The Recruiter's Blog

by Alan Charman

"If you want to get the inside oil on New Zealand employment (and social!) conditions, forget the Department of Labour and newspapers, read this blog!"

 

December, Christmas and New Year blog up soon!

 

 

Newsflash, September 2009: 220,000 Kiwi kids live in poverty.

Bullshit.

This kind of headline sickens me. It is lying to the point of fraud. Fraud perpetrated against people on this planet who are living in poverty - real poverty. The kind of poverty which means a walk to the nearest communal water supply, hoping to christ there's some water. The kind of poverty which allows kids to die from the far-too-common diarrhoea infections from sub-human living conditions.

The kind of faux poverty that sandal-wearing, tree-hugging twats claim exists in New Zealand should be given its rightful name - child neglect, or even child abuse, as the neglect is wilful and avoidable.

We live in a society where a social welfare safety net is provided to those in need.

Yes, the system's bloody awful, but it's the only one we have and it does provide a living for the least-able members of our country. The reason that kids go hungry and/or go without other essentials of life is pure selfishness on the part of their parents - in almost all cases*

Those hungry kids without shoes are often in that situation because their parent/s smoke, drink, use drugs or gamble.

By this, I am in no way suggesting that all beneficiaries are drunken druggies, but is factual that huge numbers of parents of these 220,000 children smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol and many do drugs or gamble - please note that Lotto is as much gambling as the TAB or pokies.

Almost every single one of those children in "poverty" has a colour television in their home. Many have Sky. That is not poverty.

 

*There is one tiny class of people which almost qualify as living in poverty in this country - those on the minimum wage. Those people have my admiration for working and trying to better their families, often under conditions worse than many beneficiaries due to a stupid system which is skewed to favour the useless as well as the helpless.

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