Posts by Hilary Stace
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Hard News: Media Take: The selling of…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Hutt South was a hard seat for Labour to win after the latest boundary changes. Ginny Andersen ran a great campaign and she could win it next time. I heard different things to you about what was happening on the ground. So I was not surprised that the hijacker of the Hutt Chamber of Commerce's Twitter account, which supported Chris Bishop and attacked Jacinda, turned out to be friend of his.
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Hard News: Media Take: The selling of…, in reply to mpledger,
Thank you Mrs Pledger. I should no longer be surprised at the lack of self-reflection or understanding of those not like them, by many on the political right. Eugenics is about the 'fit' and the 'unfit'. It is also about power and oppression and who gets to hand out those labels and who gets given them. That runners ad is such a good visual representation of these assumptions.
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Hard News: Media Take: The selling of…, in reply to Glenn Jameson,
The runners ad was an obvious representation of Social Darwinism. A monochromatic group of the 'fit' run past and knock over a group of diverse and multi-coloured people who are tied up and thus disabled by society. The fit (or privileged) run on, the disabled (the 'other') fall over and are left behind.
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Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the Special…, in reply to Emma Hart,
I wonder if this is also because the local Labour electorate MP is often known for doing a good job helping constituents. For example, Grant Robertson has a busy central Wellington office with very helpful staff and it is also easy to get an appointment to see him if you want to. There have been local list MPs who have had electorate offices in this area but their offices never seemed very busy. My friend who lives in an area with a National MP says you can see the MP's secretary if you make an appointment but it is impossible to see the MP himself.
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Just heard from a friend whose non-verbal adult daughter was not allowed to vote because she couldn't say her name.Mother too tired to fight. She has voted until now. The Easyvote card used to be sufficient.
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Access: Disabled floater voters 3:…, in reply to ,
It never said they were the same. Just that students with these conditions needed extra support. Some submissions covered one condition such as dyslexia or autism and some covered the support that students needed more generally.
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The select committee inquiry into dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism etc has taken up a lot of time in the last parliamentary term. Green MP Catherine Delahunty cleverly persuaded the committee to undertake this inquiry (despite its National Party majority) with the support of Judith Collins who was briefly on the committee and knows a bit about the issues. Hundreds of people made written and oral submissions including some powerful ones from students themselves. Eventually a long report came out with some weakish recommendations. However, so frustrated were Catherine and Chris Hipkins and Tracey Martin (two other opposition members on the committee) that they wrote their own minority report with several more and tougher recommendations. The point of all this is that the Greens, Labour and NZFirst have shown they can work very well together on inclusive education during this last term and they all have very good party policies. My favourite is the Greens in that it specifies inclusion in school camp as a marker of inclusion. All the inclusive education policies are on the party websites and are very detailed. Much better than last election.
National's on the other hand is heavily tied to its policy of social investment so only some mysteriously targetted (for predictive risk) kids in compliant schools will benefit from new funding.
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I’ve seen a few references to this informative post in recent days.
Who would have thought that the kauri would come back and bite in the last week of an election campaign? Ironically, also with a strange link to the Minister charged with fronting and sorting the mess.
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Of high importance is changing the culture of Work and Income so it becomes a helpful organisation not a punitive one. Labour and Greens have both promised action on this. Quite a complex issue but leadership from the top (ie the Government itself) would be a good start.
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Some useful analysis of that landlords' poll by Thomas Lumley https://www.statschat.org.nz/2017/09/17/polls-that-arent-any-use/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StatsChat+%28Stats+Chat%29