Pick a Side

Mia urges everyone to pick sides in what turns into a very sick diatribe:

My words are inadequate to express how angry, how upset I am for Folole Muliaga and her family. Even if there is no connection between Mercury’s disconnection of their electricity and her death, cutting off the electricity of someone on oxygen fills me with rage.

But partly I am finding it so hard to express myself because her death is not that unusual, in fact it is just a demonstrates a common tragedy. Last year Idiot/Savant wrote about the cost of cold weather: in NZ 1,600 more people die in winter than summer. In winter every time a house’s electricity gets disconnected is risking their health, and maybe their life Not just the disconnections, the cost of electricity (and ridiculously badly built houses) damage people’s health, and risk people’s life.

It’s not just electricity, we’re a rich country and there are people who aren’t allowed food and blankets.

All I can say is that poor people being denied electricity to run oxygen is not OK. It’s not an acceptable systems failure. It’s not an acceptable side-effect of an otherwise fine economic system.

Pick a side. If you’re OK with the wages of poverty being death then continue as you were, but if you’re not, then don’t just look on and let it happen.

I pick the side which says “don’t rely one anyone else to look after your families best interests”.

I pick the side that doesn’t make claims like:

• This is a common tragedy because people also die of cold
• Under normal circumstances, people should die at the same rate during winter
• There are people who aren’t allowed food and blankets (this libel makes me all the more angry, when you follow the link and find the linked article has almost nothing to do with the claim)
• Capitalism = Poverty = Death. (Actually, Socialism = Wastage / Inefficiency / Laziness = Shortages = Poverty = Death)

Hyperbole is one thing, but this goes far, far beyond that. Claiming that people are not allowed blankets is outrageous! Where is the justification for that claim? Where is the law or regulation quoted?

Nowhere. It’s a lie.

Mia should think a bit about that when she pickets Mercury. Oh wait, she’s picketing the completely unrelated Electricity Commission.

Do we need to say anything more? 😕