petitioning

ok, lazy post day as i had to go out to another islam awareness week event tonight. so, some catching up with links to posts i've put up at the hand mirror in the last few days. first is this post about mr george sodini who went on a killing spree in america last week, choosing to target women because... well, read the post. and read this one by the queen of thorns, which has some great links also well worth reading.

i also put up this post about overland shoes, which is exploiting it's vulnerable young workers.

there are a lot of petitions out there at the moment. a couple that i think are worth supporting are:

the unite union campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15. as far as i'm concerned, the only sure way to economic prosperity is to increase the wages of the least well off. we've pretty much seen that tax cuts don't work - at least the one on 1 april definitely didn't, because around 70% of nz'ers didn't get a cut, and some actually had to pay more tax. so i'm all for ensuring that people get a decent wage for their labour. you can download the unite petition from their facebook page, or you can phone them on 0800 2 UNITE

the other petition is due in this friday. it's organised by tim grigg and addresses the (alleged) breach of the privacy act by hon paula bennett. it reads:

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that the House of Representatives acknowledge that, in accordance with long-standing rights, any act of publicly opposing any government policy does not give actual or implied consent for any minister or public servant to release private, confidential, or personal information about the person making the complaint, and further request that the House of Representatives acknowledge and assert that the abuse of personal information held by the government is an affront to the rights of all New Zealanders to freely participate in democratic political debate and to trust their personal information will protected.

if you're interested in this one and require further information, you can contact tim at timothy.grigg@xtra.co.nz.