17 January 2013

SELECTIVE INDIGNATION!

An article in the newspapers during the week of 31 December 2012 to 4 January 2013 - has produced some interesting analyses.

Pension reductions have been forced on single women with children to force them into newstart allowance and to make them look for employment when the youngest child turns 8. There are less and less jobs and if incomes are reduced, searching for jobs becomes more and more difficulty because of associated costs. No matter, an Australian Labor Party (sic) has all the answers for social problems, as ever robbing the poor to pay the rich and make them richer. Hence the growing divide between rich and poor!

On 1 July 2009 the Rudd ALP government "married" gay, lesbian, transgender, HIV couples living together and made them into "married couples" in itself and antiquated outmoded custom where men owned women and no woman was entitled to a single pension when her husband retired and was given a pension. Married couples did not and do not each get a single pension - they get a married rate pension, considerably less than 2 single pensions - and this is now 2013!!

Fast forward to the here and now! When the two of us were "married" by Kevin Rudd and his bunch of merrie men and women, and our single pensions which we had been receiving during our 70s and some of our 80s were combined into a "married" rate pension, we each lost about $100 per fortnight.

The Rudd government refused to provide a "grandfathering" clause to this change thus apparently ensuring a saving annually to the federal government of about $66 million per year.

In addition, now that we had a joint and combined income, where previously I personally as an individual received extra income from two small superannuation indexed pensions which, when they went up with indexing increased my income by a few cents a week, Centrelink reduced my pension by a few cents per fortnight, but now that we had been turned into Siamese twins by the government, when my pension was reduced fortnightly, so too was my partner's, thus saving the federal government a paltry sum which was expended on sending us letters each time with our amended incomes.

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction!

Where is the understanding of low income people by a government hell-bent on ensuring that their capitalist friends are enriched immeasurably - by a few paltry dollars from pensioners and single parents?

Spare us from their tears!

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90 years old, political gay activist, hosting two web sites, one personal: http://www.red-jos.net one shared with my partner, 94-year-old Ken Lovett: http://www.josken.net and also this blog. The blog now has an alphabetical index: http://www.red-jos.net/alpha3.htm

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