It’s been a while since I did a NRT fisk.
Asked how the government knows it is reducing child poverty, she says that it depend son how it is measured. Asked how it is measured, she is eventually forced to confess that it is not – something she finds hilariously funny.
Idiot can’t help himself. Handed the shiny toy of a minister acting like an ass, he just has to smash it up.
But its not funny. Child poverty is a blight on our society, which ruins lives, both those of children and of the adults they grow up into. Its immediate and ongoign effects are estimated to cost us $8.8 billion a year. And (and this cannot be stressed enough) it isentirely a matter of government choice.
It’s a matter of choice. Of course, like all Idiot/Savant’s most extravagant claims, that authoritative looking link is not linking to something that proves his point, but rather to one of his own posts. In that post he declares, based on a report from people who share his fact-free opinion, that “child” poverty would be fixed by… changing to another, slightly different method of throwing money at the problem.
Because if paying people something called “Working for Families” didn’t fix the issue, then clearly we need to call it something else!
Our government chooses to have 270,000 kids grow up in poverty. It chooses to waste their lives, and inflict on the rest of us the social cost of doing so. And it finds that funny.
Given the evidence he’s got for his interpretation for Bennett’s laughter (zero) why does he stop there? I mean, this is a guy who told us that the US secret service were planning on mowing down large crowds* of New Zealanders because they were bringing a minigun here. I mean, why not claim that Bennett is laughing because she’s going to herd these kids into canning plants and sell them to the Chinese as safe baby food?
The Children’s Commissioner is right: the government needs a plan, and it needs measures and targets, so we can hold them accountable for their performance in this area. And then we’ll see who’s <expletive deleted>laughing.
And if Idiot had done a post outlining how the minister is laughing at the idea of measuring poverty, while claiming improvement he’d have a post no one could reasonably disagree with.
But by ramping up the political spin to hyperbolic levels (and by flat-out making s**t up), he’s turned a gift-wrapped opportunity to show the public what’s wrong with the government into a crazy rant that no thinking person can take seriously.
It’s a point I’ve made a few times. Idiot wants to be seen as a principled guy who keeps out of the sewer, but when push comes to shove what he really wants is to be just like the Whale Oil.
* I have a strong memory of a post that make this claim but it appears to have gone down the memory hole. However, the comment says much the same, ridiculous thing. Or maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.
Something should go here, maybe later. 