The attached cartoon was published at the Whale Oil Blog on 05 May - a great effort by Boom Slang. Amazingly enough, those same intellectuals and troughers who remained silent during and after the murder (oops, manslaughter) of another brown baby, are now screaming that the cartoon is racist... Unbelievable! A reminder that the murderer of the Kahui twins remains at large ( Rhys Middleton, a 23 year old motorcyclist from Napier was killed on 07 February by 27 year old Jieling Xaio, a visitor from China in New Zealand on a working visa.
By her own admission, not a confident driver, and without any previous experience on the open road, Xaio was seen by witnesses to have been driving erratically prior to the accident, She entered a plea of Guilty to the charge of Dangerous Driving Causing Death in Napier District Court yesterday.. There are no mitigating factors to this case, and a family is now without their son, (Rhys was also engaged to be married early next year). Xaio will be sentenced in June, and her lawyer is hopeful that any penalty will be financial - personally I am of the opinion that the outcome was an inevitability rather than a possibility, and that a custodial sentence should be considered. ACC remind us that riding a motorcycle is 21 times more likely to result in an accident involving injury than driving a car - a fairly daunting statistic. Some motorcyclists are idiots and their injuries the result of a lack of skill, over confidence, or plain stupidity - others, careful and conscientious, suffer from bad luck.... None of this helps when someone who should not have been driving a vehicle on New Zealand roads causes a death. Some people are just plain nasty, The persona of trade unionists and those screeching from the left, regardless of the cause, so often tends towards the unpleasant.
Having returned after following Gerry Brownlee around the refugee camps of Jordon, Mr Little is now banging on that New Zealand should be "the right thing" and taking more of these unfortunate souls. A philosophical dilemma that requires judging whether they are more deserving than those equally or even more desperate to come to New Zealand from other parts of the world. The question for Mr little would be where does the money for this come from? Should we divert funds currently allocated towards keeping our Tamariki safe from their parents and guardians, or perhaps by providing fewer dialysis machines to those suffering from self inflicted diabetes? In my view it is inherently dishonest for any politician to make promises without explaining where the money is coming from - knowing a dollar can only be spent once, to re-allocate to one requires first taking it off another. One of the companies I own manufactures and exports Infectious Substances Packaging www.bio-bottle.com . For many years we used a local "Sheltered Workshop" to handle most of the assembly work - whilst boring and repetitive to the "average" worker, it was well suited to those not quite as fortunate, the Intellectually Handicapped. When they worked on our site, it was apparent how proud they were to be amongst working people, the seriousness in which they took the responsibility of turning up and performing - good stuff. Because they were exempted from a minimum wage, Sheltered Workshops could offer gainful employment performing worthwhile jobs at a pace that suited themselves, outside the pressures of "normal" business. To most, the money was of far less importance than the ability to get into the community, enjoy the companionship of others and the satisfaction that comes from being in the work place. The IHC was the major employer of the intellectually handicapped, and operated many workshops employing just about anyone who needed a job. Unfortunately there were trade unionists, left wing activists (think Sue Bradford, then Green MP) who viewed the process as "Systemic Oppressions", exploitation of the disabled. in 2007 The Labour Govt repealed the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act which had historically allowed the Intellectually Handicapped to be paid less than minimum wage. Unfortunately, and with the benefit of hindsight, in direct contravention of the best interests of those they were supposed to represent, the IHC supported this move, and quickly shut down over 75 of the "workshops" that it operated, thereby casting their charges out of employment. So, seemingly betrayed by the IHC, combined with the idealistic and selfish actions of the activists and bureaucrats deprived hundreds of intellectually disabled the benefits of working, the pride in performing a worthwhile job within the community and the camaraderie of their peers, instead consigning them sitting at home, apparently unemployable and worthless in the "real world" Unfortunately, the social experiment that failed the Intellectually Handicapped so badly has never been addressed, and the travesty remains. That being the case, we have not enjoyed the benefits of providing meaningful work to those who really appreciated it for a number of years, and we're all the worse for it. Thanks Sue! |
Don MalcolmA perfect day involves being on my Harley with a long ride ahead.
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