Election 2008: union support for the Labour Party

The Service & Food Workers Union has been conducting a phone “survey” of its members, and I have obtained a recording of one of these calls which was made today.

They stated that the answers would be “confidential and will only be used by the Union to help us with our election campaign“: so there’s no doubt about it, they’re running a campaign. They also said “we’re just ringing around all our membership just to get an idea of where members’ thoughts are in terms of who they’re voting for so that we know where to pitch our election campaign“.

Question 1) Do you know that under our MMP voting system you have two votes, a party vote and an electorate vote? So there are two ticks on the voting paper.

Q2) When it comes to political parties, which one of these would you usually support? Labour, National, Greens, the Maori Party, or another party?

Q3) Did you vote in the last election in 2005? Which party did you give your party vote to?

Q4) The election this year, which party will you be party voting for?

Q5) I’m just going to run through some of the policies of the Labour-led government, and if you can just tell me whether you support or don’t support these:

The first one is that the Labour-led government has put money into health, which has allowed for cheaper doctors visits and prescriptions. Is that something that you support?

They’ve also introduced the Working For Families Package, which gives a tax credit to lower income families with children. Do you support that?

They’ve increased the minimum wage every year so it’s now up to twelve dollars an hour [do you support that?]

They’ve introduced an extra week’s annual leave, so we’ve gone up from having three weeks to having four weeks. Is that something that you support?

Q6) A lot of our members have said they’re worried about a change of government at the election in November because they feel that some of the National Party policies are going to be quite threatening to the Union. So just some of the National Party policies some of the things the National Party has said that they will do. I’m just going to run through and if you just say whether you’re concerned or not concerned.

The National Party has said that they will allow employers to sack a worker within the first 90 days of a new job without having to give any reason. Is that something that concerns you?

The National Party has said that they will sell KiwiBank to overseas owners [does that concern you?].

They’ve also said that if elected they would change the KiwiSaver retirement scheme so that employers will not have to put as much money in [does that concern you?]

Finally, the National Party has said that they will allow Australian insurance firms to get involved in the accident compensation scheme in order to make a profit from it. Is that something that concerns you?

Note the use of the phrase “Labour-led government” which is also used by Helen Clark.

There are several statements of fact that are either questionable or simply wrong and I do not believe that this is a survey; the questions are obviously biased as a pitch for the Labour Party.

The Electoral Finance Act is so badly written that it is hard to know what is third party spending, but if this qualifies as third party spending the SFWU could be in trouble. According to Wikipedia they have 23,000+ members: $120,000 divided by 23,000 equals $5.21, and it is not hard to imagine each of these calls costing $5.21 by the the time you count wages, office overheads, phone bills, and the like. In other words the SFWU may blow their spending limit on this sham survey alone.

Click here for an update to this post.

See also my posts here and here.

• Anti-gang laws are contrary to natural justice and a violation of civil liberties

Wanganui District Council is trying to push through a law forbidding the wearing of gang patches and tattoos, and this is now a step closer to coming into force. Gang members are usually sociopathic thugs (like many politicians*), but that does not alter the transcendent issues here. What are the transcendent issues?

1) simply wearing gang insignia is not a crime against property or person. The classical libertarian definition of a crime is thus: It is illicit to initiate or threaten invasive violence against a man or his legitimately owned property. As you read on you will see that we already have laws covering the threatening part, which is what this law is attempting to address.

2) this simply won’t work: the best way to deal with gangs is to legalise drugs

3) the police agree with me, saying that it won’t work and it will put the police in danger

4) like the Electoral Finance Act, this is yet another law that breaches the Bill of rights. The Mayor of Wanganui said:

One obstacle to the bill is that it technically breaches the Bill of Rights but Mr Laws said Parliament should put this to one side for the “greater good” of Wanganui.

There is a repeated pattern of the laws of NZ being put aside when they are inconvenient. Here Helen Clark leads by example.

5) there is another repeated pattern in NZ law, which is adding additional regulations to cover something that is already illegal. Liquor bans are a good example of this: we already have laws covering drunk-and-disorderly offences, but liquor bans are added to that, killing the civil liberties of the law abiding citizens who want to have a glass of wine at the beach and watch the sun go down.

There are already plenty of laws covering intimidation by gang members, and here is just one example:

Section 9 of the Summary Offences Act says:

Common assault
Every person is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding $4,000 who assaults any other person.

The definition of assault is:

Assault means the act of intentionally applying or attempting to apply force to the person of another, directly or indirectly, or threatening by any act or gesture to apply such force to the person of another, if the person making the threat has, or causes the other person to believe on reasonable grounds that he has, present ability to effect his purpose; and to assault has a corresponding meaning [emphasis added]

So, we have a law with a very broad definition of assault that includes threatening behaviour, but instead of using that they want to add another illegal law that breaches the Bill of Rights.

6) the law will cover tattoos. So will the gang members start wearing balaclavas to cover their facial tattoos? Will balaclavas then be made illegal in Wanganui?

7) the law will allow the seizure of tattoos that are gang insignia. Yes, the State can now strap you down and take away your tattoos. This is like a nightmarish science fiction movie come true.

8.) this opens the way for the State to outlaw other groups and insignia that it finds inconvenient. Many Christians are opposed to the anti-smacking law, and if they get too obstreperous will the wearing of crosses be made illegal?

This law is an example of the despotic Police State gone mad and should be opposed by all those who value personal freedoms and common sense.

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* here’s ten candidates for the diagnosis of “Highly Paid Sociopathic Thug”:

• Helen Clark, a.k.a the White Witch
• Winston Peters
• Sue Bradford
• Michael Cullen
• George W. Bush
• Barack Obama
• Vladimir Putin
• Joseph Stalin
• Mao Zedong
• Pol Pot

Helen will be pleased to know that she has the international status that she so desperately wants.

MP Marian Hobbs makes a sanctimonious attack on the media

Marian Hobbs, a Labour MP, was on National (Socialist) Radio last night displaying the sheer arrogance typical of MPs in the Labour/Green cabal. Marian is retiring this year and I’d like to say “good riddance”, but no doubt another communist of equal malevolence and incompetence is waiting to take her place.

Click here for the MP3, then advance 10 minutes to hear Marian getting all precious.

A few sample quotes:

“If we continue in this unholy partnership between assertion without knowledge and a celebrity-focused media…we will get the politicians we do not deserve”. Marian, here’s a newsflash: we already have the politicians that we do not deserve.

“It is sad that our gallery is full of people whose perspective is so jaundiced; it doesn’t build respect for democracy, but maybe that’s the aim of the media”. Unlike Labour, who have built respect for democracy via the Electoral Finance Act.

“Media authorities…want to become the sole makers-up of the public mind, the sole moulders of perception.” Unlike Labour, who always tell the unvarnished truth and let the public make up their own minds.

Marian sounds like a teenage girl who is affecting a holier-than-thou attitude, except that in this case it’s not an affectation.

Union support for the Labour Party – Part 2

Click here to view Part 1

The Service & Food workers Union has been doing a mailout, which I presume is going to all 23,000+ members. I’ll show you what the mailout contains, then I’ll make some brief comments; click on the images to see them full size.

First, the envelope: note the bait used to get people to open it.

Now we get the the “Important New Benefits”. They’re hardly important: an extra $500 free accidental death cover and the child cover has gone from $250 to $500. The additional cover available has doubled but so has the price. John Ryall writes “In Solidarity”.

Then, on the other side of that page we find what is effectively an electoral advertisement. Note the Marxist concept of fairness, and it’s interesting that the Labour Party isn’t named. A electoral enrolment form is also enclosed.

We live in what is theoretically a free country, and there is nothing wrong with people expressing their opinions. However, I have two objections to this union mailout:

1) the duplicitous nature of the mailing. The envelope trumpets the ‘Important New Benefits’, which turn out to be rather unimportant, and in my humble opinion the whole thing is just bait to get people to read an election advertisement.

2) it is also duplicitous when unions say that they are there to help the workers, when in fact they are simply a political tool of the Marxists: I believe that the union should be honest about their motivation. Union members don’t realise that they are being used: history shows that Marxists use workers to gain power, then oppress those workers.

However, lies are the native language of Marxists so none of this surprises me.

It is also interesting to note the enclosed electoral enrolment form: the Left has had a long history of needing to push their target demographic to enrol, and will convey voters to the booths if necessary. The Right never has this problem; have you ever heard of the Business Round Table posting electoral enrolment forms to its members? What is the difference? As Theodore Dalrymple says in Life at the bottom : the worldview that makes the underclass there are many people for who do not think beyond their daily routine of TV, pub, food, cigarettes and visits to the welfare office. They have no thought for tomorrow, and politics may as well be in another galaxy for all its relevance to them.

Helen Clark used the perfectly legal activities of the Exclusive Brethren as an excuse for bringing in an illegal law that stifles free speech, selling the lie that money buys elections. What she actually did was make a law that is so confusing that only those who can afford lawyers speak out (e.g. unions), whilst everyone keeps quiet for fear of the police. The White Witch does not like dissent.

• Helen Clark is now the White Witch

This is an update to an earlier post.

The local Labour Party faithful have been busy with their hammers and sickles putting up billboards, so I went out to see Herr Helen’s photo, which the NZ Herald obsequiously described as ‘glamorous’.

Glamorous it is not, and neither is it realistic. There isn’t so much digital dentistry this time around, but the shape of her face and her eyes have been altered so that it doesn’t look like her at all. Those who accuse Helen of being a lesbian will probably think that the photo makes her look a little butch.

Photo from NZ Herald

The moral of the story is this: Helen will publicly display whatever persona suits her ends. In my humble opinion she is fundamentally dishonest, in accordance with her dogma.

Only a dishonest Prime Minister who had utter contempt for the rule of law and considered herself to be above the law would pass a law that breaches another law. According to the NZ Law Society, the Electoral Finance Act does breach the Bill of Rights. This is not some minor clash of laws, rather the EFA violates a fundamental Act that gives us some protection from the State. In my humble opinion this is treason and all those who voted for the EFA should at least be removed from office and forbidden from holding public office in the future*.

A government that considers itself to be above the law is a tyrannical government, and the leader of such a government is a despot.

Seeing a picture of that despot wearing a white jacket reminds me of the evil White Witch who ruled Narnia.

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* According to my dictionary treason is “violation or betrayal of the allegiance that a person owes his sovereign or his country”, also “any treachery or betrayal”.