Posts by Susan Snowdon
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About this work or training (or starve) idea. I used to go to computer classes run by MIT (Manukau that is), which was a place up the road open every day of the week and late on some nights. All I had to do was phone up and book. I could go any time, any day, as often as I wanted, all year long. It was almost always full. All sorts of people went, old, young, men, women, mothers, grandfathers smart people, idiots. We all seemed to be learning useful and different things.Then they shut it because it was 'out of their area', or some such nonsense. We were supposed to go to night classes at the local college. As if one hour a week at 7pm on a Tuesday would suit everyone... Now that was the sort of thing that really was helping people with work skills. I wonder if John Key has that sort of investment in mind for the unemployed proletariat?
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15 hours a week at $12 an hour, multiplied by 52 weeks. $9360? Take away the abatement, I have no idea how to work that out. Take away tax. I don't know how much child care costs for primary school children, but let's say you use up 4 weeks holiday from your '15 hours a week, only in school hours job', that leaves about 8 weeks of school holidays to cover. (Remember, the nature of DPBs is that they have no partner to help.) Take that away. Transport, to and from your 'job'. (Ignore transport to childcare in school holidays, they can walk.) Take that away.(You could walk too, if Pak'n'save is handy. Although you might have to go further afield if all the DPBs from your impoverished suburb have got in before you.) What's left? A sense of achievement? Yes, that's comforting, they can eat and clothe ourselves in that...
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My license was endorsed so I have to drive a car with 'external wing mirrors'. (I think that cancels out anything pre-1920) Anyway, after I failed the test it only took two days before I wiped one of them off on a parked car. Bugger...
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Well done that man! (For taking kids to the movies. And staying there with them.)
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And I couldn't even get the quote thing right.
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<quote>plus his site looks like my Grandmother designed it.<quote/>
That's very funny. But sad. When I want to make my children laugh I tell them I'm going to take a course on 'the actor within' , or web design. I'm not even a grandmother and I know more about sub-atomic particles than I do about web design...
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What I'm thinking about now is that people who do bad things (kicking their partners downstairs included), have to eventually be accepted somehow back into our community. We can't demonise or ostracise them forever, that's stupid and unrealistic. There has to be a way for them to find a place with us again. I understand, and believe in, the therapeutic value of 'owning up to' one's bad behaviour. This may include formal 'punishment' as well as the informal forms we are seeing now - public criticism, loss of job, loss of face, expressions of remorse (genuine) etc etc. I would like to see Tony Veitch accountable for his actions in a court of law. But, one day he has to be able to live amongst us again. As do all those people already in the prison system for whatever silly or despicable things they've done. If you are on the side of Sensible Sentencing obviously you lock them up forever/brand them/ do whatever it takes to signal they are less than human. But don't we need to 'forgive' them eventually? (After due process, penance, counselling, the passage of time, whatever it takes.) I don't mean saying what they did is before is now ok, but that we are ok with how things are now.
I just feel that it is easy to be angry with Tony Veitch's actions, and to get hot and bothered about all the ramifications. I certainly do. But he's not 'evil'. I would rather see him rehabilitated than pilloried.
Hmm... I sound very pious. Probably due to watching Taxi to the Dark Side at the Film Festival tonight. (Gitmo Bay, torture, Rumsfield etc.)
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Sorry. Only 41% say no way. Wasn't wearing my glasses.
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The latest issue of NZ Womens Weekly apparently has an article on Tony Veitch. (Already.) The online readers poll asks if he should be given a second chance - 53% say 'yes!', 46% 'no way!', and 6% 'maybe'. (Doesn't say what numbers are involved.) I find that strangely disturbing. I wonder if readers of the print version have a different perspective. Or if they would feel differently if Tony Veitch was a big hulk of a man i.e. more physically threatening to look at. Or, here's a thought, is the online version read mainly by men?
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Not sure about this, but doesn't
an endless circle-jerk of people
refer only to men? Good to see you're not insulting the intelligence of us women.