Posts by Marc C
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Hard News: Crowded houses, in reply to Sacha,
Those that would apply for such temporary emergency accommodation must surely have been told, but of course, when they face the reality of otherwise having to sleep in the rain and cold, what "choice" would they have, so sign at the bottom, and the contract is done.
I am sure that most in the public, most voters and potential voters, who would never be faced with such emergencies, would not have a clue this was going on.
That is why more should perhaps end up facing the same, so they "learn".
I could survive a housing bubble burst and economic crash, I have learned to live the tough life, which perhaps some pampered middle class people in warm and insulated homes may need to get used to not too far in the future.
When the jobs go, the economy tanks or worse, when it all comes crashing down, the consequences will be dire for many. But as usual, most will fend for themselves, and fight for survival, the pecking order will be maintained and the status quo will somehow be maintained, even if this necessitates the army needing to be called in to ensure "order".
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Paula Bennett, pulling the wool over our eyes and faces:
"Emergency housing beds gave 'false hope"
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11640573
The Budget 2016 will have to be carefully dissected by the opposition, as it will again show, that most will be nothing more than rearranging the deck-chairs, by robbing Peter to pay Paul, and things like that.
Sadly most MSM are too busy with the snippets thrown around in the 24 hour news cycle, and the need to present endless click bait, the NZ Herald website and its contents have never been worse when it comes to quality, I just noticed with disgust.
Where will it all end, a dictatorship, where those at the top that pull the strings can manipulate all into such degrees of stupidity, ignorance and indifference, that society needs to collapse first, before we get a change of government?
The fact that probably not dozens but hundreds sleep in cars, in sheds or even in the open, not able to afford accommodation, that is a scandal, but what would have once led to protests and public rage, seems to go on much unnoticed, until someone suddenly stumbles over it, and thinks, hmm, this is not quite right, is it?
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Quoted from above: "What made it worse was that in her interview Paula Bennett did find someone to blame: existing state house tenants.
"We've had decades of people thinking it's a home for life," she said.
So people who aren't rushing to leave their fixed rents in favour of a private rental market that's getting out of control are the villains? That was a low thing for the Minister for Social Housing to say."
I have been following all these reports with some great interest. A few years back I helped someone into a Housing NZ home, that was before the Nat led government actually changed the settings and rules for being entitled to get into a Housing NZ home, by basically throwing all those on the earlier category C and D priority lists off the list of people considered for state or social housing support. And of the remaining categories A and B, those that were not meeting the now only true high priority and access enabling category A, that means category B persons, are simply "assisted" to find housing on the private market.
Thousands were thus quietly thrown off a list, or remained on an "obsolete" list, that nobody even looks at anymore. I was myself category C, so no chance for any Housing NZ home, hence putting up with private rental.
The person I helped faced an extremely difficult uphill battle then, and as I have learned, it is much, much worse now, near impossible to get into any Housing NZ home.
That accommodation supplement paid by WINZ for people in private rentals is a max of $ 145 per week for Auckland and lower for Wellington and other regions. It never covers more than half or even just a third of actual rental costs. It has not been inflation adjusted for donkey's years. When the bastards at the top talk about increasing benefits each year, that is inflation adjustments, they only talk about the main benefit, that is just over $ 200 per week for a Jobseeker benefit, which is adjusted. Most need accommodation supplement, temporary additional support, perhaps disability allowance and special needs grants to make ends meet.
So all the additional supports have, perhaps with the exception of the disability allowance, NOT been increased for years, they are not inflation adjusted. The annual increase for most is just a few dollars, and as there are other thresholds for maximum entitlements, some do after the inflation adjustment for the main benefit suddenly find the disability allowance being cut by a few dollars, as the adjustment put them above that secret "threshold". That is what goes on, and with special needs for say dental treatment, you only get $ 300 maximum per annum that is not recoverable, anything costing more is repayable, from a very basic benefit, that is meant to cover your very, very basic needs as it is.
I am not surprised that many do at present have to repay the costs for emergency housing in motels and so. The system has been so designed that being on a benefit is only meant to be "temporary". That stuffs up most that are sick and disabled, because when they have their own clothes, furniture, and so, it will get used, get old, break down and needs replacement, which again can only be done by way of special needs grants, which are then repayable, thus WINZ are actually themselves pushing people into debt.
This is what goes on, has been going on for years, and thanks so much for John Campbell today, to show us more of the crimes committed by a shit government, a criminal government, that does not care, and whose Minister's words are either blatant lies or hollow nonsensical, alienated lecturing and misinformation.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/304200/eight-week-old-baby-among-hundreds-homeless
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/304202/hnz-homes-sitting-idle-for-yearsAnd today's announcement by Phil Twyford, that Labour wants Auckland Council to get rid of the Metropolitan Urban Limit, which under the new Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan is anyway supposed to be replaced by a Rural Urban Boundary, shows that not only the government is running out of answers and sensible solution, the opposition has joined the government is flip floping and rushed, panicked actions and decisions, basically admitting, they have lost control of it all.
While all this goes wild, nobody dares to challenge the government, to put immigration on hold, by upping the requirements under the points system, or other measures, and by only letting urgently needed, skilled people in, that have qualifications on the priority skills list. The elephant in the room is ignored, and Auckland will prepare for more sprawl plus intensification, welcome New Zealand's version of "Los Angeles Plus 2016".
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RNZ’s Media Watch made mention of this 60 minutes video (referred to above) from 2012 as well. Here is the audio from 15 May, where the Panama Papers and how the media reported on them are discussed from 18.50 on in this track:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/201800763/mediawatch-for-15-may-2016The formerly accessible online video is discussed from 25.25 min/secs on.
So it seems, for most in the MSM this topic ‘Panama Papers’ has now been dealt with and is no longer of much interest. Thanks to lack of funding for investigative journalism, for never ending over commercialisation and resulting 24 hour news cycles allowing little attention to detail, Paul Henry, Mike Hosking and other leading “media personalities” seem to set the trend, and the rest follow.
There has been little reporting on the Panama Papers over recent days, Kiwis are told to “move on, there is nothing to see”, the Prime Minister said so (on ZB radio), do as your told, go back to work, shut up, switch your brain off and get on with it, is the message here. Yet in other parts of the world people seem to be taking the released information a bit more seriously:
http://www.dawn.com/news/1258710/nawaz-suggests-forming-joint-committee-to-probe-panama-leaks
http://www.theguardian.com/news/series/panama-papers
https://panamapapers.icij.org/
And besides of the BBC and some other overseas news channels, even CNBC considered it newsworthy to report on our PM's ejection from Parliament last week:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/11/new-zealand-pm-thrown-out-of-parliament-over-panama-papers.html -
Cracker: Breaking the Silence, in reply to linger,
I agree, and what you say proves, that we are being conned on a massive scale, with pseudo science, or at least selectively chosen "evidence based" reports, which have little value, despite of supposed peer reviews by the researchers' colleagues from a like minded school of thought.
Re "evaluation", I suppose they mean, comparing the job placement figures with those that they had on their books before, who were not getting such interventions. It is all just a cost focus that they have on this now, hence this fancy calculation of the prospective billions in welfare costs over persons' lifetime, that is the sum of them being on welfare support.
The medical and social science had to make way for the actuarial approach, the only "science" that counts for this government, it seems.
Honest and true scientists will detect the huge holes in this kind of "Swiss cheese" we have here. Holes where you can drive a truck through. Spin, misrepresentation, manipulation, intimidation, obfuscation and censorship, some from government ministers, some internal, from management, but also peer pressure, and we get what we have, going as far as Radio NZ considering abolishing a well respected science program.
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Cracker: Breaking the Silence, in reply to andin,
They (MSD and the government) claim that they are working with individuals based on their needs, and give them "wrap around services", which is actually nothing much more than "intensive case management", working along with individuals based on certain contracts of course.
I agree, the science is lacking, it is largely based on surveys and statistics, with limited value, as was proved before:
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/msd-and-dr-david-bratt-present-misleading-evidence-claiming-worklessness-causes-poor-health/Yet the Associate Minister was very defensive and denied any failures:
http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/business/qoa/51HansQ_20150917_00000008/8-welfare-reforms%E2%80%94mental-health-and-sole-parent-employmentAnd we are still now waiting for the evaluation report, which according to Jo Goodhew was supposed to be made available by end of last year, which never happened. Here are some of her not so true answers:
"Hon JO GOODHEW: As I have already said in my primary answer, the full mid-point evaluation is still being undertaken and is yet to be completed. What I do know is that the Government is not afraid to try some new approaches, and, therefore, in order to do so, we have to undertake the trials, let them get to the end of the time, and be evaluated properly."An evaluation was originally overdue by September, but was never presented (Hence Carmel Sepuloni's questions). What is this talk about "mid point evaluation", when the trials run out mid this year (2016) after having run for over two years now? Just more obfuscation and BS.
"Hon JO GOODHEW: These people are all voluntarily in these trials—the member has obviously missed that point—so we are not experimenting on them."
For Sole Parent beneficiaries there is nothing "voluntary" re such trials. For mental health sufferers, it is officially "voluntary", but there are other implied pressures they get, e.g. refusing to participate in any measures that assist in getting work ready may lead to sanctions, and refusing participation outright, will not be looked upon kindly.
Since these last major welfare reforms were introduced there has been very little info shared with media or even via OIA requests, and MSD have refrained from going on too much about the "science" behind it all. I wonder why, have they stuff to hide, is it not as "robust" as first thought? Bad news do often get swept under the carpet, and failed "evidence based" new policy is quietly discarded again, never mind the ones they experimented with:
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/mental-health-and-sole-parent-employment-services-msd-withholds-o-i-a-information-that-may-prove-their-trials-a-failure/
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/msds-selective-and-poor-responses-to-new-oia-requests-on-benefits-advisors-reports-mental-health-and-sole-parent-employment-services/ -
This is the kind of supposedly "evidence based" form of "science" the government loves to promote, spread by one Senior Health Advisor working for the government in MSD:
http://www.gpcme.co.nz/pdf/GP%20CME/Friday/C1%201515%20Bratt-Hawker.pdfTrying to influence GPs and other health professionals seems quite ok, by using selected scientific reports, written by researchers doing mostly "desk research" on other reports by others, and the report writers themselves admit that more research is needed.
http://orca.cf.ac.uk/3256/
http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_210440_en.pdf
https://www.tsoshop.co.uk/bookstore.asp?FO=1279028&DI=607598While there may be some truth in what this research presents, it seems rather easy to notice how it is so presented to serve certain ideologically driven politicians and governments who want to "reform" welfare and get people of benefits.
http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-az/from-the-british-welfare-state.html
"For six years from 2003, Unum Provident Insurance funded the former DWP Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Mansel Aylward, who retired from his role at the DWP to become the Director of the Unum Provident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University. During that time, Professor Aylward co-authored arguably the most damaging report in the history of British welfare as The Scientific & Conceptual Basis of Incapacity Benefits which was, effectively, a blueprint for the introduction of the WCA.[14]"
For years it was a major insurance company that funded this particular research by Aylward et al at the so-called UNUM Provident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University, but as controversy arose, the name UNUM was swiftly dropped from the Centre's name.
The increasing funding of science by private, vested interest holding funders is stuff to really worry about.
When Minister, Paula Bennett, was full of praise of this kind of research, talking personally with the "advisor" Aylward, Director of that Centre.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/speech-medical-professionals
"However UK research tells us that many of these people have what shouldbe manageable health problems."
"The focus for people with disabilities and long lasting conditions will be on their barriers to work not just their health, and we’ll be hands on, early on.
This was an important point made by the experts on the Health and Disability panel which I established to review our proposed welfare changes.
It also echoes the UK’s assessment processes and the “Pathways to Work” initiative for vocational rehabilitation designed by Professor Sir Mansel Aylward.
When I sat down with Sir Mansel earlier this year he told me that health conditions account for just 10 to 15 per cent of barriers to work for people on disability benefits.
He said that many health conditions or disabilities can be well managed in work but addressing other barriers are just as important."
"Sir Mansel says that health wise, after six months of unemployment each day off work is as detrimental as smoking 200 cigarettes."
As a result we got major welfare reforms, where many sick and disabled now get reassessed for capacity to work, which some seem to welcome, but is the approach now used much better than what was tried and failed in the UK?
An appointed Health and Disability Panel included vested interest holding members, some running work placement services such as Workwise, who were later rewarded with contracts for trials like Mental Health Employment Services. The senior policy advisor for the Wise Group was on that Panel appointed by Bennett or MSD, same as a former ATOS employee by the name of Dr David Beaumont (running Pathways to Work in Otago). He is now also president of the AFOEM, and was the one who invited Aylward to come here and advise governments and health professionals.
Beaumont is also involved with this outfit:
http://fitforwork.co.nz/teamJust some info worth reading:
http://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/the-health-and-disability-panel-and-its-hand-picked-members/With Paula Bennett now in charge of climate change, I wonder what magical solutions she may come up to address those issues?
Are there any scientists left who dismiss the serious challenges and threats we face? She must be out looking for them already, as her boss gave a great example of how things are sorted with scientists:
http://freshwater.science.org.nz/index.php/news/new-zealand-pm-john-key-we-are-100-pure/
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10850101This was a good interview showing how dodgy Bennett is as Minister:
http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news/climate-change-paris-agreement-signed-video-6464414 -
But despite of my negativism, thanks Damian for your good work and this post.
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I don't know what to think of this post, it is neither here nor there, I feel. There seems to be a lot of silence, no comments, is it, because people reflect on all this important stuff, or is it that they also know no answers?
We need a Commissioner for Science or so, who ensures science is allowed to play an independent role in our society, allowed to have a voice and is protected from undue or even less so unacceptable influence from the ones who pay for it. A code of independence for science and scientists is needed, that is if it does not yet exist.
Also a whistleblower legal protection must be given to those that feel they are muzzled by employers or those who pay them.
We are living in a society where we lose our fourth estate, some think we already lost it long ago, we are at risk of losing much more. A dictatorship of the vested interest carrying, the wealth owning and paymaster parties is what we have, where criticism and open opinion is no longer welcomed, and silenced, to keep the machinery of business and a compliant state running.
As for the rest I observe, the so called "left" in New Zealand is basically DEAD, it only remains "active" in a few individuals and small determined groups, who continue to fight all the crap we see happen each day. The rest of society simply no longer cares but for their own personal or vested interests, in individual, business or other terms, and an ever growing number are so marginalised, they simply are off the page, so to say, they do not seem to matter.
I was at least a bit positively impressed by Newshub for a change showing us the grim face of homelessness in Auckland, and people living in cars.
In the meantime social experiments with social impact bonds and so forth will continue, driven by an ideologically driven government who just does not want to have anyone, scientiest or not, to bother and disturb their agenda.
In a society of mercenaries, servants, slaves and otherwise wealth, asset owning, paymaster kind of bosses, who set the rules, we can expect only a further deterioration of this state of affairs we have.
There is NO reason to be proud of being a New Zealander in this year 2016, fake pride for the All Blacks and so are just desperate escapism or cheap travel in this poor condition our society is in.
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Hard News: Forgetting what we didn't know, in reply to izogi,
Shocking, Maori Party voting in favour of LTCs after Nats used a lengthy SOP to amend the Bill at extreme short notice. This tells me that they need to learn more and do more research about taxation legislation and practice, the folks doing research for Maori Party.
They were used, I fear, to pass legislation, not realising the likely consequences.
But then again, I wonder whether other MPs from other parties always know what they are voting for or against, following the party line may even simply force them to be ignorant and careless.
Laws always have some consequences that may not be foreseen, and hence it is necessary to avoid rushing through any significant legislative changes, which the Nats have done very often, to the detriment of many.