Posts by Sam F
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to giovanni tiso,
You know what else gets on my tits? Public libraries.
Oh man, do not get me started on that one again…
So what he’s saying is that Knowles didn’t spend enough time justifying to the baying hounds of the collected meedja why he wasn’t sending men to what’s turned out to be almost-certain death. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
I think he's now tacitly admitting that his earlier pontification on mine rescue methods was entirely meaningless and ill-informed, but as a professional comms consultant he believes the news media were poorly served by the rescuers, and that's clearly the real tragedy, amirite?
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Looks like it’s going to be twatcock by a landslide.
By way of a footnote then: this isn’t a neologism, but it seems to me to have been a year of entitlements.
Some of the powerful still got them of right, some lost them for overstepping the bounds, and some were about to get them taken away for the sin of being poor and non-influential. But at least various persons made sure that everyone knew they were entitled to their own views – the underlying message often being that they were entitled to bugger off regardless.
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Whilst we’re sharing scarily apposite links from bloggers overseas, this:
It’s a popular idea these days – Ian Duncan Smith and Chris Grayling certainly see ‘benefit dependency’ (rather than, say, poverty, or limited opportunities) as the greatest scourge of the working classes today. The way to combat benefit dependency is (apparently) to stop paying benefits. This will discourage the next generation from leaning on benefits and make them more self-reliant. The logical conclusion of this argument is that it would be a good thing to stop benefits completely, indefinitely – after the unemployed, the fatherless kids, the various other ne’er-do-wells have all died off (which would naturally happen completely peacefully and without incident, like the characters quietly accepting their fate in ‘On The Beach’), Britain would be able to restabilise with a manageable, morally superior population.
A caricature? Well, how else is the disincentive supposed to work? Hand out benefits on a lottery basis, perhaps, so only 50% of applicants get money (Chris Grayling could flip the official coin), and repeat every year so that nobody will be able to take their benefits for granted? Getting benefits is already a tedious, drawn-out, humiliating process and benefit-based lifestyles are already shite. Granted, we haven’t pushed this as far as is humanly possible. Nobody has yet implemented Digby Jones’ ace idea of putting the long term unemployed in hostel rooms on starvation rations, for example. But being on the dole isn’t fun. We’ll know when the cushy benefit lifestyle has become a ‘disincentive to succeed’ when we see hedge fund managers jacking it all in to go and sign on at their local Jobcentre.
And this bit in particular gave me a familiar chill:
There has been no moral decline. The spread of the myth of one is a product of the perpetual war on welfare that’s been fought by both parties over the last thirty years. Today’s underclass are the old working class. The majority of the population haven’t suddenly developed defective moralities en masse and lost their once-unassailable work ethic. They’re the same people, just living in a very different society. The endlessly-praised hard-working parents and grandparents (case in point here) had the good fortune to grow up in a time when employment was higher, when industry was still the country’s largest employer, and even people with little or nothing in the way of education could reasonably expect to find work for life. It was regimented, dull, badly-regulated work with precious little chance of advancement, true, but it was there.
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There is an entire group of people that is being unfairly and dishonestly demonised here for political gain. It is not a new thing in history. It is appalling. It needs to be roundly condemned and vehemently resisted. By saying ‘okay, but how do we go after the bludgers’ you’re doing the exact opposite, and buying into the narrative. For isn’t it like saying “this group of people, these victims of how society works – shouldn’t they really be perfect?” No group of people is. Catching benefit bludgers is no different from catching tax cheaters or dishonest accountants or scamming bankers, all of whom cost society. But no policy is made regarding those other groups starting from the assumption that they are in fact all fraudsters, which is what the WWG is proposing we do with welfare recipients.
+1
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Who else heard about this?
New research has found about half of families living in the country's most deprived areas have never even heard of the Working for Families Tax credit.
The Minister sounds fairly relaxed about this:
"If the study is showing that 40 percent are not getting it it's saying that 60 percent are, so, you know, if you're a cup half full you'd say that 60 percent at least are getting assistance that they may not have been getting before, but it does tell us that there are people perhaps in those lower incomes that are not accessing the sort of services and the help that is there so we need to have a close look at that and see how we can do that."
I'm not sure whether the study actually says that 60 percent are "getting it" - if 40 percent have no idea it exists, I'm not sure it follows that the rest are definitely getting the entitlement? But I'm not 'a cup half full' I guess.
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The poll did seem to honour the spirit of the working group, yes.
And they only needed to add "youngest on solids" and "youngest in second trimester" to get the Kiwiblog septella.
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Hard News: I'm not a "f***ing cyclist".…, in reply to Sacha,
Some rightly furious responses to the Thompson piece at the Herald, notably this:
Another genius article.
We sure know how to produce them.
Bikes must be fitted with rear-vision mirrors – This would actually be a good thing, cyclists probably wouldn’t like it but you’d feel a lot safer on a bike. I can’t see it would have saved any of the 5 people that got killed by cars not following the road rules though.
* indicators, I personally have no problem with this. Just remember how many cars you see change lanes etc without indicating though.
* They can only ride single-file on a single-lane road unless overtaking – as all other vehicles on the road are required by law; Perhaps drivers should remember that to overtake you need 100m ov clear visibility throughout the manouvre. Yeah right.
* Be fitted with headlights that must be on at all times – as other two-wheeled vehicles on the road are required by law; YES YES YES, all road users at all times. 100% agree.
* All bike riders must pass a road-licence test – Do you know anyone adults that ride a bike that don’t drive? Oh yes, we all have a license already.
* All bikes must be registered and pay road tax – Yep, sure thing. Paid on the amount of damage done to the road.
You’re a true visionary Eric
Or more succinctly, this:
I enjoyed your writings on alcohol and driving standards but you've lost the plot on cyclists. Everyone I know that rides also drives and pays taxes except my 13 year old daughter and her mates, your columns just plain stupid. Take care when driving around cyclists. Isn't 5 dead enough for you and some of your fellow drivers?
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Very nice - and what an opening sentence...
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Just got an email from a friend asking me to join a Facebook memorial group for the Pike River miners, and Gmail’s ad banner flashed up a plug for West Coast job vacancies on TradeMe.
Almost literally raged at my screen before I realised that no human was likely involved.
Sympathy to the families of the 29 - may the cameras and microphones now recede, and let grief do its painful, healing work.
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In the past few days it has occurred to me that a rear vision mirror, affixed to either helmet or handlebars, would be more than ornamental on the bike. Has anyone got any tips on what works with these?
I’ve seen a fair few people on bikes – mostly cycle tourists – with mirrors mounted on the right-hand bar.
A few are mounted below the bar, extending down below the handgrip, so when you’re headed along with your head down you can still scope out what’s behind. Above the bar might be better in general for people travelling in town though.
You can apparently also get helmets that have really trick mirror systems integrated into them, but I’d think a standard mirror would be all most people would need (and call me old-fashioned, but I’d prefer a soft foam helmet without little hard bits embedded into it).
And hooray for polite gesturing on bikes. I often deploy a defensive outstretched arm with palm raised when a vehicle appears to be edging out into my lane. I then dispel that imaginary forcefield with a quick thumbs up and nod/smile of recognition when the driver actually stops. Hasn’t failed me so far and you do actually get nods, smiles and thumbs up in return quite a lot of the time. Crash averted, recognitions of common humanity exchanged, I see no downsides.