by frog
Beneficiary bashing blogger Lindsay Mitchell published a post last week in which she attempted to argue that many people on sickness and invalid’s benefits should be looking for work.
She compared the current unemployment and sickness/invalid’s benefit figures with those in 1999, the last time unemployment was at its current level of 7.3%, and came up with this bar chart:
She then concluded that for a good many people a sickness or invalid benefit is merely a de facto unemployment benefit.
Wrong!
Despite the same unemployment rate, the employment situation in 1999 was quite unlike that today. In 1999 unemployment levels were just starting to decline from a ten year period of high unemployment. 35% of 1999’s unemployed had been unemployed for 6 months or more.
Today’s situation is very different. There has been a rapid rise in unemployment over the last year after a sustained period of low unemployment. So many more of today’s unemployed are likely to have a partner who is still in employment and be ineligible for unemployment benefit. Many others are likely to have their own resources to live on and have no need for an unemployment benefit, at least yet.
Mitchell should have considered this graph prepared by the Ministry of Social Development before jumping to her conclusion:
Source: DSW Annual Reports or Statistical Information Reports and MSD SWIFFT data.
It shows no surge in sickness and invalid’s benefit figures to correspond with the plummeting unemployment benefit figures between 2000 and 2006. It just shows the gradual increase in sickness and invalid’s benefit figures consistent with the inflow to those benefits being significantly greater than the outflow – only 12.5% of sickness and invalid’s beneficiaries manage a sustained exit to employment within 3 years according to Ministry of Social Development research.
I guess she ignored it because it doesn’t fit in with the conclusion she had already made.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Featured by frog on Mon, February 8th, 2010
Tags: beneficiary bashing, invalids benefit, Lindsay Mitchell, sickness benefit, unemployment, unemployment benefit
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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what can you say, really…
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SPC, don’t get me onto the junk food in schools issue.
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One suspects you are being very charitable, Frog.
My personal opinion (given without any research whatsoever, merely a product of my very opinionated mind) is that LM may not have actually researched the MSD website, as it is not run nor funded by the National party.
She may, however, have had recourse to the invaluable marketing polls conducted by Curia, her mate DPF’s consultancy company.
However, without any research to back this up, I hardly expect this opinion to be carried by any newswire or national news agency, particulalry since I am known not to vote for the National Party.
Of course, these opinions are merely idle conjecture, grounded in my own personal biases against hacks who are paid to produce propaganda for the National Party, and I would hardly get paid, and published nationally, for such sentiments, would I?
Especially in a ‘fair and decent society’, where ‘the mainstream’ expect that the media represent the middle ground, and cover all aspects of an issue equally….
for the frogpond:
music to read polls by: Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant
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So there is no association between one declining line and the other climbing lines (which if combined make a steeper incline)?
I am not, and never have, claimed an absolute association, but between 2000 and 2006 there was net migration from UB to SB of 25,000. The numbers migrating rose every year through to 2004. And yes, as you say, they then stay on the sickness benefit (or move onto the invalid’s benefit).
Hence my comment;
For a good many people a sickness or invalid benefit is merely a de facto unemployment benefit.
Not ALL.
If you google ‘medicalisation of labour market problems’ you will see that reliance on disability benefits rather than unemployment benefits is a recognised phenomena in many developed countries.
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Lindsay, do you understand the definition of a terminal disease?
One which can be medicated to create less discomfort, but which is not ever going to go away, and which has as a feature of the diagnosis, that the patient’s condition will deteriorate until terminal?
The only reason the sickness and invalid’s benefit rates don’t climb more rapidly is that a whole bunch of people only spend less than 3 years on the benefit because they die.
Paula Bennett’s policy changes are just an unsubtle attempt to get even more terminally ill people to do that state a favour and commit suicide (incitement to an illegal act), which at last look, was a definition of facist eugenics policy.
Obviously, I’m unsure whether your advocacy of her policy is an implicit or explicit agreement with such thinking, so I’ll be blunt and ask you –
Lindsay, do you think the terminally ill should just be put to sleep, much like your aged cat with a tumour can be put down at the vet’s ‘to save him from the pain’?
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The increases from 1976-2006 are reasonably straight lines indicating that this trend is likely to continue – 2036 300,000+ invalids and 200,000 on the sickness benefit?
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Katie, You are over-reacting. There are more people relying on these benefits for substance abuse than because they have cancer. I personally know three people on invalid’s benefits with conditions that do prevent them from working. I am not denying real need. Why is it when a genuine question is posed, one which many people want answered, about the significant growth in apparent disability dependence, a personal attack results? I am not connected with National in anyway, have not been a member of ACT for almost a year and frequently read and cite MSD research.
SPC, The following is the media release that prompted the article in the Hutt News;
Media Release
RECORD RISE IN SICKNESS BENEFIT NUMBERS
Friday, January 22, 2010
Statistics released today by the Ministry of Social Development show that numbers on the sickness benefit have jumped by 8,000 or 16 percent in the past year. That is the largest yearly increase recorded since the sickness benefit became available in the 1930s.
Welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell believes this is as much a reflection of the recession as an increasing incidence of sickness or accidents.
“Looking at the profile of people on the sickness benefit, compared to five years ago they are younger, fewer have worked in the past year and more have a psychological or psychiatric incapacity. Often depression and stress can relate to being unemployed.”
“The government needs to take great care at this time not to let people who should be on an unemployment benefit migrate to one of the longer term benefits like sickness, invalid or domestic purposes benefits. As the economy recovers numbers on the unemployment benefit can be expected to fall. But people on other benefits have a much greater likelihood of becoming entrenched.”
Ends
In coversation with the editor I was asked whether I thought the incapacities were genuine (esp psychological and psychiatric, the fsatest growth area)and I said I am not au fait with the field of health, but there was anecdotal evidence that some GPs were not happy with certifying benefit applicants and recommended he read the recent Auditor General’s report into the less than successful IB abd SB reforms and GPs experience of them. I suppose honesty can appear as a clumsy confession. Ironically (for katies benefit) I have directed you to MSD research about the invalid’s benefit and an explanation of why the numbers have grown. At least half of the growth is not explained by the ageing population.
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Lindsay, if half of the increase is explained by an aging population, what then is the proportion that arises out of the higher retirement age (a separation and secondary cause)? The third factor is the modern society consequences of smoking, sugar and fat – here note that we have a particular problem because of the impact of the increasing per centage of our population who are Maori and Pacific Islander Polynesians – who are in relatively poor health. This speaks to the point of the negative impact on growth of income disparity and associated society disfunction – which is exacerbated by inadequate benefit levels.
It would is entirely predictable, that many young people unemployed long term through the late 80’s/90’s period found when jobs became available in the past decade they were less than able to work – thus they transferred to the SB and possibly onto the IB if their health declined further. Similarly children raised in those families in that period might well have left school in poor health and without either skills or confidence. The negative outcomes that can arise from that are also seen in our statistics.
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katie, not only is there the factor of people going off SB and IB because of ther deaths, there is also the factor of more people going onto these benefits and staying on them because modern health care has kept them alive and for long periods. Then again is the factor of public health care waiting lists and people staying on benefits while on them.
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WOULD ACT GET BENIFICIARIES TO MORTGAGE THEIR HOMES?
One can’t assume that most UB benificiaries are deliberately going for sickness benifits when statistics show us that we do have a large ageing population!
I don’t see any large rises in the SB and IB in the graph above and as Katie said it is probably because that after 3 or 4 years invalids die! Sad but true.
I would like to see what graph would reveal after 2006, could Frog get more information on that?
As for Lindsay admitting that she belonged to the ACT party, well say no more. That’s coming from the far right isn’t it?
What would ACT do? privatise all benifits and have everyone dependent on corporate charity where benificiaries would have to mortgage their houses to raise the initial collateral?
They probably wouldn’t reveal all their policy they will keep that close to their chest and feed us suger coated bullets. Like what Mr. Hide does with Auckland Greater City Bill.
Would they Lindsay.
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SPC, I wouldn’t disagree with you about why the numbers are growing. I’ve identified at least 12 reasons. But the issue is how much of the incapacity could have been avoided, and how much of it is genuinely work-preventing?
My original background is Labour. And I am happy to stick with a state safety net but not one that creates massive disincentives. For three or four decades after these benefits were introduced their usage was low and stable.
Katie, in 2005 7314 people went off an invalid’s benefit, only 24 percent due to death. 23 percent got married, got a job, or went overseas. 25 percent moved to another benefit, 5 percent went to prison (very high compared to the general population). The remainder either didn’t renew their declaration or had excess income/assets for eligibility.
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Lindsay, on the issue of working to ensure good public health and sufficient jobs so that those not in the best of health can still find work, the Greens and you, have on goals at least, some common cause.
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Lindsay, I just don’t think there are a lot of medical practitioners out there who certify people as unfit for work when they actually are fit. Sure, there will be the odd bad egg, but doctors would be risking their careers if they were blatantly mis-diagnosing to advantage their patients with the security of a sickness or invalid’s benefit.
I think the much bigger worry is the appallingly low figure of 12.5% of sickness or invalids beneficiaries frog cited who are rehabilitated into sustained employment withing a three year period. There seems to be a paucity of rehabilitative programmes to assist people with the potential for full-time work back into it, and a disjunct between MSD who pay the benefits to these people and the MoH and DHBs who fund treatment and rehabilitation.
The situation of a friend of mine exemplifies this. She has been off work for three years now. Her medical condition is sufficiently serious to prevent her from working (she made an attempt to return to work after her first year off, but this failed), but it is not considered serious enough by the DHB for her to access the elective surgery she needs to return to work. She has no medical insurance. So she languishes on a sickness benefit, when she could be back at work in 3 or 4 months if she were to have the surgery. That just doesn’t make sense to me.
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Morphing the unsubtle incentives applied to get terminally ill people to die with dignity into a “fascist eugenics policy” that requires the elderly to be “put down” slips deliberately down the slope. The fact that when I find myself terminally ill I can’t have adequate pain relief and can’t arrange to die with dignity, is simply our society’s denialist approach to death in action.
As little time as I have for Bennett or National’s policies, you need to be careful where you go here.
As for the nature of the benefits balance… we are ( as a nation ) overpopulated in terms of available productive work to be done. That is partly the economics of being a small island a long way from everywhere and it is partly the invidious preference given to passive investment in housing and it is partly the reality that production is now more efficiently arranged through automated machinery and a few very skilled workers than by large numbers of workers and managers employed with hand tools. So we have the current situation. It isn’t a GOOD situation, but it isn’t all that uncommon and it is true to some degree in every nation of the OECD.
Efficiency and productivity are such that we can’t all BE employed at regular jobs.
Which still leaves the question of what is an actual disability and whether there is some sort of rorting of that system, which appears to be what Lindsay is attempting to work through.
I don’t think that initial claims are generally working against us VERY much as there is a medical hurtle that needs to be cleared before they can be started.
With sickness and invalids benefits it makes sense for the numbers to increase over time with an aging population attempting to continue to work. To the degree that they do? Maybe. The real problem however is that the work available in NZ is not going to ever pay a 58 year old retread from some defunct industry to retrain for a skilled technical job. Even someone who is at the top 1% of abilities for this age is at a disadvantage in trying to go back to work if that person was ill for any length of time.
The skilled tech being out, that person might get work somewhere at the expense of someone else being out of work. No PRODUCTIVE investment in New Zealand means that there is damned little available. The incentive to go on the IB means that such people will try pretty hard to get it.
The problem is not (I think) that the IB and SB are too generous or poorly administered. The problem is with the rest of the economy…which still needs to be saved from the bankers.
Good luck folks
BJ
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@toad February 8, 2010 at 2:47 PM
Ah, one of them has surfaced – not that he has anything to say on the substantive issue – just that we should give Lindsay a fair go.
Frog exposed the fallacy of Lindsay’s argument that sickness and invalid’s benefits are de facto unemployment benefits for many people. If you want to engage in that debate, bro, come up with some evidence, rather than ad hominem attacks.
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Frog exposed nothing but the usual crap we hear from the hard left.
What point is there debating the issue with you Toad?, you people have your heads in the sand.
Lindsay has pointed out time and time again how Labour and National have simply shifted the problem from the dole to the Sickness and Welfare benefits yet you steadfastly refuse to accept it.
You are not even honest in your arguments, I would have a lot more time for you if you just said that the Green party policy is to make work optional.
I do not have the time to debate the issue with people who want to keep the status quo, anybody who thinks that vermin like Phil U and Natasha Fuller have the right to sit around all day stealing money from hard working Kiwis do not deserve a reply.
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“read the following posts, one of the first will be from Greenfly who epitomises all that is wrong with left wing politics and closed thinking”.
Blush !!!
Why thank you my flinty-brained friend!
I’m elevated by your commendation.
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I do not want to keep the status quo. One thing I do agree with Lindsay Mitchell on is that too many people spend too long on sickness benefit in particular. That is because, unlike ACC where there is a statutory obligation to provide rehabilitation (even though ACC sometimes fails to comply with it), there is little effort made and little money spent on rehabilitating sickness beneficiaries back into employment.
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Toad
Once again you see the state as the answer to everybodies problem.
Are you seriously suggesting that it is fine for bludgers to sit there and do nothing to help themselves if ACC are not footing the bill?
Tell me, do you ever get sick of being taken for a mug by these people?
You want to see a sickness beneficiary get back into employment?, then the answer is to take the Clinton approach, pout time limits on all benefits.
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So, yet another Key follower obfuscates and lies to make people think that the unemployed were transferred to sickness and invalid. This was completely debunked by The Standard a couple of years ago when the amount of unemployed decreased through going into work and the sickness numbers increased double the unemployed decrease, which given many unemployed went into work, most of the sickness beneficiaries would have been coming straight on to the books. Looking at the history of an older and sicker population coming from bad policy changes by Douglas (who is in government yet again – stupid New Zealanders)controlling Labour and Richardson the Mother……of all budgets as Hone would have emailed it, I’m not surprised at any increases in sickness beneficiaries during Clark’s years, where all policies eventually come back to bite us, policies that greedy New Zealanders are lapping up from moneytraders and the like still. Do New Zealanders never learn that people like Lindsay Mitchell and Big Bro are the crosby/textors of the national/act government. Do National New Zealanders never learn that their beloved party of long ago has been taken over by the extreme right who are here right now preparing to take over, privatise/sell off what assets are still left. How could any New Zealander be so stupid to want to be owned and governed by outside influences, paying rates on assets we no longer own, that we build up in the first place.
That’s enough to make anyone terminally ill.
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bro, if it gets people off the benefit into work, then surely it is worthwhile the state paying.
And if you have no money to pay for the treatment you need, what can you do to “help yourself”?
Cue in bro: “Well, they should have had medical insurance”.
Let’s not deal in hypotheticals. For a variety of reasons, many people don’t. So what can they do if they don’t?
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Toad, very good point. Sickness benefits could be reduced if we concentrated on why people are on it. Spend money on rehabilitation and if the National/Act gov’t want to put a spin on it, warn the beneficiary that a PI is being paid megabucks to watch them and if they are discovered lifting sacks of concrete while on a sickness benefit they will be jailed (since this crowd love jail/gaol)so much. It’s a perfect solution since we also know this rightside crowd love spending money on anyone but the vulnerable. One proviso – if they do this, a codicil will be added to their work contracts that if they push any more bullxxxx upon our backs, they will be jailed, since they are also on a benefit, paid for by the taxpayer.
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Liar liar pants on fire. Read my post on benefits. You are continuing to promulgate a lie. The increase in sickness beneficiaries were double that of the decrease in unemployment. It’s thanks to your lords and masters the National Act parties that put in policies to the detriment of our society and it’s children’s futures that this was a terminal society until Labour in the new century brought back a heart to this country. Now you and your crosby textor mates are perpetrating another crime, for which this government should be jailed for by trying to sell our country off to moneytraders and the like in NZ and overseas.
You are certainly clever. You’ve brought in zillionaire Lord Ashcroft under the guise of helping find our stolen medals (were they really stolen?)who is a well-known funder of anything conservative (National and Act) and proactive in destroying unions and workers’ pay equity and Lord Monkton to ridicule the climate change that looks to ruin our children’s children’s lives long after the moneytrader Key has wrung all the riches from our country’s resources. Your masters are the devil incarnate and should be washed from our shores.
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Posted February 9, 2010 at 10:23 AM
Yes I remember a father and son suicide caused by National tax policies in the 1990s
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to cover several of your bewildered comments in one go (I don’t spend all day on the net, so have just read what’s been posted since last night):
Unlike yourself, I do have a background in health professions.
I studied science assiduously in high school, and worked (briefly) in the health system in the 80’s.
I left because even in my twenties, I could see the writing on the wall.
Since I entered university in ‘84 to retrain, quite a lot of the hospitals and care facilities have been closed.
All the people who lived in long-term care, for instance, in facilities like the Kimberly Centre for IHC patients in Levin, have been returned to family members, and now live on Invalids’ Benefits.
Similarly, there have been many hospitals and ward closures in the Psychiatric care field.
All of those patients who are not sufficiently unwell to be permanently committed, are also on Invalids’ Benefits, in community care or on release to their families.
Apart from those who die, or those who under effects of psychosis kill family members, most psychiatric events result in a return to the family/community care. This means, for adult psych patents without a spouse or parent to live with, either a dodgy boarding hostel/halfway house, or some form of subsidised social housing.
It’s colloquially known as ‘revolving door’ psychiatric care, and as it has been imposed around the various DHB’s, staff have been under huge pressure to manage seriously ill people, without sufficient resourcing in wards, beds & staff to do so – hence, patients are discharged too soon, not followed up adequately, and not rehabilitated.
Don’t take my word for it, though.
If you’re going to do social policy analysis, I suggest you ask the stakeholders for some information – like, the NZ Nurse Organisation, the union for nurses; or some of the excellent NGO’s who support the long-term disabled, like CCS, IHC, Schizophrenia Foundation, etc.
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I have not noticed any of PM Watcher’s posts before, so if you are new to this site I say welcome aboard your contributions make worthwhile reading.
What Katie is saying also makes sense I mean in Christchurch they have closed down Sunneyside long ago. I noticed the change, there were some very colourful characters walking around, people who don’t really know how to look after themselves. When I had a Studio at the Arts Centre one character rolled in covered in grass and I could he had been drinking petrol!!!
So It is only a matter of time that such people get physically sick and terminally ill. If they were looked after properly it would save all that expense and heartache.
So I don’t understand why Lindsay is harping on about the increase of sickness and Invalid benificiaries cant she make more constructive comments on how to create work and improve the health system?
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Thank you Drakula,
I’ve always been fond of horror flicks – the classic Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing films.
These modern ones that come under the guise of social policy that force people out into the streets which puts them at the mercy of exploitation and us in danger is the real horror story.
I totally agree with you about Katie’s posts – informative, compelling and National/Act will ignore them completely.
I regard this current government with horror and also the ease with which New Zealanders in general, judging by the popularity of the moneytrader Key, are happy to sell their own country out for promise of riches that they won’t see.
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solkta –
that is exactly the kind of thing I found in my heart I could not be part of administering or supporting. I was at loggerheads with the current thinking, and abhorred most of the Psychiatrists I worked under.
I am sorry that you have seen a friend go in this way.
I’ve had many friends with complicated psych diagnoses over the years since (prolly, ‘cos I don’t flinch, I understand what’s wrong with them, and I have no fear of the ill, just compassion) – many of whom have slowly deteriorated, some due to the underlying condition, some due to the side-effects of the pharmaceutical regime they submit to.
It’s hard enough for someone who has a psych condition to just function, let alone fight the system to get what they might be entitled to, or even just keep a roof over their heads.
NGO agencies usually pick up the slack, like the Night Shelter and the Home of Compassion Soup Kitchen, here in Welli. But some towns just don’t have those kind of services, and the MSD and MOH systems don’t offer anything to cover the basics for the life-time disabled.
It’s something that I have friends involved in, from a different perspective, creating alternative solutions to the punitive ones laid out by government agencies. (cue dopey hippy song, ‘I get by with a little help from my friends’ … sing along in your own time
… )
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Henry
“Its not in anyones interest to cancel welfare.”
That is debatable, however, it is in every bodies interest to make it a lot harder to get and to set strict time limits on those who do receive it.
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Solkta; that sounds awfull I am sorry that you lost a friend. I have so very little faith in modern psychiatry, that if I were to go a bit ‘bats in the belfry’I would do it privately but then again I could be a danger to all around me.
I am an admirer of Carl Jung who advocates talk therapy. Why all the drugs? There have been breakthroughs but not much one is lythium treatment for schizophrenia and catscans to locate tumors.
Katie is lythium a drug or just a trace element?
I just think we still know very little about the mind.
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Drak-
two things;
talking therapies do generally work better, for some kinds of non-organic psychological disturbances, but staff cost money.
It also seems to be a therapy that works better for women, for a number of reasons, but mostly that women talk more easily, with less anxiety about disclosure than men. (ok, big generalisation)
A prescription for Pharmac-subsidised meds is so much cheaper. (IF it works…)
and Lithium is used for several presentations; it’s a co-receptor to neuro chemicals, which in some organic psychiatric conditions needs to be supplied because the ‘normal’ biochemical pathway has been disrupted.
[I still read New Ethicals, the pharmaceutical industry publication, intermittently - it may be available in the research section of your local public library, or you could search medsafe website for info on Pharmac-approved meds]
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So I don’t understand why Lindsay is harping on about the increase of sickness and Invalid benificiaries cant she make more constructive comments on how to create work and improve the health system?”
She did…with ACT.Shrinking the state…(which is THE main cause of all the subsequent issues we have to deal with),freeing the market (no dear we have not a had a free market in NZ for decades if ever)and allowing said market to allocate rewards and penalties accordind to its fundermental principle …JUSTICE.
The solutions have always existed…but the clash with the envy ridden socialist control freak agenda so are of course not to be considered.
If you really cared about the plight of the poor and desperate you would consider all options…you aren’t so you won’t.
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Yes, we all hate JUSTICE and the poor. That explains everything. OR perhaps you’re certifiably out of you’re mind. It just HAS to be one extreme or the other. I can’t see any other options.
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The problem with the extreme right, James as you would know, is that they believe that everyone wants to be like them. WRONG. Judging by many polls showing the huge numbers of people who actually like the laid back NZ way of life, there are many likeminded people out there who don’t need to stab others in the back or concentrate only on making money to feel good about themselves. Sadly, the greed is so ingrained that nothing else is enough for the sad and the grasping to feel good about themselves. That’s the gap in NZ.
Start a group – oh you have – the NationalAct Party? Ahhh Thought so.
The other problem of course, James, is that without a poor, desperate and indentured workforce there would be no haves and havenots for the egotistical nutjobs to imagine that someone out there envies them. So the rich nutjobs will do whatever it takes to keep that gap alive and growing and providing cheap labour. Therefore, all your hyped up solutions through your masters Joyce and Key and Hide are lies, spread to make the poor think you actually care. Shame on the right for their betrayal of New Zealand and heartland New Zealanders.
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“Yes, we all hate JUSTICE and the poor. That explains everything. OR perhaps you’re certifiably out of you’re mind. It just HAS to be one extreme or the other. I can’t see any other options.”
You DO hate justice…thats why you lefties witter on about “equality” without any thought to the unequal input of effort between those who are better off and those who compared to them are not.Now Im meaning those who create wealth by working and serving their fellow man in open free trade and competition…not the fringe dwellers who are either crooks,won lotto or who inherited money.
Fact is the guy with the skills to earn $20,000 a year does not deserve to be living the lifestyle of the guy with the skills to be making $250,000 a year….sorry if that makes you cry but thats reality….and just.The only area where both should be treated equally is before the law…in the defence of their individual rights.
A just and moral society (meaning one with a true free market and limited,rights protecting government)allows the $20 thou guy the chance to match and beat the $250 guy….IF he wants to,upskills himself and makes the effort.
You DO hate the poor….because you want to keep them that way by advocating tierd failed solutions that never relive them from their plight…indeed you further entrench them into it.Intergenerational welfarism anyone…?
For example what leftie has offered a proposal such as Roger Douglas has to seperate superannuation from the greedy hands of pollies by having everyone open a personal account to which they contribute the money, formally taken by the state and squandered leaving a pile of IOU’s for future generations, through their working lives that just earning bog standard bank intrest with the magic of it compounding over time would return well over a million dollars on retirement day? Add in the incentives that that prospect presents to people who would be incentivised to take far greater care of their health and personal lives to make sure they were around to enjoy what would in effect be similar to a garanteed 1st division lotto payout and you start to see the big picture of whats possible if we start to do things right…
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James – his mum still lies awake at night, gnawing on her candlewick bedspread.
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Roger ‘turn up the Vivaldi dear, the screaming of the sows is becoming intolerable’ Douglas?
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Yep. Can’t understand why simple phrasing isn’t getting through.
James-
You are on the wrong blog. Nobody here supports your elitist fantasies, go play at Kiwiblog.
(oh, did anyone see the smack in the face Kiwiblog got in the Dompost? Friday’s, I think… http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3321329/MP-in-ferry-diversion -drama
the ferry company regularly has folk get on the wrong boat, and has a routine behaviour for solving the problem – only DPF would assume that there could only be a ‘fix’ if someone pulled rank – Fullers are a much more ‘equal opportunity’ service providor than that!)
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“James-
You are on the wrong blog. Nobody here supports your elitist fantasies, go play at Kiwiblog.”
What “elitist fantasies”? Helping the current poor become no longer poor is an elitist fantasy?
The poor can go to hell as far as you people are concerned right Katie?
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James – ‘pray’ and ‘prey’ have different meanings.
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James – that bird on the flag that hangs behind Hide and Douglas when they address their loyalists, is that a vulture?
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