Big Brother is alive and well, and trawling social network sites...

Big Brother is alive and well, and trawling social network sites...

I was just reading a weekend paper here in Wellington, New Zealand, where an article reveals how "Big Brother" is alive and kicking and trawling social network sites to gain possible information on their members.

The article discussed how NZ government departments are trawling these sites for information that can be used against people on social welfare benefits for fraud purposes. One woman had been caught, redhanded you might say, because she admitted a relationship on the social networking site, and the department took a fraud case against her.

Even employers are in on the act looking for information to use against employees: In one case an employee was caught bragging on the site that he was taking a "sickie" from work because he still had a massive hangover.

If this is happening in a little country like NZ, just imagine on what scale it is being used in larger countries like Australia, Britain or in North America and Europe?

In my opinion they are just a pathetic and despicable bunch of Sebastians!

National's ACC policies just a ploy to grab ACC's $6 billion reserves...

The decision by National for compulsory competition from foreign insurance companies in the accident insurance area, if New Zealand is unfortunate and stupid enough to allow the election of a fascist inclined government in November, is really just a ploy to allow National to get hold of ACC's Six billion dollar reserves.

Despite the bullying behaviour of longterm claimants by ACC, the scheme is still the best in the world in accident insurance compensation.

The real effect of such a policy would weaken ACC in the accident insurance market in New Zealand.

A National leopard can't change its blue spots - it is the same...

It would be very, very easy just to slag off the National Party for pure political and ideological reasons, but I have come to detest that party and what it represents - not what it stands for, because I don't think it actually knows anymore.

Three terms under that little gnome of New Zealand politics, Robert David Muldoon, a nasty vindictive little man in anybody's language, just about destroyed New Zealand's economy - he knew it all, nobody could tell him anything. He was the closest thing NZ had to a dictator. But he did, surprisingly, have a soft spot for our senior citizens, and used it politically at times. 1975- 84.

Three terms under National with Jim Bolger and Jenny Shipley nearly destroyed New Zealand, socially; could there have ever been a more fascist piece of legislation than the Employment Contracts Act ( Sid Holland's Emergency Regulations during the 1951 Waterside Lockout may have been, but were temporary) which was designed to emasculate and hamstring the trade union movement to such a degree it hasn't recovered yet in the private sector; to reduce real wages and conditions; and to create flexibility for the employing class with thousands of full time jobs being lost in months, being replaced with temporary and part time jobs; mature workers in general suffered more than most under that legislation and have never fully recovered despite the propoganda to the contary . The words "union or unionist" didn't appear once in the ECA, being replaced by some obscure American terminology as "bargaining agent". In fact it was an American type of legislation written by lawyers with no experience in the industrial sector; it became known as employment law. There is more that could be said, and will be said at a later time.The outcome of this legislation has outlived those who created it - the present Employment Relations Act created by the Labour led Governmnt only really amended the ECA It should have thrown that legislaton along with the National Governmet into the garbage can of history and started again. 1990-99.

John Key and the National Party would have us believe that they have become some centralist party which genuinely cares for the NZ underclass and the less well off in our society? Yeah right! Pigs might fly too. National would be a wolf in sheeps clothing!