Sideswiped: Populist Peters throws shade on Luxon
There is a new 'squeezed middle' in NZ? bone dry humour, Green beangate, Kowtow design disaster, whale on toast and turning water into wine.
The Squeezed Vulnerable
Not a great time to be a non-landlord in Aotearoa, is it?
Or a postie, or a broadcast news worker, a hungry kid who counts on getting lunch at school or a burnout parent of a disabled family member. The list goes on, and on.
A bomb dropped on the disabled community this week when changes to what carers can use the funding they’re entitled too (there’s that word again) have been squeezed hard.
The news landed with a thud, without warning, effective immediately because the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha has simply ran out of money.
The funding is for carers to take a break from their caring role. One family on 1news bought their non-verbal ASD kid an iPad, but devices no longer fit the new criteria. Newshub reported milage for support workers and massage for carers lifting people are no longer deemed appropriate.
Things like swimming lessons, zoo passes, audio books and apps are the most accessible ways to give respite.
In government la la land, this is the example of how carer support should be used:
“Lily has an allocation of Carer Support for her son Liam who is 15 years old and has an intellectual disability. Liam is very keen on engines and in particular tractor engines. Lily has contacted a local farmer who has agreed to spend a day teaching Liam all about engines. Lily is going to use her Carer Support to contribute to the mileage costs for the farmer. While Liam is with the farmer, Lily spends time reading, turns her phone off and enjoys the break.”
Someone on Twitter said of visiting Cambridge in the Waikato, that it must be “how National MPs see New Zealand”.
Yeah. The monocultural echo chamber of wellness and wealth and cows.
There are officially 432,000 unpaid carers in New Zealand. Mostly parents, who are allocated a maximum of 14 days a year ($75 per day) for some respite from 24/7 caring of a high-needs family member.
To target this group in our society for cost saving is beyond heartless.
The government have shown us their priorities.
Ruapehu Alpine Lifts has pocketed another $7m bailout.
And all 880,000 superannuitants will get the Winter Energy Payment ($636 per couple) automatically, whether they need it or not.
Whether they have a property portfolio or not.
Joke missed
Humans being humans
Bone dry SOH: “The wedding I attended was between a tech designer and a beef farmer,” tweets Mark. “A few of the people had turned to Chat GPT for help with their speeches, but the groom scored the line of the night… “here’s me thinking AI stood for Artificial Insemination.”
Beangate: Forking out $8 for 500gms of Pams round green beans, purchased as a companion to my Tomato III recipe shared last week.
These are them.
Take a closer look.
Blackened and rotten ends. I only bought them yesterday. That really yanks my nightie. Price gouging for crap vege.
Destined for the sale bin?
Love me some quirky fashion — I have tiger print pants and a velvet jumpsuit — but what is going on here? A Brethren tablemat?
Whale on Toast
“I used to associate whaling with the era of oil lamps, three-masted whalers, and hand-thrown harpoons, but most whales were actually killed after 1945, by which time we’d forgotten most of our other uses for the products of whaling – spermaceti, baleen, heaps of lean whale meat. By the time we banned commercial whaling in 1986, the leading use of whale oil was in margarine. A huge fraction of all recorded whale hunting took place basically in order to provide the world with something that felt like a luxury as it rebuilt after the war. As Seth Miller memorably put it, “mostly, the whales were spread on toast.”
Read more at Scope Of Work here.
Reason No 2 NOT to ban Tik Tok
Adrian Bliss as Jesus, turning water into wine.
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Sorry to the email contingent for my mispelling of whether! Aghast. Forgive me.
I am not a carer, or personally aware of such in my circle (although did have but the "disabled" person is now costing the govt a lot more by being cared for in a rest home!) but as a HUMAN with empathy & a brain I cannot understand how this govt can look at carers for the disabled & allow a sudden withdrawal of respite funding at all, let alone overnight with no notice. For all that it would cost until formal Budget in a couple of months, surely repurposing the $52,000 that Luxon was going to claim for his mortgage free Wellington apartment OR any of the other perks for rich people that could be stopped with the same lack of notice???
As for the Winter Energy Payment, yes it goes to ALL but with strong notice of encouragement to decline it for those who don't need it - it is a fiscal fact that any targetting of such "entitlements" (as in we have paid our taxes for all our lives in the case of over 65's) generally costs more to administer than any savings... Messrs "Entitled" Luxon & Seymour & Peters should encourage their mates to decline these payments, or donate them to say DISABLED CAREGIVERS RESPITE CARE eh?