NZ's War on Poverty Worse Failure Than LBJ's

What Have You Done?

Last week we marked the utter failure of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.  Nearly fifty years on  poverty is worse in the United States than when the "war" began.  

Lest some get the impression that this blogsite is anti-American, and since the War on Poverty is on our minds, it's worthwhile reflecting on how New Zealand's own little War on Poverty has been going.  It's been as ineffectual, wasteful, and useless--if not worse--than LBJ's now infamous War.

Bob McCroskrie has kindly filled in the New Zealand scorecard:

The current focus by the Prime Minister and other politicians and lobby groups on tackling child “poverty” is warranted, but “focus” and “targets” will simply be hot air and rhetoric until the elephant in the room is acknowledged – that is, the role of family structure.

Family malformation and breakdown is contributing significantly to increasing income inequality and child poverty, and must be confronted before we will see any significant improvements.

Dishonest UNICEF

A Front Organization For the Left

Lindsay Mitchell writes a blog covering the perversions of New Zealand's welfare state.  She recently had the temerity to make some critical observations about UNICEF.  At this point we must issue a warning.  Mitchell's subject matter, coupled with her critical mien, draw us very close to what can only be called heresy according to present received wisdom.  

We acknowledge that UNICEF is the United Kingdom's secular version of the Anglican Church.  More accurate may be the observation that UNICEF is the Anglican Church's "welfare" arm.  The thing flows out to the colonies.

Mitchell approaches being labelled a heretic because of her sarcasm towards UNICEF.  She points out that in June 2017 (that is, a mere six months ago) UNICEF launched the following jeremiad:

New Zealand has performed poorly in a global report card on children’s well-being, and Kiwi kids will continue to miss out unless there is a massive upheaval in how children’s best interests are served, says child rights organisation UNICEF NZ.

Child poverty, child poverty, child poverty.  New Zealand was failing badly.  The implication was the gummint was evil.  It was run by neo-liberals (whatever that sobriquet may mean).  The vulnerable were on the scrapheap.

Now, six month's later, UNICEF is singing from a different song sheet:

"You Considered Yourself Lucky"

Outwardly Wealthy, Desperately Impoverished

Here is a description of what it was like to live in a council house in Britain in the nineteen fifties. Remember that council houses were often found on special housing estates where houses sprung up like mushrooms after the war in an effort to house people--many of whom had lost their houses or accommodation through the Blitz.  In other words, they were relatively modern houses for their day.

The front door opened directly on to the pavement and you walked straight into the front room, which was only used on special occasions.  My mum said it was 'to be kept for best'.  You then passed into the living room, where there was a dining table and chairs and a couple of armchairs around a big black coal-fire stove.  A huge black kettle, full of hot water, would always be resting there.  The living room was also the setting for my Friday night scrub-down in an old tin bath . . . . A door opening on to the stairs took you up to two bedrooms.

There was no bathroom or indoor toilet.  If you were caught short during the night, you used a chamber pot under the bed . . . . . Downstairs, the room at the back of the house had a gas stove and a large sink where clothes were scrubbed clean by hand.  The back yard was shares with three other families and the only toilet was at the end of the yard, with a bolt on the inside of a rickety wooden door.  [Quoted in David Kynaston's Family Britain 1951-1957  (New York: Walker and Co, 2009), p. 165.]

To the superficial modern Western mindset, such living conditions today would be regarded not just as appalling,  but a breach of human rights.

Rivers of Angry Tears

Will The Real Author Please Stand Up

Children's Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft has had a chasm open up before his feet, and he has stepped right into it.  Silly man.  One would have thought that someone of his experience and reputation would have avoided the trap with aplomb, but sadly no.

New Zealand has been, once again, assailed by scolds within the European Union and the UN.  This time it is a report on the welfare of children: nations are ranked according to how children are being looked after, from best to worst.  Poor old NZ has copped the lot.  Its ranking has fallen precipitously: from  45th to 158th.  We are near the bottom of the world: there are only 165 countries in the list: New Zealand, apparently, is one of the worst countries in the world in which to bear and raise children.

The judge is deeply concerned.

A European advocacy group has ranked New Zealand 158th out of 165 countries on children's rights. Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft said the ranking was "a wake-up call" for New Zealand to protect children better from abuse and neglect and to give children a say on new laws and policies.  [NZ Herald] 

Maybe he should have spent more time in chambers thinking, researching, and reading before putting his mouth into gear.

Media Effluent

She Was Just a Concerned Random

Some years ago when we were foolish enough to take courses on media at Auckland University we were informed that journalists were generally lazy.  Rather than being both investigators and reporters they tended, as a group, to dress up press releases as if they were the produce of an independent investigation by the media.  Rather cynical, non?  Let's see.

It's school holiday season in New Zealand, so public libraries are full of school aged children.  Apparently one lady believes that's a terrible indictment upon our society.

Libraries are being inundated with unsupervised children during the school holidays.  Clendon woman Therese Luxton said her local library is teeming with unsupervised kids who have been dropped off by parents who can't afford childcare.  She said she met a "very frazzled" librarian who said they were being used as a free babysitting service. Children had come without food and the librarians had not budgeted for food.

"After returning to the library with bags of feijoas I was met at the library door, by an unattended little chap who was all of six," Luxton said.  "He asked for a bag with no hesitation at all and took it by himself with a bag on his back."  Luxton believed this was the consequence of expensive child-minding which resulted in the over-extension of a community facility having to double as a social agency.  [NZ Herald]

So far we have been led to believe that a random person, called Therese Luxton, is making a general complaint that libraries are full of unsupervised children.  This lady believes (apparently) that it is due to parents not being able to afford childcare for their kids during school holidays.  Implication: the gummint is ultimately at fault.

Who is Therese Luxton, we hear you ask?

Worse Than a James Bond Martini

Child Commissioner All Shaken Up

Well, it's child poverty time again.  We think we could make a good living from ghost writing the Child Poverty reports for the next ten years now.  It would save an awful lot of money, fuss and bother.  Newspapers and other media outlets would appreciate preparing their pieces reporting on child poverty well in advance.  And we all know now how those pieces will read.

Firstly, let's review the new Children's Commissioner, Judge Becroft's reaction to the latest Child Poverty Monitor:

Children's commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft says he was "shaken" by the 2016 child poverty monitor, the first to be issued since he took the advocacy role.  Produced by the University of Otago, the annual monitor, released today, shows child poverty rates are stable, with a slight decrease. [NZ Herald]

"Shaky" presumably indicates that Becroft  was giddy with success.  OK, so the decrease was slight, but a decrease nonetheless.  First time in a long time.  Wow.  That has to be the right interpretation of "shaken"--or, if not, one would be excused for thinking that the good Judge and the NZ Herald are merely salivating at the prospect of a sensational headline.

Secondly, child poverty measures in New Zealand are of little worth because they are relative.

Don't Confuse Us With the Facts

Tiresome Vacuous Canards

The book of Ecclesiastes says, "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.".  [Ecclesiastes 4:9-12]

This teaching is pretty much self-evident, the lameness of committees notwithstanding.  There is safety, strength, protection, and power in numbers.  Since the truth is self-evident what madness has persuaded our culture that sole parenting is OK as a model?  What convinced the Chattering classes, the authorities, the government, the academics, the know-it-alls that one person trying to bring up children will do as well as, or in many cases, better than two adults living with their children?

The downstream effects of marriages breaking apart are legion.  Most of them are bad, or less than ideal.  Therefore, it is no surprise that a recent piece fingers sole parenting as a major cause of child poverty (one of our perennial bugbears in New Zealand).

Barrel Bottom Scrapings

Desperate Stuff

Ad hominem argument always--always--tells you that the critics have nothing substantial to say against an opponent.  Ad hominem is an attack upon the man (who is proffering an opinion or argument) rather than upon his opinion or argument.  "The world is going to end tomorrow," says one.  The critic soundly rejects the proffered notion of a terminal earth by criticizing not the opinion, but the unfashionable hair style of the advocate.

It's the kind of thing North Korea faces all the time when its bouffant-extraordinaire baby leader speechifies to his devotees.  Nobody can give any credence to the opinions of one so sartorially challenged.

Ad hominem argument is cheap, nasty, and dumb.  It is also irrelevant.  It is only the small mind which considers it to be not only relevant, but an effective rebuttal.  Nonetheless it sure makes one feel good, even superior, and riotously clever.  But students of informal fallacies will tell you in a heart beat that ad hominem argument always fails because it has no relevance to the point at issue.

Yesterday, we posted an article Jamie Whyte authored.  It appeared in the NZ Herald, and argued the current measures of child poverty in New Zealand were absurd, even meaningless.   Within a heart beat his critics responded--with a nasty ad hominem attack.