Hard News: Dear John
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That Invalids' Benefit thing cuts very close to home for my family, and I'm all the more furious because of it. My younger brother is legally blind - qualifies for a cane, member of the Blind Foundation, etc - but is actually partially-sighted. It's very partial, to be sure, but still enough to be useful. He gets the IB, as is his right. His experience with trying to get work is that employers don't want to try and accommodate someone who needs little more than a large computer monitor, so that he can run it at a usable resolution without losing all the real estate. He's a competent typist, a qualified computer technician, and very task-focussed. So far he's managed to get precisely one job from all his looking: WinTec employed him part-time for 18 months as a course administrator. Unfortunately they restructured and the position was abolished, so he's back to trying to find a job. Funnily enough, not happening.
Until employers are routinely prosecuted for discrimination against the disabled, invalids aren't going anywhere. No amount of "encouragement" from WINZ can get them jobs that aren't being offered. Of course, I can't see National tackling that particular problem, either. Easier just to bash the beneficiaries than to try and beat sense into employers.
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if you squint hard enough you cant even tell the difference between key and goff. policies be damned, image is everything. hopefully they're grooming another helen in the wings except hopefully hotter, taller and with nicer teeth. gotta make key seem like a bully beating up on a vulnerable woman in the next election....irection
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dubmugga:
I know I'd get a full body poo facial if I cross-posted this on Kiwibog and The Sub-Standard, but yeah... we have one party (Labour) that's slightly left of centre, and another (National) that's slightly right of centre. And even the Greens and ACT aren't as extreme as the wingnut-o-sphere would have us believe.
That's not such a bad thing.
*runs for the nearest fire exit, while pulling on body armour*
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Which ones would the government order should be handed over to a trust? How do you define a "news magazine"? Will we have a special government panel that defines what "news" is? Will the government then decree how editorial websites may operate?
The idea I've been mulling around would be akin to giving the word "newspaper" a legal meaning. You can't just set up your shingle and declare yourself a university in this country, the word has a meaning in law. What if you were to do something similar to the word newspaper, or news magazine or whatever? The administration of qualifying for the title of newspaper would be self governing or via a non-government standards body. You can still publish what you like, only if you want to call yourself a newspaper you have to meet the criteria.
The most avowedly right-wing newspaper in the country, the NBR, is privately-owned.
You seem to be making assumptions that such changes would be designed primarily to deliver bias that I can live with, but they are not. they designed to bring the focus back to the important democratic function of the news media. As you've noted, if you want bias we can just stick with the status quo. I don't care if the Herald is the mouthpiece of the Remuera elite. What bothers me is there isn't an Auckland Star to bring another POV to the citizen. The news media is quick to arrogate to itself the privileges of their freedoms, but it seems they are seldom interested in their responsibilities in the modern democratic state, which I doubt can actually function in the long run without a strong and responsible media. The whole point of media ownership laws is to ensure they perform their function at all, not tell them what to say or do.
WRT the Australians who own our newspapers, would you be proposing forcible sale to local interests? I'm sure Barry Colman would be pleased to enter such a buyer's market.
When the government changes the regulatory environment people are always forced to do a whole lot of things. There was precious little sympathy for farmers when subsidies were removed, and if GST goes up I doubt the media will cry to many tears for those living on fixed incomes. What makes the media so special on that front? And besides, if the only allowable ownership model precluded being run as a foreign owned profit making business would Mr. Coleman still be interested?
As for a financial Quisling like Ron Brierley - I imagine he would laugh at the quaint idea of labelling him from anywhere other than Globalmoneystan.
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That Invalids' Benefit thing cuts very close to home for my family
Seriously. If they try to make a certain member of my family work any more than the part-time job he has, we may as well kiss his hard-won ten-year sobriety goodbye. He just couldn't mentally handle full time work. To say nothing of his two chronic, painful medical conditions and the lingering traumatic effects of a serious head injury. There's absolutely no way.
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Paul (and anyone else)
I don't have a big dislike for the Australian (bit of jest earlier). I must however mention after living there for 11 years + I did find more and more that the "she'll be right attitude" of so many of my friends and colleagues was wearing thin.It was this same complacency (PAS always excluded) that is shown time and time again on the news and stuff like the targeting of the Invalids benefit was the next piece to be rolled off at human expense. This balance sheet approach to the sick and in many invalids case, dying is abhorrent. NZ is not one big business, it is one small country. The sooner we New Zealanders all realise that we are in this together the better off we can all be.So every time we see the government baying for the blood of the needy, I will call it. -
However, I'm confident the decision wasn't about driver reluctance to go an extra 3kms as Roughan swallowed.
Yup that's not likely to be the only factor. It might be a contributing factor though.
Either way are about the same overall distance, especially if you are going west along the motorway rather than doubling back east towards the CBD. It is designed as a ring route, after all.
I guess if you write off the cost of anyone using as an 'alternate route' from the city, then there's no real driving factor of any kind about where it should connect up. Why stop at Rosebank? It could follow Gt North Rd and connect at Te Atatu, linking most of the Western Districts more tightly to the motorway network.
My objection to the connection being at Patiki Rd is that basically it's in the middle of nowhere...you really should put the nexuses near to where people are.
But it's academic...the route it's going to take is to Waterview, and the only question is how. I wanted a tunnel. Pretty much everyone in the area wanted a tunnel. The only people who didn't want a tunnel are people who don't live in Auckland, because they didn't want to pay for it, and don't care a stuff who loses their home or what heritage is destroyed in the process of making yet another ugly motorway through the middle of the suburbs.
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What bothers me is there isn't an Auckland Star to bring another POV to the citizen. The news media is quick to arrogate to itself the privileges of their freedoms, but it seems they are seldom interested in their responsibilities in the modern democratic state, which I doubt can actually function in the long run without a strong and responsible media. The whole point of media ownership laws is to ensure they perform their function at all, not tell them what to say or do.
There's hope yet. One less prolefeed rag corrupting the populace.
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