Michael Cullen Award
This week's, Michael Cullen Award for Pseudo-Intellectual Blather, goes to Waikato University legal academic, Claire Breen. Writing in today's Sunday Star/Times Ms Breen wowed the judges with this truly exquisite piece of bullshit.
"Labelling anyone who believes in a "socially just" society as socialists as Lindsay Mitchell did (November 13th) will be seen by some as flattering, by others as a misrepresentation, depending on one's understanding of ideologies.
With more than 30 varieties of socialism in practice, from the extreme and now defunct totalitarian state-capitalism of Russia, to the benign social-democracy of NZ's left leaning political parties-which incidentally, prefer a mixed economy of private and public than ACT's extreme of private only-where does Michell stand?
Mitchell stands closer to Marx than he would care to admit.
Marx wrote in his "Manifesto" that the unemployed were to be regarded as social scum. "that passively rotting mass thrown off by the layers of old society".
(Reminiscent perhaps) of an ACT attitude reflected in their ravings against the dispossessed of the Rogernomic-economic revolution.
I doubt if we will be hearing words like "elimination" and "gulags" from ACT, but "Comrade Rodney Hide" has a certain deliriously ironic ring to it as he and his party, appear to share Comrade Karl's beliefs towards the unemployed or any other group in need of social justice."
Don't laugh, this person might be marking your son or daughter's exam papers one day.
"Labelling anyone who believes in a "socially just" society as socialists as Lindsay Mitchell did (November 13th) will be seen by some as flattering, by others as a misrepresentation, depending on one's understanding of ideologies.
With more than 30 varieties of socialism in practice, from the extreme and now defunct totalitarian state-capitalism of Russia, to the benign social-democracy of NZ's left leaning political parties-which incidentally, prefer a mixed economy of private and public than ACT's extreme of private only-where does Michell stand?
Mitchell stands closer to Marx than he would care to admit.
Marx wrote in his "Manifesto" that the unemployed were to be regarded as social scum. "that passively rotting mass thrown off by the layers of old society".
(Reminiscent perhaps) of an ACT attitude reflected in their ravings against the dispossessed of the Rogernomic-economic revolution.
I doubt if we will be hearing words like "elimination" and "gulags" from ACT, but "Comrade Rodney Hide" has a certain deliriously ironic ring to it as he and his party, appear to share Comrade Karl's beliefs towards the unemployed or any other group in need of social justice."
Don't laugh, this person might be marking your son or daughter's exam papers one day.
posted by Trevor Loudon at
11/20/2005 08:34:00 PM
8 Comments:
Yes I saw that and sighed. We really do have some utter dipshits in Auckland Trevor. You've just met one of them.
Waikato, not Auckland!
Hey, TCM doesn't say that anyway. It doesn't identify the unemployed as 'the dangerous class.' This silly woman probably can't even spell QED...
...wonder if Lindsay's going to respond. I think she should, I think she will. The twat deserves to be exposed.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Leglegl - the fact Claire Breen from St Heliers teaches/lectures at Waikato University means diddly squat. Waikato is the the worst law school in New Zealand and is nothing more than an entrenched leftie hellhole. I didn't know she taught there. Now I do, she is discredited even further.
and what's with the censorhsip trevor? You are complaining about the extremist policies of the once glorious Soviet Union but here you are practising one of the arts they had so exquisitely mastered - censorship. Keep up the good work, comrade.
Here is the letter that Claire Breen responded to;
Dear Editor
How many ways can a person have it?
Claire Breen, Letters November 6, blames our shocking child poverty and abuse statistics on unemployment, because research shows a strong correlation between the two
We now have the lowest unemployment in the OECD. Still, the latest Ministry of Social Development annual report admits that children in New Zealand are more likely to be victims of crime than in the mid- nineties.
What else can Ms Breen find to blame? Oh, the economic reforms of the eighties. Yet these reforms delivered us the reduced unemployment she wants.
Next she says, "we urgently need a generous safety net" but our welfare payments to families with children are already above the OECD average. Ironically it is these payments that are preventing us from reaching the "full employment" Breen calls for.
Blaming the hardship and cruelty some New Zealand children experience on unemployment, economic reforms, the Employment Contracts Act - any damn thing but the individuals who fail to care for them - is a collosal cop-out.
END
Note, I did not label her a "socialist" (she used quotation marks). She didn't deal with the arguments I put. But then it's commonplace for people who can't debate the ideas to attack the person. I have written a further letter indicating that I am still waiting for a proper response.
Here is the letter that Claire Breen responded to;
Dear Editor
How many ways can a person have it?
Claire Breen, Letters November 6, blames our shocking child poverty and abuse statistics on unemployment, because research shows a strong correlation between the two
We now have the lowest unemployment in the OECD. Still, the latest Ministry of Social Development annual report admits that children in New Zealand are more likely to be victims of crime than in the mid- nineties.
What else can Ms Breen find to blame? Oh, the economic reforms of the eighties. Yet these reforms delivered us the reduced unemployment she wants.
Next she says, "we urgently need a generous safety net" but our welfare payments to families with children are already above the OECD average. Ironically it is these payments that are preventing us from reaching the "full employment" Breen calls for.
Blaming the hardship and cruelty some New Zealand children experience on unemployment, economic reforms, the Employment Contracts Act - any damn thing but the individuals who fail to care for them - is a collosal cop-out.
END
Note, I did not label her a "socialist" (she used quotation marks). She didn't deal with the arguments I put. But then it's commonplace for people who can't debate the ideas to attack the person. I have written a further letter indicating that I am still waiting for a proper response.
Rafe, I deleted my own comment as my picture got in the way of the text and then reproduced it below the deleted post. Wanna apologise to Trevor?
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