Consequences
It seems being disabled in New Zealand means being set back from doing anything.
First we had Nicky Wagner wanting to be "out on the harbour".
More recently, we saw National MP Alastair Scott state at a disability rights debate in Wellington that "Love has consequences" whenever a disabled person moves into a place to live with their partner.
This is effectively saying our basic human right to love and be loved by someone will be met with punishment rather than praise.
I speak from personal experience here.
My late wife Felicity was on ACC due to an accident in 1984.
After we were married, while most people congratulated us, Winz saw fit to reduce our income by $130 per week, $6500 a year. The case manager at Winz said to me, "I only want what's best for you."
I still fail to see how reducing our income at all was "what was best for us".
Because of Felicity being on ACC, my benefit was cut, as was the money she got from Winz herself, due to the stupid theory that "two people can live on less", which is evident in the extremely flawed system that is in place.
We very nearly separated because of this.
Before this, we were just getting by comfortably. After that, we started to struggle due to the shackles placed on us.
Everyone should be able to find someone to love without having the fear of being financially penalised.
Just because the state is assisting us with money does not give the state any right to say we in the disabled community cannot live with someone we love and care about.
JULIAN EMMETT
Gonville
Media war
The media war against the centre left is on! Although we haven't yet seen any fake smears such as the famous bogus $100,000 bottle of wine of 2014, the corporate media (the Herald, Newshub, etc) are shoring up support for the right wing.
Meanwhile, the propaganda corps such as David Farrah's Taxpayers' Union somehow float their nonsense as real news throughout all "legitimate" media (such as the ludicrous statement that the amount owed by Metiria Turei -- for occasionally having flatmate(s) over 3 years -- "probably amounts to $57,096".)
The latest Roy Morgan Poll shows a huge leap for Labour and puts the Labour-Green alliance ahead of National. Roy Morgan results, unlike other polls, are based on polling cellphone users as well as landlines. Yet this poll has been ignored by big media in favour of a supposed "leaked' UMR poll spelling doom for Labour with NZ First/Winston Peters as the apparent "winner".
Peters is still preferable by the corporate class. He, as "Le Pen lite", heads a law-and-order, anti-immigrant party with slightly left economic policies marginally more benign than France's National Front.
Some remember when he betrayed voters in 1996 when he, against all expectations, went with National. He did, after all, vote when with National in the '90s to institute the seminal Employment Contracts Act and, unlike Jim Bolger, the Prime Minister at the time, never renounced it. This act was a carbon copy of right-wing, USA-based Orwellian titled "right to work" laws responsible for inflation-adjusted wage declines and unprecedented inequality.
Bolger recently publicly pronounced that "neoliberalism has failed and suggests unions should have a stronger voice." Yet I have yet to see anything in the often irresponsible NZ media, other than a rare op-ed ... and little by Peters, to support this obvious truism.
BRIT BUNKLEY
Whanganui
Who's to blame?
I found the "life in pictures" on the opinion page, of the "river hazard", raised the same question for me: Who is responsible?
Then it became obvious. The river is now a person, and Maori are the guardians.
I think Maori should talk to the river and come to some agreement and shift this piece of flotsam, and without dipping into the ratepayers' pockets for compensation.
A. BARRON
Aramoho
Mandy Brooke says she has "got so much out of" her 10 years as manager.