What the Dickens are Abbott & Co up to?

Now Abbott & Co are trying to privatise welfare by stealth. They want to bring back the good old days, when you had to put up with a religious lecture from some born-again alcoholic wowser in a smelly St Vincents backroom before you could get your hands on a couple of cans of beetroot, spam, and corn for your kids.

The government expects 550,000 applications for assistance, which will be delivered by charities in the form of food vouchers, transport or medications, household goods, clothing or by helping to pay rent or utility bills. Heaven forbid that the poor should have discretion in their spending, and blow what's left after bills on a bar of chocolate, or a new lipstick
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Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/welfare-groups-warn-changes-will-spark-catastrophe-20140605-39lzi.html#ixzz33qoXk1rg

PS. Have been thinking of restarting this blog after long absence. Just didn't know where to start, too busy ducking Abbott & Co's blitzkreig against the majority of Australian workers and those unable to work.

Is $6 too much to ask?

In a moment of misguided altruism brought on by endless browbeating by the resurgent Abbottist New Guard, DH was heard to opine that she would not minding paying $6 for a doctor's visit. All part of the New Social Responsibility, in which the conscientious welfare recipient is encouraged to march to the nearest cliff and jump off in order not to burden the nation's young.

Yes, DH knows we boomers are not dying off fast enough, especially those of us who can't afford the trip to Mexico for a bottle of horse-tranquilizer. 

So. Anyway. DH begs to revise her views on co-payments. Her underlying assumptions were that that 

• one wouldn't need to be going to one's doctors more than about twice a week (one should only be so lucky!) and 
• one would have secure rentals pegged at no more than 30% of one's income.

Otherwise, $18+ a week could push one over the edge. Not forgetting the cost of medications, prescription and non-prescription, the dentist... whoah ... but who on a pension indulges in dentistry these days? Let alone visit a specialist who charges $100 over the scheduled fee just to hold a can of liquid nitrogen to one's nose and go "squirt".

Of course it would be more rational if the powers-that-be stopped their hypocrisy and made voluntary euthanasia legal. Oddly enough, this hypocrisy comes from the very same Right Wing Economic Rats, who want to make our lives miserable by forcing us to be productive till we drop, though they secretly would prefer us dead. Yet they are the very ones insisting on keeping us alive, often in the name of Jesus, or, at least, the Jesus Vote.