Labour Sacrifices Handicapped to Ideology
Muriel Newman warned me about this two years ago. It still makes me bloody angry
From Whale Oil
Labour supposedly the party of the under-priviledged continues to hound and attack the handicapped. A couple of years ago they brought in minimum wage requirements that closed many sheltered workshops. How many?
Well there used to be 3500 people working in workshops, now there are around a 1000.
My Brother in law was one of the ones caught up in this stupid law. His workshop closed leaving him bewildered and bereft for things to do when previously he has somewhere to go each day and a purpose and some pride. He now always says as he has been trained to that Helen Clark is a "bad lady, she closed my workshop". He says it loudly and often. You will never shut him up about this.
Now Labour plans to kill off the sheltered workshops once and for all, with their law requiring sheltered workshops to have formal employment agreements with disabled workers.
For fucks sake most of these people cannot legally sign any documents. The person who has the most influence in their lives is the person who spoke to them last. This is the ultimate in abuse of the handicapped and nothing more than taking advantage of them to swell union numbers.
From Whale Oil
Labour supposedly the party of the under-priviledged continues to hound and attack the handicapped. A couple of years ago they brought in minimum wage requirements that closed many sheltered workshops. How many?
Well there used to be 3500 people working in workshops, now there are around a 1000.
My Brother in law was one of the ones caught up in this stupid law. His workshop closed leaving him bewildered and bereft for things to do when previously he has somewhere to go each day and a purpose and some pride. He now always says as he has been trained to that Helen Clark is a "bad lady, she closed my workshop". He says it loudly and often. You will never shut him up about this.
Now Labour plans to kill off the sheltered workshops once and for all, with their law requiring sheltered workshops to have formal employment agreements with disabled workers.
For fucks sake most of these people cannot legally sign any documents. The person who has the most influence in their lives is the person who spoke to them last. This is the ultimate in abuse of the handicapped and nothing more than taking advantage of them to swell union numbers.
posted by Trevor Loudon at
11/08/2006 10:24:00 AM
3 Comments:
Hi Trev.
My cousin is also disabled, and always points to the high unemployment that disabled people suffer, so I feel for your relation. But should a real libertarian, in the spirit of Thomas Paine and the Rights of Man, not fight for equal rights for all people before the law? I mean, paying the minimum wage is the absolute MINIMUM we can do to ensure dignity for the disabled. Critiques like this make you look to be on the side of Ebeneezer Scrooge or Montgomery Burns by comparison.
Yours as always
Secret Trev Fan
PS Helen Clarke IS a very Bad lady,
but thats social liberalism for you!
Thanks STF. It was actually Whale Oils relly not mine, but its the principle that counts.
The only real equality is that "before the law".
The trouble with minimum standards is that they quickly become maximum standards.
If there were 3,500 people in workshops and now there are 1,000 that means 2,500 vulnerable individuals have probably suffered a massive drop in their quality of life.
That also probably effects thousands of family members.
I don't want the disabled to suffer because the state has betrayed them. I want the disabled to have as many advantages as possible and the best life possible.
That can best be achieved in a free, open, low tax, minimum government society.
If wages are higher, wealth is greater and restrictions are fewer, people become generally more benevolent, which naturally improves the lot of the disabled.
Is socialists can treat the least able in society in this callous way, what would they do to the rest of us, if given a chance.
BTW, still working on that RAM info.
You used to see these folk waiting for buses to go to their work. I haven't seen them out and about for some time.
Work is about more than wages. It is one of the most important places of interaction with other people. The workshops were a great way of giving these folk a feeling of participation in the everyday world.
The unionists who forced the workshops out of business are heartless ideologues. Dead hearts as well as dead brains
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