poverty

Michael Laws calls out the poverty industry:

 [M]ost New Zealanders are not convinced that New Zealand has a child poverty problem. We have a piss-poor-parenting problem, yes. We don’t have an inadequacy of resources.

Which is where the Children’s Commissioner and the liberal lobbyists have it all wrong. They quote statistics about kids going to school hungry, about inadequate rentals, about hospitalisations and woeful child dental care, as if no argument is required.

Look at those poor kids, they declare. There’s the proof of child poverty.

No, it isn’t. It’s proof that thousands of Kiwi parents are making bad choices about their priorities. And that the welfare and community organisations that are supposed to be supporting them . . . aren’t.

Indeed, it’s a dual failure. The parents aren’t up to their role and the agencies are ineffective with their assistance. And that includes churches and other social agencies that prefer to lobby for more money, rather than use their funding appropriately.  Read more »

So, as per usual, TVNZ managed to dredge up a Budget whinger on last night’s news.

Carissa Graham already has six kids with twins on the way.

Here they all are on the couch, eating potato chips.

This whinger and bludger should learn to shut her legs before breeding anymore. The source of her poverty is her ability to flip it up willy-nilly.  Read more »

Once again the parties of the left, aided by their plants in the civil service are calling for poor kids to be fed at school.

Every day thousands of Kiwi kids go to school hungry or without lunch.

They are more likely to fail in school, to have poor health and to feel ashamed. Some of our considerable additional investment in children in low- decile schools is wasted because they can’t concentrate on learning. We are all affected by the additional costs of future low productivity and welfare dependency.

The expert advisory group on solutions to child poverty report I released in December last year recommended implementing a targeted food in schools programme to support children to learn and succeed.  Read more »

Bono Vox talks about fighting poverty, now normally I think what he has to say isn;t worth listening to, but this time it is worth it.

His talk is called The good news on poverty (Yes, there’s good news):

Read more »

Further to my earlier post….What’s worse is that yesterday she was the author of the investigation that said there was no housing crisis.

Is there a housing crisis in Christchurch? The Press examined statistics, attended open homes and spoke to experts and members of the public. Anna Turner reports.

I thought a revisit was in order…so picking up from commenters on the earlier post we have identified the following from just one picture of the low income family with 5 kids.

The bloke is wearing a tee-shirt that reads “Crack A Woody Honey!” which is an ad for Woodstock Bourbon and Cola – and funnily enough sitting next to him is a glass of something that looks a lot like the product on his shirt.  Read more »

Labour made much about a housing crisis in Christchurch, they lined up disgruntled drop kick after disgruntled drop kick to spout on about how there was a crisis in housing in Christchurch…except there wasn’t and isn’t:

Is there a housing crisis in Christchurch? The Press examined statistics, attended open homes and spoke to experts and members of the public. Anna Turner reports.

Difficult, pressured, heated – yes. But a crisis where ordinary people can’t buy or rent homes and flats and many homeless are roaming the streets or living in cars – No.

Those are the findings of a two-week investigation by The Press.  Read more »

Matt McCarten has turned his brain off and written a silly, snarky piece for Herald on Sunday about how unpopular John Key apparently is with the Exclusive Bro-thren’s.

I have called them a cult church and I will repeat it again, they are the Exclusive Bro-thren. Who cares if a bunch of sect Maori like you or not?  They even changed the rules banning women speaking on a Marae when it suited them.  When rules are changed for Metiria Turei to speak you know those extending the pleasure are an extremist bunch of nutters belonging on a list with Destiny Church.

McCarten has gone all whiny again about the sacking of Kate Wilkinson and a guy I have already forgotten. Phil? The guy who John Key  stuck his neck out for before.

Given they only got told about it hours before their dear leader gratuitously humiliated them revealed something ugly in Key’s psychological makeup.  Read more »

I can’t stand Asenati Lole-Taylor but this tweet exchange is pure gold:

There is no helping bludgers and she has just found out. Julie Fairey goes all pinko and wants to give the drunk gambling bludgers a hug….and probably a couple of thousand of taxpayers dollars too…and os probably arranging for Len Brown to build them and affordable home.

Read more »

The left wing has much to say about child poverty and try to define it by some amorphous measurement meaning there will always be poor children. In the UK they are moving to address this, not by spending billions more in welfare which doesn’t do anything for the statistics, rather they are looking at establishing better measurements:

Child poverty is to be measured by how long children have two birth parents looking after them, the length of worklessness in households and school achievement under controversial new plans to be set out on Thursday.

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, will downgrade Labour’s system of measuring poverty relative to the rest of the population, which he believes can provide a skewed picture of household finances.

A new range of indicators will be introduced including family stability, worklessness and educational achievement. Duncan Smith, in a joint move with the schools minister, David Laws, will say the new measures better reflect the reality of poverty in the UK today.

He will stress the most recent figures, showing that since the coalition was formed in 2010, 300,000 children had moved out of relative income poverty, the number of households living below the median income. But he will point out that this fall is due to a decline in the median income nationally, which pushed the poverty line down, and the children defined as moving out of poverty were no better off in absolute terms than before.

Poverty is currently measured by the number of households living at or below 60% of the median income. Labour set a target to reduce the number of children living in relative income poverty to 1.7 million by 2010-11. This was not met; in 2010-11, 2.3 million children were living in relative income poverty. It also vowed to abolish poverty by 2020 and set this goal in statute.

Duncan Smith will say: “As we saw earlier this year, when the child poverty level dropped by 2%, a fall in the median income may lift a family out of poverty on paper. Yet … real incomes did not rise and absolute poverty was unchanged.” For the 300,000 children no longer in poverty according to the official statistics, life was no different.

He will add: “A fixation on relative income, on moving people over an arbitrary line … does little to identify those most in need and entrenched in disadvantage, nor to transform their lives.

Labour has been telling us that feeding poor kids will help their learning. They implore the government to think of the children, despite that fact that their parents don’t think too much of them in the first place to send them to school without lunch. They claim that despite the millions in benefits and state assistance that the state must now provide food for the children.

And all without a shred of evidence to support their notions. They even enlist their tame flunky media hacks like John Campbell to “prove” what they say…again it is only anecdotal evidence.

Then along comes some real evidence, that I just bet John Campbell won’t follow up with this week…you see it doesn’t suit his narrative. Neither will it suit the NZ Herald who love pimping poor people.

Feeding hungry schoolchildren does nothing to boost their learning, a new report shows.

The findings have surprised experts in a week when campaigning to introduce free food at schools to combat child poverty put pressure on the Government.

The only “significant positive effect” was that children felt less hungry, the study into free school breakfasts found.

Head of the study, Associate Professor Cliona Ni Murchu, said there were indications that attendance at school was also likely to improve but in reading, writing and maths there was no noticeable improvement.

Researchers at Auckland University’s School of Population Health studied 423 children at decile one to four schools in Auckland, Waikato and Wellington for the 2010 school year.

They were given a free daily breakfast – Weet-Bix, bread with honey, jam or Marmite, and Milo – by either the Red Cross or a private sector provider.

Despite the findings going against the assumption that well-fed children concentrate better and therefore do better at school, the report has not deterred the advocates of free food at schools.