Posts by Lynn Yum
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This is like I, Daniel Blake, except it is real and it is happening right now in New Zealand. I'm both angry and sad about this. Angry that government under National had became so out of touch, sad that once unimaginable bureaucratic persecution is actually happening.
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Hard News: Drugs and human rights, in reply to Tom Semmens,
I object to calling Bennett a "class traitor". Her callousness and vindictiveness is a matter of public record. There is no need for name calling.
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I find the cynicism of the National party knows no bounds.
By most accounts they are underfunding the police. They allow the drug dealers and robbers of dairies to feel like they can operate with impunity. They themselves are part of the problem.
To solve that problem they want to what, take away human rights from alleged criminals instead of properly funding the police? They made their own bed with their "rationalisation" in the past 9 years. Now they need to lie on it.
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Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration, in reply to Chris Waugh,
This is the kind of reason why I kind of zoned out of this discussion, in addition to me forgetting the password here. Some people refuses to acknowledge this kind thing happening, even when there are credible testimony supporting it. I don't feel like I want to cry "racism!" every single time. It is taxing.
I probably know a lot MORE Asian assholes simply because my social circle is a lot more Asian than your average Kiwi. Do I conclude, based on my data, that Asians are more likely to be assholes? No I don't. It is just people. Some people are just assholes. It has nothing to do with race. So whatever data people have on "Asians are asshole" have a perfectly good alternative explanation: it is just people.
All we anti-racists ever ask for is to treat each individuals on their own merit, and make no prejudice based on skin colour. Hence I have every sympathy towards Maori and notice the subtle racism towards them in all section of NZ society (thus giving a free pass to politicians to diss them at will with little repercussion, chicken and egg).
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Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration, in reply to william blake,
I think it was pointed out at the time already, but Labour's methodology is completely flawed if they want to use THAT to show foreign buyers are buying up all the house. What about non-Chinese sounding foreigners?
If Labour simply cut-and-pasted their research methodology from Vancouver, then they should have know there was a backlash in Vancouver as well, where some people tried to bury the problem by crying racism and then keep on pretending everything is fine. (Kind of like what National is doing, really.)
The right way to demonstrate foreign ownership is driving up property price is to first find official, credible statistics on foreign ownership of property. Take the government to task on that, or find some better way to measure it.
So Labour either is too lazy to refine the methodology used in Vancouver, or they just want to point the finger at certain people and demonise them. I don't know which is worse.
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That Labour hanging the Chinese out to dry is the reason I'm NOT going to vote Labour, for the first time EVER.
Incidentally, that kind of "research" was done in Vancouver. This comes from a Guardian article that is probably not shared nearly enough in NZ:
Last year [2015], Andy Yan, a respected local urban planner and academic, took Vancouver’s most expensive neighbourhoods and looked for buyers in a recent six-month period with non-anglicised Chinese names – that is, names without a “western” first or middle name, a method he and other experts defended as an imperfect but academically sound way of gauging tenure in Canada. Yan found that they accounted for two-thirds of all house purchases.
Several prominent figures in the real estate industry publicly questioned whether the study was racist. So did Vancouver’s mayor, Gregor Robertson. “This can’t be about race, it can’t be about dividing people,” he told the CBC. Some in the Chinese community expressed discomfort with the study as well.
Others, including Yan, were taken aback. “My great-granddad paid the head tax,” he told a local newspaper. “So to somehow use [concerns about] ‘racism’ to protect your privilege? That’s just absurd. This is an almost uniquely Vancouver reaction.”
Indeed, there is profit to be had by capitalising on people’s discomfort around race. [Ian] Young [a blogger] sees a willingness on the part of politicians and the real estate industry, faced with the prospect of unpalatable policy decisions, to maintain the status quo. “There are a lot of vested interests here,” he says. “To red-flag the entire conversation as racist, I find that disturbing. This is the most profound social justice issue in Vancouver today.”
And more from Ian Young:
Ian Young, author of the South China Morning Post’s enormously popular Hongcouver blog, the must-read chronicle of Vancouver’s affordability woes, is more sanguine. “When you have thousands of super-rich settling in a new city in very short time, that’s discomfiting … people don’t know what to think,” he says. “But the issue here is [the buyers’] millionaire-ness, not their Chinese-ness. And I think most people get that.”
I can't afford to buy a house in this market in Auckland. I'm Chinese. It is a combination of record migration and lack of housing supply that pushed the market so high. Race isn't an issue here. So Labour should just come out and say it, in no uncertain terms.
And here is another parallel from Vancouver:
And yet, hiding behind an absence of good data, government officials have mostly refused even to admit that foreign capital is making it impossible to buy a house in Vancouver – let alone act to level the playing field, for instance via a progressive property tax.
Hey, haven't we seen that somewhere before? National said there was no housing crisis in Auckland until, what, last year?
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I was talking to my parents who went yumcha the other day, they say that most of those working there are foreign students. I pointed out to them that is probably because only foreign students can afford to do that kind of low wage job. Given that minimum wage cannot even cover rent and living expense in Auckland, only those students already with their rental covered as part of their study here can afford to take those jobs.
My point is, it is the system that is bonkered. It is the immigration system that allows those minimum wage job to appears to be viable, but it really isn't, especially in Auckland. The system that allows this exploitation is the villain here, not the students. So yes I agree with Jogai. "Don't hate the player hate the game."
And yes TOP's slogan always strikes me as odious. For them immigrats are just GDP numbers and nothing more. No they are not. They are people.
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Hard News: A thundering clash of, in reply to ,
It was the intentionally polarising a population for political gain. She took a gamble, to advance her political objectives, that people other than her will pay for.
Wait, what? I can agree that she should have handled her confession better, i.e. cleared her account with MSD completely before confessing. But pointing out that the benefit system made her lie, and therefore the system is cruel, should NOT be polarising. In a rational discussion, we just evaluate her argument, and whether or not you believe the argument depends on whether or not you believe her story is substantially true. Other people have corroborated her story, and only after she made the confession, so no one should discount the argument out of hand. At the very least, her argument deserves a closer look. This is raising a red flag (again), not polarising.
To discount her argument is to simply ignore the problem, or as someone else suggested, speaks to the underlying prejudice against beneficiaries. Or simply view politics as a game for power, that every move is a calculated bid to win power and nothing more.
For some people, politics isn't a game of thrones, it is about improving lives. Shocking, I know right?
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to simon g,
So far, all I’ve heard is sanity – we’d lose a hundred MPs overnight if that level of pre-MP misdemeanour required resignation.
I wouldn’t ask her to resign for THAT. No. But IMO that is stupid.
But she is taking one for the team because her benefit situation will drag on and on with both an MSD investigation and media investigation. There will be he said-she said on and on about her “real” circumstances until the cows come home, or until the election. That has to stop if the Greens is going have any chance in this election.
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I think Metiria Turei did the right thing to resign, but the scrutiny on her benefit situation is IMO a diversion from the real issue, that the welfare system treats people it is supposed to help like shit. Most people want and need a helping hand from time to time. They don't want a handout. But given the amount of personal information WINZ requires, it is assuming that everyone is asking for a handout.
On the other hand, her vote fraud was unjustifible and just plain stupid.