Personally I am disappointed in all of New Zealand that even when confronted with the reality of life for over quarter of a million Kiwis are unemployed, they simply accepted what the PM and his party said and even when nearly a quarter of New Zealanders did not vote most people spoken with, were to say the least, apathetic about our future as a nation.
It seems to me that no platitudes for the future will do for me.
As a country we have no strategic plan, though the PM suggested that could be solved by a President Obama Speech to the Nation across all networks - hurrumph - I believe that what most people want is something tangible upon which to hang their future.
We have no clear and practical options on what to do with child health and welfare, family health and welfare, housing for all, whatever their financial situation, education that has enough teachers and specialist to enable all students to develop whatever their parental or physical situation and work for all and school buildings and facilities that match those desires.
Saying that the country spends too much on poverty is not a solution for those people who are too poor to put on the heaters in mid-winter, too poor to eat three meals a day of high nutritional value and too poor to afford school uniforms or even to catch the bus to school. All people need to have access to work that matches their skills or lack of them. All people need to recognise that the government is seeking out work for all people not simply those with educational skills and abilities and qualifications but for those who were less than average students and for whom work has become a desperate downward spiral of no success.
We continue to be incredibly short of trades people yet it is expensive to go to trades school to get that start in life for those over 25 with a family and either welfare payments or extremely low paid work.
We continue to have low skills in technical areas like computers, yet this government canned and wrote off and failed to continue to support any form of night schooling where ordinary New Zealanders could get the help and support to develop and increase their knowledge within their budgets, with specialist teachers who wanted to share their skills and abilities with anyone who wanted to learn.
As a matter of fact Night Schools came out of the depressions and recessions of the past where people went to learn and to get warm and in many cases were given hot soup to keep them going. These Night Schools continued for many decades, allowing very ordinary New Zealanders to gain the skills the needed outside work hours.
Finally we need to return to being a country of innovative and competent organisations that give ordinary people work at a reasonable paid rate and mostly in small manufacturing. Much of this work has gone off-shore for cheaper paid workers, yet those work environments are now at about the same level as basic wages in New Zealand and we need the work to be here not overseas.
In speaking to a well know clothing manufacturer on a plane earlier this year I made the point that the costs of producing their products overseas were about the same as here and they concurred. I also made the point that the age of their manufacturing facilities overseas would now be in need of replacement and they agreed so I asked why not do it all here and begin a process of never ending development of all their staff and management to assure the company that at all times the very best of New Zealand ingenuity was at work amongst all their staff and at that point I left the plane
Come on New Zealand feed your own, use the marvellous and now under developed New Zealand ingenuity and skilled lateral thinking of all New Zealanders and get us back into the real and well developed country we used to be and a leader in the world of a well-paid, all peoples employed nation of the future.
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