ACT's David Seymour - i like his style.

[fungus pudding]

I've worked in an office most of my life, taking holidays when my employer lets me, and coming back to thousands of e-mails....most of the time I would dread taking a holiday because of the stress involved, the stress involved in getting everything squared away before going, and the stress involved in cleaning up the mess upon return. The stress involved in the job in general.....sometimes I felt like my heart was trying to burst right out of my chest. Even the stress involved in getting to work....fighting through traffic on congested roads. If you work in a big city and your alternator goes on you, your car stops dead at the lights with a full line of traffic behind you....

I don't want to hear that working people are 'privileged', 'greedy', or 'selfish'. We are rats in a rat race, exhanging the days of our lives for money. Where I worked in South Auckland - when I was working there - you'd go down for a walk along the shore line & come to a park where beneficiary families were having picnics and riding around on bikes. Then I'd head back to my cubicle to work my afternoon away in order to get money to pay bills in order to live.

I don't want to hear that it's degrading or onerous that beneficiaries have to meet with case managers. What is degrading and onerous is going through 'performance reviews' year in and year out, reviews which are often just a stupid formality yet are a case study in corporate head f*ckery. My partner works her guts out for a big corporate and sometimes can't sleep at night during certain times of the year when the stress levels are at their greatest. I've seen her in tears over a performance review she felt was unfair. Trying to juggle times when we can take a holiday together is a mission in itself. We are exchanging our lives for 4 weeks of holidays a year. People are working their entire lives for the mirage of having a great life when they retire...when they retire they are broken and burnt out and facing ill health. Please don't tell me beneficiaries have it tough while the rest of us are 'privileged'.

......ain't that the truth....well said.

[Balance]

......ain't that the truth....well said.

Very well articulated by LN indeed.

NZ under this useless woke Labour government has become a nation where parasites, criminals & freeloaders are given free rein to rip off hard working and law abiding citizens.

This is what happens when NZers allow career politicians who have never created a single free market job or business ever in their lives to run the country into the ground.

Last chance on October 2023 to halt the rot. Vote out Labour and let’s trust NZers to keep them out for the next 20 years. It will take that long to repair the damage done by these freeloading Labour politicians led by Hipkins and Ardern.

[BlackPeter]

We may just be about to get a government that will at least start to treat the cancer on our society that woke liberalism has produced. Most beneficiaries are parasites and bludgers.

If the state (ie decent hardworking taxpayers) is providing accommodation, it can actually do so most efficiently by building the units concerned of hardwearing and durable materials to minimise the damage caused by feckless tenants and concentrating them in high rise blocks which can be made easier to police by limiting and controlling access points.

Gated communities are generally thought of in terms of keeping the crims away from decent people's property. It is easier, cheaper and more effective to to form gated high rises and keep the crims, druggies, and bludgers in.

There may be some concern for the welfare of the hordes of children sired by feckless and selfish transient males and popped out as a lifestyle by "welfare queens", but that could be addressed if they were concentrated, by giving welfare officers and "facility supervisors" skeleton keys to allow "without notice" inspections of the units and the children in them.

The criminal tendencies of the beneficiaries can be addressed by abandoning the woke liberal policing policies that have got us into our present trajectory towards third world status, and reintroducing the "three strikes" policy, along with generally longer sentences and tougher prison conditions.

It may even be time to consider reintroducing the birch, since the fabric of our society has frayed and behavior has markedly deteriorated since corporal punishment was banned in schools and homes by the woke left.

Accepting a benefit from taxpayers should come with obligations!

Oh dear ... you sound like a very angry man with an agenda ... concentration camps for welfare recipients?

So - allow me, to put that into perspective.

No doubt, there are some beneficiaries around who fit your bill - hardcore criminals just on as sabatical from prison, the "rubbish" our Australian brothers put out the door and probably some more.

There are however as well plenty of beneficiaries who came into this situation without fault of their own. You might have heard of the cost of living crisis (I know ... why don't they eat cake if they can't afford the bread?) - and paying the rent and feeding the kids when one of the adults for any reason lost their job (some people do get sick or have accidents) or died is tough ... and I would not know how a single mum or dad (again, its not always due to irresponsible breeding habits) could look after their children and put food on the table in any part of the country without receiving welfare.

And no doubt there are plenty of other cases in betweeen these extremes in the spectrum

Treating all these people like the worst of the worst and concentrating them together with hardened crooks in gettos (concentration camps?) is the most reliable method to increase criminality and breed the next generation of crooks. Is this what you are asking for?

Not very sensible, isn't it?

Sure - look after the difficult cases and place them in accomodation with increased security. But more important is to give families who are in need - and definitely their children a good chance to flourish. Don't forget - these are the kids who run our society in 20 and 40 years - and these children might be needed to wipe your butt when you can't do it anymore for yourself.

Better give them the best chances to become valuable members of our society instead of concentrating them with hard core criminals.

The concentration camps you are suggesting clearly would not do that job. We need to invest more into the next generation, not try to save money and lock them up just because their parents have been less lucky than you (or me).

[Logen Ninefingers]

Oh dear ... you sound like a very angry man with an agenda ... concentration camps for welfare recipients?

So - allow me, to put that into perspective.

No doubt, there are some beneficiaries around who fit your bill - hardcore criminals just on as sabatical from prison, the "rubbish" our Australian brothers put out the door and probably some more.

There are however as well plenty of beneficiaries who came into this situation without fault of their own. You might have heard of the cost of living crisis (I know ... why don't they eat cake if they can't afford the bread?) - and paying the rent and feeding the kids when one of the adults for any reason lost their job (some people do get sick or have accidents) or died is tough ... and I would not know how a single mum or dad (again, its not always due to irresponsible breeding habits) could look after their children and put food on the table in any part of the country without receiving welfare.

And no doubt there are plenty of other cases in betweeen these extremes in the spectrum

Treating all these people like the worst of the worst and concentrating them together with hardened crooks in gettos (concentration camps?) is the most reliable method to increase criminality and breed the next generation of crooks. Is this what you are asking for?

Not very sensible, isn't it?

Sure - look after the difficult cases and place them in accomodation with increased security. But more important is to give families who are in need - and definitely their children a good chance to flourish. Don't forget - these are the kids who run our society in 20 and 40 years - and these children might be needed to wipe your butt when you can't do it anymore for yourself.

Better give them the best chances to become valuable members of our society instead of concentrating them with hard core criminals.

Pseudo prisons clearly would not do that job. We need to invest more into the next generation, not try to save money and lock them up just because their parents have been less lucky than you (or me).

I don't know if Davflaws is being facetious or not. All I want is for beneficiaries to have the same sort of obligations and oversight that working people do. It's pretty simple really. I'm sick of seeing working people labelled as 'selfish', 'greedy', 'privileged' when in reality they are getting milked by the state while frantically going round on round on the hamster wheel of life. We are all working and paying taxes hoping for a great country where hard work is rewarded and people take the opportunities that are available. In my opinion we are all being betrayed by the Left, we are being betrayed by people who literally hate our system and society and make no secret of it, people who will gladly borrow $100 billion and spend it wastefully to undermine our country and saddle it with an onerous burden. It is sick. It is wrong. If you are a democratic socialist, and you are working away to usher in a pure socialist system to replace our (psuedo)capitalist society, that should preclude you from standing for Parliament. Why do we allow people who want to destroy us the means to take power? It's insane.

[jonu]

Oh dear ... you sound like a very angry man with an agenda ... concentration camps for welfare recipients?

So - allow me, to put that into perspective.

No doubt, there are some beneficiaries around who fit your bill - hardcore criminals just on as sabatical from prison, the "rubbish" our Australian brothers put out the door and probably some more.

There are however as well plenty of beneficiaries who came into this situation without fault of their own. You might have heard of the cost of living crisis (I know ... why don't they eat cake if they can't afford the bread?) - and paying the rent and feeding the kids when one of the adults for any reason lost their job (some people do get sick or have accidents) or died is tough ... and I would not know how a single mum or dad (again, its not always due to irresponsible breeding habits) could look after their children and put food on the table in any part of the country without receiving welfare.

And no doubt there are plenty of other cases in betweeen these extremes in the spectrum

Treating all these people like the worst of the worst and concentrating them together with hardened crooks in gettos (concentration camps?) is the most reliable method to increase criminality and breed the next generation of crooks. Is this what you are asking for?

Not very sensible, isn't it?

Sure - look after the difficult cases and place them in accomodation with increased security. But more important is to give families who are in need - and definitely their children a good chance to flourish. Don't forget - these are the kids who run our society in 20 and 40 years - and these children might be needed to wipe your butt when you can't do it anymore for yourself.

Better give them the best chances to become valuable members of our society instead of concentrating them with hard core criminals.

The concentration camps you are suggesting clearly would not do that job. We need to invest more into the next generation, not try to save money and lock them up just because their parents have been less lucky than you (or me).

I believe it's called satire.

[Logen Ninefingers]

I believe it's called satire.

It's pretty weak satire because it's taking aim at anyone who worries about how our society is becoming weaker and weaker and placing less and less personal responsibility on those who are preying on society. It's satire that takes aim at the wrong people. If you go on Seek there are thousands and thousands of jobs there and yet we say that people sitting on a benefit year in and year out are the good people and it's demeaning that they should have to meet with case managers. Something is going badly wrong, the balance has tipped to an extreme when working people are habitually called 'selfish' and 'privileged'. We now have more gang members in this country than we do farmers, and yet the Left treat farmers like they are scumbags. It is a disgrace.

[Entrep]

Logen Ninefingers I would vote for you

[Balance]

It's pretty weak satire because it's taking aim at anyone who worries about how our society is becoming weaker and weaker and placing less and less personal responsibility on those who are preying on society. We now have more gang members in this country than we do farmers, and yet the Left treat farmers like they are scumbags. It is a disgrace.

Same way this woke pro-gang and pro-beneficiary government treats property investors - like they are the scum of the earth.

Meanwhile, Kainga Ora hired several hundred more highly paid staff (professionals apparently from the industry) - their contribution so far is to make the housing situation out there worse!

And can you believe this - are still way behind their healthy homes program despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on staffing and consultants!

[justakiwi]

You, as usual, are making huge assumptions about people you don't even know. Who exactly is labelling working people as 'selfish', 'greedy', 'privileged?" Not the majority of beneficiaries that's for sure. Beneficiaries have many obligations and responsibilities, that you are obviously unaware of as clearly you have never found yourself in the position of needing temporary assistance. Job Seekers in particular have ongoing obligations to not only meet with case managers regularly, but to declare income from all sources as they earn it. Yes, people on JS (and supported living benefits) are often working part time, and are only being "topped up" by WINZ, to ensure they can put food on the table. They have training obligations if relevant to their situation, and have to demonstrate they are looking for work (and provide proof of that).

Black Peter is 100% correct in everything he said above. STOP lumping all beneficiaries into the same "bottom feeder" bucket of disgust! Nobody is disputing the fact that some people exploit the system, but the vast majority do not! The comments made here by some of you, say far more about you than they do about us, and your comments demonstrate your own entitlement, and feelings of superiority.

You people rant and rave about co-governance and racist policies blah blah blah - yet you contribute just as much to the division in this country, with your narrow minded, ignorance about how the other half lives.

There, but for the Grace of God go I. Remember that.

I don't know if Davflaws is being facetious or not. All I want is for beneficiaries to have the same sort of obligations and oversight that working people do. It's pretty simple really. I'm sick of seeing working people labelled as 'selfish', 'greedy', 'privileged' when in reality they are getting milked by the state while frantically going round on round on the hamster wheel of life. We are all working and paying taxes hoping for a great country where hard work is rewarded and people take the opportunities that are available. In my opinion we are all being betrayed by the Left, we are being betrayed by people who literally hate our system and society and make no secret of it, people who will gladly borrow $100 billion and spend it wastefully to undermine our country and saddle it with an onerous burden. It is sick. It is wrong. If you are a democratic socialist, and you are working away to usher in a pure socialist system to replace our (psuedo)capitalist society, that should preclude you from standing for Parliament. Why do we allow people who want to destroy us the means to take power? It's insane.

[Logen Ninefingers]

The Left won't relent in their Quixotic quest to make everything 'fair' according to their ever-shifting definition of 'fair'. They will destroy New Zealand in this doomed attempt. It is rather like the US army and an infamous episode from the Vietnam War: "in order to save the village it was necessary to destroy it".
Once our living standards have fallen through the floor & our young, our best, and our brightest have all left, we will be in a much worse place to deal with any and all challenges we face as a nation. Crime will be rampant, government will be dystopian, and the populace will be made up of the elderly and the impoverished.