Bullies

I do wonder why it is that Right Wing Adherents always seem to find Downright Nastiness and Rudeness to be a fun way to interact. Nothing seems to amuse them more than to bash the vulnerable, especially beneficiaries.


Yes, this is going to be about Paula Bennett, but I need to vent some other stuff too.







That Private Christian School

Because, despite the fact that we are all supposedly in recession mode, our Flash New Government have now awarded further tax cuts to the richest segments in our society. They have also awarded $38million to the private schools.

It was a remarkable thing, therefore, that we were witness to a Principal of a Private Christian School, Rathkeale College in Masterton, hounding a solo mother, to the point of expecting her to mortgage her house, in order to pay to them the Voluntary Donations (note the word voluntary) that she has been unable to pay over the years. (She had paid all the compulsory stuff which was the largest amount by the way). But, beamed onto our Aotearoa/New Zealand telly screens, this unrelenting, white man, dressed in expensive suit and tie, accused this woman of free-loading and bludging on the rest of their school community. Even a partial payment was not good enough (she offered to pay what she could) for this avaricious man and his greedy school board. They wanted all of their potential pounds (NZ dollars even) of flesh to the last cent.

Adult & Special Education

I wrote already about the cuts that have been made to Adult Education throughout New Zealand. I must now report that a further $2.5million has now been cut from Special Education Units in state schools which offer support for kiddies with very severe physical disabilities.

but to get to the point here -

The Training Incentive Allowance & Ms Paula Bennett

The Training Incentive Allowance is now to be cut from sole parents. Enter Paula Bennett, the Minister for Social Development, the Minister who once herself was also a Solo Parent on a Domestic Purpose Benefit (DPB), the Minister who used Training Incentive Allowance (TIA) herself in order to gain qualifications and get herself out of poverty and into our Parliament no less! This Minister had this to say: "We have not cut the training incentive allowance; we have not cut the training level, we have merely changed the level." Gotta love the spin, not. Sole parents would still be helped, she said, "with a foundation course or other certificate", but at university level they would be treated as other students, she said.

In normal English language without the spin, that sole parents means getting a student loan and supporting their families via the student loan route rather than the DPB which the student loan was quite obviously never set up to do.

The Training Incentive Allowance (TIA) exists to enable solo parents to upskill by taking courses relevant to their needs. These might be more basic community-based courses, or polytech courses or university course. The TIA offsets the costs of the courses that solo parents are engaged in, for example, course fees, texts, stationery etc, travel (bus or train fares to an institution or petrol costs) and childcare costs. If the training allowance wasn't there, these costs would need to come out of grocery costs because most benefits have absolutely no room for manoeuvre anywhere else and few mothers would be prepared to take food from their children to enable their own study. There is no extra fat in a DPB, it covers rent, food, electricity - that's about it really. Solo parents must number amongst themselves the world's best economists. Some of them are straight out amazing.

So basically most solo parents are (from next year) going to be shut out of university study and any upskilling which could make a serious difference to their lives (and incomes).

Dissent

Two solo parents, Jennifer Johnston and Natasha Fuller, part way through their university degrees have publicly criticised the TIA cuts because only those sole parents who can find a way to complete their degrees via Student Loans will be able to do so, the rest will be left high and dry. Student loans are set up for young students who don't have parental responsibilities.

For example the student loan only offers an $18pw accommodation subsidy because it is assumed students will share houses (3, 4 or 5 students to a house maybe) to save costs. A solo mother (or sole father for that matter) with kiddies in tow usually needs at least a 3 bedroom house to her/himself and her/his family so that isn't going to work. And the student loan money is only available during semesters which means at the end of each semester there is a week standown (a week with no money at all) as the adult student moves off the loan onto some other income or benefit.

Most solo mums also study on a part time basis rather than full time purely because of their other responsibilities so they would be accruing an awful lot of student loan by the time they were done.

Now It Gets Ugly Because ...

Fighting for themselves and others, Jennifer Johnston and Natasha Fuller (and a heck of a lot of other people) were horrified when Queen of the Bullies, (Minister for Social UnDevelopment) Paula Bennett, released personal financial data about the two women after they publicly criticised cuts to a training incentive allowance.

Ms Bennett had her staff go through personal WINZ (Work & Income NZ) files, then gave the garnered information to the media as a weapon against the dissenters. She has tried to justify this complete abuse of power by saying she made the information public because (she reckons) the women were presenting a skewed picture to the public. Including all the TIA allowances the women received as though it was income (which it is not), Ms Paula Bennett has, in fact, presented an far more skewed picture, (allowances which are paid to providers are not income) and opened the door to the favoured sport of some people - beneficiary bashing.

Right Wing governments adore beneficiary bashing - it takes the heat from their real agendas.

Ms Johnson and Ms Fuller say there has been vicious reaction to them personally from some members of the public. Jennifer Johnston, said Ms Bennett was trying to intimidate her by releasing details of the welfare she receives.

"The ‘Right’," (from Bomber Bradbury's blog over at Tumeke) " – that includes Not PC – the corporate media – even David over at Kiwiblogh (who pretends to be enlightened) are all effectively arguing that the beneficiary is somehow inferior to the rest of us and as such don’t have the same rights to privacy and are open to this of type of abuse because it creates ‘better understanding of the debate’. What a load of absolute bullshit – complaining about a training allowance doesn’t ‘imply consent’ that you can now have all your personal details sent out to the media openly by the Minister you are complaining about! And that so many NZers are blind to this fact in their rush to bash a Bennie is about as ugly as our country gets."

As Paula Bennett is the Minister of Social Development, beneficiaries form a good part of her constituency and, in the view of Sue Bradford (Greens Party), Ms Bennett owes "a duty of care to this constituency." If so, Ms Bennett certainly doesn't see it that way.
Campbell Live Interview with Paula Bennett and Sue Bradford Here

She is also not averse (my opinion) to telling outright lies. On being asked to divulge her own spend on TIA, Ms Bennett says, oh it was so different then. It was much harder she reckons there was no child care subsidy, for example. Well, sorry Ms Bennett but that is just not true. The Child Care subsidy was available back in 1998 at least and I remember a friend using it back around 1990 at least while she was doing a typing course at the Polytech. So even though Ms Bennett might feel as though she is older than she looks (her opinion) she isn't so old that she could never have got a child care allowance. No way.

Meantime Prime Minister John Key (that wolf in sheeps' clothing) told reporters he was "comfortable" with the women's information being released and accepted Ms Bennett's justification.

The Labour Party intends to lay a complaint with the privacy commissioner against Social Development Minister Paula Bennett for releasing income details of two beneficiaries.

We are only about seven months into this political term, at this rate by the time we are done with it we may be believing even Rob Muldoon was benign.

The Chocolate Wars

The last time when I wrote about chocolate, my focus was on slavery and the exploitation of children in particular. This time the focus is on palm oil plantations and specifically on the Cadbury Corporation.


The palm oil industry (as most of us know) is knocking down rainforests and burning peat across Indonesia and Malaysia to expand production to meet the increased demand. This is resulting in the release of massive amounts of greenhouse gases and the destruction of the habitat of endangered animals such as the orang-utan. Deforestation contributes about twenty percent of global carbon emissions; a figure widely accepted and commonly used at United Nations climate change conferences. Most of this country's palm kernel imports come from Indonesia, with the remainder from Malaysia. Both countries are currently experiencing large-scale clearance of rainforest for palm oil plantations.

Below is the latest Whittakers commercial comparative advertising their chocolate product to Cadbury's amongst the recent controversy about (1) Palm Oil being used in the Cadbury's Chocolate bars, (2) Cadbury moving production to Australia resulting in unemployment here in New Zealand and (3) the packaging size changes.



http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/19582/ 13th July

Auckland Zoo, located in New Zealand's largest city, has decided to banish the iconic chocolate brand, Cadbury, from its shelves. because the chocolate maker, one of the country's largest and most popular chocolate manufacturers, has substituted some of the cocoa solids in its products with palm oil, from plantations in South Asia.

“We are advocates for wildlife,” said Auckland Zoo's conservation officer, Peter Fraser. “The biggest threat for animals is encroaching palm oil plantations. The plantations lie in a biodiverse hotspot. Orangutans are critically endangered,” he said. But so are the Sumatran Tiger and Rhino, the small clawed Asian Otter, [and] reptile, and plant species.


Palm oil is derived from mainly from plantations in Indonesia, Borneo, Malaysia and South America. Currently only four percent of palm oil comes from sustainable sources. “We had to look at our shelves and see if there were any Cadbury products,” Mr. Fraser said.

The zoo has been selling Cadbury chocolates in it's shops and restaurant, and palm oil products also form part of the zoo's animal feed.

“If we talk the talk, we have to walk the walk.”

Mr. Fraser said it was not currently possible to remove all palm oil products from the zoo as, in the case of some animals' feed, there is no replacement right now.

Cadbury's Response

Cadbury spokesman, Daniel Ellis, told the Sunday Star Times that Cadbury was a member of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a body tasked with ensuring responsible and sustainable palm oil crops.

Greenpeace Response

Vanessa Atkinson, Greenpeace New Zealand climate campaigner said that, [being] “RSPO certified doesn't mean that the palm oil you buy is sustainable or that it hasn't caused rainforest clearing or climate impact. There is no segregation of suppliers in the supply chain."

Greenpeace warns that the carbon dioxide released by the draining and burning of peatlands for palm oil plantations in the South Asian region is responsible for four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Chocolate Eaters Respond too

Many Cadbury's customers are also dismayed and outraged. The outrage is such that bloggers are criticizing the altered product and promising to switch to competitors' products. A petition asking Parliament to put out warnings about palm oil is also in progress. Some consumers are disillusioned with the taste of the new product and are urging Cadbury to bring back the old recipe while others are angry over the effect of palm oil plantations on rainforests.

Apparently Cadbury Australia has been adding palm oil to its products for some time but New Zealanders have only recently been surprised with downsized bars of chocolate which have a different taste and texture to how they tasted before.

Mārire

This seems to have somehow wound up being two blogs in one.

Anyhow, my sister and my mother came for lunch yesterday (we went to Seagers for lunch - really nice) and during the conversation we found ourselves remembering our grandmother (my father's mother) and her motel in Picton which she had named the Marire Motels.

Picton Harbour.

By the time ... my mother first met my father in Wellington in the 'fifties and he took her across the Cook Strait to Picton, my grandmother was a widow (my grandfather had died at age 52 from a blood clot following an operation) and she was running the Sunwick Bed & Breakfast on High Street. My father was one of five children and his two older brothers were already married. I think his sister was helping my grandmother at the time and the youngest brother was still living at home (just).

Actually it was just recently that this youngest brother (as he was driving us quickly to the Wellington airport to catch our plane home back in May) told my mother that he had been present at the dance when my father first met her. He had been with a group of blokes and she hadn't realised at the time that one of them was his brother on a visit to Wellington. It was a nice thing for him to tell her the story from his perspective.

Creating Families and/or Motels

A recent Picture of High Street, Picton

My parents married, and first me (1957), and then my sister (1959) were born in Wellington, then we moved to Taumarunui where my little brother was born (1961). Meantime my grandmother had decided that running a bed and breakfast place was getting too full-on and she wasn't getting any younger so she decided to build motels instead. She wanted to build them on the High Street, handy to the local shops and the beach which would take good advantage of the emerging tourist industry in Picton and had to push her case quite hard through the local council as no motels had been built on the High Street before.

She must have been around sixty at this time.

My first actual memory of my grandmother (I must have seen her before this but been too young to remember) was when our family left Taumarunui, which is in the middle of the North Island, more or less, to live in Blackball way down on the West Coast of the South Island. This was in October of 1962 and we had a really rough crossing over the Cook Strait (between the two islands). My mother had dolled up my wee brother to look really cute for his first introduction to his grandmother in Picton but he was fearfully sick on the ferry and arrived looking white and miserable - a very poor specimen of a grandson right then.

The Cook Strait rail and vehicle ferry Aramoana which was in service in 1962.

My grandmother (a very practical woman) had built her motels as single story units which surrounded three sides of the section of land and were open to the street. They were built of concrete block (I think that is cinder block in the US?), and painted in fashionable 'fifties pastels, each unit a different pastel colour, pink, lemon, pale blue or green. Between each unit was a single garage (the only motels with garages I have ever seen in New Zealand) and the forecourt was laid with small coloured shingle so that if any of the visitors cars dropped oil it could be easily got rid of. Each unit had two bedrooms, a kitchenette, shower and toilet, and a small lounge with dining table and chairs. A shared laundry (agitator washing machine) and several rotary washing lines were to be found in a group around the back of the units.

A corner unit had become my grandmother's home and office. She didn't get out a lot because she always had to be available to answer the phone for bookings but a large window provided her with a view onto the street so she could watch all the comings and goings as they unfolded on the street, and she was very handily placed for her friends to visit her each day. Her unit contained a couch in the lounge which folded out to become a bed, and also, us kids were fascinated by a large cupboard in her lounge from which a bed was pulled down when the cupboard doors were opened. There were also two bedrooms, my grandmother's room had two single beds and the other room had another two single beds and a large canvas cot for the youngest grandchildren like my wee brother, so she was all set up for when family came to stay.

Mārire - the motels, the word, and the meaning ...

My grandmother always had a strong respect and liking for the Maori people and wanted a NZ/Maori name for her motels, which meant something, rather than some irrelevant name dragged here from overseas. As children we never paid much attention to the name, Marire Motels but I remember my grandmother telling me that a local Maori woman had told her that the word meant peace. My grandmother was very pleased that the locals approved her choice of name for her motels.

So yesterday we checked my Reed Dictionary (my better Williams Dictionary is down in Christchurch at my sister's house) and it listed, mārire : quiet, gentle, discreet, placid.

The word mārire was also associated with a movement in the 1860's.

Pai Mārire (Good and Peaceful)

Pai Mārire followers around the Niu Pole

Te Ua Haumēne had been influenced by Christian missionaries after being captured by Waikato Maori back in 1826. It was these influences which shaped aspects of Pai Mārire. He had also learnt to read and write in Maori and became very familiar with the New Testament, especially the Book of Revelation.

Professor Ranginui Walker (Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou/ Struggle Without End, 1990; p 130) tells us that:

"The first overtly anti-Pakeha religious cult, founded by the prophet Te Ua Haumēne, arose in Taranaki, where the Land Wars began. Te Ua had fought beside Wiremu Kingi in the war and realised that something more than military prowess was needed to counter a standing army with superior numbers and weapons. Te Ua gained a reputation as a man of mana when the wreck of the Lord Worsley was attributed to his mystical powers of makatu. He communed with his god, Te Atua Pai Mārire, the Lord Good and Peaceful, and claimed visitation from the Angel Gabriel, who revealed a vision of Te Ua surrounded by all the tribes. The vision symbolised Te Ua's mission of unification, and his cult known as Pai Mārire (Good and Peaceful), signified the new relationship between tribes. converts worshipped around a Niu pole, rigged up like the mast of a ship, and expected to be endowed with the gift of tongues and a knowledge of science. Followers of the cult were promised that when every tribe was converted and unification achieved, the Pakeha would be conquered. They were also promised immunity to the Pakeha bullets if they went into battle crying 'Hapa Pai Mārire Hau! Hau!' It was from this battle cry that the Hauhau cult derived its common name. The cult initiated a new kind of guerilla warfare, which the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs had warned would be the consequences of confiscation."

Clearly the peace alluded to is between the tribes, and not between Maori and the colonists.

The flag at the top of this picture was Te Ua Haumēne's personal flag. The word ‘kenana’ (Canaan) shows his identification with the Jewish people, a people driven from their homeland. The bottom two flags belonged to Tītokowaru and Pēhi Tūroa, who were Pai Mārire followers.

Tourist Court Motels

A long time later my grandmother sold her motels and finally retired. They were renamed as the Tourist Court Motels and upgraded/modernised. They were repainted white and the single garages became studio units. Shops were built (one each side) at the front where there used to be taps and hoses for the visitors to wash their cars.

Our Children Are Not Our Punchbags

First the Background

A few years back people in our country was transfixed when a judge ruled that a woman who had beaten her kid with a horsewhip was only using "reasonable force" for the purpose of correction, a defence which was then allowed under Section 59 of The Crimes Act. I hate to think what that judge's home life was like.

It came out that many parents who might otherwise have been found guilty of child abuse (whacking their kids with blocks of wood and all sorts of other implements) were using Section 59 as a defence and winning their cases.

Sue Bradford of the Greens Party responded by bringing to Parliament (back in 2003 this was) a private members bill to Repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act to address this situation. "Parents", said Ms Bradford, "are supposed supposed to be protectors, not attackers, and children should feel totally safe at home."

``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
"You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable."

Kahlil Gibran.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Finally The Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 amended the principal Act, to make better provision for our children to live in a safe and secure environment which should be free from violence by abolishing the use of parental force for the purpose of correction. This bill was passed by an overwhelming majority of 113 to 8 votes.

Some of you who were reading my Yahoo!360 blog may remember me writing on this topic before. We basically got up to about here. All was good.

But ...

The far-right-wing Act Party (Act is anti-regulation of any kind even to protect our kids, it seems) and disgruntled MP Taito Phillip Field voted the minority eight votes. This bill, I could point out, was not actually increasing regulation, it was merely amending the existing regulation to improve it. That point seem to have escaped the ACT party.

The Referendum

Since then, a campaign of misinformation led by much of our media, some extreme fundamentalist christians, Act supporters and sympathisers, and brainless celebrities like Simon Barnett to name a few, has culminated in a Citizens Initiated Referendum. We get to have a referendum if someone circulates a petition and enough of the Kiwi adult population sign it, (I think they need to get about 10%).

The former United Future MP Larry Baldock designed this confusing and heavily loaded referendum question, “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?” He was collecting signatures on this months before the new law was even finally passed.

The first point which I think needs to be made is that The Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 doesn't actually make smacking a criminal offence. The new law has not led to mass criminalisation of good parents.Indeed, a review of police reports have indicated that the number complaints even made have been very small. There has appeared to have been some increase in complaints about the use of more heavy handed force (not just smacking) and some prosecutions (as in the well publicised James Mason case). Other cases have been resolved in a range of other ways including referral to Child, Youth & Family (CYF), case conferencing and advice to parents.

Secondly there are many parents (like me) who do not think that smacking/hitting whatever your kids is part of any good parenting strategy. Quite often stressed parents smack their kids purely because they, the parents are stressed, but as the title of this post notes, our children are not our punch bags. We throw our hands up in horror nowadays when men belt into women (I was just feeling stressed honey) because men are so much bigger and more physically powerful than the women they hit, but surely, we parents are also bigger and more powerful than our kids.

What we find, in fact, is that many young parents don't really want to hit their kids at all but when they themselves have been brought up with smacking as punitive discipline, many times they simply do not know what to do instead. A child advocate came to our town a few weeks back to talk to parents on just this subject and was surprised (and very pleased) that none of the young mums she met had any problem with the law, none of them wanted to smack their kids, what they wanted was ideas and advice and helpful alternatives to smacking.

We all want our children to grow up to be well behaved, responsible people, able to have peaceful and happy relationships with their partners and children. Children need positive, safe and secure childhoods if they are to grow up to be successful, non-violent and happy people.

A recent survey showed that at least 3 out of 4 Kiwis believe this referendum to be a waste of money.

A referendum isn't a cheap thing. This one is expected to cost us $9million. In a recession. Great.

Voting in the referendum runs from Friday 31st July until Friday 21st August, 2009. Kiwis will get our voting paper in the mail between Friday 31st July and Friday 7th August, 2009.

Taken from an interview
on National Radio's Morning Report (June 17, 2009)

Larry Baldock: It is absolutely clear that if a parent uses any reasonable force right now to correct their child right now they are breaking the law…

Sean Plunket: Can you give us an example of that having happened?

Larry Baldock: There are examples that we’ll have available…

Sean Plunket: Can you give us a single example of that having happened, please?

Larry Baldock: There was a grandfather for example, who tipped his grandson out of a chair because the grandson refused to obey his grandfather to turn down the television and so on.

Sean Plunket: Was he convicted and was that a smack?

Larry Baldock: He plead guilty …

Sean Plunket: Was that a smack?

Larry Baldock: No, he tipped him out of a chair….

But wait, there's more...

Sean Plunket: Can you point to anyone who has been criminalised for smacking a child?

Larry Baldock: Yes we can.

Sean Plunket: Please, could you give me an example?

Larry Baldock: Well, I’ll have to go to my list of examples.

Sean Plunket: Can you give me a single example off the top of your head?

Larry Baldock: No, not off the top of my head, I can’t...

Wouldn’t it be nice to send Baldock a bill for $9million?

Provocation? No Way!

We in Aotearoa/New Zealand have been following this case on our news for some days now and I am growing more and more appalled, and I am sure I am not the only one.

It is completely bizarre, that a man who drove to his girlfriends' home, and took with him a nice sharp knife, on arriving, exchanged greetings with her mother, then walked upstairs to the young woman's room, and stabbed her (not once but two hundred and sixteen times, including slicing off her ears and hacking her nose even), claims provocation PROVOCATION if you please - as a defence.




He, Clayton Weatherston, even has a woman lawyer. I'm shocked that he can stand there bare-faced and have that woman lawyer argue provocation as his defence and that this woman lawyer (who really should know better) would agree to bring such a defence to our courts of law.


Imagine if he is found Not Guilty because of this so-called provocation. Could every NZ male now decide to stab a woman 216 times (that's two hundred and sixteen times and don't forget the ears) and plead provocation? Will provocation now become a defence again, for men who beat up their partners? Could violent parents (having lost the ability to plead reasonable force when they belt up their kids with horsewhips and the like) now insist on provocation as a defence instead?

It seems to me we have another piece of law which requires repealing. Where is Sue Bradford when we need her.

Spinners - Anthony McCarten (a review)

"It was some time on Saturday night after work but before closing time down at the pub that Delia Chapman saw a spaceman. Well, that wasn't quite true. She saw ten of them. They stayed for about half an hour. And they took her on their 'vessel'. They had silver suits and stainless-steel boots. The vessel was ultra-modern and entirely impressive."

Delia is next found on the middle of the road into Opunake by the new librarian (nephew of the mayor). In fact he nearly runs her over. So he gives her a ride into town where she tells her story to the understandably disbelieving local policeman (who is also the netball coach).

Everyone in Opunake finds it funny when quiet factory worker and netballer (goal shoot), Delia Chapman, makes the absurdly "American" claim that she was invited on board a spacecraft and 'interviewed' by aliens. It's Yanks that see spacemen.

"They imagined close encounters at the drop of a hat, especially when they were depressed, or had insomnia, or were on some kind of pills.[Delia] had read this. New Zealanders were different. They saw ghosts, not UFOs, poltergeists, the odd devil and the ever improbable witch."

But the jokes all turn to dismay when tests reveal that the sixteen year old virgin is pregnant! And things can only get worse when two of her young workmates and fellow netballers announce their pregnancies too and cite fathers with intergalactic addresses. Delia begins to believe that the new children will arrive with instructions to save the world.

Next there are crop circles and a flattened cow (a spaceship landing on the cow?)

And the media arrives in town bringing disrepute onto the town.

A humorous satire with several twists.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The author, Anthony McCarten, was born in 1961 and grew up in New Plymouth (NZ), and spent two years as a reporter on the Taranaki Herald. He has previously written ten plays and made five films, one of which "Show Of Hands" (about a competition to win a car by being the last person with their hands still touching the car) was coincidentally shown on the telly just over a week ago . He has also published a collection of short stories (A Modest Apocalypse). Spinners is his first novel.