Hard News: A thundering clash of perspectives
100 Responses
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
It was quite striking that Morning Report made a point of saying that David Seymour had tried to shop them some bullshit rumours this week and they weren't having a bar of it. It was an unusually hot burn.
Gee, someone feeling a little guilty about taking an MP out over rumours from a family member that (gasp!) solo mothers get assistance from whanau? And as a lot of people have pointed out, but which a lot of commentators are whistling past, is that when any relationship fails it's not exactly hard to find someone who'll drag you through the mud. If I ever lose my mind and go into politics, feel free to track down my ex- who (I've heard) is still bitter I dumped his arse after catching him dicking my (also ex-) best friend. I basically don't have a functional relationship with my mother, I'm sure she has loads of dirt to dish on what a garbage monster I am.
Listen, in the end Checkpoint got their scoop, collected their scalp and it can't be undone. But I really don't need to see National Radio pretending it's any kind of ethical paragon here. -
izogi, in reply to
Armstrong:
An almost audible groan would rumble along the National Party’s benches at Parliament every time she rose to ask a question. They knew it was a cue for another sanctimonious lecture on National’s failures.
Yes because clearly the real purpose of question time is so that government back-bench MP's can grill Ministers about what makes them so awesome.
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andin, in reply to
Honesty is about abiding by the law of the day, truth is more to do with morality, and authenticity which I think comes more from personal insight
You have no idea do you? here let me help
read this for starters -
It was a bit rich hearing Seymour on Morning report this morning asking people to have an open mind about his hobby horse euthanasia bill - yet he wasn't prepared to have an open mind about Metiria - but was prepared to try slinging mud of dubious provenance.
Another odious oik that needs his marching orders. -
I think she’ll make an awesome anarchist.
Me too.
Ex Green Party Female Co-leadership Nominees' club. That's an elite group I'd like to see.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Well it certainly shows through in the way that we so often talk about child poverty instead of just poverty, even if just to try to make an argument which seems less negotiable.
Yes, that's the deserving/undeserving dichotomy in action for sure. The moral implication of that emphasis on child poverty being that wider society will more likely accept that children are in the 'deserving' poor side (i.e., we can't blame children for having hopeless/'undeserving' parents).
It's one of the key reasons why I favour a UBI going forward - it obliterates that deserving/undeserving type casting. And equally as importantly, it gets rid of the benefit abatement regime - the very thing Metiria was pointing out makes good, caring people desperate and deceptive.
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Sacha, in reply to
Maybe you could tell group who you really are.
Please let's not have this conversation again. People have reasons for using different identities online, though real names are more common here than many other places.
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andin, in reply to
dont put your ignorance on me go read a book
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Guys, there really doesn't seem to be a lot of point to this argument. And "you have no idea" and "dick" don't lead anywhere useful. Let's move on.
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The Spin Off has Nandor's take on this whole saga:
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/11-08-2017/greens-icon-nandor-tanczos-on-metiria-and-what-the-party-really-stands-for/ -
Sacha, in reply to
Thanks, Dave. Note that this site automatically makes links clickable if you paste the whole thing including the beginning.
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Nandor still has a clarity of thought & expression that no amount of getting high has defeated (takes one to know one) but someone copied a link recently to a 2006 thing he wrote on his own site that outlined why the green movement was neither left nor right. The GP political position ought to become authentic accordingly. It would have helped if he had noted the back-fire effect of the caucus mis-reading its support base.
I went down to see him when he was living in Ngaruawahia a few years ago & asked him if he'd joined the Greens as a consequence of me taking the draft Green justice policy to him & Mike Finlayson to get their approval when they were fronting NORML in the early nineties, & he acknowledged that's why he switched sometime later. I was hoping to recruit him and form an alternative political movement (to finesse rapid progress, that democracy always prevents) but he said his young family situation made him unavailable.
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Rosemary McDonald, in reply to
.... Seymour on Morning report ..... have an open mind..... euthanasia bill – yet .... Metiria ..... slinging mud of dubious provenance.
Another odious oik ....Yes, curdled the milk in my ricies it did...
Perhaps, and this is only a suggestion mind, since Metiria has actual lived experience of her hobby horse...surviving on a benefit...shouldn't Seymour do likewise with his?Now of course I'm not suggesting that he end it all. Of course not.
But while he sits smug in his snug world of privilege, gloating on the political demise of one who presumed to open up the festering wound that is poverty and inequality in Godzone, beneficiaries have died for the sins of WINZ.
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Mikaere Curtis, in reply to
Nandor still has a clarity of thought & expression that no amount of getting high has defeated
Got a citation for this ? Why are you painting him as a stoner ? What evidence do you have beyond that he espouses Rastifarianism - many who use marijuana in a way that is comparable to how red wine is used in a Catholic sacrament ?
This kind of stereotyping always annoyed me when Nandoor was an MP, and it still rankles.
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Dennis Frank, in reply to
No stereotyping intended, Mikaere. Just reminding folks that plenty of us have clarity of thought & expression despite - or perhaps even because of - getting high often throughout life. You think he joined NORML for some reason other than the justice issue? I think he was operating from experience & solidarity with like-minded others.
Your point about the relation of spirituality to green politics is vital. I've considered that relation essential since embracing it in the early '70s. While I was working intensively as activist & office-holder in the GP in the early '90s I was puzzled to encounter very few others who were motivated similarly.
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Leilani Momoisea has contributed this, which I feel we could all benefit by reading:
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andin, in reply to
Thanks
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The people grieving Metiria's harsh exit see journalists as pursuing the poor, brown solo mum she was 20-odd years ago.
Hi. Yes.
It's the default assumption of so much of the media attention that Metiria must have ripped the system off for tens of thousands of dollars. Who the fuck thinks beneficiaries could take tens of thousands of dollars? How distant from reality do you have to be? And yet that's the story they chased.
And when she said, publicly, that she didn't want her family dragged into this, the media seems to have delighted in hunting around the relatives to try and find what else she was "hiding".
Local newspaper, 10th, day after retirement announced, front page.
'Scrutiny' too much for Turei
Poll shows Green vote collapsingSo that's the national framing, right, that everything the brown woman says is a lie, and every rumour against her needs digging into for the real story.
The real story here is the one Matiria told. That benefits are stupidly hard to live on and most people get lots of help from family and aren't completely forthcoming about every single thing with WINZ. If the media had investigated that for a second they'd find people living on the fucking street right outside their buildings. They probably fucking well pass them on the way into work each morning. That could be some questions worth asking maybe, is some of this "massive increase in freedom camping" thing that folk go on about actually a symptom of impossibly grinding poverty in this country.Then again, the last time I saw an investigation into living in poverty on the TV, the reporter ran out of money half way through the week, and had enough convenient assets and stores in the house to get by for the last few days anyway. Which is just colossally vacant, that's nothing like being poor, there are no backups, there are no convenient low-cost assets to fall back on, and the extended family is often not that well off to help out much.
But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching 'roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all.You'll never live like common people
I don't think people get it at all. I had support, I had wealthy enough family nearby to solve my problems if I asked or sometimes if I didn't, and thus I am not homeless today, but it was still impossible. The system is cruel, it assumes you are cheating and forces you to constantly beg for what the law says you must have, and to prove your innocence. Even if you're in a fucking wheelchair now they want you to prove you can't walk to a doctor on a regular basis, just in case your spinal injury went away while no one was looking.
It's like that for everything, all the time, on top of there not being enough money for anything at all. People have to walk around collecting signatures now, to stay on the dole, and if you're one short they cut you off. How fucking terrifying that must be.
It was quite a relief, you know, for me, getting kicked off the dole each time, because it meant a few weeks or months of being cold and hungry and bored out of my skull with nothing to do, but I didn't have to go into WINZ any more, not for a while, not if I stretched things out a bit. That was my early 90's. Life might've gone a lot better if I'd just lied to them all the time.
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The people grieving Metiria's harsh exit see journalists as pursuing the poor, brown solo mum she was 20-odd years ago. Journalists are obliged to see her as the Member of Parliament she's been for the past 15 years, as a would-be member of the country's governing executive.
MP or not, she is still brown and a mum (therefore woman). These facts combined with this being about poor-person's lying, as opposed to middle-class lying (eg. tax cheating) has everything to do with the ferocity of the "pursuit" and how much it was likely to succeed.
Gordon Campbell is the only white male writer with a regular platform I have found that seems to understand this:
It goes to show the double standard in politics is alive and well. Which one, you may ask – the one where a different standard of behaviour is applied to politicians on the centre-left as opposed to those on the centre-right? Check. The one where far less is expected of white male politicians than brown female ones? Check. The one where benefit fraud gets treated far, far more harshly than tax fraud? Check. All of the above.
"Journalists" were successful in "doing their job" here because of the presence of each of institutional classism, racism and sexism. The rest of them don't seem to want to acknowledge this.
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Doing the same to Bennett just repeats the offence.
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blog at The Standard posted just after the shit started to hit the fan. Lots of commenters asking for Paula Bennet to be subjected to investigation by the MSM.
Oh, fuck right off. I'm sorry, but the left-wing brometariat calling for another not-white woman to be hounded out of Parliament by another round of media beneficiary-bashing panty-sniffing moralism? That is missing the point to a distasteful degree.
Hey, let's also ask Bennett if she's got any "baby plans" in her future and whether that means she can't do her job. That should put the crap cherry on the bullshit sundae.
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Yeah, what Craig said, only mine was shorter.
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Green party exec board says thanks but no to Kennedy Graham standing again.
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Time for a tune?
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william blake, in reply to
Oh, fuck right off.
Metiria Turei. Maori woman who owned benefit fraud to highlight issues of poverty.
Paula Bennett. Maori woman who can't remember if she did benefit fraud, and lawyered up when challenged, who became minister for social welfare and recinded the educational opportunities that she had to get her out of welfare dependency and instituted sanctions on the poor.
So no I won't fuck off.
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