NO 'RECOVERY' AND NO JOBS

Last week John Key vowed to create more jobs this year. This from a Prime Minister whose Government is intending to take the axe again to the state sector with hundred of jobs likely to be lost.

This didn't deter Johnny from declaring that 'all the indications we have is that 2011 will be a better year.' Sure, whatever you say Johnny. I think we can file away this statement with Key's comments about an 'aggressive economic recovery' in late 2010.

A week or so ago the Minister of Unemployment appeared on TVNZ's Breakfast where she announced that 'there are jobs'. Apparently she discovered a couple of jobs in Auckland and a part time job in Dunedin.

Paula Bennett couldn't really explain why the unemployment figures had gone up 10,000 in the December quarter but that didn't stop offering some advice about the importance of positive thinking.

Said Bennett : "There are more people looking, but there are jobs out there. You need to keep positive, you need to keep active. You will only find a job if you're looking for one; they aren't going to land on your lap."

There you go. If you can't find a job then you just can't be looking hard enough. You just have to be more positive. And you might like to get a haircut as well. And pull you're socks up.

When asked what the Government's plan was to create jobs Bennett couldn't provide any details. except that the plan revolved around 'business confidence' which she claimed 'was improving all the time'.

Of course none of Bennett's ineptness is going to prevent her putting the boot into beneficiaries again this year.

The economy is wrecked and welfare services are being chiseled away to pay for the failures of the rich and powerful.

I heard NewstalkZB'S Barry Soper commenting over the weekend that the National Government isn't concerned about beneficiaries because most of them don't vote National.

But this is not about jockeying for position in the race to see whether Tweedledee or Tweedledum will win the election come November.

Why is someone like the moralistic and punitive Bennett allowed to get away with bashing the most vulnerable people in our society?

Has thirty years of neoliberalism destroyed any notion of social solidarity? Do we really want to put profits before people? Do we really think the rich are more deserving than the poor?

I like to think that this is a alien ideology that has been allowed to choke this country because it has been promoted and defended by the very organisations that claim to represent us - the Labour Party and the CTU.

In Egypt the people overthrew a dictator that oppressed them for thirty years. I'd like to think that we can have overthrow a socially corrosive ideology that has also prevailed for thirty years.

But, like the Egyptian people , we will have to do it for ourselves because neither the Labour Party or the CTU bosses will be joining us on the barricades.