My brothers most memorable saying is, "If you're looking for sympathy; it's between 'Shit' and 'Syphillis' in the dictionary".
People who live in Glasshouses shouldn't throw stones.
I am, of course, referring to the solo mothers receiving the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB) that have been hauled out to trash the government over the "axing" the Training Incentive Allowance.
Paula Bennett, Minister for Social Development, to counter the women's claims, released the amounts that each woman receives via the DPB. Many years before becoming a government minister, Paula Bennett herself was receiving the DPB so I don't believe she released the information without any concern for the women's situations.
The two women Natasha Fuller and Jennifer Johnston are paid $715 and $554 respectively each week.
I can't blame the MSM for picking up on this issue as it came, screaming and blazing, into the public domain. So if something was to be reported, I guess this story has all the hallmarks.
What I do blame the MSM for is the showing their breathtakingly transparent bias.
Given the previous Governments nine year torrent of leaks, it's fantastically rich to bemoan what they call this Governments "Big brother" tactics.
But ok, I guess that's a slightly different issue, so getting back to the matter at hand.
Those two women have been blatantly used.
To her great credit and realising she was being used, Ms Johnston sought dialogue with Paula Bennett. Ms Fuller, has taken a more aggressive approach and is being aided by Labour MP Charles Chauvel to make a formal complaint against Ms Bennett to the Privacy Commissioner.
Dear I say it, this has Phil-Ins sticky fingerprints all over it. While he hasn't gotten involved directly, I believe he has taken a page out of the "Helengrad" playbook and delegated his mud-slinging to a newly christened attack dog, AKA Charles Chauvel - the pink hitman.
{UPDATE - Interestingly 2 years previously Natasha Fuller let WINZ use her details in a brochure and a year later went on TVNZ's "Fairgo" complaining about her EXPENSIVE hair extensions - I don't know about you but I smell ANOTHER Labour party stooge]
Anyone who has been to University has seen them... people who put their study above everything else... at some stage most become aware of what they are sacrificing and seek to remedy their lack of social contact. Once they have identified the problem they tend to go about fixing it with the same level of commitment they apply to their studies. But they key phrase there is, "Once they have identified it" - some never do, or at least do, but too late.
So you could fairly say that University is a breeding ground for sociopaths; not only is it a breeding ground but it also goes one step further and actively glorifies and rewards that particular type of pathological student.
There is yet another type of student that anyone who has been to University also knows about; the students that burn-out and have a mini-meltdown. Most of the time they only harm themselves, but now and then one goes "postal" and draws in victims as their world goes supernova.
You see: University is far different from being a big fish in a small pond at College - Dux students and teacher's pets are thrown into a very big pond and it's a pond filled with particularly nasty Pirahana. After luring "Fresh meat" in with 101 papers a droplet of blood is added to the water and an academic feeding-frenzy ensues.
Once the initial dust settles, academic life "normalizes" into the bi-polar existance of quiet nights studying in the library and mad adrenaline/caffine fuelled 'all nighters' to get that paper finished and once it has been the ellation is short-lived as the terror of waiting for the grade consumes your mind. Pouring your heart and soul into writing an essay, paper or thesis, only to have it ridiculed and ripped to shreds can be a hard thing to take, the higher up the academic food-chain you go, the more vicious stringent the "peer review" is.
Those with a paper-thin grip on reality quickly get their world turned upside down, set on fire then extinguished with urine!
Donning my armchair psychiatrist hat, I might opine that this is probably not a world away from what happened to Clayton Weatherston, only his Ego wouldn't let him quit his degrees so he just bottled it all up until one day there was a tipping event - probably hastened on by chugging anti-depressants and the fear of looming failure.
Not to say that every one that attends University has a screw loose, but clearly some do.
Another issue, and I am not saying Sophie Elliot did this; But it's not uncommon for young, attractive (usually female - but not exclusively) students to seduce their lecturer/tutor as a way to "augment" their grades, improve their social status or just to secure the level of comfort they are used to.... very common in-fact... When their degree is finished so is the "relationship".
Far from a reason for 33 year old Economics Lecturer Clayton Weatherston to fatally stab and sexually mutilate 22 year old student Sophie Elliot 216 times, but I think that her leaving was a crippling blow and his Ego wasn't going to allow that from a mere chattel.
I believe he thought that if he couldn't have her then no-one else could (it would be interesting to see a photo of Weatherston's mother - I bet there is a resemblance between her and Sophie; Weatherston's sister certainly has one).
Still that is only part of the story, bad enough... but then the criminal justice system gets involoved in the form of a legal defence. It's vital not to forget those lawyers that have, at best confused their conscience with their bank balance, at worst made a Faustian deal!
I'm talking about they that seek to warp professional ethics to stroke THEIR ego (dare I say protecting their like-minded academic peers). People such as Weatherston, as repugnant as it may seem, are legally and ethically entitled to a defence; I have no problem with that conceptually. When the reality consist of allowing the ramblings of a, albeit well educated, madman seeking to belittle the victim through a breathless media: professional ethics be damned!
Then there is the MSM; Barely unable to conceal their glee at such a ratings goldmine.
Scampering over the case like Gollum looking for his prescious, repeaters reporters dripping with disingenuous angst crawled over themselves to reveal as gruesome or titilating snippet as they could, in some cases ignoring the embargoes of their own Press Association to secure the all important ratings fix.
For a moment, sit back and look at the wider picture and ask why is society degrading? I say just look at the MSM.
Sure there are drugs and organised (or disorganised) crime, all that is terrible and I don't wish to dismiss or diminish any of it for an instant... but the MSM spreads as much bad news as they can, day and night, AND they do it GLOBALLY, taking a bad story and spinning it into a tabloid catastropy. News needs to be reported, that's a fact. What is also a fact is that the BUSINESS of news exists to turn a profit and bad news sells. Don't they know it, exploit it and love it.
Certainly we all need to ask ourselves some tough questions, but don't kid yourself for one second, there are magnates and corporations that have billions and billions invested in selling you what they want you to hear.
There's an extremely fine-line between actual news and mere titilation. It is a line we can't trust an ethically or morally corrupt MSM to guard...
In my opinion they are not the "fourth estate", they are the fourth ring of hell.
Inspired by Cactus's "brObesity", I'd like to coin a phrase: "Blog paper". Blog paper sums up what the MSM would like you to believe that the only thing blogs are good for is dunny paper.
MSM owner & "big-wig" Barry Coleman has been crying into his beer email and has slipped onto the well-worn track of Journos flexing their arthritic finger joints at those whipper-snappers on the Interweb.
I remember the good old days when a TVNZ journo attempted to rip a strip off this blogger, well he didn't and the BSA quite rightly spanked his wobbly bum.
Coleman's rants would carry much more weight if he hadn't hired the country's top blogger (David Farrar) to write for his rag, yet still he spits the dummy…
Why?
I believe it has more to do with market share than it has with any perceived outrage.
In short - MONEY. More people are reading free blogs & free websites so he is getting less money.
I also believe there is more than a little EGO behind their scripted spewings; How dare untrained neanderthals encroach on the feeding grounds of trained professionals.
But I would advise Coleman to draw his punches lest some disgruntled blogger "Fisk" his beloved writers for the unsubstantiated hysterics that he claims only bloggers write.
Calling it exactly as the official statistics call it isn't a brave move, so why is Cactus being brave? I think I can make a guess... I think it is because she is running the gauntlet of those that seek to twist race issues into racism issues.
New Zealand, thanks to its large Maori and Pacific Island population is succeeding as the third fattest nation behind America and Mexico. Fact.
The obesity rate among adults in New Zealand in 2007 was 26.5 per cent. This compared with figures reported the previous year by the United States at 34.3 per cent and Mexico at 30 per cent.
And even that number looks conservative based on the fat graph above. If you are Pacific Islander you are three times as likely to be obese as a European and Maori are twice as likely.
So I'm calling fat on this one. Until Maori and Pacific Islanders can "improve" their statistics in excelling at being fat, I propose a 20% health levy on all pre-tax income derived by Maori tribes such as Tainui and Ngai Tahu, to be tagged for their healthcare. Levying Pacific Islanders is a tad harder as they didn't receive government handouts because of their race, so lets slap a dedicated 20% health levy on all welfare payments and grants made to their communities to be paid into the health fund.
If it's good enough in America for the supposed "wealthy" to be paying more tax to fund obese bludgers (and we know Obama is an idiot), it's good enough in New Zealand for the source of the problems to start paying differentiated tax rates and levies based on their propensity to use services if they can't be made to pay for their own treatment thanks to the overly-generous New Zealand public health system.
The health of particularly Maori and Pacific Island New Zealanders is disgusting and its no one's fault but their own. Europeans aren't forcing fatty foods down their throats and chaining them to the couch. They are killing themselves, unfortunately slowly as their weight is placing a large strain on the New Zealand public health system with years of obesity related illness.
Government cannot be expected to interfere in the lives of people and tell them they cannot eat foods, and these "5 plus a day" huggy campaigns just do not seem to work for the right people so lets look at it the other way - like insurance companies do. Passing responsibility on based on risk.
When you complete a private health insurance application you enter your weight and fatties are charged sometimes a 10% extra levy for being that way. The insurance company doesn't care if you are "big boned", from a particular ethnic group or a whinger. Their actuarial staff have worked out the statistical higher risk that you are based on this factor that people can avoid. They can by law differentiate and charge you more.
Unfortunately it wouldn't fly to place a tax or levy on individuals as it would be deemed to be racially bias, so lets look at differentiating levies on corporate/tribal income or withholding a portion of government grants to these groups. Different corporates/non-profit/unincorporated societies are taxed differently, so I can't see why it shouldn't apply here.
Lets make it in Maori and Pacific Island Leadership's best interest to do something about their people dying from nothing at all but being over-eating lardarses and brobesity while in the process bleeding the country's health system dry for many years.
If Maori in particular were actually paying for their own people's healthcare you can bet your bottom dollar the likes of Tainui and Ngai Tahu would make it a priority to get their people fit and change attitudes.
Course Tainui could stop investing in airport hotels and build their own airport hospital for their people......idea.
I've deliberately waited (and not posted anything) until the "dust settled".
Unless you've been living in the pacific trench, under a rock buried 3.14592Km below the sea-bed: you'll be crying yourself to sleep because The king of Snap, Crackle & Pop is dead...
The US's affirmative action superstar, he who came to fame in a country trying to convince themseves that they no longer have a race problem... paving the way for Saint Obama... or so we are led to believe.
But I have been astounded, amazed, bemused & disgusted by the blood-dripping hypocrisy shown by the MSM.
Sure, it's bad form to speak ill of the dead but wow... the breathless quasi-fawning has been just nausiating!
Just think, 2-3 months ago the MSM were stammering to find an expletive colourful enough to show their disgust, contempt and even hatred for "Wacko Jacko".
For me the absolute pinnacle of MSM hypocriy was when a C4 TV channel presenter (a music channel) "humbly" announced the death of "The undisputed king of pop"; The same presenter that had formerly mocked, riddicled & parodied the late personality.
If he was a kiddy fiddler he deserves to rot in hell... everything else is window dressing.
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Anyone who has been to University has seen them... people who put their study above everything else... at some stage most become aware of what they are sacrificing and seek to remedy their lack of social contact. Once they have identified the problem they tend to go about fixing it with the same level of commitment they apply to their studies. But they key phrase there is, "Once they have identified it" - some never do, or at least do, but too late.
Inspired by Cactus's "brObesity", I'd like to coin a phrase: "Blog paper". Blog paper sums up what the MSM would like you to believe that the only thing blogs are good for is dunny paper.
I've deliberately waited (and not posted anything) until the "dust settled".
Hello, I'm Willie Hardcock; Over 122% of New Zealand males have a problem pleasing their ladies. Well I've studied the problem and have taken a hands-on approach to firm up Kiwi males.
Airbus have been getting abit of a whipping lately and I'm not entirely sure they're that much to blame.
