Posts by Lucy Stewart
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I know it's distinctly unfashionable on PAS to not bag organised religion at every turn, but there's a saying involving babies and bath-water that springs to mind when people start agitating to remove the tax exemption on churches because they see the likes of Scientology and Pope Brian.
I have no problem with churches having tax-exempt status for income that goes to charitable activity, or charities in general having tax-exempt status. I just think that to get it, churches' books should be open, and it should be restricted to actually charitable activity - i.e. education, feeding people, that sort of thing. Promotion of religion or paying clergy? Not in and of itself charitable. At the least, the money used to pay the clergy should be subject to income tax, it if isn't currently. After all, they're making a living off it. Social workers don't get off income tax because they're doing a community good.
As it stands, the system is open to a lot of abuse. Of course if more stringent standards were in place people would find ways to get around them - list people as being employed to do direct charity when in fact that's only a small proportion of their time, etc - but it'd be better than it is now.
Pope Brian, on the other hand, waves the stick of hellfire and damnation if his followers don't hang off his every word.
And you really can't underestimate the amount of peer pressure and public shame used to get people - often those with little disposable income - to tithe, and behave, "properly". I've seen what happens when people try to leave that sort of group; it's ugly. Nothing about that sort of pressure on people is worth any sort of respect.
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I was really disappointed by Campbell's interview with the Destiny guy last week - he clearly hadn't done his homework, and made some charitable assumptions about the church (e.g. that they have open membership) which allowed the guy to avoid answering anything.
But, honestly, the fact that religious groups get away from tax on the presumption that all religious activity is charitable is the real issue that needs to be addressed. Pity no-one will touch it.
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Here in Auckland, I'm in a gentrifying suburb, yet there have been some marginal characters over the years in the Housing NZ properties in our cul de sac, and we're only five minutes away from McGehan Close, the Mt Albert street that John Key labelled a "street of shame" before performing his political adoption of a 12 year-old girl (the irony being that until he was whisked in for his triumphant visit to the street, he thought it was in South Auckland).
So it's, er, different ...
That different, really? Right now I live in a small flat in Bryndwr; we're about five minutes from the snobbishly rich part of Fendalton and equally close to Aorangi School and a bunch of state houses. There are more borders than some places, but there's an awful lot of mingling along the edges.
Can't we go back to shaking our heads at Michael Laws?
Discrimination against the poor is open and acceptable in New Zealand.
I saw his latest outburst this morning, and half of me just sighed, because it's such typical Laws attention-whoring it's hardly worth the outrage.
And then I thought: hold on, when he talkes about sterilising beneficaries because their children never amount to anything? He's talking about people like my mother-in-law. He's talking about people like my partner, who according to Laws shouldn't have been born because he's incapable of achieving, e.g., the Masters' thesis he's starting next week.* He's saying this horrific shit and the media are enabling him, have been enabling him for *years*, to the point where we sigh because it's just Michael Laws again.
George has it exactly right.
*To be fair, though, it's in the impractical and dole-attracting field of computer security, rather than medicine or brain surgery like everyone who wants to overcome their shameful past of poverty needs to study.
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I note with some irony that Whitehead was educated at a time when Universities had substantially smaller class sizes, perhaps he would like to see what large class sizes have done to University education ?
Oooooh, don't even get me started on uni class sizes. They've instituted a minimum enrolment of 100 for first-year courses here, with some very grudging exceptions for things like Fine Arts and languages. It has resulted in some excellent courses being dropped after one year because they "only" got 80 or 90 students. Fuckers.
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I’ve certainly never heard that take on the story before.
If you want a failure of journalism, that's it right there.
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while that's true as far as it goes, it's also true that people who lower their voices and speak in the honeyed tones of civility are more likely to be listened to by people whose esteem is worth spit
Well, pretty much. I don't actually disagree that the whole thing is a storm in an extremely small teacup. I just thought your assertions re: Labour Party financial policy were a pointless non sequitur.
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Oh, I'm sorry Lucy. I guess I've missed what the Labour Party's finance spokesman has had to say on matters economic today. Far too busy pissing his pants over a party political broadcast that only exists in his imagination.
I was hoping we could separate disscussion over the validity of this from tasteless irrelevancies, but whatever. Tone successfully lowered.
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I'll be intrigued to see whether David Cunliffe -- and his party -- have any actual economic policy or ideas beyond "Bill English sucks donkey dick." Stranger things have happened...
As much as your party has ideas beyond satanic worship of the Free Market, how does that work for you?
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The unsayable thing is that the endless power of the Jewish community, whose spokespeople walk caroeted corridors of the corporate world not the mean streets) to maintain the outrage rings bells on newsdesks.
Aaaaaaaand that's a bingo right there.
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Families First's Bob McCoskrie said the images were "not a good look". "Teachers are role models and having a teacher linked with Penthouse is taking things too far," McCoskrie said.
Since I'm fairly certain that McCroskie - sorry, Family First - takes the position that children shouldn't be allowed on the same continent as Penthouse, one has to wonder how this is supposed to damage the teacher's role model status.