Sue Bradford is awfully upset that a Work & Income case manager allegedly told a welfare recipient, living off compulsorily acquired funds from other people, to "f' off" after she asked for a "food grant".
Most of the hoo ha about it is simply around her use of the "f" word, which is a bit of a yawn to me. It astounds me what offends politicians - not lying, not taking other people's money and spending it on all sorts of activities or indeed unprofitable businesses that nobody in their right mind would choose to spend it on, not the Police who pursue those who defend themselves, not calls for the state to continuously monitor the lives of every child, not giving food aid to a country that enslaves children as political prisoners.
No.
However Bradford's characterisation of the event she describes is telling in two ways.
First is her absolute abandonment of the idea that people have options other than going to the state in saying that Work and Income "has the power to grant or decline her very means of survival". Oh please Sue, she wasn't malnourished and emaciated was she? Could she not seek work? Could she not ask people to give her money or food of their own, out of their own choice? Work and Income after all isn't dishing out money it has been "given", but money that has been taken.
What it tells me is that the Greens think that the state should be the basic means for us all to survive, which works as long as the majority of mugs don't use it as such.
Second is the more telling refusal to acknowledge the other side of the ledger. Every dollar that a beneficiary receives costs more than a dollar taken, by force, from a taxpayer. The Greens ignore this, treating what beneficiaries have as "entitlements", as if you are allowed to live off of the back of others, by force. Imagine if beneficiaries asked their neighbours for help, or had to go door to door asking for assistance. No, the Greens prefer the clasped fist of the state and it threatening to confiscate your property and imprison you if you don't agree to give up some of your property to pay beneficiaries.
You see I'm more offended by the way taxpayers are treated by the Department of Legalised Theft (IRD). Behind the attempts to be friendly and helpful, IRD is an agency of threats, which it is quite willing to use to extract its cut from you. More importantly, the state treats you with more respect if you murder, rape and steal, than if you don't give it what it deems you should - in a dispute with IRD you're guilty till proven innocent. Funny how all those on the left who are so concerned about human rights and freedoms are happy for the state to live off this presumption of guilt.
See I'd rather like beneficiaries to have to ask for what they want - but not ask bureaucrats, but citizens. To go to a body where people donate money and make a case for having more, perhaps in exchange for doing something in return. I'd like the Greens to acknowledge that their big beloved Nanny State isn't some warm loving entity that can dish out prizes like Santa Claus, but an institution of violence - that takes money from taxpayers under threat of violence. The Greens want it to do more threatened confiscation of people's income and give out the cash as if it came off of some tree. It doesn't - state welfare is money taken from other people, and IRD does a lot more than say "f' off" if you ask to keep more of your own money to spend on food.
Tara Marks (the woman concerned) might think a little more about whether any should give a damn that she was "offended" compared to those who she is indirectly asking to be forced into funding her and her family. Note she is using the media to have a moan about how she was treated, rather than ask for some money - she's clearly hardly on her knees is she?
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