(no subject)
Jan. 31st, 2005 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labellementeuseA pinch and a punch for the first of the month...
... and no returns.
Helen Clark is SO CLOSE TO LOSING MY VOTE. If she reacts ONCE MORE to Don Brash and his fucking WASTE OF TIME speeches, I swear I am going directly to Progressive Coalition.\
... and no returns.
Helen Clark is SO CLOSE TO LOSING MY VOTE. If she reacts ONCE MORE to Don Brash and his fucking WASTE OF TIME speeches, I swear I am going directly to Progressive Coalition.\
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2005-02-01 04:09 am (UTC)*picks Tui up and pushes her in the direction of the Greens*
C'mon. At least give your vote to a viable coalition partner who will keep Labour on track, not a one-horse party who are going nowhere fast.
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Date: 2005-02-01 04:17 am (UTC)(I mean Orewa I, of course. I'm not even going to dignify this year's with a number. *disgust*)
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Date: 2005-02-01 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 08:23 am (UTC)Remember, we are a DEMOCRACY, not a POLITOCRACY (where people vote where the political wieght will hang.) I resent my vote being forced.
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Date: 2005-02-01 09:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 07:52 pm (UTC)Although I must say I love Kiwibank and am very happy he got his way on that. He just hasn't done anything else since then.
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Date: 2005-02-01 11:26 pm (UTC)I like Kiwibank a lot, too. *is switching the moment she turns 18*
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Date: 2005-02-01 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 07:11 am (UTC)I rest my case.
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Date: 2005-02-01 08:24 am (UTC)There is totally a solution! I will start and LJ-wide campaign.
Or I'll just vote for Helen and writer her lots of abusive letters.
But, see, this is the thing- we can't hold Labour to account by threatening to shift our votes because there is nowhere else to go. This is dumb, people. Democracy is about accountability. This needs fixin'.
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Date: 2005-02-01 07:42 pm (UTC)And yeah, I know, strategic voting is not the point of democracy, but...meh. Ah well. At least we're bewailing the dominance of the liberals! (And with the whole Katherine Rich thing going down, National are so. Stuffed.)
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Date: 2005-02-01 11:28 pm (UTC)OMG WTF THE MORE ATTENTION I PAY TO NATIONAL THE BETTER LABOUR LOOKS. Even NZ1st looks better than National at the moment. I spent like an hour at work today having and apoplexy at the newspaper.
It's not like I even liked Katherine Rich. But anything's got to be better than an all-middle-aged-white-male front bench, and whatserface the replacement. >.
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Date: 2005-02-03 05:01 am (UTC)"ACT: The liberal party"
Might want to be careful using the word liberal, it's different in NZ to the way the US use it. :P
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Date: 2005-02-03 08:53 am (UTC)Do I have to tell you which I meant?? ;)
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Date: 2005-02-01 09:28 am (UTC)Seriously though, it's such a shame, because Helen Clarke is a great PM, why did she chose labour? She has never seemed the labour type to me. She's too much of a hard bitch.
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Date: 2005-02-01 11:30 pm (UTC)And, well, I know this is an alien concept, but I would think she picked Labour because she believes in things like welfare and progressive taxation and social responsibility. Wierd, huh?
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Date: 2005-02-03 04:57 am (UTC)These days - because of Labour's sparkling performance in government - there is absolutly no excuse to be on the dole long term.
Personally I have no problem paying high tax rates if I feel my money is being used to benefit society, not bludgers.
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Date: 2005-02-03 08:57 am (UTC)And what do you think of the DPB? Do you believe in working mothers? Funnily, the people who are so quick to slam the "high" DPB (ha. ha. ha.) are also those who like to emphasise the traditional family unit- so, mothers should stay home and take care of their children- but not if they're on the DPB. Because then, SHOCK that they should want to, you know, TAKE CARE OF THEIR CHILDREN PERSONALLY of anything. (I think nannies are basically a crime, and creches and stuff are responsible for, well, half my classmates.)
*le sigh* You know, I actually don't have any statistics on this, and I don't know where to find them. But I will bet you 10% of my tax returns (I so cannot wait until March) that welfare is NOT where the majority of your taxes go.
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Date: 2005-02-03 08:08 pm (UTC)Does it sound too harsh to say, if you can't afford to have kids, don't have them? That's not what I do think, but close, there should certainly be help for mothers, and I completly agree with you that Mum's should be given the choice to stay home and look after their kids.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I beleive it's approximatly 1/3. That seems a hell of alot to me.
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Date: 2005-02-03 08:36 pm (UTC)Well, yeah, actually, it does sound harsh. But I'm glad you agree with me about working mothers, anyway.
Oh, I know what's wrong with that- it's like, you're trying to control people based on their financial circumstances- like, if you're not rich, it's not okay to have a family. Children are the most valuable resource, possibly second to, like, petrol or something, so... oh man, I'm totally babbling, but I'm trying to combine the ideas of children as being valuable in themselves and that, it's hard to explain, buyt just because people are poor doesn't mean they should be discriminated against, and that's what that statement was.
Um. Dude. We have like the lowest unemployment ever. I'm not sure how, therefore, the dole itself can be 1/3 of our spending.
And even if it was, one third is STILL NOT A MAJORITY.
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Date: 2005-02-03 09:19 pm (UTC)I agree with you, it's important that people should be able to have children, the percentage that abuse the system are very few, I actually don't agree with Brash on his stance.
Your right, although the unemployment rate is low because of more factors than just alot of jobs out there. But surprisingly spending has not droppped. Read this http://www.liberalvalues.org.nz/index.php?action=view_article&article_id=250 (haha, and note the title!).
I never said it was a majority, I said it was too much.
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Date: 2005-02-04 05:26 am (UTC)Ooh, you don't agree with Brash? Dude!
Er, got a less biased source, btw??
Even if you didn't...
"unemployment and emergency benefits, -19%
sickness benefit, +62%
invalid's benefit, +149%
domestic purposes benefit, +41%
superannuation, +15%"
Hey, those are GOOD benefits. I think it is our social responsibility to take care of the sick and elderly, frankly, just as some of us will one day need to be taken care of. You'll note the expenditure that dropped was unemployment...
Also. "[spending last year was]$1.634 billion - an amount almost identical to the dole bill of 1993."
So 1.639B in 1993, 1.634 in 2003- but not only has the actual monetary value spent dropped, it has done so despite inflation. Yet later on in the article the author complains
"Yes, welfare spending on unemployment has dropped significantly but growth in every other area has meant overall spending continues to climb. "
Um, they just PROVED that it has not. *headthunk*
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Date: 2005-02-01 09:55 am (UTC)And don't you people go accusing me of disloyalty, whatever anyone says we all know that politics is about steriotypes, cynicism, pessimisim and very little else.
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Date: 2005-02-01 11:30 pm (UTC)