Mandy Hager [pictured] called the words below…”utter scaremongering twaddle” and I agree completely…the
argument put forward by the writer are so typical of the Roger Douglas period
of our history…when money and greed took charge of our once democratic society
and the word WE was lost in the rush to use the word I.
Unlike the Stuff writer I have faith in the younger generation and their
now correct perception of the neoliberal bunch that took over our country and
directed all the wealth into the greedy fingers of the few.
The younger generation are paying for all that mismanagement and private
company takeover of New Zealand’s collective wealth. The young know only too
well of the takeover of various profitable enterprises once own by us all. The
young are now heavily in debt because of the student loans system introduced
twenty odd years ago.
Martin Van Beynen who wrote the
stuff item must be living in some world unknown to the rest of us…and I’m no chicken…he
is the strange chap that believes there is no inequality in NZ. He is a sort of
a reincarnation of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson and even John Banks mixed
into one unintelligent pen pusher. Here is what he wrote, in part:
“It's also understandable why
young voters should find the socialism espoused by Corbyn, essentially a
reactionary, attractive.
They are simply too young to have
lived through a big government, highly regulated, state-ownership economy or to
remember much about the disastrous socialism experiment in the Soviet Union.
Corbyn's United Kingdom would see
a return to collective bargaining, nationalised rail, post and water, a free
national health and education service, high taxes on the rich and massive
Government investment in infrastructure. It sounds very much like New Zealand
pre-1984.
Young New Zealand voters won't
remember the endless strikes and ubiquitous regulation. Yes wages were high but
only for workers with unions who could hold the country to ransom.
If school holidays were coming
up, the seamen would stop the ferries across Cook Strait. When stock was
banking up at the freezing works, the freezing workers would go out. The
wharves were centres of industrial blackmail, pilfering and inefficiency.
It took weeks to get a telephone
installed and New Zealand set world records for the length of time it took to
construct anything. Yes we protected our industries but that led to cronyism,
high prices and lousy quality. We had about one per cent unemployment but how
many people actually worked?
The country ignored international
realities.
By 1984, New Zealand was
struggling with crippling balance of payments and budget deficits, was heavily
subsiding exports and regulation, which had been used to freeze prices, had
gone as far as it could go. A financial crisis was imminent.
The correction, when it came, was
brutal, perhaps unnecessarily so, but choices were limited.
Perhaps the outlook for young
voters in New Zealand is not nearly as bleak as those in UK, US and France but
they will share some of the same views.
Our parties, desperately
competing for the middle ground, will be wondering how they can harness this
young voter disillusion. A bribe around education is always a good idea.
But tired, old solutions proposed
by the likes of Sanders and Corbyn have been tried before and failed to produce
a golden age. Young voters need a reminder”.
If you feel up to the strain you can read his whole ramble…
It’s not hard to accept that this year is an election year…and the Nats
will need every bit of PR propaganda they can muster from their friends in the
MSM. I believe that young people are on the move especially when it comes to
understanding the massive double cross behaviour that was forced onto them by
the now discredited neoliberal money manipulators. Why because they [the young]
are now having to pay the price for the greed and selfishness of my generation.
The great bulk of my generation are now seeing only too clearly the fatal and
life damaging results that we though our blindness and greed have left behind
for the younger generation to repair.
Van Beynen is
of Dutch
extraction, van Beynen was born in Christchurch.[1]
He lived in west Auckland from the age of 11.[1]
He was educated at St Peter's College, Auckland[2]
where he played rugby union.[3]
He attended the University of Auckland where he studied law,
graduating in 1981.[1]
He gained a M.A. in 1982.[2]
Van Beynen is married with three children and lives in Diamond Harbour, Banks
Peninsula.[1]
All his education was funded by the tax payers of the time…no student
debt for him…
Have a happy week
and never forget you are back bone of a nation that is rediscovering a
collective and caring society...you are among the most important people in the
world.
Peter J Wheeler
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