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Elections and Daylight Savings... |
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Today is the day of the general elections, here in New Zealand.
There's been some interesting things happening, in the lead up to the election.
Firstly, the Green party had been doing quite well, until the leader Metiria Turei came forward and admitted she had committed benefit fraud, when she younger and struggling with living on the unemployment benefit. A lot of people appreciated what she was doing: trying to draw attention to how little money beneficiaries have to make do on and how hard the circumstances can be for people in that position.
I personally identified with it. Back in late 2010 and early 2011, after finishing my degree at University, I couldn't immediately get into full time work. I was doing a couple of part-time jobs I had already gotten while still in Uni, but I didn't make enough money from those jobs combined to live off, so I went on the benefit.
WINZ wasn't great to deal with. They didn't know how to find jobs to suit people's skills and knowledge. They knew I had a degree, and that I wanted to preferably work in fields related to my degree, or at least get the kind of job where employers look for people with degrees, but the staff didn't know what to do with that information. All they understood was to push everyone into minimum wage, full time retail jobs as soon as possible so they could get them off the benefit.
They didn't know how to deal with the fact that I had two, eventually three part-time jobs, all of which had casual hours, and so I couldn't tell them an exact amount of pay I expected to earn each week because I simply didn't know, as it changed every week.
They had no answer, no way around that.
They had this system where you had to come to a meeting every week, and if you didn't make it they might cut your benefit off. But the catch was, if you knew you weren't going to be able to make a particular meeting, it didn't help to talk to the case manager directly. They wouldn't note it down, or reschedule for you. They just fob you off, tell you to ring the 0800 number on the day of the meeting and let the staff there know. Which wasn't a great plan, because ringing the 0800 number usually meant being stuck on hold for over an hour.
All in all, not a great system, and I feel for those still on it.
Anyhoo, Metiria Turei's heartfelt confession ended up causing a backlash that resulted in her having to step down as the party leader. The Labour party had been struggling a lot, in fact their support had been down a lot ever since Helen Clark stepped down as the party leader several years ago, and it just seemed the public didn't take to any of the other leader choices the party had tried.
So a little while ago, in the midst of sad looking poll results for the party, the Labour Party leader Andrew Little stepped down, and was replaced by the new leader Jacinda Ardern.
Jacinda is 37, young and not a typical middle-class male leader, and so immediately people took notice and they shot up in the polls to start being neck and neck with the main rival, the National party, who are currently in government.
And so now, on election day, most people seem to agree things could really go either way. It's a tough one to predict.
I do hope Labour wins. National has been in power now for three terms, and I'm not a fan of their policies.
As a 31 year old, still getting by on a reasonably low income, and still renting and unable to get into owning a house yet, it's hard not to get frustrated at a government who seem to favour middle-aged, middle-class people over everyone else.
Outside of politics however, life is not drastically different from in my last entry on here.
I still frequent the gym down my street. I'm on Week 6 of the 12 week diet program now, and I have now lost 10.4 kg in total, since joining the gym in June.
It sounds great I know, but I still hope for better. I want to make drastic changes, enough to hopefully make my body a lot healthier and make these goals of getting pregnant successful.
I have been playing a lot of World of Warcraft this week. Finally starting to get through quests involving dungeons and raids, that I had been putting off for the last few months. And finally completed the quest storyline for Suramar.
Nick, my brother, moved over to the UK a couple of weeks ago. He originally planned to leave just after our overseas trip in May, but Visa delays meant he had to come back home to finalise some stuff. But he finally left. I don't know how long he will be there, I guess indefinitely at this stage, but who knows.
I guess that's about all I have to update you on. Tonight is also daylight savings change, which is also exciting because it means Summer is not too far away in the future now.
Well, I will catch you up more some other time.
weezieishness · Sat Sep 23, 2017 @ 06:39am · 0 Comments |
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