Sacred cows
The revelation by a friend that Bridget Jones was indeed a mere make-over of Jane Austen crushed me. But what came next was a discovery well worth my while. Having never touched a book by Jane Austen in my life, never even knowing who she was indeed led to new authors and books devoured. Now the bookshelves are filled with Austen, the Bronte sisters, Dickens, to War and Peace. All in a similar vein - tales of love, broken hearts and happy endings.
However I was most put out reading the briefing by Treasury to the Finance Minister at the end of 2008 where the real intentions of the government are laid bare.
Recent policy announced by the government can be pinpointed back to this document - skills, and public sector in particular.
Is nothing sacred? I read the tax base will be broadened ie to the corporate tax rate and that we really want to privatise infrastructure but there are other ways to get around this (really?), and the number of students getting degrees is not high enough. Students are graduating with diplomas.
Ahh. But this really caught my eye. 17 year olds who stay at school an extra year provide more productivity. Ah yes. Productivity. The new code for labour, or working in a job earning money for the tax base. Have I hit the nail on the head?
But if you are a parent, here is the cream puff and tea.
Early childhood education allowances for parents with pre-schoolers to help parents get back into work.
No mention of getting women back into work. Only Helen Clark was foolish enough to go down that road and call us productivity units.
Being a woman is sacred. And so is being a parent.

A Dust storm
Today dust arrived in Sydney, and later Brisbane. The worst ever seen according to reports on The Sydney Morning Herald.
Coming from the west, the dust appears to have arrived after high winds at places such as Broken Hill settling above Sydney. However it is covering all of NSW and was in Canberra yesterday. Face masks are flying off the shelves and anyone who has travelled west of Sydney by train knows that all that remains between Broken Hill and the rest of Western Australia is dust, and more dust.
A Sydneysider friend has dust through her house after leaving a window open 2cm wide.
One newspaper report even suggests the effects may be felt in New Zealand.
Great. Thanks very much to all the capitalists. Climate change, don't you just love it.

7.8 for New Zealand
I noticed the lampshade moving in my peripherial vision tonight, and went online to discover the Pacific tsunami warning centre issued a tsunami warning for New Zealand's 7.8 earthquake.
This is the first time I have ever heard of one being issued. Thankfully I didn't feel the quake, only just a very slight push on the couch.
Geonet is overloaded and CNN had the item as breaking news. Invercargill is near the centre.
Hopefully the tsunami doesn't hit.

Growing up with the King of pop
Growing up in the far south of New Zealand where the weather is torment at times and rain pelts down on the roof, the one thing to make you feel alive was the sound of Michael Jackson.
I'm a Jackson fan from way back, growing up on the back of hits such as "Beat It', "Billy Jean" to "Thriller". I had a copy of "Thriller" as a young teenager, and even today I still love listening to a Michael Jackson song. I love to boogie.
So it is with great sadness, tears were shed at the sad news reported on CNN of his death today. He changed history with the moon walk and his dance routines in Thriller. Culture has been transformed, and videomakers, dancers and film have taken his dance and incorporated into their own.
But it wasn't until 1996 that I finally got the chance to see him live. A lifelong dream, I snapped up two $100+ tickets and took my young teenage cousin to the Sydney Football Stadium. Our seats were right up the front, and we had a wonderful view. It was the first real concert I have been to that was really a night of entertainment, a whole production with Michael Jackson coming out about the crowd on a crane stage that hovered over the crowd.

4 November 2008
Tuesday November 4 2008 is one day that will go down in the history books.
Galvanising people to vote is what has really happened in the last 24 hours in America. The fact people poured out of their homes to vote, many for the first time or lined up for 3-4 hours to vote gives a sense that maybe we can do this here.
I sat and watched the numbers roll over yesterday (we are a day ahead in NZ) with friends and we were all quiet as the numbers rolled over. I for one was flabbergasted. Obama's 349/162 victory over McCain is astonishing. Eventually the champagne was popped, and drinks drunk by Obama supporters, but a few of us were stunned by the result.
Obama's first speech as President elect was very impressive, he touched on the personal, the big picture together with history.
But I am not an Obama nor a McCain supporter. What I am a supporter of is encouraging people to vote for what they believe in, for a society they want to live in where people are treated with decency instead of greed. This is what the campaign was really about.
As New Zealand goes into our own election this Saturday, it will be the next election which the left here must work to galvanise the vote in any shape or form. This needs to happen urgently here so the next generation are not left with a sense of being deserted by those who went before them.
I don't think much will change under the new President elect from the current administration. What I would like to see is the people who voted to keep the pressure on their new government and speak out when what has been promised is not delivered.
Unfortunately, like here, two parties generally are the ones in the press.
This election has woken people up in the US and that is the first step. Will it now be the right platform for Nader to push through and rise for the left?

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
You have to wonder how people become so self-centred and have no problem what so ever in demeaning people they don't even know.
In particular, young females who spit out words such as loser, you can't get a job and it must be because you did an arts degree.
Hearing such talk from intelligent young women in a large city is concerning. These people didn't care about a decent society, they only cared about the fact that they didn't have to pay any more tax.
The topic? Free education. Why? Because it's election year here and the celebrity which drew the crowd of 1000 at the university was the prime minister.
These women expressed laughter at the words decent society, and expected to have a well-paid job. That way they would be able to pay off their student loan so there was no problem.
In contrast, two young medical students (male I must say) advised they each had $50,000 student loans after four years. They too however felt it (the loan) would be ok in the future as they would be earning enough to pay it back.
But one of them did express that yeah, perhaps people do not know how their student debt will affect the in the future.
And this is the point.
People, young and old, good, bad and ugly have to pay to get a university or polytechnic education. It can cost thousands, and does.
But surely we have been sold a dud. Employers have been told to hire people only with degrees. Therefore, people will want to go to university to make sure they can get a job, therefore young people will pay for it, and gosh, the government gets let off the hook and doesn't have to fund education as much.
Lots of students at university helps the unemployment rate appear down. The bonus is not as many people are on the dole.
Therefore the dole is scrapped for students or made harder to get, means-testing is brought in and bingo you've hit the jackpot. (The government that is).
What's worst, feminism has been taken over by capitalism. Women have been sold the line of going to work. Be a man.
All this has done has increased the number of people seeking work to keep wages low. People have to compete, and to compete and actually get a job, you have to have a decent education.
While more women in work means more tax paid to the government. And as women are the majority of the population, here lies the key to power and votes for any campaigning party.
So what does this all mean? Who cares? I do.
I resent the fact as a woman I have been sold a lie to get me working, that I have spent my entire life trying to get ahead because that is what I should be doing, and that I should be out there in the workforce.
Families are going on hold, and because of our user-pays system it has enfranchised an entire generation into debt. Forget about saving up to buy your first home, you will be renting, and delaying motherhood until you are in your late 30's or at 40.
It's the student debt that componds the problem!
Cast your eyes back 50 years, and women didn't always work. Women used to stay at home, and look after their children.
Women are the ones who reproduce the next species, not males but the fact remains no major parties in New Zealand have decent family policies. Everyone wants women in the workforce, and this is shown by child-care subsidies. Some women may want to work, some can't have children, but you can never get away from the fact that parents looking after their children from birth is healthy. It may not be possible for every parent, and women may want to work but we should have proper family policies to encourage families to stay at home if they want to. Policies should be so good that the majority do. This has happened in the past with left government coalition in New Zealand from 1999-2002. One key policy pushed by the Alliance was paid parental leave. It is now at 14 weeks however while it can be transferred to a partner, if this option isn't elected, men only get 2 weeks unpaid. The paid parental leave needs to be dramatically increased. In fact supporting parents to stay at home to take care of their children is one policy which would be a winner. Currently if you are not working you get less than paid parental leave. I heard a suggestion this week of giving the 20 hours free childcare to mothers directly who wish to stay at home.
Things need to desperately change. The self-centred, individualist approach is frightening. But you can't blame the young people. This generation have been sold out by New Zealand, sold into a slavery of debt for the next twenty years when the decision-makers creamed it in the 1970's and 1980's. People are not being told the facts.
In the 1970's and 1980's, there was no student debt, and university must have been "quality" as all of these baby-boomers are running the country now. So the fact you have to pay for "quality" is a pure PR line.
In fact it was Labour who brought in student fees in 1989, and National doubled the rate when it took power in 1990.
But on campus no one seems to know or care. And no major party is certainly telling the young students.
All they tell them is we will control fees, and give you interest-free loans, and an allowance.
Big deal. I don't wish a student debt on anyone. Education was free, and must be free in the future.
Because all this country is left with is a bunch of really ugly individualistic attitudes coming out of the mouths of young women.
That to me is the most scariest thing of all.

Is it worth it?
Ask yourself this. Do you actually need that big fat salary?
Inside a recent Listener magazine, thrift is the cover topic.
Ponder the word thrift for just a tiny second.
Thrift makes me think of the war years, the depression.
If you live in a society that treats people as human beings - as people who live and breathe air every moment and who need food and shelter to survive, then I imagine the planet would be a much nicer place to rest.
Because resting is exactly what we are doing. We don't own the earth, we just so happen to be resting up here for a while.
Yet society is bent on destroying our own species through greed and self-interest.
A society that truly took care of its people would be a place free of fear, and of violence. People would be ok.
You really don't need alot of money to survive if you are taken care of properly.
Housing should be a right of passage. It should be one of your entitlements together with access to free health care, education and cheap utilities. Healthy chemical-free food is what I want. I want cheap electricity, transport and water. These utilities must be publicly owned.
Right now though our public health system is under threat - I am subsidising the private sector at the expense of ordinary citizens. Our health system is under enormous threat of being wholly and fully privatised as the government continues to head more to the right.
I am paying for a specialist because I am not entitled to one free under the Maternity Act unless I'm in desperate need. This is wrong.
But in fact, New Zealand actually used to be quite a nice place to live.
Real permanent full-time jobs were normal, no one hardly worked part-time or contracted, and Mum stayed at home to take care of the children. We had lots of doctors and power was dirt cheap, and so were houses!
What's wrong with that?
Sure if women want to go out into the workforce, I'm not about to stand in their way but I take offence at being called a "productive" unit by our government.
Just maybe, if women were given real options and fully supported through a true benefit for EVERY WOMAN whether she is pink purple or blue, then maybe the self-talk going on her head that she must go to work to be seen to be a "professional" would disappear.
A society based on full-employment is one where families would be able to spend time together because the cost of living would be actually affordable. Hell, women could even afford to stay at home and look after their kids.
Then wouldn't be a need to work overtime, do two jobs, and rely on childcare.
Of course opposers will say I want to work and live a comfortable life and individual responsibility.
We all want to live a comfortable life though, and shouldn't everyone be entitled to that?
In my city, I wait an hour for the local bus, and my rent is expensive. We live on one income. This is actually enough but every day the power bill goes up, the phone bill goes up, and petrol is going up. What next? My rent?
And now I'm being asked to be thrifty! Turn off your lights to save New Zealand power.
This is something I take exception too just when winter is kicking in. It's cold. People need to be warm yet in the middle of June I'm being asked to turn off my power.
At the same time, multi-nationals will get a rebate from my taxes if they shut down their company for a bit so our lakes fill up with desperately needed water?
How desperate? If it's so desperate why aren't these companies paying more for electricity than ordinary citizens?
Individual responsibility is a compelling argument. How can you argue this? It is the message of the right wing government and the way of the future.
These multi-national companies should be paying much more for power than the citizens of New Zealand!
When the multi-nationals start turning the lights off, then I will.
Until then, I am entitled to be warm and have a light going while I read a book or cook dinner.
A new government with people's interests at heart is what is needed in this country.
I am not proud to be a New Zealander. It offends me greatly the way we treat our own people, especially our elderly.
It's time we turned back to the left, and dumped the two main political parties in New Zealand