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Lindsay Mitchell
lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com
Lindsay Mitchell has been researching and commenting on welfare since 2001. Many of her articles have been published in mainstream media and she has appeared on radio,tv and before select committees discussing issues relating to welfare. Lindsay is also an artist who works under commission and exhibits at Wellington, New Zealand, galleries.
RNZ reports on research from a Christchurch Beneficiary Advice group which looked at the effect of benefit sanctions, the consequence of not meeting obligations – those pesky things we will have in our lives. Here’s the quote that stopped me:
“We had clients talk about how they had to go and ask friends and family members for food for their children, which I think quite often causes embarrassment. They don’t want to be seen to not be providing for their family,” she said.
This amply illustrates that many people whose income arrives weekly from WINZ make no distinction between that source and earnings from work.
They don’t want to be reliant on visible people but don’t understand that they are reliant on invisible people.
Should there be some form of plain-English Work and Income pamphlet that explains how benefits are funded, how taxation from workers is spent on non-workers, and the incongruity of a beneficiary describing her or himself as a “provider”?
Yet again we see another example of the inversion of English. Words have lost their original meaning and with it comprehension of real life.
The people to blame for this are not those dependent. It’s the people they deal with, who should know better.
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