to change them. those who currently have the power aren't likely to give it up easily, no matter how polite and respectful you might be.
there are times when activism has to be direct and confrontational, when someone has to go out on a limb to stand up for their cause because progress just isn't being made. a relevant example for here is the suffragettes, many of whom suffered and were ostracised but without whom women in some countries would not have been able to vote.
it seems to me that social justice is more important than social connectedness. that there is no point in having personal wellbeing when there are people around you who are suffering and need help. when that help can only be effectively delivered through institutional and structural changes in society, then i think we have a moral duty to go out on a limb and challenge the shared values that allow marginalisation to exist. even at the cost of social-connectedness, although we can always hope that there will be other people who agree with us and can provide us with some positive connections.
*i haven't got permission to use his name, so the speaker will remain anonymous. would love to attribute though, as i was certainly impressed.
Relationships give people support, happiness, contentment and a sense they belong and have a role to play in society. They also mean people have support networks in place they can call on for help during hard times...
Several studies have demonstrated links between social connectedness and the performance of the economy and positive outcomes for individual health and wellbeing.
Social connectedness is fostered when family relationships are positive, and when people have the skills and opportunities to make friends and to interact constructively with others. Good health, employment, and feeling safe and secure all increase people’s chances of developing positive relationships.
the speaker mentioned that well-being actually leads to good health, then went on to talk about aspects around social connectedness. one example he gave was of the roseto effect, which is basically the study of an isolated but close-knit community in america that had much better health stats than the average even though lifestyle factors such as employment, diet and exercise were pretty much the same as everyone else. the factors that explained this unusual health outcome were said to be communal rituals, social support and cohesion, shared values, a common aim, family meals, and a lack of uncertainty.
there was plenty more to the talk (including a mention of the roots of empathy thing), and it was really interesting. but the thing that struck me most is that, as an activist, the one thing you do is go against prevailing values and customs. because your views or your activities are designed to change the status quo, you often face hostility and lose that social connectedness. which, according to the above, will have negative consequences on your well-being and general health.
i did ask the speaker about this, and how to deal with it. i wasn't entirely satisfied with his answer, though it was pretty good. he said something along the lines of treating the people you want to change with respect, recognising that you yourself are not perfect just as they are not perfect. that i agree with, in the sense that i always think you kill more flies with honey ie i prefer to bring people along incrementally than to be confrontational and challenging. having an inherent respect for the people you're interacting with will always show in the way you behave and the words you choose, and is more likely to get them listening.
but. often the change that is required of people will mean that they are potentially less well-off, at least in the short term. in being an activist, you are actually challenging the power structures of society and seeking to change them. those who currently have the power aren't likely to give it up easily, no matter how polite and respectful you might be.
there are times when activism has to be direct and confrontational, when someone has to go out on a limb to stand up for their cause because progress just isn't being made. a relevant example for here is the suffragettes, many of whom suffered and were ostracised but without whom women in some countries would not have been able to vote.
it seems to me that social justice is more important than social connectedness. that there is no point in having personal wellbeing when there are people around you who are suffering and need help. when that help can only be effectively delivered through institutional and structural changes in society, then i think we have a moral duty to go out on a limb and challenge the shared values that allow marginalisation to exist. even at the cost of social-connectedness, although we can always hope that there will be other people who agree with us and can provide us with some positive connections.
*i haven't got permission to use his name, so the speaker will remain anonymous. would love to attribute though, as i was certainly impressed.
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