Parliament under Lock(wood) and Key

I don't have the time to get too involved in this post as I'm taking advantage of some break time at work, but didn't want to wait until I get home tonight to post it.

The rules on what footage can be shown on Parliament tv (among other things) have been tightened. The article states that they've been changed "by MPs" but it seems to have come largely from Lockwood Smith, the Speaker and National party member, as an obvious response to what happened in the House a couple of weeks ago when a man attempted to jump off the balcony.

Under the new rules "ambient sound" and shots of what politicians are doing would be regulated - meaning that John Key's apparent throat-slitting gesture and the shocked reaction from Labour would not have been allowed into the media if the new guidelines had been in place at the time.

This is not an irrelevant detail. This is important. These are our representatives - we need to be able to know how they act when they're not performing for the cameras. Transparency is a vital part of democracy or there can be no informed consent, and this clearly undermines that.

Parliament is our house. We need to be able to see what goes on there - all of it.

I wasn't even going to bother

So, there's this footage of Trevor Mallard calling another MP "Tinkerbell" during a Q&A session in Parliament. Obviously this is pretty shitty, but I wasn't going to comment on it for a couple of reasons - one, No Right Turn already did, and two, the footage was dated 2009 and he hasn't shown a consistent history of equal shittiness.

Then Labour MPs started getting dismissive and defensive on Twitter.

I mean, I understand the reaction. Homophobia's bad, you don't want to be painted with that brush, especially for something that someone else did two years ago. But the way they're downplaying what Trevor said is actually pissing me off more than the fact that he said it in the first place. There's a very easy way to do it:

"Look, internet, we know what Trevor said sucked. We don't condone that. That's why that footage is two years old - it's not something we would allow one of our MPs to do consistently."

Then Trevor Mallard could say something himself about how he regrets it and he was wrong.

Very simple. Instead we have Clare Cullan calling criticism "ridiculous" and Jordan Carter announcing, "News alert! Homophobia and saying stupid things arent the same thing."

Actually, they are the same thing. And dismissing criticism about it instead of apologising and pointing out the age of the footage looks kind of dickish to the LGBT people who are pointing out that even super awesome people who are strong proponents of homosexual law reform can say homophobic things.

Shame

Today is not a good day to be a New Zealander.

The situation with the MV Rena worsened overnight, drastically. There is now anywhere up to 350 tonnes of oil in the water. There is still little official response to the oil washing up on beaches, with local volunteers spearheading the effort to clean it up despite the risk to themselves in doing so without proper safety gear, which any prepared country should have available. Meanwhile, National's plan is... to wait until it gets worse. @BreakingNews on Twitter, an international newsfeed, has already tweeted that this is our worst maritime environmental disaster ever - how long until they drop the word 'maritime'?

Meanwhile, leaked documents have revealed the government's stance on establishing a marine reserve in the Ross Sea. That is, we can't do it, because it would damage our ability to fish toothfish. Toothfish are longlived and slow-maturing, and as soon as I learned that it told me everything I needed to know. They're fucked. It's been a consistent story through history - species that are longlived and slow-maturing have a tendency to die shortly after encountering humanity. (Not all of them, to be clear - the fact that there are still longlived and slow-maturing species alive does not negate this point. The fact that many of them are critically endangered especially doesn't.)

Today, I am honestly ashamed of this country. I fully believe that the current government will destroy anything that stands in its way if its allowed to continue down this path, and while that would be terrible anywhere, the fact that New Zealand has so much biodiversity that simply can't be found anywhere else makes it even more tragic. The only glimmer of hope lately has been the truly impressive response by the Greens to the Rena disaster - they have been incredibly active in talking to the public, investigating what's going on and keeping people informed - check out this post by Gareth Hughes regarding the helpfulness of chemical dispersants. No one else in the public view is asking these questions. Their web presence is especially vital these days in reaching those who otherwise would have to rely on mainstream media for news, when the media both locally and worldwide has repeatedly failed over the last several months and years to represent situations accurately and without bias.

The fact that anyone could genuinely believe that humanity does not have an important impact on the planet is utterly depressing. The fact our government itself seems to think that "opinion" is more important than science is even moreso.

Tax is good

I'm sure I'm not the only one who played SimCity as a kid(/teen/adult). My usual version was 2000 and the bane of my existence was tax. You usually had it set around 7-8%, because when you put it up people booed and left town, and if you put it lower you couldn't pay for anything. I loved all the little social good programs you could institute, so paying for things was an ongoing problem. Like all good politicians, I solved this by putting it higher than I intended, then lowering it again to trick my people into thinking I'd caved.

In the real world, people have other solutions. In Kansas, the Topeka City Council is struggling with having to pay to prosecute crimes that last month Shawnee County decided were too expensive to deal with and shunted onto local councils. The cases involved are misdemeanours, including domestic battery.

Faced with the reality that you have to spend money to punish criminals, Topeka has come up with the obvious answer: stop punishing them. It will be voting next week on whether to repeal the ban on domestic battery, rendering it not technically legal, but not something that will be actively prosecuted either.

This is pretty solid evidence that austerity is a bad plan, especially considering that most of those who espouse it also try to be seen as tough on crime. In New Zealand the government is essentially paying companies to pollute; in America, tax deferments mean that corporations are operating under a tax rate of 0%, or less. The richest are avoiding paying their share, and everyone else is paying it for them.

Pointed question time

Yesterday we got a flier in the mail advertising David Carter (the National MP for my electorate) holding a meet and greet this weekend. And I'm extremely tempted to go.

I mean, really, what better opportunity to ask a REAL LIVE MP about government policy? Like, what he thinks should be done about the rising levels of social inequality, and is he going to accept the payrise that compensates for the loss of the international travel allowance at a rate of 300%, and does he think National subsidising polluters is inconsistent with their pledge to reduce emissions by 50% of the 1990 total by 2050, and is the government planning to install commissioners in Christchurch to replace the city council.

These are questions that niggle, dammit.

When consent of the governed cannot exist

The very basis of democracy is that the government is by the people, for the people, of the people. The government is supposed to act in the name of the people, with their consent - that's what the whole voting process is about. When a significant enough portion of the population votes for a party, it indicates that they approve of their policies.

But for this relationship to have any real meaning, the people must know what the government is doing. Not necessarily detailed information that is highly sensitive, but at least an overall idea - they should know what those secret parts of the government are doing, in general. A government that deliberately hides its actions from the voters cannot have consent, because the voters do not have the knowledge required to form consent.

Which is a problem for National. They have just - finally - admitted that the SAS are in a combat role in Afghanistan, which I suspect quite a lot of people were pretty sure of anyway (I was). But we weren't told. Instead we were fed the lie that they were "mentoring" and "giving aid". In the meantime, there are families in New Zealand who've had members in combat situations while the government lied about it, and presumably the SAS were not allowed to admit this.

And of course, they're still hiding the ACTA and TPPA negotiations. The only information we have on either of these treaties has been leaked, not released officially, and all of it looks bad for us. Yet, if the government signs these treaties (and they look set to sign ACTA this weekend), we will be contractually obliged to follow them, severely limiting the laws we can set in several different areas - for example, one provision that has been partially revealed could well prevent us from enacting laws to protect against the evergreening of medical patents (such as those in India).

America is a bully when it comes to copyrights. It is utterly ridiculous that an easy way to guess whether a book or movie is in copyright is to check whether it came out before Walt Disney's work, yet media corporations like Disney are essentially setting copyright laws for much of the world because of the broken political system in the US and the sycopancy of other governments.

America is a bully when it comes to medicine, too. It's a huge industry over there, with drug companies and insurance providers essentially running the entire show, and the fact that medicines can be bought here for far cheaper than they can in the US upsets them terribly. That's possible because we have Pharmac which can negotiate a decent deal for us, so they'd love for National to agree to anything that would weaken Pharmac's position - another thing rumoured to play a big part in TPPA.

And especially, America is a bully in the Middle East. At this point there are no good guys in this conflict - every side is supporting or has supported or will support at least one dictatorial regime willing to inflict horrors on its people for militarial or financial gain. We should absolutely not be encouraging it, let alone participating, yet National has put us in that situation and refuses to bring us back out of it. To suggest that it would be dishonorable to withdraw is utterly ludicrous and downright offensive. If they had any respect for the dead they would bring the still living home.

If we lived in a fair world, more voters would take National's admission of the true nature of the SAS' mission, as well as the credit rating downgrade we've just received, as reason to not re-elect them. Not that Labour is the best alternative, having just caved on the video surveillance bill, but three more years of National will only increase the death toll - not just for our soldiers, but for those driven into poverty by their failed economic policies.

Enough hypocrisy to go around

One of the articles I read this morning when I got to work was about a walkout at the UN after the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made a speech criticising the US. The article was quick to point out the hypocrisy of the speech, coming from the leader of a country whose last election was highly questionable, where protests are crushed by the military and where there is a great deal of political unrest. It also makes much of the conspiracy theories, such as the claim that most Americans and most outside the US as well believe that 9/11 was staged to ensure the survival of Jerusalem. There seemed to be a fairly decent amount about Zionist conspiracies.

But then near the bottom, Philippe Bolopion (Human Rights Watch's UN director) gives us this with no apparent sense of irony:

"The world assembly should take with a grain of salt the remarks of a leader who said nothing about the public hanging yesterday of a 17-year-old in his own country," he said.

I'm sure everyone knows what I'm getting at with this, but on the off-chance that sometime in the future someone comes across it and can't recall, yesterday also happened to be the day that Troy Davis was executed in Georgia (the US state) despite seven out of nine witnesses recanting and alleging police pressure*, one of the two remaining witnesses being a primary alternate suspect, and three jurors saying that they would change their votes if they could do it again. As far as I'm aware, Obama has made no comment on this.

(*another source I read said ten witnesses had signed affidavits recanting - either way, it is a considerable number)

Ahmadinejad's speech pitted the poverty and unhappiness of most countries against the riches and power of the US and unnamed European nations that he accused of perpetuating wars, causing the current global economic crisis and infringing on "the rights and sovereignty of nations."

He attacked the United States and European colonial powers for abducting tens of millions of Africans and making them slaves, for their readiness "to drop thousands of bombs on other countries," and for dominating the UN Security Council He singled out the US for using a nuclear bomb against Japan in World War II and imposing and supporting military dictatorships and totalitarian regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

"It is as lucid as daylight that the same slave masters and colonial powers that once instigated the two world wars have caused widespread misery and disorder with far-reaching effects across the globe since then," Ahmadinejad said. "Do these arrogant powers really have the competence and ability to run or govern the world?"

Honestly, he may be a complete douche, but I can't say he's entirely wrong here. I do note that there is plenty of poverty and unhappiness in the US and other Western countries as well, of course, this isn't an East-West divide, and I doubt that Iran would do any better if it were suddenly put into a position of global power. But that doesn't make his criticism automatically invalid. And this isn't all distant past, either. There are plenty of people alive who remember WWII, and the propping up of dictatorships is still going on today. It's been a few hours since the House of Representatives cut off a bill that would have continued funding the government past the end of the month, which is a pretty huge deal for the economy of, you know, the world, and it was only a day or two ago too that Obama tried to convince the Palestinians not to approach the UN with a request to become a member state, which unless there's some kind of sudden death double or nothing clause I'm not aware of is not actually going to cost them that much even if it's a no, so I can only assume the only advantage in them not asking is that the chance of it actually happening is vastly decreased.

And really, next to the funding and support of dictators and other such meddling in outright wars for people's very existence, I don't exactly feel right getting into new information about their demands in treaty negotiations. We'll just leave it at: the US does not inspire happy feelings in me, and it's disappointing that it was Ahmadinejad who brought this up simply because he's so easy to dismiss.

Why I support a UBI

You may be wondering, what is a UBI? UBI stands for Universal Basic Income, which is exactly what it sounds like: a guaranteed income for everyone at a level that allows them a basic standard of living, which can be padded by working for money. In my opinion, this extra income should have a higher tax burden on it than is now standard to support the system - others may argue that it can be done a different way.

Isn't this a lot like socialism? Yep, it is. I'm okay with that. I don't see why socialism is a dirty word. We're social creatures who live in societies, and we all benefit when standards of living are increased.

So, why is a UBI better than the current system? We already have benefits, after all. But those benefits don't actually cover everyone, and when they do, they're barely enough money to get by on, with prices rising much faster than benefit payments. Not to mention, our current system is based heavily on the idea that paid productive work is the benchmark we should be judging people on, and that what work is most important is based on the ideals of an entrenched system that devalues some very difficult jobs. This is why teachers are paid so little, school librarians get even less, and parents get nothing. Any job that is traditionally a woman's job automatically gets a massive paycut, simply because it is considered to be a woman's job. If we were to start over with none of those preconceived notions, who really thinks that teachers and nurses would be put into such shit working conditions? These are vital jobs - caring for the sick, instilling knowledge and the ability to analyse and assess into the next generation.

In this sort of environment, we also risk losing a lot of knowledge that isn't considered commercially viable. Not many people have the time to put into learning something that isn't going to help them earn money - in New Zealand this particularly applies to a lot of Maori traditions like carving and raranga (flax weaving), studying Maori oral history or pre-Cook science, interviewing elders about the stories they remember*, etc. This knowledge is valuable, but especially since Maori are disproportionately represented among the poor, it would be very easy for it to die out.

A lot of opponents to the idea of the UBI say that if we give out money for nothing, people won't work. This is categorically untrue. People do volunteer work as it is - quite a lot of it, in New Zealand. Other people really believe in what they do and value things other than income. How many people have taken or would take a job that pays less because they would enjoy it more? Many would have a job just for something to do, to keep them busy. And still more would simply want a bigger income than the UBI would provide, and so would work to earn it. Not to mention that the importance of work and productivity is a cultural one that wouldn't disappear overnight were a UBI to be introduced, so you also have the people who'll work because they wouldn't want to say they didn't work.

And then there's the jobs themselves. As we improve technology, everything becomes more efficient. We need far fewer people to do work that once would have required many. We also have a constantly growing population, and while that means more services have to be provided, as a company gets bigger they can streamline their operations to require fewer staff:customers than a smaller business would. Improved methods of transport and ordering aid this as well - you don't need a brick and mortar store in every town if your customer base is all shopping on the internet and having products sent to them, and you don't need a factory in every city if your product can be trucked down to your other stores without losing quality.

To cling to the idea that someone must work in a paid job to be a productive member of society is backwards. Free market capitalism does not value the things that people value. We would still have art, and literature, and entertainment - but we'd have much less of it... or rather, with a UBI, we'd have more of it. And in my eyes that can only be to the good.

*there is actually a show on Maori TV that is basically just talking to elders about their lives, and it's awesome.

Haere mai, National.

UPDATE: Pictures are now up on the Events page.

Today, the Cabinet met at the Copthorne hotel near the airport. There were about thirty people there to "meet" them, so I decided to stop by after work to join in and have a chat to a few people. (I overlooked the fact that turning up in a shirt and tie, accompanying someone with a camera round her neck, made me look a little like a journo, but the lack of a press badge and the fact we stuck around for a while without trying to interview anyone did at least something to dispel that.)

The most striking thing about the crowd was that people had so many different agendas. It's to be expected, really - this was a golden opportunity and there's a lot to be angry about. It did mean, however, a bit of clash when people's opinions overlapped, and a bit of discomfit when people were being particularly noisy about some things that we didn't entirely want to be associated with - there was a fair amount of venom directed towards the police officers, who were actually acting pretty damn professionally, as well as general sexism, fat-shaming, homophobia, and rhetoric comparing our politicians to actual overseas dictators. I mean, hey, I hate John Key with a fucking passion, but I can admit he's no Gaddaffi. I'll grab the photos later and get them up so you can see the range of signs. One of the funniest moments was actually when Roger Sutton was leaving and one guy was saying, "Roger Sutton for Prime Minister!" while another chanted, "Arrest Roger Sutton!"

On the whole it wasn't too bad though, and there were some good people there. Even the guy we got into a bit of a slagging match with apologised for going off. Everyone was incredibly passionate and clearly believed pretty strongly in what they were there for; I was listening to one of the organisers give an interview to a couple of actual reporters and the things he was saying were really succinct and well thought-out. We did get quite a lot of support from passing traffic, too - the best were the big transport trucks blowing those really deep horns, and one guy who went past on a bicycle ringing the bell madly. Predictably, no politicians came out, but as I mentioned above, Roger Sutton did. He was leaving for the day to go and get some more work done, but instead of getting into a car well onto the Copthorne property and having the police escort him out (as everyone else did), he just calmly walked out and stopped for a moment to say hi, answer a couple of questions - or at least, say he couldn't answer them - then got in his car. As he was leaving, he tooted his horn and gave us a wave, which most people were pretty happy about.

I did get a chance to speak, though I will be the first to admit I am not well versed in the use of a megaphone! I got it mostly sorted out though. The gist of it was really that we're increasingly running out of places to turn to. We're not resilient, we just have no other options, but politicians won't listen to anyone long enough to be told that. There was actually a story in the news today in which John Key was quoted as saying that we're "stoic" down here - hardly anyone has come up and complained to him. To which I say, how can we? He was barricaded away inside with six or eight police officers on hand! It isn't any real surprise, really, that people are so eager to talk to me when I'm at work - no one from the government will listen, and then they ask me where I live and find out I actually get where they're coming from and they're telling me things they haven't even told their families. As I said this afternoon, my job is half help-desk and half phone counseling.

There are also going to be more community meetings, to get people organised and talking, because as a few people rightly pointed out, it's only when people are able to share their stories that the best plans come out. The first will be next week, Wednesday the 14th of September, at 7.30pm at the Linwood Community Art Centre, 468 Worcester St. I think it's being run by Action for Christchurch East and Beyond Resistance - there's going to be a couple of short film clips and lots of talking, as well as food and drink and "child friendly space".

Our government is tech savvy (yeah right!)

Just about twenty minutes ago, someone shared something on Twitter that really seems a little ludicrous. It's a page from the Environment Canterbury website, a government department:


Click on the image to open the full-sized version.

Considering the fact that it would be a compliment to call National's web presence "mediocre", it's a bit of a concern that government websites are in this state. The most recent Fairfax poll put Greens at 11% - but a similar poll on Twitter recently had them at the time I voted closer to 70%. That's because they're by far the political party with the most successful online presence. Similarly their Facebook page, I'm told, is more popular than both Labour's and National's. And of course, it was National (with the help of Labour, who have now admitted their mistake and are pledging to repeal the law within 90 days if they're elected) who pushed through the notorious "Skynet" law which showed just how complete their lack of understanding of the internet really is. In this generation, can we really afford a government of dinosaurs? Shouldn't we be looking to the future? To do that, we need people capable of navigating the chaos the internet has become, and National is clearly not qualified.

And of course, tomorrow is September 1, the first day of Spring and the day the Skynet law comes into effect.

@johnkeypm can I borrow a fiver?

Two things today, and I'll start with the moderately more lighthearted one. I'll be headed to the National party welcoming committee on Monday (and hope plenty of other people will too!) and I'm pondering signs. My sister suggests "STFU & GTFO" for the pure simplicity, but I'd like to come up with several over the week so I can choose between them and then actually make the damn thing on Sunday. (Due to the news of my impending $1000 dentist's bill and being given the opportunity to do my raranga two days a week instead of one during September I don't think I can afford to take Monday morning off.) I'm tempted by "dude, where's my economy?", "not going anywhere (coz we can't afford to leave)", "TIA is MIA"... I think the last time I had to come up with a good slogan was during the teacher/student strikes in 2002.


Less jovially, police are still telling women not to go out without an escort. In New Zealand. Only at night time, though! I guess it's fine during the day, but damn, once that sun goes down you ladies had better make sure you have a male family member with you and your ankles covered or you're gonna get raped.

Except, probably not, since stranger rape is by far the least common kind, but if you do it's your fault. You should have been at home with your male acquaintances to protect you. You know, where most rapes happen.

'Bias' in reporting

Recently there was an article on Stuff about how John Key told the Americans back in 2008 that National couldn't make any really conservative policies because there was a socialist streak in all New Zealanders. They've now updated this news with more information - John Key has confirmed that he said that!

The article's here.

It's really not particularly interesting, and I'd seen a lot of it before, but the comments are worth a read purely for the highly contradictory nature of them. There are quite a few people bashing Stuff for their anti-National reporting... and also people bashing Stuff for their pro-National reporting. There are a lot of people saying "Well, yes, and that's awesome." But there are also some who hate it. And, of course, the few people who don't follow the journalistic style well enough to realise that only a minority of the article is Key's words, as well as the people who think that rich-bashing is a good political move.

For extra brain-ache, the poll that came up for me in the side bar was asking if I thought benefit payment cards were a good idea. In our apparently socialist country of rich-bashing, 77.2% of the respondents voted yes.

God, I'd hate to see what we'd be like if we didn't hate rich people so much!

Time to take up placards?

"How r u supposd 2 deal with EQC when their systems aren't showing correct info. I can see my claim online & c info they can't & won't! #eqnz" - @sherdooce on Twitter

Christchurch, I'm tired. I'm tired of seeing the stress people are under, I'm tired of feeling the stress myself, I'm tired of being abused because I'm the most accessible person who'll actually talk to people over the phone. Coming out of winter people have power bills in the hundreds or thousands that they don't know how to pay - WINZ are telling them to apply for a Red Cross grant that closed a month ago. The plight of those in the residential red zone who are waiting for (often inadequate) payments has been documented and reported on, but I wonder how many people know that repair work on houses in the orange and white zones stopped as soon as http://www.landcheck.org.nz came out? I've come across families that are hoping to be lucky enough that when half their house is knocked down they'll be able to sling a tarpaulin up and live in the other half. I've had people tell me that the damage to their home isn't too bad now that the wall has been propped up to keep it from collapsing. I've talked to at least one person who came down with pneumonia while living in a barely-heated house.

It's easy to say there's help available, it's easy to say people can leave, it's easy to say that living without plumbing isn't that bad. But the information government offices have is out of date or just plain wrong, WINZ turns people down for emergency funds because they earn too much or they've already had their meagre allotment or they haven't exhausted other options, even though no one knows what those options are - either because they can't afford the methods of seeking them out (eg internet, daily newspapers) or because they're poorly advertised. Other people know they'd be able to manage their costs if they moved away, but it's impossible to find the money for transport, moving trucks, somewhere to stay while they find a new home, bond, rent in advance. Some decided early on that they could manage without help, but now are realising they hadn't anticipated how costly things were going to be - and many sources of assistance have dried up several months down the track. And anyone who lives in several particular suburbs in the east knows about the stench of human filth, the effort it takes to carry chemical toilet tanks to a septic station, the frequent trips to arrange around small children or availability of home help, the feeling that you're never quite clean enough.

The fact is that financially things are only getting worse for a lot of people, and it's falling upon private charity to help keep people's heads above the rising tide. And private charity can't do it all.

On September 5, Cabinet are meeting at the Copthorne Hotel in the Christchurch city centre. If I recall correctly, this is the first time they've met outside Wellington in well over a decade - it's clearly supposed to be some kind of symbolic gesture rather than pure coincidence, especially given the date. Unfortunately, symbolic gestures are not what we need. We need help. If we can't get it from government helplines, we still have the right to peaceful protest, and this seems like the perfect opportunity. I want pickets. I want placards. I want our government to see that we're not going to go away. I want to hear what they have to say about their complete failure to protect the people they're supposed to represent. Am I the only one?

Playing with matches

The New Zealand blogosphere is all a-twitter with John Key's welfare plan for teenagers on benefits. I have some lengthy thoughts, but first I'm going to link to a video: The Intervention - Witness - Al Jazeera English

I'v already linked this a couple of times on Twitter and a week or so ago on Google+, but I think it's particularly relevant right now. It's nearly an hour long, but worth it - it covers the intervention program in Australia which took control of the incomes of Australian Aborigines in the far north of the country and the fall out from it. Obviously there are differences to what John Key is proposing - for starters we're not going to be taking away jobs that young people already have - but it's important viewing.

The thing about National is that I can't trust they've thought any of their policies through. The complete shambles of the Skynet law proved that. And that leaves me with a lot of questions about this one. What is this supposed to achieve, exactly? Are they also going to make a push to teach people budgeting skills, or are they just going to do it for them? Is there going to be room in the system for birth control, and if so, will people be able to choose the one that suits them the most or will they only have a few options? (eg, a certain dollar value a week might be good for condoms or the pill, but not an IUD, which is a cost outlay to begin with and then no more for years) What happens when something unexpected comes up that needs to be paid for - most people will sit down and make a decision, like, maybe I'll spend a bit less on food and put off paying the power bill until Tuesday. Will beneficiaries be able to do the same thing, or are they just screwed? Have they actually considered the fact that 16-17 year olds can't legally buy alcohol and cigarettes anyway, so if they're doing so it must be through a method that isn't necessarily going to be affected at all? (Note in the Intervention video, at one point a shop owner says that though he's been losing money, alcohol sales haven't changed at all. It's the food sales that suffered.)

Even aside from practicalities, I have little doubt they haven't given serious consideration to the emotional affect of something like this. In essence, we'd have people leaving high school ready to join the adult world, and then finding that if they can't get a job they have to go into this system where they're treated like small children. If we want to beat them down and humiliate them, it's probably a good policy. If we want to build resentment, it's great.

I really can't help but notice that the only people who think this is a good idea are those who think people want to be on a benefit. Look, I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. Being on a benefit is hell. For starters, your income is far less than a minimum wage full-time job would give you, and it's still less than many minimum wage part-time jobs would give you. Beyond that, though, there's the constant worry. How do you explain the gaps on your CV? In my case, how do I explain my complete lack of references even from when I was working? I had a nervous breakdown at work, and then somehow went through two more jobs before finally realising I couldn't actually keep going - as a result, I don't have anyone from back then who'd even say neutral things about me, let alone good. Most unemployed people don't have that problem, but that's another issue with this system - it treats everyone the same, when everyone is not the same. Then there's the self-blame and confusion. Am I really on this benefit because I have to be, or am I self-sabotaging? If everyone's saying this is my fault, are they right? Maybe I am just useless. Maybe I shouldn't even bother. Maybe I should just live down to their expectations. It would be easier than trying to prove myself over and over again and never, ever managing it. (In the case of teen parents, I suspect, but don't know, that this might be even more common. Society hates teen parents.)

Ultimately, this policy does nothing to address the real issues. It does nothing to create jobs. It does nothing to teach young people skills. It does nothing to give them confidence in themselves, to find their strengths, to help them realise their goals. It's just a looming dark pit, right behind them, waiting for them to make a single mis-step. Given ongoing events in the UK, given the financial crisis in Greece, given the growing inequality in New Zealand and the repeated outbreaks of preventable illnesses and the high numbers of young people without futures, this is going to do nothing but doom us. And I, for one, am terrified for the results of this election. I have no realistic hopes that Labour will beat National, but all I can do is hope that their majority is slim enough that they need a coalition - and not just with ACT.

Doing Studylink

It turns out the government is so committed to making tertiary education accessible that there's a whole department dedicated to putting students in debt. As well as a basic student loan to cover course fees, if you can't afford to eat while studying full-time, you can borrow your living costs from the government.

Okay, this isn't entirely fair - they also manage student allowances, again for full-time students. Here's where I get lucky. Because I'm closer to 30 than 20, my parents' income doesn't get means tested when they decide whether I can get one. Remember how I said I was the fourth of five children? To raise five kids, my parents had to draw in a pretty decent sum of money. Unfortunately Studylink doesn't take into account the fact that all seven people in the house needed to eat and have things to wear, they just look at the income and say it's too much. Now that I'm over 25 though, they trust that I actually have to support myself (I guess most poor people are supposed to still be supported by their parents for quarter of a century), though the fact that I'm boarding in my parents' house (due to the fact that I cannot afford market rent prices; I pay an amount closer to what market rent was when I was renting a few years ago) does affect how much of a student allowance I could get. The fact that I could get one at all is due to limited full-time - basically, I'll have to get Massey to tell Studylink that I'm too sick to study full-time, so just handwave and pretend that I am.

Anyway, on the Studylink website, you sign up for an online user id so it will save your eligibility test results and let you apply over the internet. Oddly enough, despite the rather confusing nature of the actual eligibility test when your situation isn't completely straightforward, it was signing up for a user id that I had the most trouble with, and this is due to strength. If you've signed up for a lot of online accounts you've probably come across at least one that will tell you your "password strength". It's based on factors like the length, the type of characters used, and sometimes whether it's made up of words you can find in the dictionary. Studylink loves strength. It protects your account from hackers who are too lazy to actually hack! Not that they even have a name linked to my account yet. Here's what you give them when you're signing up:

Password: You'll see why I'm listing password first in a moment. The strength restrictions on your password are that it has to be 8-15 characters, made up of both letters and numbers. Easy enough.

Username: Your username, which you use to log in as, has exactly the same requirements as the password. This is where I had to think for a moment because none of the various handles I use online have numbers in. I just replaced some vowels with numbers.

After confirming your password you get another common security feature - Challenge question. If you forget your password, the question will come up and you have to give the right answer to reset it. Studylink offers ten choices of question. However, here's the trick. The answers have strength restrictions too. They don't have to have numbers in them, but they have to be 6-30 characters, with no spaces. I'm going to list the questions they offer, with my answers, using x for every letter.

What was the name of your first school? xx xxxxxxx
What is your father's middle name? xxxx
What is the first name of your favourite childhood friend: Either xxx or xxxxx
What street did you live on when you were five years old? xxxxxxx xxxxx
What was your first job after leaving school? xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx
Where did you celebrate the start of the new millenium? I honestly can't remember, but at a guess, xxxx
What is the name of your first stuffed toy? xxxxx
What was the first concert you attended? xxx xxxxxxx
What is the middle name of your youngest child? I don't have one.
In what city or town did your mother and father meet? I'm not sure about this one either, but several of the options have two words.

Notice something about that? Every answer that I know for sure is either too short or has a space in it. Even the ones I'm not sure of or have a couple of answers for won't work. In the end I had to adjust an answer and hope that if I ever forget my password, I'll remember what the hell I did. On the plus side, I guess anyone else would have trouble figuring out what the hell I did, too.

At this point, I am actually going to pause a little in the whole process. My next step would be to apply for a student ID and PIN at Massey, which is the first step in online enrollment, but tomorrow I have an appointment with a Justice of the Peace - after wanting to do it for a few years, I'm getting my name changed so my surname will no longer be a rough equivalent of "Pleasestalkme". I want to hold off on giving my name out to a whole pile of institutions until I have that done, because it's much easier than trying to convince them to change it in their systems later.

In the meantime, I'll be sticking with my budget and keeping on clocking in hours at work, trying to get the money to pay for as much of this as possible. Kia ora!

Sense from Chaos

It's human nature to try to rationalise things, to understand them. It's an amazing skill which can be applied to anything from scientific research to creating works of art. So it's only natural that people would be trying to apply this skill to the things that are happening in London.

But the thing about riots is that they're inherently irrational - once you start trying to understand them logically, you've already failed. They're not a behaviour confined to humanity, either. My social rabbit owners list has had plenty of discussions about grumpy rabbits throwing food and water bowls around; there have been experiments done on rats that showed how they became aggressive and unstable when confined to a too-small place; cattle stampede when stressed in the wrong way. Small children throwing a tantrum will damage their own possessions, too - and self-harm is a common element of mental illness. Of course it makes no sense. The point is that by the time a population hits the tipping point into rioting, nothing makes sense. It requires a particular combination of long-term stress, frustration, disempowerment and helplessness. The UK is one of the countries with the highest level of inequality in the developed world, and also among the worst in terms of social mobility. There is almost no hope for self-improvement if you're born to the "wrong" family.

But the fact that they're illogical doesn't mean they can't be predicted. Writing in the Guardian on July 29, less than two weeks ago - but before the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan that sparked the original protest - Alexandra Topping says,

"Aaron is one of hundreds of youngsters in the north London borough of Haringey whose youth clubs were shut after the youth services budget was slashed by 75% after a cut of £41m to the council's overall budget. Hundreds of thousands of young people throughout the UK are affected.
Gang experts, MPs and sector workers are warning that these cuts – which have hit youth services harder than any other area of local authority spending, according to the education select committee – could have a serious impact on the safety of young people in urban areas."

(I suggest you read the whole article. It's pretty chilling, in retrospect.)

And it's not as though the police are regarded as holy figures who ought be immune from attack. Since 1998, there have been at least 330 deaths in police custody (two a month), but investigations by the IPCC have resulted in a total of zero convictions despite numbers that point at the very best to extreme negligence. Meanwhile, Tottenham is subject to frequent stop and search policies which result in weapon stashes in an attempt not to be caught with a knife, meaning that anyone can likely find a deadly weapon at any time.

I could, I guess, talk about the hypocrisy in talking about riots depending on where they take place and whether we're supposed to like the government that caused them (see: Egypt over the last few months, Syria, the French Revolution), or unpack things that have been popping up on Twitter like, "I saw 3 or 4 young women looting Tesco Express for nappies and milk tonight. Difficult and serious problems beneath this mess." I could disclaim the whole post by saying that I understand the visceral reaction to people destroying their city when we've been struggling with nature doing it to our own. But mostly I think it can be summed up thus:

Cuts to youth services. Cuts to education. Cuts to welfare. Cuts to health. Cuts to preventative programs to reduce crime or substance abuse. Cuts to jobs. Society has been telling these people for years that they are disposable, useless, a blight on humanity. The message has been reinforced so much that they've started to believe it. Are we surprised, now that they've started to act like it?

Dear ACT party, help me out here

Why is rationality better than emotions?

For that matter, how do you know your rationality isn't a simple disguise for emotion itself? Because none of your arguments seem very logical to me.

Strange but true

* In 1898 Morgan Robertson published a book about the SS Titan's maiden voyage, in which the allegedly unsinkable ship sank after hitting an iceberg. In the story the Titan's 24 lifeboats were woefully inadequate for the three thousand passengers and crew aboard the ship, leading to great loss of life. Fourteen years later...

* The same bus company in Auckland employs two drivers with the same phobia of masks or face coverings (a genuine condition, let's be clear). Despite the season, which can be cold even in the north of the country, the passengers in each case who set off this phobia were not wearing scarves and hats, but instead were two of the extreme minority of religious Muslim Kiwi women who wear hijab or something similar.

* Back in 1914, a German mother photographed her baby boy on a film plate and took it to a shop to be developed. The outbreak of the war intervened and she was never able to pick it up. Two years later after the birth of her daughter, she bought another film plate to photograph the girl, and when it was developed she discovered that it was a double exposure - over the top of the photograph of the little girl's older brother.

* Anthony Hopkins co-starred in the 1974 'The Girl from Petrovka' as Kostya. The film was based on a novel that, the previous year when Hopkins had first signed the contract, proved extremely difficult to get hold of, until he spotted a copy sitting on a bench at a train station. The scribbles inside, and later confirmation from the author George Feifer himself, proved that the copy was Feifer's own, missing after having been lent to a friend.

* In PM John Key's office, the pay gap between genders is 27.5% - a fact which has nothing to do with gender.


Though, personally, I do wonder why no one is talking about the reasons for pay discrepancies that can be explained without pointing (directly) at pure sexism. Like that fewer women are in high ranking positions. (Even in "female dominated" fields like nursing, teaching and non-profits there is a disproportionately high number of men in management positions.) Or that women are more likely to take a sick day to deal with children. Or that women are, you know, more likely to be the primary caregiver of children. Or that women are more likely to live below the poverty line. Or that women are less aggressive in negotiating pay. Or that women are taken less seriously in positions of authority. Or that an atmosphere is more likely to be described as hostile to women than to men. Or that more women leave good jobs due to sexual harassment than men. Or that the work often done by women is considered less important. Or that women tend to seek work that offers more flexibility (because they're more likely to be the primary caregiver of children) for less pay. Or that women are more likely to take several years out of the employment market, sacrificing their career progress, despite maternity leave policies allowing them to keep their jobs when they have children. Or that women are less likely to take a promotion that requires them to move to a different city.

You know, little things like that.

RESOLVED: wanted to talk

Post title is an actual log subject from work this week.

The organisation (I haven't named them here; I don't speak for them, can't speak for them, so it's easier to make a nominal point of anonymity even if a large proportion of readers know which org I'm talking about) I work for is currently moving the call centre down from Wellington. This week we get 50% of the call volume, next week we're going to 100%. I pulled the morning shift for the first three days of this week - Monday I then went straight into Payments to help with a pay run that was unexpectedly complicated, so ended up pulling a nine hour shift. I heard a rumour there was daylight that day, but couldn't say for sure.

Today, the 22nd, is four months on from February. From Twitter and from first-hand contact with the public, I can develop a picture of the emotional state of the city - perhaps not in high detail, but enough to make out the shape of it. And while psychologists are telling us we can cope, there are people who are questioning that. There are even some who've committed suicide already as a result of the ongoing stress and uncertainty. There's a peculiar phenomenon in human psychology - if you put two people in confinement (whether that be prison, solitary, a POW camp, whatever), and tell one that they will never get out, and refuse to tell the other anything, in many cases the former will be able to handle it better. It's not, strictly speaking, the situation itself that is proving so hard, though it certainly is extremely difficult. It's that there's nothing to look forward to. We don't know when it's going to end or how bad things are going to get.

I think it's not irrelevant to this that February wasn't even the beginning. Remember that we had that 7.1 on September 4th - February was six months after that. We are now ten months, not four, into the intermittent shaking, the questions without answers, the property damage and emotional stress, the loss of landmarks we had believed would always be there. We had thought that September was the worst, that after that things would slowly taper off - there would be significant aftershocks, sure. There was one in October, another on Boxing Day. But go back to January and ask any random person on the street and nobody expected any of what we're going through now. So now? We don't expect things will just calm down and stop. We can't. Last time we believed that, things got suddenly and unexpectedly worse by magnitudes (6.3 of them, to be exact).

The two big shakes last Monday (13 June) only reinforced that.

After last night's 5.4 and the dozen or more that followed overnight I was expecting a bad day on the phones today. It was surprisingly calm, with most people in pretty decent moods, and I had some really nice chats with almost all of them ending well. Yesterday was far worse, actually. It's a little inexplicable, but that's how things are now.

I will say, last week was the first time I wasn't able to say that I felt things were improving. Now? I'm not sure. I suppose they are. We're about to get some definitive news, proper long-term stuff of the utmost importance, and that's going to go a LONG way towards fixing some of the communication breakdown that we've been noticing lately. Some of us, at least, are going to be told when their release date is, and as much as the reparation money, the sheer emotional relief of that knowledge is going to do a lot of good. But beyond that, I can't say. My confidence in the future is, shall we say, shaken.

......YEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! 8)

(Because hey, at least we can joke, right?)

LGBT rights by country

Yesterday, after being accused of being (along with Dan Choi) a closet GOPer (lol), I was told to name countries that allowed gay marriage, with the note that NZ is not one of them. Thanks, I'm aware of that - I live here, and when I'm ready for a relationship it'll be with someone of the same gender the government thinks I am. Mind you, I had already told this person that their previous statement was so ridiculous that I was going to go and look at pictures of bunnies, so I did not reply. When I had exhausted trademe's bunny section, though, I did go to the fastest information source there is - wikipedia. LGBT rights by country or territory provides tables, subdivided by region, of (as you can imagine) rights that LGBT people have in various countries.

It's not a perfect list, I'll say that first. It focuses largely on recognition of relationships, while other rights such as protection from unfair dismissal or eviction, or the right to visit loved ones in intensive care, or the access to hormone treatments and surgery, tend to be grouped under a single column or two. It's a decent overview, though, and provides a very simple way to rank countries.

Firstly I'm going to list the countries named as allowing gay marriage (not civil unions, as New Zealand has), and then I'm going to give a descending list of the number of ticks countries have until I reach the US, as the original argument was centered on the relatively few rights that queers have there.

Marriage:
South Africa, Canada, Mexico City, Argentina, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain
Pending, partial or under consideration:
Uruguay, Israel (recognised, but not performed within country), India (not outlawed, and some cases reported), Nepal, China, Cambodia (technically prohibited but there has been at least one case), Finland, Ireland, UK, Luxembourg

Number of ticks by country:
South Africa (7), Canada (7), Norway (7), Sweden (7), Netherlands (7), Spain (7);
Israel (6.5);
Uruguay (6), Iceland (6), Isle of Man (6), UK (6), Belgium (6), Croatia (6), Portugal (6);
Australia (5.5);
New Zealand (5), Argentina (5), Brazil (5), Colombia (5), South Georgia (5, one "unknown"), Denmark (5), Poland (5), Slovenia (5), Pitcairn Islands (5);
United States (4.5), Finland (4.5), Greenland (4.5).

Finland and Greenland are good company, I'm sure, but it interests me to see which countries are much higher up in the list - Uruguay is probably not a country that springs to mind when you think gay rights, let alone Croatia. At any rate I think it's safe to say that the US is not the leader in LGBT rights that these guys were trying to paint it as.