Paula Bennett Is On Facebook

Judging by the reaction of most of my Facebook friends, I am at odds with the prevailing view on Social development Minister Paula Bennett. Or maybe only The Left can be arsed getting their knickers in a twist over it.

Once again my blog on the subject failed completely to elicit any responses,
but Chris certainly did via his Facebook page. Here's a smattering of opinion:

Chris:- Kia kaha, Paula Bennett! Beneficiaries are scum of the earth who should be afforded no special privileges whatsoever, in fact we should treat them the same way that we treat suspected Iraqi terrorists, i.e. set the fucking attack dogs on them. You go, girl.
Andrew and 5 others like this.
Peter:- Apparently not only is John Key a cunt, he also has some spare cunts that can walk and talk independently. Like sentient Muppets.
3 hours ago
Chris:- Yeah, I suspect it's only a matter of time before National cut all the Creative N.Z. and N.Z. On Air funding, too, 'cos we all know that musicians and artists are a pack of lazy mongrels living off the state and scrounging for handouts. Fuck 'em all, and if they complain, then Paula Bennett can make a database of them and publish it online in much ... Read more
3 hours ago
Shayne:- I think once they finish refurbishing eden park they should use it for roll calls, mass work seminars (This is how you clean a police car!) or the occasional public flogging. bring back Work For The Dole!
2 hours ago
Jo:- I'm presonally awaiting the elimination of Arts and any creativey stuff from universities, thereby allowing more funding to allocated to the REAL areas like business, engineering, and law. And also preventing those bohemian scum from having any aspirational ideas.
2 hours ago
CheapSex AtSquid:- I love how The Left are so aggravated on this issue. It's like the 80s all over again. http://cheapsexandotherstories.blogspot.com/2009/07/pot-calling-kettle-black.html
2 hours ago · Delete
Shayne:- yes. i'd have to agree cheap sex. being on the dole truly does insulate one from the real world...
2 hours ago
Chris:- The Left? You don't have to be on the left to be a scrounging bloody dole bludger, mate, you just have to be out of work or a single mother! Fucking spongers... put them in the army, I say!
2 hours ago
Chris:- Oh, and being an ex-dole bludger now with a cushy minister's job seems to have insulated Paula Bennett from the real world quite nicely - apparently having shitloads of money'll do that for ya quite quickly...
2 hours ago
Jo:- No no no - she still lives in West Auckland - she knows what's happening on the streets. She doesn't need to read carefully researched reports to know where it's at.
2 hours ago
Chris:- She's doing for the single mums what Margaret Thatcher did for all the grocers' daughters... nuffink.
2 hours ago
Lady:- they are questioning me about working odd labouring jobs under the table while still getting handouts for my 2 children...how the fuck else am i suposed to survive? I wana kick some1 in the cunt!
2 hours ago
Natasha:- I had an unbelievable 90 minute meeting / interrogation with WINZ 3 weeks ago, to sign up for a temporary "Sickness Benefit" ( that's what they put pregnancy under); After going to the wrong desk where the woman sighed and said "DPB, over there" (the third time Studylink has made a comment like that to the quite married me); and at near full term ... Read more
2 hours ago
Chris:- Apparently Paula's got a nice big minge that needs a new bootprint or two - proceed with the kicking forthwith!
2 hours ago
Chris:- WINZ seemed to get a lot nicer there for a while but it's apparent that orders from the top are now to be arseholes to all and sundry again. Sigh...
2 hours ago
Shayne:- i can remember working on a building site and this old codger came up and started going on about "solo mums - bloody bitches!". i suppose it's a continuation of the bloody maoris/coconuts/chinks school of thought. obviously all these people ARE to blame for our social ills and impending economic ruin of course... but my mum was a solo mum. i grew up in a street FULL of solo mums. they are different from us you know...
2 hours ago
Jo:- Natasha - have you thought about actually giving birth at the WINZ office, just so they can be really sure that you have got a baby, and you're not just making it up to get out of working at Macs? (I myself only had a baby to take advantage of the 14 weeks amazingly well-paid parental leave on offer. I sent him back after that.)
2 hours ago
CheapSex AtSquid:- watch out - it can't be long b4 WINZ use FB to prove ur not actually seeking work (ie ur on FB too much).
2 hours ago · Delete
Lady:- haha thats funny jo
2 hours ago
Jo:- Maybe we SHOULD send our babies to the government after 14 weeks (or whatever the current mandatory breastfeeding period is) - then they could get the kids into the Macs training schemes nice and early, and ensure that very few people ever actually try to get stupid things like tertiary educations or become musicians.
2 hours ago
Natasha:- Haha, yes we're having number 2 for the extra 60 bucks...I did seriously consider it Jo, but settled for getting all pissed off, ringing the 0800 number, finding someone who agreed that yes, the dunedin branch is not "entirely helpful",and gave me a few pointers, which led me to being able to march (sorta) back in, and while presenting forms for the extra things we are eligible for, asking why I hadn't been fully informed of my rights. She signed off and got rid of me as soon as possible.
2 hours ago
CheapSex AtSquid:- but don't most solo mum's take their infants to McD's anyway...?
2 hours ago · Delete
Rachel:- I can't get the dpb. despite leaving my violent ex. cos I am too "able to earn" I'm also bloody exhausted and earning less than those women are receiving every week....
2 hours ago
Natasha Griffiths:- and shayne, dunedin taxi drivers are always good ones to strike up the solo mums debate as well...
2 hours ago
Geoffrey:- she can fuck off
2 hours ago
Geoffrey:- she is a fucking hypocrite... sorry to swear on your page bruv but really she's rubbish
2 hours ago
Natasha:- yeah just as we thought the baby boomers could start to die off after milking absolutely everything, then complaining profusely at subsequent generations asking for anything, we've got a new generation of fuck heads who have what they need and feel they can tell everyone else to move along. I'm not sorry for swearing cos chris swears all the time. I've seen him.
2 hours ago
Chris:- I'm sure you've heard me, too, Natasha... I think I've even done it in a couple of songs.
2 hours ago
Jo:- Well, you know, Paula did pull herself up by her bootstraps. (My favourite line - the Listener article titled 'The girl from Struggle St'. Give me a f**king break!) So clearly everyone can if they really WANT to. I mean, it's not like the quality of life of the upper middle class is dependent on the existence of a vast pool of under-employed badly paid labour or anything!
2 hours ago
Chris:- Yeah, and I'm still waiting to get prosecuted for stating on facebook that Clayton Weatherston is a murdering arsehole, thereby apparently jeopardising his chances at getting a fair trial. Rot in jail, psycho boy. And Paula Bennett can suck a fat one, the evil fascist bitch.
2 hours ago
Jaq:- I think we all need a nice cup of tea and a lie down.
20 minutes ago
Jo:- Facebook - the 21st century Mrs Merton Show. "Let's have a heated debate ..."

BTW - if you're interested in joining the Labour Party in bagging Bennett you can join this Facebook group.

The Pot Calling The Kettle Black

The National Government are trying to force this mother into prostitution.

I must confess to being a little startled to see both John Campbell and Mark Sainsbury (7pm on TV3 & TV1 respectively) so strident with Social Development Minister Paula Bennett last night. Both were keen to fan the flames of outrage that a Minister should publicize the details of exactly how much two beneficiaries were getting, when said two beneficiaries had gone to the media claiming the Government weren't giving them enough money.

I was startled because an hour earlier both networks had confirmed (via their political reporters) that it was standard practice for Ministers (both Labour and National, in previous decades) to normally leak this type of infomation to reporters 'off the record' and let them run the story. Bennett's crime seems to be that she just issued a press release to ALL media, instead of a quiet whisper to a favoured Parliamentary hack.

No, you say, Bennett's crime is that she is bashing beneficiaries when she herself was on the DPB not so long ago. Okay, I'll grant you that but I still have to side with Bennett when she says that was then and this is now. Hypocrite! you reply.

Not really. Welfare benefits were set up to help people in times of need - to act as a safety net - not a cocoon to insulate you from the real world. Trust me, I was on and off 'the Dole' a lot when I was in my early 20s so I know how seductive it can be getting all that money for nothing (it was so nice I once claimed it twice). You get used to the income stream and pretty soon you begin to believe that you've 'earned it' because you're contributing to the community in other ways. In my case I was 'contributing to the Arts' via my role as manager of various bands and breakdancers. In the case of Natasha Fuller she contributes by volunteering two days a week at her children's school.

In hindsight I'd guess Fuller has contributed more than I ever did, but at the time I felt I was entitled to the measly $126 a week* the government gave me. And that's the problem. We now have generations of people who feel they are entitled to that money, that they deserve that money, and shouldn't be expected to demean themselves by taking a job that is beneath them. How will working on minimum wage at McDonalds get me any closer to my dream job of being a TV Presenter? ask today's youth.

Well, the reality is that we can't all be TV Presenter's, DJ's, Party Promoters, Fashion Designers, Make-Up Artists, or whatever else it is that today's youth aspire to, so "f#ck you" if you think my taxes are going to pay for you to sit on your ass while you wait for that dream job to land in your lap. Cos it won't. Take that job at McDonalds** and get some frikken life experience in the real world - you'll meet real people (both customers and co-workers) and you'll learn what it's like to actually work for a living. You don't have to stay there forever but while you're doing that you'll be suitably inspired to chase your dream job, really chase it.

Bennett's mistake has been that she hasn't communicated very well. According to the Herald On Sunday who originally reported the story last weekend:

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett announced in May's budget that the Training Incentive Allowance (TIA) - a key stepping stone off welfare for DPB and invalid beneficiaries since the late 1980s - would apply only to high school level or lower courses. But universities and polytechnics knew nothing of the changes until students tried to enrol in the past few days.

So a whole bunch of beneficiaries are now finding they can't get the TIA to go to PolyTech or Varsity. Boo hoo - take out a student loan and Boo Ya! you're in. It really is that easy... what a shame Bennett hasn't made that clear.

[* Fuller gets $715 a week, but she has 3 kids to raise.

** Irony Alert - the Government are going to provide a significant TIA to McDonalds to subsidise jobs for the unemployed]

The Rich Get Richer When They Get Government Support

There's a great story in Rolling Stone that gives an insight into how Goldman Sachs managed to record a US $3.44 billion second-quarter profit. [Hey, let's take a minute to absorb that: in 3 months they made US $3.44 billion profit. In a global recession]. Apparently ex-Goldman Sachs senior staff move into the Whitehouse (and have been for decades) to either act as advisors to Treasury OR take up key roles in the Administration.

In September of last year, then-Treasury secretary Henry Paulson (ex Goldman CEO) made a momentous series of decisions. Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention. The very next day, Paulson confirmed a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets: By contrast, retired auto workers awaiting the Chrysler bailout will be lucky to receive 50 cents for every dollar they are owed. Immediately after the AIG bailout, Paulson announced his federal bailout for the financial industry, a $700 billion plan called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and put a heretofore unknown 35-year-old Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the funds.

I strongly urge you to read the linked article, Matt Taibbi's "The Great American Bubble Machine" in Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83. Here's an excerpt:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren't much more than pot-fueled ideas scrawled on napkins by up-too-late bong-smokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for megamillions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

The history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman.

Someone Needs A Hug

I created a fake profile name and friended 500+ women who I don't know, nor do they know me. I was going to blog about the results of this anthropological experiment but it got too weird. But some results so far:

1] Women over 40 (meaning they're really over 50) are horney as, and will send you all sorts of 'sexxxy' stuff. (and yes, I've checked, they're not men pretending to be women online)

2] There's a lot of Anorexic women on FB, using the codename 'Ana' as their middle name, giving eachother 'thinspiration'

3] There's a lot of women out there with self-esteem issues. Like this girl who made all these comments (no-one else was commenting) about one of her own photos (not the one used above).

[name redacted] soo drunk in that pis:P
August 31, 2008 at 6:12am

[name redacted] im o soo high
August 31, 2008 at 4:15pm

[name redacted] NNNOOO PIC!!!
October 3, 2008 at 10:32am

[name redacted] FUCKEN HATE U!!! !

Which makes me sad......

It's 'Business Time' - screwed by Thai Air??

With all the airlines struggling to sell seats, and the supposed 'Price War' that has ensued, I thought I might publish an email I sent my travel agent upon our return from Bangkok. Thai Air had offered a hella deal on Business Seats, so we thought we'd sample the delights of 'Business Class'. While the seats and service (once seated) were great, actually getting the seats we'd paid for turned out to be a 7 hour marathon at the Bangkok terminal.

This is the future of airline travel folks, you get what you pay for (cheap seats) but sometimes not even that. Thai obviously sold more Business Seats than they had in the actual plane, and hoped some people either wouldn't turn up or could be fobbed off back in to economy.

Subject: Thai Air

Hi [travel agent's name redacted, it wasn't his fault],

We got back on Saturday night (approx 10 hours late) and had a great time overall, marred only by the final leg ie the flight from Bangkok to Auckland. I'll fill you in:

When we turned up at check in we were told that the flight was full and they only had one Business seat left. We expressed surprise since we had paid for 3 business seats and we expected to be seated in business.

The check in lady was all smiles and said they would ask if any of the business passengers would be prepared to move to economy (and be compensated) so that our family could fly together in business. This process took a very long time and an hour later we were still without any confirmed seats. Our bags had been checked but no boarding passes issued. Because we didn't have seats.

The language barrier kicked in early on and this added to our distress. We were seemingly being assured the matter would be resolved in our favour, but without much detail as to how. All we knew was that time was ticking by and the gate would close. We were offered one seat in business and two in economy, with compensation of approximately NZ $400 for each seat, which we declined. We were later offered two seats in business, and one in economy, which we also declined. We were later offered two seats in business, and one in business on an Emirates flight leaving two hours after the Thai flight, which we said we would accept if they could not get a third passenger to go back to economy (we were under the impression that some people had been bumped up because they were waitlisted for Business, or used their Starpoints, but as I mentioned the language barrier made everything unclear).

Then with about 10 minutes to go, we were happily informed that all three of us could travel together in Business on the Emirates flight, leaving two hours later, if we wanted to travel together. Which we accepted. A porter led us from the Thai Airways side of the enormous Bangkok Terminal right across to the other side to the Emirates desk. Where the Emirates staff were less than pleased. Their english was better and they explained that they had told Thai that their flight was full and the best they could do was waitlist us on business, and that they could not confirm seats. And now that we were in front of them they could confirm that it was highly unlikely we would get any seat (even in economy) on their flight. So we went all the way back to the Thai counter.

Again we had to wait a long time while they sorted things out. They then cheerfully informed us that they could get us to Auckland by the next flight out, leaving at midnight. But via Sydney ie the Thai Air Bangkok-Sydney flight. The Sydney-Auckland leg would be on Air NZ later, but we would be home by 8.30pm! Unfortunately both flights were full, so we would have to fly economy on both legs. Again, [my partner] indicated this was not acceptable, since we had paid for business seats. There were more smiles and some time later they came back and told us that they could confirm seats in Business, for both legs. Great, but now we had to wait another 45 minutes for the seats to be re-ticketed.

Long story short we spent over 7 hours in the Bangkok terminal, and only two and half of them in the Thai Business lounge. Our daughter was a mess by then, so naturally we were disappointed at how things turned out. Thai did give us meal vouchers for dinner at the terminal, which was appreciated, but the whole affair was quite stressful. The only silver lining was that we got to trial Air NZ's business service - their sleeper seats we found to be superior to Thai's.

Since returning we have had lots of of comment from all and sundry that this is how the airline industry work now: flights are oversold to ensure maximum profitability and undersold flights are cancelled (as happened to my brother and his two boys, in Amsterdam). If this is the future of air travel then surely it will only hasten the decline of the industry.


Cheers,

Nick

------ End of Forwarded Message

NB - when we actually got on the Air NZ flight there were PLENTY of business seats free so Thai Air LIED about that - how much of what else they told was a lie?

(BTW -the photo's are of the lovely Bangkok Terminal)