Minto blames Goff et al for Nia Glassie’s murder
November 26th, 2008 at 9:37 am by David FarrarJohn Minto has worked out who is to blame for the murder of Nia Glassie:
There is never any excuse for abuse of children and it’s natural for us to want long prison sentences for her killers. However, unless we clearly see the context in which she was killed then we will condemn other children to similar abuses.
Yes the context of what makes people stick a toddler in a drying machine to torture her.
As Nia Glassie lay dying in hospital last August the New Zealand Herald published figures related to child abuse among Maori. Social issues reporter Simon Collins reported that Maori children were more than twice as likely to die from child abuse as other children but that this was a relatively recent development.
In 1987 child abuse deaths for Maori were on a par with the rest of New Zealand. From 1978 to 1987 the number of children aged 0 to 14 per 100,000 killed was 0.92 for non-Maori and 1.05 for Maori.
However from 1987 it rose rapidly. For the period 1991 to 2000 the figures were 0.67 for non-Maori but 2.40 for Maori.
This dramatic increase has obvious roots. The number of Maori in paid work dropped by 15 per cent between 1986 and 1991 while total employment fell just 6 per cent. Maori unemployment peaked at a staggering 26 per cent in 1991 while the non-Maori rate was just 9 per cent.
Maori were disproportionately degraded by the policies of Rogernomics under Labour’s 1984 to 1990 government.
Yet those who killed her did so in a time of near full employment. But hey let us ignore that and blame it all on Rogernomics.
Those who demand vengeance for Nia Glassie’s death would be better to first set up a gallows outside Parliament and the Business Roundtable offices before they focus on the miserable men guilty of her murder.
Yeah, nothing to do with those who tortured a three year old. Or the neighbours who did not report it. The guilty parties are those who saved a country from bankruptcy.
The most important solution to ending child abuse is to make full employment the number one economic priority. Forty hours work on decent pay by which a breadwinner can support a family in dignity and respect must be at the heart of social and economic policy. Not surprisingly it was dropped as Labour Party policy back in the 1980s by the likes of Roger Douglas, Helen Clark and Phil Goff while it’s never been National Party policy.
So Douglas, Clark and Goff plus National are all to blame. Again never mind that at the time this happened unemployment was the lowest in the world. I think it is reprehensible of Minto to try and blame this sociopathic torture and abuse on the economic policies of 20 years ago.
Anything less than this is to cry crocodile tears for Nia Glassie and condemn more children to her fate.
You don’t get full employment by turning a country into Cuba, as Mr Minto advocates. You get it by having a strong economy.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Has no one told Minto his use by date was 1984?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Problem with his theory is the mother was fully employed and she was one of the perpetrators of the abuse…
Wasn;t working for families supposed to solve this? Minto still fighting the battles of his youth
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Minto is a bitter old man who’s greatest disappointment in life is that he has not managed to create a class war. Best ignored.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 9:59 am
“Maori were disproportionately degraded by the policies of Rogernomics under Labour’s 1984 to 1990 government.”
I hear they were also disproportionately “degraded” during the second world war too. If there had not been a war, there would not have needed to be a maori battalion and the families of those who died would not have their line broken or scarred. Then the grandchildren of those soldiers would not be so upset. The blame lays at the feet of Germans of a Nationalist Socialist persuation reacting to economic conditons caused by the Kaiser’s failures. Since the Kaiser was distantly related to the English Monarchy, several English monarchs and their representatives in NZ, the GG, are responsible.
Tune in next time for more Minto Madness!
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Minto? Irrelevant, hysterical and just trying to get himself noticed. Ignore him and he’ll go away, hopefully, like the class bully he is.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Minto is part of the problem not part of the solution.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:05 am
The rank hypocrisy of this cowardly communist POS is even more repugnant than usual. Anyone with a brain knows that if there is any political faction responsible for the proliferation of lifestyles and events that are exampled by the Glassie case it is the power obsessed left. Control freak scum like Minto who have throughout history used the disadvantaged as a stepping stone to electoral success. Not only used them but put policies in place to make sure they exist and that poverty increases, so expanding their political power base. A legion of hopeless people who in their desperation and contrived ignorance will reach for the false promises of the left.
Minto loves poverty. He loves despair, and he and his ilk labour to create these things for without poverty traps and welfare and a “disadvantaged class”, the left would never gain enough votes to win an election.
They make poor people. The make underclasses. All across the globe the pattern is the same. Nia’s death was not the outcome of any small government free enterprise pro-prosperity ideology. She lived an died under socialism. The foul barbaric ideology that Minto and his ilk thrust upon us through deceit and deception and misuse of power. For the left, the votes are in the ghettos. They need them, and they need more of them.
The real rank hypocrisy is that Minto doesn’t really care about Nia. To him, she’s a casualty of the class war. The real desperate irony is that throughout history, whenever Minto and his group have obtained the total control that is their life obsession, they’ve killed and starved and impoverished people by the millions. Its the left’s way. Always has been. Always will be.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Well said posters Minto is a dying breed and should join the rest of them he still hasnt figured out that Communisim is a dead duck
Dont worry Apart from the other point one of one percent of nutters like Minto he only shows himself up to the rest.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:21 am
The problem the Mintos of this world have (and to a certain extent the Clarks) is that they never got over their own particular event or time. In Minto’s case this is obviously the early 1980s, while Clark assumed that everyone still cared as much as she did about Vietnam. Fair play to them, I don’t mind anyone having a specialist area of history to indulge in, but these folk shouldn’t get so exercised when the rest of the world doesn’t share their enthusiasm. As was said above, they’re dying breeds and all the better for that.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I think Minto is partly right that politicians should take some of the blame, but not for the reasons he’s set out.
Politicians over the last seventy years have instituted inter-generational welfare that robs its victims of consequence to their actions. Kids are growing up in some households not attending school, not getting appropriate medical treatment, in broken homes (normally with no fathers) with exposure to the criminal justice system, substance abuse, poor housing conditions, and financial incentives for mothers to have more children in such an environment. Meanwhile various governments have used these people as a justification for throwing billions upon billions of more taxpayers’ dollars, with the excuse that we need to help those most in need.
The Nia Glassies of this world are the most in need. Where the Government justifies intervention and support in everybody else’s life, it stops short at providing real consequence and drastic intervention where it is most drastically needed. Welfare payments have to be stopped, and children have to be removed from the most at-risk families who can’t provide the most basic elements of physical safety, access to education and health services, and food and housing. The most vulnerable kids in the most vulnerable environments have to grow up in an environment of consequence, where personal responsibility means if you don’t look after your child, the welfare train stops.
Minto, unfortunately, doesn’t want that kind of drastic intervention where it’s most needed. He wants to use the Glassie case as a trojan horse for more state intervention where it isn’t needed, to create more dependency.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:27 am
“As was said above, they’re dying breeds.”
Wake up. One just got elected to the most powerful political office in the world. You think the left are losing and freedom is winning you’re a dangerous and deluded fool.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Minto should join his mate Trotts where they can wallow in self pity together. Like Trotter Minto has failed to reach adulthood and prefers to live in some alternate reality, there really is no hope for him and the best thing we could do for him his to put him out of his misery.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:32 am
DPF – if the right wing reforms had no social impact on children – please explain to me why the percentage of NZ’s children living in “low income households” went from being 11% in 1986 to 35% in 1994 (social report 2008),
http://www.socialreport.msd.govt.nz/economic-standard-living/population-low-incomes.html
Whilst youth suicide rates doubled over the same period?
http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/indicators/education_and_learning_outcomes/labour_market_and_social_outcomes/1787
Of course to the ideologically blinkered there’s no causal relationship, but to those that lived as a child in a low-income community throughout this period the association is, “well duh” – of course poverty, income inequality and the resulting social alienation causes stress, frustration and depression. I guess that’s the price of increased “efficiency” and “labour market flexibility” hey DPF?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:34 am
“Of course to the ideologically blinkered there’s no causal relationship, but to those that lived as a child in a low-income community throughout this period the association is, “well duh” – of course poverty, income inequality and the resulting social alienation causes stress, frustration and depression. I guess that’s the price of increased “efficiency” and “labour market flexibility” hey DPF?”
Ah yes, the left wing idea that all poor people will eventually commit crime.
Wrong.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:38 am
goodgod – ever heard of the phrase “reductio ad absurdum”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Goodgod – ever heard of the phrase reductio ad absurdum?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Minto is right about this: the roots of Nia Glassie’s abuse lie in a societal sickness. This does not excuse the individuals in any way, but there are far far too many people who share the same sick attitudes, who have become de-humanised.
Minto is also right about the virtue of work. Full employment would be great, and having a job is a powerful force in giving structure and motivation and sense in your life. Paula Bennett for one would agree with that.
Where Minto is wrong is his top-down approach to a solution. He thinks the problem is there are not enough jobs and Govt should act to create more. But the problem is actually at the bottom, with people who are (often) unemployable.
Minto thinks (as Labour tends to) that the problem is lack of money. If you give people more money this will cure them of their anti-social culture. The truth is the other way around. They won’t get jobs until they become better human beings.
The real solution is a bottom-up one: fix the broken people, and the jobs will follow.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Nome fuck off with your reports and their contrived conclusions. You need votes and you lie and cheat and impoverish people so you can get them. You pervert democrocy through manufacturing poverty, and then holding out the false hope of a socialist Nirvana to those you have impoverished and made ignorant and desperate. Its a recognised leftist strategy in their obsession to control us all. You are just another stinking socialist hypocrite. Pretending you care about Nia when all you really care about is political power.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:42 am
John Minto won the Shepherd of the Year Award in 1981 and has been basking in the accolades ever since.
Vote:But keep in mind, and this a a difficult fact for the left to accept;
“What would provincial town New Zealand do for medical services if black rule had not been brought to South Africa?”
November 26th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Roger Nome: Quote: “DPF – if the right wing reforms had no social impact on children – please explain to me why the percentage of NZ’s children living in “low income households” went from being 11% in 1986 to 35% in 1994 (social report 2008),”
Because NZ was technically bankrupt, because the definition of low income households changes, because of the increase in measuring things like low income households.
But do tell, what % of children lived in low income households in NZ during the Clark years? Wasnt there a UN study on that?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Piss off Nome. You are not addressing what DPF was saying, in fact you are misrepresenting it.
Stop trolling and get a life, you pathetic tosser.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Hah – when confronted with the facts, as per usual, all the right has is obfuscation and impotent rage. Pathetic.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:53 am
The Christchurch Press (and perhaps other Fairfax newspapers?) regularly insults its readers with a Minto monologue. It’s an unbelievably blinkered and dated far-left view of the world that should have died with the Soviet Union.
Minto leaves no room for choice between right or wrong, or for a free independent personality. Every action is the result of a person’s environment and this environment can be perfected into a Leninist paradise on earth. Then there will be no crime, no hardship, no poverty.
What an appalling insult to the millions who died in the gulags and in Mad Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
How come this guy is allowed to teach children in state schools? Does anyone monitor his teaching to ensure he is not merely parroting Marxist doggerel to them?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:53 am
The issue here is that individual crimes are caused by individual criminal AND the only practical method for a government (or anybody) to change overall crime is social policy.
Exactly what social policy obvious the is difference of opinion on.
(I’ll include the justice system in that, for all I think that, as far as change goes, it’s a small part of the solution)
People claiming particular crimes are proof of their own hobbyhorses is stupid, but it doesn’t stop a John Minto.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:54 am
“Hah – when confronted with the facts”
Go away. You’re a compulsive liar. Always have been. Always will be. The left have to lie, or they’d get nowhere.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Speaking of impotent nome – your mates at the standard are waiting for your return tonite with your tales of raids and daring do. LOL.
Now run along boy.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 10:55 am
“Does anyone monitor his teaching to ensure he is not merely parroting Marxist doggerel to them?”
Yeah, but the “monitors” are just as bad as Minto. Just not so open about it.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Nome is the living undeniable proof of what the left are doing. Producing through manipulation of society and the education system, under educated slow witted fools infatuated with socialism. The more Nomes produced, the more votes for the left. The more Nomes in control, the more destructive outcomes. A self perpetuating cycle, and thousands of Nia Glassies die along the way.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:02 am
So Roger Douglas was working for the National Party back in the 90′s now?
Someone better make a note of these historical revisons for the rest of us who were there and apprently have the facts wrong from our direct observation.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:05 am
From that same report:
“The improvement since the mid-1990s reflects MORE ROBUST ECONOMIC (AND INCOME) GROWTH, THE STEADY DECLINE IN UNEMPLOYMENT, the increase in housing assistance and the increase in tax credits for families with children.”
The line was trending down by the end of Nationals term and this trend continued throughout Labours worthless time in charge. This is perfectly consistent with a structural change having an immediate negative impact on the economy with the positive outcome occurring steadily over a long period afterwards.
In fact, right at the end of the report it states that NZ was just slightly above the OECD average in 2004. So it isnt a NZ story by any means.
Nome in the typical unthinking leftie troll style assumes that the situation before 1990 was 1) inherently good, and 2) was sustainable. Look at the pretty chart, note that it moves a certain way when something happened and ignore that it happened almost immediately, which should be a reasonable persons first clue that what they are looking at is a statistical anomoly rather than an economic reality.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:08 am
“Someone better make a note of these historical revisons for the rest of us who were there and apprently have the facts wrong from our direct observation.”
Good to see more and more people getting angry with the lies and propaganda of the left. That anger needs to be demonstrated and the left need to feel it.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Why don’t we call a spade a spade? Maori society is a sick society. It is up to Maori leaders to improve their own people. I used to get annoyed at the claim that Maori problems are all due to colonisation. That is only an excuse.
Minto is just a has been communist. He and his ilk hate capitalism because it allows some people to become rich. Yet history shows you can’t have all people equal in society That leads only to the lowest common denominator becoming the norm.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Nome- i guess i brought two boys up in a low income, single parent way. Both high acheivers, both have found themselves after school work (one mowing lawns when even the paper round jobs had been taken up by refugees); both brought up in an area noted for it’s low socio-economic status, lots of crime round about etc. I shouldn’t imagine they will turn out to be child abusers, although i don’t want to be smug about anything.
Vote:The rest of you, sometimes a mother just wants to be a mother, I know living on a benefit isn’t great, but leaving your children alone isn’t either and even grandmothers have a right to their own lives. So, i was on a benefit at times and temping for over nine years so i had the freedom to bring my children up my way, be there for school trips etc. it wasn’t easy and the result now, is I can’t get work in the downturn we’re in. Instead, i have started my own business (perfectly reasonable, a professional occupation), but as it’s only been existing 5 weeks, not yet making any money. It’s the very devil to get any money to live on from WINZ and Working for families. Barely enough to pay the mortgage. Perhaps they’d rather I was on a benefit and took a job as a street sweeper or something? My problem now is, the son that’s on student exchange in the USA turns 18 next month and all allowances for him stop then. Even though he’s still at school. So when that happens, i’ll be faced with a mortgagee sale of my house, or give up a perfectly good, sustainable business to go back on a benefit, which might mean i can scrape through, with taking in homestays etc. I’ve done all that for years, i’m tired, i don’t want to do that again. Does my younger son know all this? No! He’s sitting level one NCEA and i don’t think he needs the worry. He’d leave school and get a job if he did know, but he’s worth a lot more than that. moral of this – don’t blame all ills of society on state handouts, please don’t think work outside the home is the be-ll and end’all of existence and please, don’t lump all sole parent families togther as if we were all the same.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:14 am
So Roger Douglas was working for the National Party back in the 90’s now?
“Someone better make a note of these historical revisons for the rest of us who were there and apprently have the facts wrong from our direct observation.”
Good to see more and more people getting angry with the lies and propaganda of the left. That anger needs to be demonstrated and the left need to feel it.
Someone claimed that?
What are you referring to? The “it was dropped as Labour Party policy… by the likes of Roger Douglas, Helen Clark and Phil Goff”?
Someone better make a note of these historical revisons for the rest of us who apparently have the facts wrong from our direct observation.
[edit: - "who were there and"]
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Nome should not be subject to abuse (it just gives the standard ammunition), play the ball not the man he has at least backed up his point with stats. It is not a baseless trolling post.
Vote:But hold on, what would have happened if the reforms had not taken place?
NZ would be looking at far worse statistics long-term. Notice the trend line since 94 is down ie the benefits of the reforms having been . There are also a whole lot of other factors that have contributed ie stock-market crash in 1987, massive deficit left by outgoing Labour govt in 1990 and probably a number of social factors such as the increase in relationship breakups, single mothers with only DPB income and that sort of thing. You will see that the trend downwards is consistent from the peak in 94 indicating that Labour from 99-07 have done no better on this front than National from 95-99, despite tax credits for lower income earners and community services cards and the like.
So Nome, put it into a wider context and your conclusions seem dicey at best and foolish at worst.
Minto is on the lunatic fringe, poverty might explain theft and the like but how can it be a cause of child abuse. If anything, it is the fact that Labour has done nothing about intergenerational welfare that has led to a culture of pig-ignorance, laziness and abuse. The Glassie case is merely a micorcosm of the anything goes attitude exhibited from these lifeless morally decrepid individuals.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:18 am
If things had continued as Nome and his ilk wanted, NZ would have been in a MUCH worse situation in the late 1990′s than it was.
All that Nome and The Standard and even Minto care about are individuals incomes, and they ignore everything else including things which would affect individuals income in the future!
This isnt surprising given that class warfare, sowing social unrest, stimulating envy and a sense of entitlement is the main source of their political power.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:20 am
…if, as I heard last night, a Maori child dies every 5/52 in NZ from child abuse, I wonder how many more are being tortured on a daily basis ?
Vote:Minto, of course couldn’t care less. The only people he wants bought to account are the Business Roundtable. Don’t attempt to discourage or dissuade him. The more he expresses himself, the more he discredits his position. Nice too, to see him and Trotter at loggerheads, and Trotter and Leila Harre having a spat.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Sorry poverty might explain the INCREASE in theft, rather than its legitimacy (although other cultures such as the Chinese culture would argue it is not immoral to steal from another to help your struggling family). However, the world leading rates of child abuse in NZ cannot be put down to poverty given that NZ is by no means the poorest country or the country with the biggest underclass. I put it down to the above culture mentioned in my last post and intergenerational welfare and breeding without caring amongst many in our society. If Minto is right Nome, then why are NZ’s child abuse stats so high yet our poverty figures are not?
Vote:Indeed, some Greenie nutter was telling me we were a “rich” country and this is why we had to be a world leader in climate change. I laughed and pointed out our OECD ranking and the current recession.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Glubbster wrote:”…poverty might explain theft and the like..”
Ask New Zealanders in their late 80s or 90s whether there was more “theft and the like” then or now? You will hear stories of towns where people didn’t even lock their doors. Of a time when murder, rape, and even white collar crimes like fraud, were far, far less prevalent.
Or compare the number of burglaries now with 40 years ago.
You will find there is far more theft now, yet New Zealand was poorer then.
The view that poverty causes crime is a view that stems from Marxism or in its parallel Claytons form, Christian socialism, which spawned Labour in NZ.
There is choice. Punishment plays an important role. So too does the way society regards theft. When it no longer despises it, attributing it to poverty or some other form of “victim” type effect, you can bet theft incidences will rise.
Minto’s propaganda makes crime worse.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Minto is cut from the same cloth as Bradford. Both tend to paint themselves as champions of the downtrodden. The net effect is that those who are downtrodden can look up to these people as some sort of saviour. I’m sure that both Minto and Bradford get satisfaction from this but the problem with that sort of dynamic is that it requires the downtrodden to remain so.
In order for this to work, the poor masses must be told that their situation is not their fault, and that they are victims of some sort of covert class system that conspires to keep them in this situation, when often it is the likes of Minto and Bradford that give legitimacy to their situation. By removing self responsibility, you create a situation where the actions of an individual, such as those responsible for the Nia Glassie brutality, are mitigated by failures in government policy.
This concept is utter nonsense. That Minto so clearly believes this to be true shows just how much of an idiot he actually is.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:36 am
(although other cultures such as the Chinese culture would argue it is not immoral to steal from another to help your struggling family)
What the fucks this outrageous misrepresentation about?? There’s not a civilized and prosperous social culture anywhere that advocates theft as a solution to the problem of poverty. Some of the poorest societies on earth impose some of the harshest penalties for theft.
The only people who think the perception of poverty justifies theft are socialists. In any society dominated by cultural socialists, theft is always going to be a major problem.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Anderton: Still banging on about the 1978 election.
Clark: Still banging on about the 1981 Springbok tour.
Minto: Still banging on about the 1984 reforms.
Yesterdays people, all of them. Thankfully we have Key looking to the future.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:45 am
“You will find there is far more theft now, yet New Zealand was poorer then.”
Well said Jack5. The claim that poverty justifies theft is one of the most vicious and socially destructive articles of propaganda the left have ever been successful with. Its a concept that lies at the heart of convincing the citizenry that socialism is a good thing.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Of course theft is wrong and we are judging theft from NZ standards not any other.
But its not that simple in China. Also, doing business in China also is very different and understanding of their cultural idiosyncracies is crucial if you want to be successful over there. One cant just think about everything from a Western paradigm. This is not meant to detract from the first point but is simply an interesting cultural comparison.
Jack NZ has changed massively since 40 years ago! we are a totally different society. We actually enjoyed better relative overall living standards than we do now until the 70′s. But this is beside the point. Put it this way, it is more likely theft goes up than child violence as a result of an increase in economic hardship. I thought that was an obvious point. If people have no money and cant survive or find a job some will resort to theft. This does not excuse their theft nor is it the fault of society. Personal responsibility.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Kimble:
“The line was trending down by the end of Nationals term and this trend continued throughout Labours worthless time in charge. ”
The thing is that GDP per capita (OECD PPP) actually grew from 1986 to 1994 (although slowly because National collapsed the economy and sent unemployment spiraling by cutting social spending, thereby reducing demand).
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/wp/2002/02-14/11.htm
So it wasn’t that New Zealand got poorer – it was that the distribution of wealth within NZ changed so rapidly (as a result of the right wing reforms) that child poverty levels tripled. Don’t get it twisted – the ratio of NZ kids killing themselves doubled over the eight years of right wing reforms because of the stresses, despondency alienation and depression that poverty brings – not because of the “Nanny state” – in fact that was cut-back severely over that period.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Actually the link should have been:
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/wp/2002/02-14/11.htm
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Kimble:
“The line was trending down by the end of Nationals term and this trend continued throughout Labours worthless time in charge. ”
The thing is that GDP per capita actually grew from 1986 to 1994 (although slowly because National collapsed the economy and sent unemployment spiraling by cutting social spending, thereby reducing demand).
http://www.socialreport.msd.govt.nz/economic-standard-living/population-low-incomes.html
So it wasn’t that New Zealand got poorer – it was that the distribution of wealth within NZ changed so rapidly (as a result of the right wing reforms) that child poverty levels tripled. Don’t get it twisted – the ratio of NZ kids killing themselves doubled over the eight years of right wing reforms because of the stresses, despondency alienation and depression that poverty brings – not because of the “Nanny state” – in fact that was cut-back severely over that period.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Kimble:
“The line was trending down by the end of Nationals term and this trend continued throughout Labours worthless time in charge. ”
The thing is that GDP per capita actually grew from 1986 to 1994 (although slowly because National collapsed the economy and sent unemployment spiraling by cutting social spending, thereby reducing demand).
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/wp/2002/02-14/11.htm
So it wasn’t that New Zealand got poorer – it was that the distribution of wealth within NZ changed so rapidly (as a result of the right wing reforms) that child poverty levels tripled. Don’t get it twisted – the ratio of NZ kids killing themselves doubled over the eight years of right wing reforms because of the stresses, despondency alienation and depression that poverty brings – not because of the “Nanny state” – in fact that was cut-back severely over that period.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Kimble:
“The line was trending down by the end of Nationals term and this trend continued throughout Labours worthless time in charge. ”
The thing is that GDP per capita actually grew from 1986 to 1994 (although slowly because National collapsed the economy and sent unemployment spiraling by cutting social spending, thereby reducing demand).
So it wasn’t that New Zealand got poorer – it was that the distribution of wealth within NZ changed so rapidly (as a result of the right wing reforms) that child poverty levels tripled. Don’t get it twisted – the ratio of NZ kids killing themselves doubled over the eight years of right wing reforms because of the stresses, despondency alienation and depression that poverty brings – not because of the “Nanny state” – in fact that was cut-back severely over that period.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Glubbster:
NZ has changed massively in 40 years. But what do you by ” We actually enjoyed better relative overall living standards”.
I don’t think so. It was the norm to leave school at 15 because families typically couldn’t finance higher education, and any way universities etc didn’t have the social-sciences twaddle courses and film studies etc.
And you say “If people have no money and cant survive or find a job some will resort to theft.”
We are nowhere near as badly off as we were in the 1930s Depression, and by far most people didn’t resort to theft then.
It’s about choice, about free will to choose, about knowledge of right and wrong, about personal responsibility.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
“So it wasn’t that New Zealand got poorer – it was that the distribution of wealth within NZ changed so rapidly (as a result of the right wing reforms) that child poverty levels tripled.”
What crap. Reports written by politically partisan government bureaucrats aren’t worth shit, (ask any Cuban) but the perceived causes and outcomes as interpreted by brain damaged indoctrinated socialist robots like you Nome are worth far less. Get out of the way. You had ten years to fix it and you made if worse. Now fuck off and come back when you’ve had a brain transplant that allows you to get a grasp on reality. The best way to fix the problem of a society of Nia Glassies is to stop listening to the worthless shit of idiots like you.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Wonderful, Roger Nome, if only those evil right wingers didn’t get into power every few years and undo all the good that socialism was doing meanwhile, eh?
What a wonderful parallel universe to be living in. Presumably the USSR and China were wrong to lose their nerve, North Korea and Cuba just need to stay the course like they are and they will soon be vindicated.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
The Spectator
“An age of barbarism” BY Melanie Phillips
Friday, 14th November 2008
“Twenty years ago, I started writing about the breakdown of the family, the systematic undermining of moral constraints and the ascendancy of ‘lifestyle choice’, a doctrine which forbade condemnation of any lifestyle as harmful. Non judgmentalism was now mandatory; the only judgment to be permitted henceforth was that judgment was discriminatory, and only disapproval was to be disapproved of. Stigma and shame were considered an affront to individual rights; disapproval of adultery or elective lone parenthood, for example, were dismissed as ‘Old Testament fundamentalism’.
During the past two decades, I warned repeatedly that the fragmentation of family life was in general a source of pain, damage and acute danger for children in particular but also the women in whose name modern feminists were promoting female independence from men; that mass fatherlessness was creating deserts of depravity and highly damaged children who were growing up to become highly damaged parents; that the collapse of social and moral controls was destroying the most fundamental values of civilised behaviour, with individuals raised in such emotional and moral chaos that they were incapable even of feeling the empathy with other people that is the very foundation of social relationships of the most basic kind; and that the welfare system was actually incentivising such wholesale destruction of individual lives and society itself.
Then as now, I was scorned and vilified by the ‘progressive ‘ intelligentsia. I had become reactionary, right-wing, ultra-right-wing, a harker-back to some mythical golden age of the fifties, a moraliser, an extremist, a bigot, a fascist, demented. Bien-pensant opinion spoke with one voice. Progressive politics meant the freedom to behave exactly as one wished in pursuit of instant gratification, and to destroy all external constraints, both formal and cultural, which got in the way. Anyone who, like me, spoke of the essential civilising force of stigma and shame in providing crucial informal constraints on the infliction of harm was demonised as a throwback to a cruel age of social ostracism. Government policy, egged on by activist judges who deliberately voided family law of ‘moral judgments’ on the basis that that there was no right or wrong in family life because it was always just too complicated to untangle, accordingly penalised marriage, rewarded adultery, further incentivised lone parenthood and systematically normalised irregular relationships.
Wickedly, to cover its tracks that same political/intellectual class stopped breaking down official information about household violence according to married/unmarried status so that it became impossible to show what previously official statistics had clearly demonstrated: that women and children are at vastly greater risk of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of unmarried and unrelated men passing through the household (a recent US study found, children living with a non-biological adult are 50 times more likely to die from afflicted injuries than those living with their biological parents). Indeed, we have now reached the point where official forms increasingly fail to use terms such as ‘mother and father’ or ‘parents’ in favour of the non-discriminatory euphemisms of informal ‘relationships’. Britain has simply written orderly, married, normative family life out of the script.
I also wrote years ago about the institutionalised incompetence of social work, in the grip of a political correctness so extreme that it was wholly incapable of responding to situations on the facts that plainly presented themselves, with catastrophic results. From the death of Maria Colwell in 1973 inquiry after inquiry has been convened, made recommendations and been ignored as atrocity has followed atrocity on the social workers’ watch. Then as now the same excuses were made – that social workers were under-funded, under-resourced, under-trained, under pressure, damned if they did and damned if they didn’t, unsung heroes who should not be condemned just because, hey, from time to time a child was sadistically abused or tortured to death on their watch, it was all the fault of government penny-pinching, we’re all guilty, etc etc. Then as now I was vilified as a heartless social worker-basher, extreme right-wing lunatic etc etc.
And now we can all see the truly terrible results. This week we have been presented with the life, systematic torture and death of baby P, a case so harrowing that many of us can hardly bear to read the details and cannot do so without weeping.
We read that he died at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and their lodger. We read that the mother expressed no remorse and boasted she will be free by Christmas. We read that she had another child while she was in jail.
We read that the Director of Children’s Services at Haringey council has refused to apologise and insisted that no-one was to blame, despite evidence that social workers ignored doctors and three employees had received written warnings.
We read that four government ministers were warned that Haringey council’s child protection service was out of control seven months before baby P’s death – by a council whistleblower who was sacked and gagged for issuing this warning and who is prevented by court injunction from giving evidence to the official inquiry into the baby P case.
We read commentators falling over themselves to express horror, shock, revulsion, incredulity, outrage. Where have they all been these past two decades? We read of political point-scoring and righteous indignation at the political point-scoring.
Of course the political point scoring is obscene. Of course the book should be thrown at Haringey council.
But we also read this week of another household in Manchester where a baby and his two year-old brother were stabbed to death by a mother suffering from mental illness.
And we read of Shannon Matthews’ mother and her boyfriend’s uncle, on trial for abducting that poor child and keeping her locked up in order to extract a reward for her safe return.
The truth is that it is all far, far too late. Britain has simply undone the fabric of civilised life. And the most bitter reproach of all must be for the people at whose door the ultimate responsibility for this catastrophic state of affairs must really be laid — not the wretched politicians, not the council officials or Ofsted inspectors or other negligent or incompetent professionals, not even the sadists who actually killed baby P or who murder or maim countless other children, but the amoral and criminally self-regarding so-called ‘progressive’ intelligentsia, who have bullied, smeared, intimidated and manipulated Britain into a truly dark age of barbarism.”
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
“……..the most bitter reproach of all must be for the people at whose door the ultimate responsibility for this catastrophic state of affairs must really be laid — not the wretched politicians, not the council officials or Ofsted inspectors or other negligent or incompetent professionals, not even the sadists who actually killed baby P or who murder or maim countless other children, but the amoral and criminally self-regarding so-called ‘progressive’ intelligentsia, who have bullied, smeared, intimidated and manipulated Britain into a truly dark age of barbarism.”
Get that, Roger F-wit Nome? Melanie Phillips is talking about YOU.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Well SAID, Redbaiter at 10.05, and most other commentators on this thread EXCEPT Roger Nome.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Get that, Roger F-wit Nome? Melanie Phillips is talking about YOU.
..and she’s so perfectly right, and such a wonderful writer, but I feel I must make one small correction-
I would have slotted the phrase “self proclaimed” in front of the noun “intelligentsia”. “So called” is OK, but few people today are fooled by this. They know that Universities are largely staffed by politically correct Stalinist progressive idiots, and therefore incapable of producing much else. A major solution to the problem of the Nia Glassies will be achieved when our school/ university system returns to focusing on education rather than indoctrination.
Roger Nome with his nauseating detached from reality crap demonstrates this so well. There are thousands out there like him, all bent on the same destruction. Its another big problem desperately needing to be fixed.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
The Free Western world was wrong to repudiate Joe McCarthy. We’ve actually been far too soft, the occupants of the Commie Trojan Horse have been far too successful stuffing up our society.
The “progressive intelligentsia” that Melanie Phillips refers to, are the followers of cultural Marxist ideology which had its origins in philosophers like Gramsci, Marcuse, Adorno, Foucault and Derrida; and the program was not designed to “improve” Western society at all, although that is what its dupes think; the people who developed this ideology were disappointed that the West had not gone in for revolutionary Communism, so they set out to go about it another way.
Nia Glassie and Lillybing and the Kahui Twins are the logical intended result. It is just that Maori and certain other races are like the canaries in the coal mine. Note that the most desperately poor recently arrived refugees from Commie and other totalitarian regimes do not do this stuff to their kids, what’s more they work their asses off and are successful contributing members of society within one generation, because they do not succumb to the “blame capitalism” lie.
Gramsci, Marcuse, Adorno, Foucault and Derrida will all be sizzling in hell along with Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot. So will their evil knowing supporters.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
# Jack5 (160) Vote: Add rating2 Subtract rating 0 Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
“NZ has changed massively in 40 years. But what do you by ” We actually enjoyed better relative overall living standards”.
I don’t think so. It was the norm to leave school at 15 because families typically couldn’t finance higher education, and any way universities etc didn’t have the social-sciences twaddle courses and film studies etc.
And you say “If people have no money and cant survive or find a job some will resort to theft.”
We are nowhere near as badly off as we were in the 1930s Depression, and by far most people didn’t resort to theft then.
It’s about choice, about free will to choose, about knowledge of right and wrong, about personal responsibility.”
You are right, JackP.
It was certainly a whole lot better for our society that not so many people went to Uni and got pumped full a whole lot of lies.
Vote:I don’t think one taxpayer cent should be wasted on Uni education. If anyone wants to go to Uni for good sound reasons that will benefit us all in the future, they should leave school and work their asses off for a few years and save money to pay their way. They might get a bit more sense meanwhile, and choose useful courses of study, instead of useless ones that ignorant idealistic 16 year olds tend to choose when they don’t have to pay the true cost.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
On the alleged connection between poverty and crime, Theodore Dalrymple argues that poverty doesn’t cause crime, tattoos cause crime. In his vast experience in the prison systems of the UK, he has discovered that most criminals have tattoos, therefore tattoos must cause crime.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Why is it that all the right has is hollow rhetoric and non-sequiturs as an excuse for an argument? It’s damn boring actually. You’d think that out of all the right wing posters here, one of you would be able to offer up something approaching a logically sequential, evidence-based argument, but no. You’re all fucktards!
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
“So it wasn’t that New Zealand got poorer – it was that the distribution of wealth within NZ changed so rapidly (as a result of the right wing reforms) that child poverty levels tripled.”
He is right on this one. More people earning more will raise the median wage. It is against the median wage that inequality is measured. But inequality measures are pretty much useless in isolation, as they cant be used to deduce the cause. For example, a reduction in the top tax rate will cause an increase in poverty if the after tax income is used as a comparison (which it should be).
Did the increase in after tax income of people on the highest marginal tax rate actually harm anyone on the lower marginal tax rates? No. Arguments of tax burden and government spending aside, an increase in inequality had no impact on the well being of those newly poverty stricken people.
Child poverty is a lovely term, isnt it? It is used by the Left as a club; they beat people about the head with it until they are dim enough to actually believe what the Left is preaching.
Who has children? Young people. That is indisputable.
Who earns more, young or old people? Well if they are working the greater experience of the older people is worth more in the market, so they are likely to earn more.
So something that increases the take home pay of the older people will push them further away from the incomes of younger people. If you only measure poverty using inequality, it would appear that the number of people in poverty has increased, even though they havent moved in real terms.
This is where the double whammy comes in. Those poor benighted, newly “poverty stricken” are more likely to have children so the number of children in poverty is going to increase at a higher rate.
They choose the “children in poverty” statistic because 1) it tugs on the heart-strings, 2) it has shock value and gets headlines, and 3) it has a natural bias which aides their case.
Most people wont think too deeply about it and wont see that bias and the poverty-industry lobbyists are relying on that to get their radical and wrong-headed ideas into the main stream.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Jack5 (160) 8 0 Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 10:53 am
“The Christchurch Press (and perhaps other Fairfax newspapers?) regularly insults its readers with a Minto monologue. It’s an unbelievably blinkered and dated far-left view of the world that should have died with the Soviet Union…..”
It is not a case of “perhaps”, other Fairfax papers inflict Trotter on their readers, and the other occasional op-eds from overseas are almost invariably leftwing, and give scum like Hager wall-to-wall coverage for their conspiracy rot.
It would be not so bad if they did run counterbalance from the Right wing; can you imagine Peter Cresswell getting an op-ed column in any MSM paper in NZ? But what is worse, talking to other people of similar opinions, you find that no-one ever gets a letter to the editor printed, that attacks the ridiculous and insupportable stuff that they inflict us with, written by people like Trotter and Minto.
It would be entirely just on this basis alone, for these papers to lose sales and go out of business.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Jack5 (160) 2 2 Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Glubbster wrote:”…poverty might explain theft and the like..”
“Ask New Zealanders in their late 80s or 90s whether there was more “theft and the like” then or now? You will hear stories of towns where people didn’t even lock their doors. Of a time when murder, rape, and even white collar crimes like fraud, were far, far less prevalent.
Or compare the number of burglaries now with 40 years ago.
You will find there is far more theft now, yet New Zealand was poorer then.
The view that poverty causes crime is a view that stems from Marxism……”
ETC. Great post, Jack5, I don’t know why the hang you are sitting on 2 thumbs ups and 2 down…….
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
There is poverty in China, but crime is low.
Mightn’t extremely tough penalties for crime have everything to do with it?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Kimble (1274) 1 0 Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
“So it wasn’t that New Zealand got poorer – it was that the distribution of wealth within NZ changed so rapidly (as a result of the right wing reforms) that child poverty levels tripled.”
“He is right on this one. More people earning more will raise the median wage. It is against the median wage that inequality is measured. But inequality measures are pretty much useless in isolation, as they cant be used to deduce the cause. For example, a reduction in the top tax rate will cause an increase in poverty if the after tax income is used as a comparison (which it should be).
Did the increase in after tax income of people on the highest marginal tax rate actually harm anyone on the lower marginal tax rates? No. Arguments of tax burden and government spending aside, an increase in inequality had no impact on the well being of those newly poverty stricken people.
Child poverty is a lovely term, isnt it? It is used by the Left as a club; they beat people about the head with it until they are dim enough to actually believe what the Left is preaching…….”
ETC.
Great post, the whole thing, Kimble.
We’ve had this debate over and over with Roger Nomer, haven’t we?
I made the point once that by his standard, every rags to riches success story was repugnant, because it resulted in an increase of inequality, i.e. between that person and the poor people that that person used to be equal to.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Every time Roger Nome and his ilk start the inequality agony aunt stuff, I will say THIS:
The following are causes of increasing inequality.
Breakdown in traditional marriage. The obvious thing is the disadvantage to children brought up without a father, or with a string of perverse male role models in their lives. But also, marriage across socio-economic groups, and subsequent “inheritance”, were powerful reducers of inequality.
Provision of services, etc, with public money, that primarily benefit the wealthy, and the neglect of infrastructure that was a greater benefit, proportionally, to lower income earners. The neglect of roads, and time wasted in congestion, has a disparate impact on the poor, who tend to depend more on motor vehicle use than middle class people who can choose where they live and can organise their life around public transport. The subsidy of cultural centres and art galleries benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor. New Orleans was a classic illustration of the consequences of concentration on trendy cultural vibrancy and the like, by the local administration, at the expense of vital infrastructure that was fought tooth and nail by chardonnay greenies and NIMBY-ists.
The “conservation” of land, and restrictive zoning, has a disparate impact on the poor, on the young and those who do not own properties, in favour of the more well-off who maintain their nice views and surroundings, while property values escalate out of reach of all who are not already on the gravy boat. An excellent article in this respect, is “Green Disparate Impact”, by Thomas Sowell. (The “poor” population of California is actually being driven out of state by escalating property values).
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/01/15/green_disparate_impact?page=full&comments=true
Increases in regulatory expense, like RMA costs, and the costs of obtaining licenses for commercial activity and the like, tend to inequality. A James Wattie could start up a food canning business in his garage. DEFINITELY NO LONGER.
This phenomenon is well covered in the book “The Mystery of Capital” by Hernando DeSoto. Interestingly, well-established larger businesses like this phenomenon, as it keeps competition to a minimum, hence the little-publicised support of many wealthy people for regulatory, socialist politics. Incidentally, that is not “Capitalism” although the cunning socialists “spin” the issues so it gets blamed on “Capitalism”. (The correct term is Socialist Parasitism). More recommended reading: “Intellectual Class Wars”, by David Horowitz, “Freedom of Opportunity, Not Equality of Opportunity” by George Reisman, and “Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty as We Know it”, By Charles Johnson:
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=8204
The subsidy of tertiary education with public money. Tertiary education itself, tends to increase inequality. To use taxes, which must remain necessarily high on low income earners, to subsidise this, only worsens the situation. An outright free market situation with all students paying fees, and a broader use of direct student-based “scholarships”, would actually produce less inequality than the system we have now, and would produce much better results in terms of relevant qualifications. I suggest too, that many of the poorer folk who do make it to Uni under the current system, could be tending to make poorer choices of qualification, which would be eliminated by better guidance under a scholarship-based system especially scholarships funded by private enterprise which knows of its needs for people with certain qualifications.
The trend for wealthier people to have children later in life, and have less of them, while poorer people still have larger families, tend to start earlier, and the worst of all are the early-starting solos.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Jack, relative means by world standard. In the 50′s and 60′s NZ had one of the best living standard in the world. We are now 22 on the OECD.
Of course we are better off as a whole than 40 years ago. GDP per capita is a measure of standard of living and compared to those times I agree we are well ahead. But in the 50′s and 60′s the unemployment rate was very low. Look at it now. There is a real underclass now in society something that was not there in those days.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Great post at 12:50 Phil. Right on the button. This is the truth that the left do everything they can to conceal.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Another thing occurs to me regarding the tax-inequality example above. It could be that the continuing reduction in “poverty” through the Labour term was partly a function of bracket creep and the very high marginal tax rates associated with Working for Families.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Philbest/Jack: I clarified my quote as poverty might explain the INCREASE in theft and the like (dishonesty offences). I had simply left out “the increase” by mistake. This is quite different from how it has been quoted in your posts. I do agree with the point that one cannot blame theft on poverty at all. I disagree that harder economic times dont lead to an increase in theft & dishonesty offences though. I think these are correlated but it it is a matter of individual responsibility. In today’s welfare state, theft even in tougher times is reprehensible.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I just hope the John Minto et al ain’t into breeding.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Many thanks Phil Best Its not the first time you have put into words or quoted those words the less articulate of us have so wanted to write
To say its a frustration to read the moron rubblish of some is an understatment. Nia Glassie babyP and all the other cases are proof positive that the Lefties have failed and failed miserably
But instead of admitting their profound guilt they continue to strike out call black white in an absurd attempt to defend the indefensible
They are obscene in the extreme in seeking to turn their guilt upon others after ignoring the warnings and the predictions that come to pass.
Minto Clark et al are a scourge on our society and until they are destroyed they will continue inflict suffering on the innocent
May they rot in hell
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Wasn’t Sue’s amendment to section 59 of the Crimes Act supposed to put an end to all of this?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
What a sad, pathetic, bitter old man. When is he going to crawl off and die?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Only if they were planning to use the defense that they were disciplining the child, I don’t think that would have applied in this case anyway.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
It’s always easier to drag the top down then raise the bottom up when your goal is to “reduce inequality”
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Why do the newspapers give space to the likes of Minto?
He’s pure poison and would, I’m sure, make Chavez et al blush with his discredited socialist diatribes.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
llew – how many times was that defence used sucessfully? Wasn’t it 4 or 5 times over the last decade?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Dunno, you could ask the same about most columnists. Maybe he’s cheap?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Not the faintest idea sorry, I was just pointing out that
the answer is “no”, it wasn’t. It just removed the defense option.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
No llew, Bradford said precisely that a number of times during the debate.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
KiwiGreg
sometimes the greatest truths are spoken in the fewest words. well put.
The tall poppy mowing behaviour is something more prevalent here than any other country I have travelled to or lived and for the life of me I can’t work out where the meanness, jealousy and spite comes from. Its not as if the jackboot of the ruling class has been hard pressed across the throat of the poor struggling workers although you would think that this had been the case when you listen to the rhetoric coming from the left (particualarly the unions but not exclusively so).
Some just cannot bring themselves to celebrate the success of others which may also explain why we get so wound up about our sports people – it all gets taken so personally
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Great posts PhilBest, I bet you not on the socialist’s “holiday” card list. Several times I have written letters to our local rag challenging Trotter’s bent view to life only to have them turned down. I must add that I’m always polite and have not once referred to him as a commie tosser. New Zealanders on the right face a huge job in turning around the brainwashed masses, if this can not be achieved our country might no longer be referred to as “God’s own”, maybe something like “The long white shroud” would be a more suitable tittle.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Oh well, I stand corrected then – I wouldn’t have thought the section 59 defense would have applied to the Nia Glassie case though.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I don’t think idiots cared whether they were employed or not, they just wanted to stay home, get drunk and do drugs.
And because they were bored they toturted a liitle girl until she died.
The main reason is because welfare has been so expanded in this country these drop kicks can exist and shag up with sole mothers who don’t inform WINZ that they are no longer single.
Minto and his leftie ilk are responsable for the death of Nia Glassie and thier failed welfare policies.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
“Why do the newspapers give space to the likes of Minto?”
As hard to believe as it may be, they don’t think they themselves are left wing enough.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Nome go read my posts and others who have held your stats to account. More specifically, tell me why:
1) There is a trend southwards from 95 consistent for both Nat & Lab govts (despite Labour’s WFF credits et al) and not just for Labour?
2) Whether you have considered any other factors for the sudden dramatic rise from 86-94? Economic conditions & social dynamics maybe?
3) Why is NZ one of the worst re child abuse, despite the fact that the stats show poverty has trended down for the last 14 years?
4) Has Labour not made the situation worse by doing nothing to address generational welfare dependency (ie polices targeted at moving people from long-term unemployed to employed (not sickness benefit)), in a time where the economy was booming and workers hard to find?
5) Why you think the govt controls everything and so if youth suicide rates increase significantly, it must be the govts fault? Have you thought about increasing pressures in the post-84 world, family breakdowns, economic conditions? Or did some people commit suicide to escape Roger Douglas, David Lange, Phil Goff, Helen Clark, Michael Cullen & Co? That is a bit silly isn’t it Nome?
Simply relying on stats without explanation is no cause to proclaim you are correct. In fact to not address the above concerns shows you know you are out-gunned.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
What has changed since the 1950s, 60s & 70s are the ethical and moral standards that we live with.
We now know that those who educated the post-war children were stupid, because they believed in grading and streaming. Without these stupid ideas we are able to have all our children ‘achieve’ at school! The fact that their level of achievement at 18 years of age is less than an Indian pupil is expected to attain at age 13 has nothing to do with it – we have no failures!
We know that those who gave us a sense of appropriate and inappropriate were stupid. They thought it was appropriate to recognise that some people were handicapped and so needed more help and support then others. They thought it was appropriate to reprimand your child with a smack on the leg with your hand when they did something socially unacceptable. They thought it was appropriate to call a man a man and a woman a woman and to celebrate the differences between them. They thought it was appropriate to behave with modesty in public. They thought it was appropriate to show respect for older people. They thought it was appropriate to reward loyalty. They thought it was appropriate to do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage. Of course, they were stupid, they hadn’t grasped the fact that Political Correctness was far more appropriate than any of these things.
We know that the judicial system of those days were stupid. Take for instance the police. They walked around, and knew people in their ‘beat’. They verbally chastised children for doing wrong, unless it deserved a clip around the ear which they were happy to dispense, and then took the child home to explain to a parent their misdeed. They took everything that came their way in the order it arrived, leaving outrageous things to the specialists and holding community crime to a minimum. Let’s look at magistrates; they handed out sentences that would cause offenders pain but not so much or so little as to not make the punishment fit the crime. Lets look at judges: they impose sentences that ensured the offender learned a lesson appropriate to the magnitude of the serious crime they had committed. Let’s look at the court system; you were dealt with, in the most serious crimes, within six months of being arrested. Let’s look at the prisons: they were nasty places that only the most incorrigablke would risk being incarcerated in twice. All these people were, of course, stupid because they didn’t realise that people committed crime because they were under-privileged, and so needed looking after and rehabilitating.
Oh. If only we had known back then what stupid people we were listening to! If we had, we would be living in Socialist Utopia now, instead of this horrible place that tens of thousands each year beg to be allowed to live in!
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
I stopped buying the Press soon after it employed Minto. I will not pay any money towards a rag that would publish his hateful bile.
Minto is far worse and far more dangerous than just a has-been communist like Troter. Minto is a terrorist supporter. He regularly praises Hamas and other Jew-hating Islamic terror groups. He has written outright lies in the Press about Israel and its founding. He actually argued against the new terrorist laws (one of the few things Labour got right) on the basis that it might prevent people from giving financial aid to groups like Hamas!
And when it was revealed that one of the suspects arrested in the Urewera raids had talked about assassinating John Key Minto’s response in a Press article was effectively “so what?”.
Why is the Christchurch Press paying a terrorist supporter to write articles?
Why is a terrorist supporter teaching schoolchildren?
And why has Minto not been investigated for possible financial support of terrorist groups?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Thanks, SideshowBob, we keep getting those suspicions confirmed, commentators here have often had the same experience, the arsewipe editors don’t print criticisms of the worst, most absurd and unsupportable stuff they print; they do allow some debate to occur on things that are more innocuous.
And Lee, I wish there was some kind of movement where thousands of people could say they had stopped buying those disgraceful rags because of Trotter or Minto and the like.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
One of the best analyses you can read is “The Great Disruption” by Francis Fukuyama
http://www.wesjones.com/fukuyama.htm
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
EXCERPTS:
Vote:“…..As people soon discovered, there are serious problems with a culture of unbridled individualism, in which the breaking of rules becomes, in a sense, the only remaining rule. The first has to do with the fact that moral values and social rules are not simply arbitrary constraints on individual choice but the precondition for any kind of cooperative enterprise. Indeed, social scientists have recently begun to refer to a society’s stock of shared values as “social capital.”……”
November 26th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Has anyone else noticed how it is always those on the fringe eg Far Left – Minto – Far Right – Libertarianz, who can always be relied upon to try and exploit tragic situations and crime for political gain?
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Ruth, you forgot the centre-left, centre-right, and centre. Also the far-up and far-down.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Resume: EXCERPTS From Francis Fukuyama; “The Great Disruption”:
“…….BEGINNING in about 1965 a large number of indicators that can serve as negative measures of social capital all started moving upward rapidly at the same time. These could be put under three broad headings: crime, family, and trust.
Americans are aware that crime rates began sometime in the 1960s to climb very rapidly – a dramatic change from the early post-Second World War period, when U. S. murder and robbery rates actually declined. After declining slightly in the mid-1980s crime rates spurted upward again in the late 1980s and peaked around 1991-1992. The rates for both violent and property crimes have dropped substantially since then. Indeed, they have fallen most dramatically in the are as where they had risen most rapidly – that is, in big cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles.
Although the United States is exceptional among developed countries for its high crime rates, crime rose significantly in virtually all other non-Asian developed countries in approximately the same time period. Violent crime rose rapidly in Canada, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. With regard to crimes against property, a broader measure of disorder, the United States is no longer exceptional: Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden have ended up with theft rates higher than those in the United States over the past generation…..”
NOTICE THAT, guys, New Zealand gets an “honourable” mention from Mr Fukuyama himself……….
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
“……..Of the shifts in social norms that constitute the Great Disruption, some of the most dramatic concern those related to reproduction, the family, and relations between the sexes. Divorce rates moved up sharply across the developed world (except in Italy, where divorce was illegal until 1970, and other Catholic countries); by the 1980s half of all American marriages could be expected to end in divorce, and the ratio of divorced to married people had increased fourfold in just thirty years. Births to unmarried women as a proportion of U.S. live births climbed from under five percent to 32 percent from 1940 to 1995. The figure was close to 60 percent in many Scandinavian countries; the United Kingdom, Canada, and France reached levels comparable to that in the United States. The combined probabilities of single-parent births, divorce, and the dissolution of cohabiting relationships between parents (a situation common in Europe) meant that in most developed countries ever smaller minorities of children would reach the age of eighteen with both parents remaining in the household. The core reproductive function of the family was threatened as well: fertility has dropped so dramatically in Italy, Spain, and Germany that they stand to lose up to 30 percent of their populations each generation, absent new net immigration.
Finally, anyone who has lived through the 1950s to the 1990s in the United States or another Western country can scarcely fail to recognize the widespread changes in values that have taken place over this period in the direction of increasing individualism. Survey data, along with common-sense observation, indicate that people are much less likely to defer to the authority of an ever-broader range of social institutions. Trust in institutions has consequently decreased markedly……”
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
“…….When the same phenomena occur in a broad range of countries, we can rule out explanations specific to a single country, such as the effects of the Vietnam War or of Watergate. Several arguments have been put forward to explain why the phenomena we associate with the Great Disruption occurred. Here are three: They were brought on by increasing poverty and income inequality. They were products of the modem welfare state. They were the result of a broad cultural shift that included the decline of religion and the promotion of individualistic self-gratification over community obligation…..
“…….The Great Disruption was caused by poverty and inequality?
The idea that such large changes in social norms could be brought on by economic deprivation in countries that are wealthier than any others in human history might give one pause. Poor people in the United States have higher absolute standards of living than many Americans of past generations, and more per capita wealth than many people in contemporary Third World countries with more-intact family structures. Poverty rates, after coming down dramatically through the 1960s and rebounding slightly thereafter, have not increased in a way that would explain a huge increase in social disorder.
Those favoring the economic hypothesis argue, of course, that it is not absolute levels of poverty that are the source of the problem: modern societies, despite being richer overall, have become more unequal, or else have experienced economic turbulence and job loss that have led to social dysfunction. A casual glance at the comparative data on divorce and illegitimacy rates shows that this correlation cannot possibly be true in the case of family breakdown. If one looks across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, there is no positive correlation between the level of welfare benefits aimed at increasing economic equality and stable families. Indeed, there is a weak positive correlation between high levels of welfare benefits and illegitimacy, tending to support the argument advanced by American conservatives that the welfare state is the cause of and not the cure for family breakdown. The highest rates of illegitimacy are found in Sweden and Denmark, egalitarian countries that cycle upwards of 50 percent of their gross domestic product through the state. The United States cycles less than 30 percent of GDP through the government and has higher levels of inequality, yet it has lower rates of illegitimacy. Japan and Korea, which have minimal welfare-state protections for poor people, also have two of the lowest rates of divorce and illegitimacy in the OECD.
The notion that poverty and inequality beget crime is a commonplace among politicians and voters in democratic societies who seek reasons for justifying welfare and poverty programs. But although there is plenty of evidence of a broad correlation between income inequality and crime, this hardly constitutes a plausible explanation for rapidly rising crime rates in the West. There was no depression in the period from the 1960s to the 1990s to explain the sudden rise in crime; in fact, the great American postwar crime wave began in a period of full employment and general prosperity. (Indeed, the Great Depression of the 1930s saw decreasing levels of violent crime in the United States.) Income inequality rose in the United States during the Great Disruption, but crime has also risen in Western developed countries that have remained more egalitarian than the United States. America’s greater economic inequality may to some degree explain why its crime rates are higher than, say, Sweden’s in any given year, but it does not explain why Swedish rates began to rise in the same period that America’s did. Income inequality, moreover, has continued to increase in the United States in the 1990s while crime rates have fallen; hence the correlation between inequality and crime becomes negative for this period…….”
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
In times like these a good crack to the head with a Minto Bar does the trick nicely. Blue squad, go go go .
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
“……..The Great Disruption was caused by mistaken government policies?
The second general explanation for the increase in social disorder is one made by conservatives; it has been primarily associated with Charles Murray’s book Losing Ground, and before that with the economist Gary Becker. The argument is the mirror image of the left’s: it maintains that the perverse incentives created by the welfare state itself explain the rise in family breakdown and crime. The primary American welfare program targeted at poor women, the Depression-era Aid to Families with Dependent Children, provided welfare payments only to single mothers, and thereby penalized women who married the fathers of their children. The United States abolished AFDC in the welfare-reform act of 1996, in part because of arguments concerning its perverse incentives. There is little doubt that welfare benefits discourage work and create what economists call “moral hazard.”……
“…….What may be more relevant to understanding a sudden upsurge in crime is changes in mediating social institutions such as families, neighborhoods, and schools that were taking place in the same period, and changes in the signals that the broader culture was sending to young people.
The Great Disruption was caused by a broad cultural shift?
This brings us to cultural explanations, which are the most plausible of the three presented here. Increasing individualism and the loosening of communal controls clearly had a huge impact on family life, sexual behavior, and the willingness of people to obey the law. The problem with this line of explanation is not that culture was not a factor but rather that it gives no adequate account of timing: why did culture, which usually evolves extremely slowly, suddenly mutate with extraordinary rapidity after the mid-1960s?
In Britain and the United States the high point of communal social control was the last third of the nineteenth century, when the Victorian ideal of the patriarchal conjugal family was broadly accepted and adolescent sexuality was kept under tight control. The cultural shift that undermined Victorian morality may be thought of as layered: At the top was a realm of abstract ideas promulgated by philosophers, scientists, artists, academics, and the occasional huckster and fraud, who laid the intellectual groundwork for broad-based changes. The second level was one of popular culture, as simpler versions of complex abstract ideas were promulgated through books, newspapers, and other mass media. Finally, there was the layer of actual behavior, as the new norms implicit in the abstract or popularized ideas were embedded in the actions of large populations……..”
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
MEN BEHAVING BADLY (From “The Great Disruption” by Francis Fukuyama)
“……ALTHOUGH the role of mother can safely be said to be grounded in biology, the role of father is to a great degree socially constructed. In the words of the anthropologist Margaret Mead, “Somewhere at the dawn of human history, some social invention was made under which males started nurturing females and their young.” The male role was founded on the provision of resources; “among human beings everywhere [the male] helps provide food for women and children.” Being a learned behavior, the male role in nurturing the family is subject to disruption. Mead wrote,
But the evidence suggests that we should phrase the matter differently for men and women – that men have to learn to want to provide for others, and this behaviour, being learned, is fragile and can disappear rather easily under social conditions that no longer teach it effectively.
The role of fathers, in other words, varies by culture and tradition from intense involvement in the nurturing and education of children to a more distant presence as protector and disciplinarian to the near absence possible for a paycheck provider. It takes a great deal of effort to separate a mother from her newborn infant; in contrast, it often takes a fair amount of effort to involve a father with his.
When we put kinship and family in this context, it is easier to understand why nuclear families have started to break apart at such a rapid rate over the past two generations. The family bond was relatively fragile, based on an exchange of the woman’s fertility for the man’s resources. Prior to the Great Disruption, all Western societies had in place a complex series of formal and informal laws, rules, norms, and obligations to protect mothers and children by limiting the freedom of fathers to simply ditch one family and start another. Today many people have come to think of marriage as a kind of public celebration of a sexual and emotional union between two adults, which is why gay marriage has become a possibility in the United States and other developed countries. But it is clear that historically the institution of marriage existed to give legal protection to the mother-child unit, and to ensure that adequate economic resources were passed from the father to allow the children to grow up to be viable adults…….”
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
“……..The most important shift in norms was in the one that dictated male responsibility for wives and children. Even if the shift was triggered by birth control and rising female incomes, men were to blame for the consequences. And it is not as if men always behaved well prior to that: the stability of traditional families was often bought at a high price in terms of emotional and physical distress, and also in lost opportunities – costs that fell disproportionately on the shoulders of women.
On the other hand, these sweeping changes in gender roles have not been the unambiguously good thing that some feminists pretend. Losses have accompanied gains, and those losses have fallen disproportionately on the shoulders of children. This should not surprise anyone: given the fact that female roles have traditionally centered on reproduction and children, we could hardly expect that the movement of women out of the household and into the workplace would have no consequences for families.
Moreover, women themselves have often been the losers in this bargain. Most labor-market gains for women in the 1970s and 1980s were not in glamorous Murphy Brown kinds of jobs but in low-end service-sector jobs. In return for meager financial independence, many women found themselves abandoned by husbands who moved on to younger wives or girlfriends. Because older women are considered less sexually attractive than older men, they had much lower chances of remarrying than did the husbands who left them. The widening of the gap among men between rich and poor had its counterpart among women: educated, ambitious, and talented women broke down barriers, proved they could succeed at male occupations, and saw their incomes rise; but many of their less-educated, less-ambitious, and less-talented sisters saw the floor collapse under them, as they tried to raise children by themselves while in low-paying, dead-end jobs or on welfare. Our consciousness of this process has been distorted by the fact that the women who talk and write and shape the public debate about gender issues come almost exclusively from the former category. In contrast, men have on balance come out about even. Although many have lost substantial status and income, others (and sometimes the same ones) have quite happily been freed of burdensome responsibilities for wives and children. Hugh Hefner did not invent the Playboy lifestyle in the 1950s; casual access to multiple women has been enjoyed by powerful, wealthy, high-status men throughout history, and has been one of the chief motives for seeking power, wealth, and high status in the first place. What changed after the 1950s was that many rather ordinary men were allowed to live out the fantasy lives of hedonism and serial polygamy formerly reserved to a tiny group at the very top of society. One of the greatest frauds perpetrated during the Great Disruption was the notion that the sexual revolution was gender-neutral, benefiting women and men equally, and that it somehow had a kinship with the feminist revolution. In fact the sexual revolution served the interests of men, and in the end put sharp limits on the gains that women might otherwise have expected from their liberation from traditional roles…..”
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
GET THAT LAST PARAGRAPH, Feminist types:
“……casual access to multiple women has been enjoyed by powerful, wealthy, high-status men throughout history, and has been one of the chief motives for seeking power, wealth, and high status in the first place. What changed after the 1950s was that many rather ordinary men were allowed to live out the fantasy lives of hedonism and serial polygamy formerly reserved to a tiny group at the very top of society. One of the greatest frauds perpetrated during the Great Disruption was the notion that the sexual revolution was gender-neutral, benefiting women and men equally, and that it somehow had a kinship with the feminist revolution. In fact the sexual revolution served the interests of men, and in the end put sharp limits on the gains that women might otherwise have expected from their liberation from traditional roles…..”
HAH.
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
“…….HOW can we rebuild social capital in the future? The fact that culture and public policy give societies some control over the pace and degree of disruption is not in the long run an answer to how social order will be established at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Japan and some Catholic countries have been able to hold on to traditional family values longer than Scandinavia or the English-speaking world, and this may have saved them some of the social costs experienced by the latter. But it is hard to imagine that they will be able to hold out over the coming generations, much less re-establish anything like the nuclear family of the industrial era, with the father working and the mother staying at home to raise children. Such an outcome would not be desirable, even if it were possible.
We appear to be caught, then, in unpleasant circumstances: going forward seems to promise ever-increasing levels of disorder and social atomization, at the same time that our line of retreat has been cut off. Does this mean that contemporary liberal societies are fated to descend into increasing moral decline and social anarchy, until they somehow implode? Were Edmund Burke and other critics of the Enlightenment right that anarchy was the inevitable product of the effort to replace tradition and religion with reason?
The answer, in my view, is no, for the very simple reason that we human beings are by nature designed to create moral rules and social order for ourselves. The situation of normlessness – what the sociologist Emile Durkheim labeled “anomie” – is intensely uncomfortable for us, and we will seek to create new rules to replace the ones that have been undercut. If technology makes certain old forms of community difficult to sustain, then we will seek out new ones, and we will use our reason to negotiate arrangements to suit our underlying interests, needs, and passions.
To understand why the present situation isn’t as hopeless as it may seem, we need to consider the origins of social order per se……”
ETC: Read the whole thing via link earlier.
Mr Fukuyama finishes quite optimistically, looking to new sources of “social order” to arise from society and culture itself, rather than from Government or return to tradition. I suspect he had to cop out in the face of the P.C. storm he might have aroused in writing this stuff in the first place. Suffice it to say, “The Great Disruption” has gone down like a lead balloon in spite of the fame of Mr Fukuyama’s other writings………
Vote:November 26th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
After all of this debate I am staggered. This little girl died at the hands of dis-functional Maori. Full-stop, end-off. That crying baby was hurled about like a kicking bag and shoved into a clothes dryer by an bunch of inadequate Maori men because they are useless human beings. Why are they useless, well ask them.
I’m male, I don’t go about killing little girls, and I can’t comprehend why they decided to kill her. Stop blaming every one and everything else. They killed her. Maybe they are inadequate humans (one’s worried about prision life which tends to support that – good job, they don’t call it the “pokey” for nothing) but that has nothing to do with me.
I certainly did not have a hand in the little girl’s death. Minto can just fuck right off if he thinks he can heavy some of the blame onto me the “Government” or the rest of us.
Crirkey, I ran a red light tonight, is it every one else’s fault? Minto should say yes.
Vote:November 27th, 2008 at 2:58 am
I live in China and I check xtra news daily.
I swear, swear, there is a murder reported there, either conviction, accused, sentenced or the crime reported, at least every 2 weeks.
Yesterday it was some fat ugly babysitter bitch that got 17 years, non-parole, for killing a baby in her care.
So, here is a deep thinking problem:
She was a *****
They are mostly ******
The unusually lucky, clever but right-winged winner, gets a free tour of the Treaty House at Waitangi.
Vote:November 27th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Roger Nome:
A simple question. Why did National have to take such a harsh stance on the New Zealand economy? The answer is simple. Because, like they have done in 2008, the New Zealand Labour Party left the country in an almost bankrupt state.
Socialist parties are almost never good stewards of the economy. Rampant spending on re-electable policy (Read as “buying votes”) coupled with blind ideology makes for a poor mixture for increasing the wealth of a nation as a whole.
I fully expect that the next few years under a National government will be equally harsh. But, that as before, this will be the beginning of a change in New Zealand’s fortune. And I expect that, as before, the Labour party will capitalize on this politically and will turn the people of New Zealand against the very group of people who have saved them from becoming another bankrupt, almost third world, socialist utopia. And that for their next term they will once more destroy the good work done by the National Party.
And twenty years from now some deluded fuckwit like you will complain about how horrible National was, without looking beyond the basic statistics and trying to understand what led to such harsh measured being required.
Your beloved Labour government.
So please, lay the blame where it is due, would you? Look for the cause. Not the effect.
As to the main topic, I’m with Ruth on this one. I’ve been purposefully trying to stay away from these threads because all that happens is some poor child’s death gets turned into a political football. That’s disgusting. In the meantime my prayers will go to Nia Glassie and those who love her.
Vote:April 18th, 2009 at 12:28 am
Wow. I came across this website doing research for an essay for uni. Geez you guys are hard out. It’s been an awesome eye opener to how closed minded and opinionated people can be- left or right. 5 months since the last post, but oh well. John Minto’s proving to be an interesting fellow- disturbing the comfortable by the looks…maybe. You guys have aroused a real interest to find out more about this man. Awesome, thanks for carrying on his story to another generation. I didnt even know he had a column. Bad press is better than no press ay?
Vote:It’s a great awareness for a student in his 3rd year of a Bachelor of Education-future teacher here.
Ruth- “Has anyone else noticed how it is always those on the fringe eg Far Left – Minto – Far Right – Libertarianz, who can always be relied upon to try and exploit tragic situations and crime for political gain?” My response to this is: man you have all just done that- you’re all guilty!!! Just a different media (and Im guilty too now). At least someones trying to address the problems by looking a little wider. Whoever it was that talked about blaming colonisation- u think having the English beaten out of u wouldnt muck u up a bit? Losing your language? Oh and heaps of your property?
Terrorist educator/supporter? ??? what are u guys all so scared of? The list goes on ad infinitum.
You have all been a classic example of society. Thankyou. I shall perservere with mainting my authenticity and values of humans above materalism, beginning here at home in South Auckland, regardless of all globalisation and shit. Just aiming to contribute to the wellbeing of our young citizens, rather than the national economy. Someones got to do it.