I'm not one to rail against beneficiaries, growing up in a single-parent household and all, but this is pretty weird. The Child Poverty Action Group seem to want 'Working For Families' cancelled on the basis that beneficiaries do not get it. If this is the case, it's a pretty bizarre move - there are working families out there who get little more than some beneficiaries and deserve any assistance they can get.

Neither the Herald nor the 3 News article explain whether the group wants it totally cancelled or modified to include single-parent families, to be honest. But by calling on the Human Rights Act and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the latter of which I'm not sure has any legal standing in NZ) it would seem the former.

I'm all for assistance to single-parent families, considering it's the children who suffer at the hands of governments elected on the promise of tax cuts, not the parents, but if they really are calling for a repeal of the Working For Families law, it's a mighty case of sour grapes, isn't it? It's true they do need more assistance financially than two-parent working families, but no government will ever be elected on that platform - there are too many selfish folk around who don't understand a silver bullet solution to a lot of things they rail against - like youth crime and drug use, for example - would be not to bring children up in poverty.

Anyway...

I'm back working afternoon/evenings, which is a lot easier on the mind and body than 5am starts. I'm actually awake for once, and can sleep. The days don't go quite as fast, but it's a trade-off I'm happy to make after two weeks of stumbling around like a zombie.

I've got three full backing tracks done on the new record, and they're the heaviest, loudest recordings I've ever done outside of demos. I'm not so sure I'll have the time or commitment to render them fully as a band though... I'm thinking a lot about it though.

Watched Southland Tales. Didn't get it. Might have to watch it again. Watched the ending three-parter of Lost season 4. Awesome.

It seems the Child Poverty Action Group want the Working For Families package extended to cover beneficiaries. This sounds good in theory, as I've always agreed that not offering support to families, working or not, punishes the children more than it does the parents - it's not their fault they were born into a poor family, etc etc. But the problem is that Working For Families is a tax break - if you don't pay tax on earnings, you don't get a break - which is a problem for beneficiaries, isn't it?

Anyway. I suppose in principle I support their ultimate aim, but they've gone the complete backward-ass way about it, and at a particularly bad time. Funnily enough, National will benefit from this far-left idea, not Labour, who are damned if they agree, and damned if they don't.

I drove the 6pm/Campbell Live cutting tonight for the first time, pretty hectic, much more so than Nightline. The top stories file refused to upload properly though, it was there and playing off the FTP server just fine, but wouldn't appear on the website. We restarted the computer, and the FTP was showing two identically named wmv files, which I thought was unpossible, then suddenly they both vanished. IT said they'd no idea what was going on, then suddenly it all came right. Weird.

I'm gonna go read Time. This time tomorrow night, we're all expecting Hillary Clinton to have woken up from her dream and faced reality for the first time in months, so that should be exciting. If not, there'll be stories about how she hasn't for the millionth day in a row anyway...