23 May 2008

One welfare recipient wanted more

The NZ Herald has a headline "Beneficiaries angry as they watch pay relativity slide". Yet the article quotes one, before quoting socialist academic Susan St John (what's stopping her paying more) and the Salvation Army.

The one woman quoted was once President of something called the Combined Beneficiaries Union. You might wonder why people who don't sustain themselves financially, who don't have to concern themselves with employment conditions, would need to belong to a Union - well, it is a leftwing lobby group. A bit like the infamously named Unemployed Workers' Union, an organisation that I thought as a child was contradictory. No one is a worker if they are not doing work (and let's avoid the stupid Marxist concept that anyone who isn't some blue collar employee ISN'T a worker). They exist to essentially lobby the state to make other people pay them more money, as crude and self interested as that.

However, wait there's more. The Combined Beneficiaries Union isn't privately funded - YOU pay for it. According to a Parliamentary Question from National MP Judith Collins, this "union" is 40% funded compulsorily by you. About $60,000 a year. Enough for someone's salary.

So you are forced to pay for an organisation lobbying to force you to pay its members more.

But wait, there's more. The woman interviewed was involved in a scandal regarding the firing of someone allegedly making expense claims for personal items. The story is here. To be fair the woman concerned, Helen Capel sounds like she has been treated badly.

However, that is by the by. The bottom line is that beneficiaries have been given nothing - you see they always vote Labour, but that means they don't need to be given anything by Labour. Of course those who care could always take their tax cut and any more, and give it to beneficiaries they know, or can find. However that would involve really giving a damn, and far too many talk about caring about the poor, but wouldn't go near actually helping them directly.

4 comments:

BigGirlsBlouse said...

God you talk a lot of blah blah blah. I see John is eating crow. The tax cuts bill was passed urgently in parliament today. Hooray for Helen!

Oswald Bastable said...

The likes of this person never seem to grasp the idea that you are not meant to live on a benefit- they are meant to be temporary subsistence.

The idea is to get a bloody job!

Anonymous said...

For fuck's sake, bgb, John-Boy is only eating crow because he's tired of the taste of dead rats.

The tax cuts are a promise Cullen knows he won't have to keep because his party will be slung out on their ample arses after the next election.

Libertyscott said...

Gee BGB, I care little more for John than I do for Helen, but hey you like good portions of your money taken and spent by the state, and you like Helen telling people what to do.

I don't quite know what it feels like wanting people to make decisions for you.