who are you

Here's the quote of the day, from today's Crikey: "Political tragics like us grossly overestimate how interested and informed most Australians are about politics. Most would be aware, vaguely, that politicians promise a lot at elections and that some people reckon that's not necessarily a good idea. Beyond that, forget about it."

Indeed. A work colleague went past the Labor policy launch the other day and, given it was all kinds of chaos and you couldn't get from A to B easily, was obliged to share some public space with a couple of young blokes, about 18 or so. They asked him what was going on, he said Kevin Rudd was launching the Labor's party's policy. Who's Kevin Rudd, they asked. My mate replied, then said Rudd was running against John Howard. Hadn't heard of him either.

Urban myth or maybe I misheard? Maybe. But if true, even a little bit? Informed voters, hey. Especially if they go to vote and the paper has neither Howard (of course, this is Brisbane) nor Rudd (possible, depends on where they live) on it? Assuming this pair can, read, of course.

Anyway, there's bigger news. Your humble correspondent is off to spend a few months in the regions - Central Queensland, to be preciser. Should be good. More later.

But probably less blogging.

hard to say i'm sorry

No! Not another John Howard post.

Rather, that other line from the song, the one that starts it: "Everybody needs a little time away.."

I just have too much stuff going on right now and, like a lot of other people, I have had it up to here with the never-ending election. That said, while plenty have had it up to here, plenty more are still filling the bloggysphere with their opinions. As one will.

Nup, it's just time to hang up the keyboard for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks.

Now written, I believe, "a couple weeks."

Rather like someone apologised for a mistake yesterday with "my bad."

Snark, snark. That'll be the Lewis Carroll version, not the Walt Disney (tm). And snark again.

Maybe come the weekend there'll be something useful to comment on.

Here's hoping.

My head hurts.

may the circle be unbroken

May the circle be unbroken - the blog post title you have when you can't remember the title you came up with earlier today when you had your regular Sunday morning read of Jeremy Clarkson. But what mainly appealed was the first comment. I love Poms (and by virtue of that comment I've just remembered the proposed post title).

Anyway, the commenter is obviously doing pretty well to afford his Phaeton, and doesn't mind showing it, but there's just a little hint of tongue in cheek to make you think one and half times before moving on to...what's bad about labour market flexibility, in those instances where it actually results in some benefit for the worker. Can't have too much of that sort of thing going on, can we?

Still and all, there's a better range, not to mention quality, of reading in the Times even if you don't agree with it, than the slovenly smearing of political enemies that passes for 'informed journalism' in this country. Puke.

So here we are on Sunday evening, and all eyes turn to...Australian Idol. Yes, even here in the rarefied intellectual atmosphere of Chateau VVB we love a good dose of warbling as the week slumps to a conclusion. So who will go on the last night before the grand finale - Natalie or Carl?

Then, via Freakonomics, we found Indexed. It's quirky and a bit uneven, but a little bit mesmerising nonetheless. I have nothing but admiration for people who are able to come up with concepts like this and pursue them.

Aaah, on the TV behind me we have a scary ad about how Greg Combet and Julia Gillard who single-handedly brought the wharves to a standstill are going to "take over the economy." Presumably by retracting the Reserve Bank's Independence and reintroducing pattern bargaining. The fact that the wharves are now an effective duopoly - like many industries in Australia - and gouging exporters dry, is a bit beside the point.

And that ad was immediately followed up by one for Ross Vasta in which he pledges to fix the roads, the parks, and so on - all local government responsibilities? What's Can-do Campbell doing, then?

Finally, I went to bottle a batch of ginger beer today for Mrs VVB but the fermentation process had failed - air had got in somehere. Bummer. The advice is always to bottle anyway, but I only bottled half the keg as I didn't want to waste another hour bottling stuff that may have to then be thrown out.

the peppers do howard

Via Today's apathetic youth, here's something for the apathetic oldies who occasionally hang around the Chateau. It's extremely funny.



I'm looking at you, Hammy.

public enemy

Got to admit while I've heard of Andrew Sullivan and read a few of his columns, it was not until I read these two columns this evening did I get a feel for his political leanings and, it would seem, how they have changed as evidence seeps out that the democracy of the United States is in fact the dictatorship of not so much an eminence grise as an eminence extremely noire. That is to say, extremely black and nasty.

You ask yourself how this can come about? Fairly simply, as checks and balances are stripped slowly away by a single political view being in power for two long - even when limited to two terms of office, in this case.

Make no mistake, the abrogation of responsible government in the US and its apparent usurpation by malevolent forces, along with somewhat paler imitations elsewhere, is going to reverberate longer and affect our everyday lives more deeply than any real or imagined external threat.

Short of this , of course.

love and theft

I haven't seen this story in the Canberra Times today picked up anywhere else. Compiling lists of expenditure in individual electorates should be the work of the appropriate Minister's office, based on lists of approved grants supplied by the relevant department. Sadly, the politicisation of Australian public services (oh sorry, I actually mean new managerialism, nothing political* about that) means that it is now seen as quite OK, in fact desirable, that the government's request for a breakdown on an electorate-by-electorate basis is seen as legitimate taxpayer-funded work.

Making that info available to government candidates in marginal electorates? Dodgy. If only for political campaigning purposes? Wrong. Keeping the lists from public view because they don't add to the sum of understanding (after all, they just total up in different ways amounts already in the public domain): despicable.

This country has been turned into a giant kleptocracy and it pains me to have to say that this, at least, is not all Howard's fault. The warning bells were rung a while ago, but of course the messenger got shot.

how's my driving (*)

Pryor in the Canberra Times does the cartoonist's job with insight and panache yet again. We can all get a good laugh from Howard and Costello's smarmy, arrogant sleights of hand but plenty will gobble it up like a sugary breakfast cereal.

And regrettably, until the whole pendulum turns in about 300 years or so, and something closer to Fred Argy's refutation of Friedmanite economic orthodoxy becomes the new dominant paradigm, we'll only get a doppelganger's interpretation from Labor.

We're all the poorer for it, of course, but we stopped living in communities and societies a few decades ago and the new reality that we all have to bow before the economy, wherever we may find it, has lots and lots of momentum.

Individually, we just need to keep the faith with ourselves, our loved ones and our friends.

Why, hello there little girl, is your name Pollyanna?

Please excuse the cheap excuse for a stream of consciousness style, it must be because tomorrow's Friday and I've just come off another 13 hour day. Of circular motion, what fun. I'm sure youse can all fill in the gaps.

(*) Apparently a song by Less than Jake.

I can't believe I actually wrote dominant paradigm. I'm so 80s.

power and the passion

Wow. Why don't we get this kind of stuff in Australia?

more than words

Whenever you're feeling a little low it's always rewarding to read how some of your fellow citizens - sorry, components of the economy - string a few words together to tell you how they feel. For instance, ask Ian Nicolson of Banora Point how he feels about Macquarie Bank's management of Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport:

Margaret Thomas asks, rhetorically, "How about improving the [airport] service
in return for the punitive and ever-increasing charges" (Letters, November 6). I
suggest she addresses her question to the monopolist spivs who own Sydney
Airport.

Ian Nicolson Banora Point

Go Ian.

The legislature in America flexes its opinions about the executives (yeah, I just said "executives") that run Google:

"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are Pygmies..."

Given the common elements in these two examples, you can perhaps feel a little moral superiority when this sort of thing happens.

As I type, the 7.30 Report on behind me is carefully deconstructing the Coalition's contradictory messages about 'economic management' and who might be 'better' at it. If you elect us your wages will go down and this is a good thing because it will contribute to the strong $1.1trillion economy that only we are capable of managing, but under Labor last time your wages went up which was bad because it led to inflation except that under the Hawke Accord your wages didn't rise as much they did under us over the last 11 years, so that was bad - or good, depending on which part of this sentence you are reading - also. Or possibly notwithstanding.

But how do you get to be king?

Anyway, I am very pleased that Chateau VVB's 24c (there's three of us here in the hacienda) a day towards the ABC is at last contributing to the growth, possibly from adult stems cells, of not only a backbone but also an appreciably latte-sipping, chardonnay-swilling anti-Coalition posture, with suitable questions, snarky comments and the occasional (but devastatingly effective nonetheless) raised eyebrow. That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

Anyway, enough of this frivolity. I hear the siren call of strategic intent, strategic overlays, almost certainly strategic strategies and quite possibly the strategy you have when you're not having a strategy. In other words, several more hours of pain on top of a full workday. Why do we do it? Anyway, there'll be half an hour off for Spicks and Specks.

around and around

So here's Mal Brough on the 7.30 Report tonight getting all thing about a fence that separates an Aboriginal community from the rest of Darwin.

MURRAY MCLAUGHLIN: Behind this fence is the Bagot community.
An Aboriginal enclave only 10 minutes drive from Darwin's CBD. About 400 people
live here. There are many other enclosed housing estates across Darwin, but this
fence so offends Federal indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough that he wants to
l pull it down.

MAL BROUGH, INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS MINISTER: It's appalling
circumstances when a government of any persuasion puts a fence up between one
part of its community and the other and lets what goes on behind it, hide behind
it.

It's appalling all right Mal. "Any persuasion". Indeed So that'd apply to the APEC fence, then?

I imagine that's different. It's not as if a fair proportion of the community wanted to know what utter bureaucratic rubbish was being traded across the table in the rooms behind that wall. A greater proportion than wanted to do harm to the perpetrators.

Pet hate of the week: the phrase 'rolling out'. As in we're rolling out broadband, we're rolling out a new product, we're rolling out services.

Does it have wheels? If not, use the proper word, maybe 'make available', 'extend', 'release'.
Petty rant over.

sundays

Bitter disappointment this morning when I went to timesonline.co.uk looking for my weekly dose of Clarkson. He's not on every week, and evidently this is one of the 'off' weeks.

But it's not all bad, because the Times always dishes up some really good writing on a host of subjects. This week, f'rinstance, we get:

a semi satirical look at what happens when science gets out of control: Elephants
on Acid. It'd never happen here with the Research Quality Framework and, of course, Ministerial interferenceinterest in the uses to which public moneys are
put.

an inevitable Britney Spears story - all about the misuse of money, of course (more on this always fascinating subject in a minute). What interested me was in the comments where someone stated that (Spears) "smells nice". One can only assume that the commenter has been within sniffing distance. Bizarre, no?

irate investors send death threats to a market analyst who downgraded their stock. There are so many angles to this story it's difficult to know where to start, so in the time-honoured way of Chateau VVB we'll make do with some off the cuff value judgements. First, it seems the claim that the stock market as the arbiter of all that is pure and influenced by government or any other interference may as well be an elephant on acid. With the undisclosed links between analysts, the firms they analyse and the inevitable imperfections in information between investors), I reckon it's more of a lottery than many people think already.
Second, death threats? What is happening to people? You get a crime committed, may be something perfectly awful, and now we get baying mobs at the courthouse, screaming for a lynching. The veneer of civilisation is wearing pretty damn thin in places. Finally, she married a pro wrestler. And now he drinks beer from a glass. That's restoring the veneer of civilisation, yes?

I wonder why I'll spend so much time perusing the Times online but barely skim the hard copy Weekend Australian that
we still get. Answers on the head of a pin, please.

Just like the recent protests in Burma and the inevitable crackdown by the ruling junta, Pakistan displays a history of feeble attempts at civilian rule interspersed with military dictatorship and suspension of rule of law, and it's just happened again. The British Foreign Secretary said they should embrace democracy, so we can confidently expect that to start on Monday. Simple, really. They say that previous behaviour is the best indicator of future behaviour: on this basis any ruler of Pakistan, whether civilian or military, is likely to overlook the needs of the people and do they want, safe in the knowledge that a few deaths is seen as the price.

When we lived there, the daily newspaper always carried an article in which some politician or other always said "we have to find ways and means to solve the problems facing the people." Insightful, really - the focus is on the ways and means, not the people, who are two degrees
removed (with the problems in the middle). So as long as opposing forces bicker and fight about ways and means....

More on the misuses of money. With the regular shitfight erupting in Victoria about the public subsidies going to Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone to keep holding the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park, I was struck by the telecast of the Bahrain Desert 400, on the TV behind me. A new track, it's enormous and - particularly striking - it's wide, so you can get overtaking moves nearly everywhere, not just some corners as in most
narrow Aussie tracks. The other thing is, just as the V8 Supercar race in China earlier this year, the stands are pretty well empty.

Obviously they have a lot of money to throw at things in Bahrain and, I would imagine, fewer restrictions on government about where it gets thrown.

Private money, on the other hand, always finds the highest and best use, or so we are reminded with infuriating regularity because, as this story shows value, like beauty, is all in the eye of the beholder.

saturday night's alright for fighting

The Courier Mail today has a feature on John and Janette Howard at home. At Kirribilli, of course, thta's home. You need to keep the sick bag close by (much as you did with the piece on Kevin07 in the Australian colour mag a few weeks ago), but it does allow some telling insights.

The PM and spouse are asked about whether they have politics-free times. And the answer, as if you didn't expect it, is "no, never".

Which to my mind tells us why and how Howard has given us the government we had to have. His whole life is politics, we wanted to be PM since he was 10 (what 10 year old has any idea about the job and what he would do with it?) and he sees the whole world through the political lens. He has all the answers about how we should live, and it's only those pesky remnant bits of democracy that prevent him from ramming the whole kit and kaboodle down our throats.

So, when asked about the death of Peter Andren, he makes a point about how well Andren did to be elected to the House of Representatives as an Independent. Not about what Andren represented or what he did. Rudd, after a short period of looking like a rabbit in the spotlights (I can see why people think he's plastic, it was like he was actually searching for what to say), talked about how Andren was a man of principle. Indeed. Such an answer should have come without a second thought, you'd reckon.

And Janette has a bit of whinge about Kirribilli: if a large ship passes too closely, the doors rattle. There's a simple solution for that, m'dear - live in Canberra at the Lodge, where you're supposed to be. It'd also save us taxpayers a few shekels.

No Saturday night should be without a decent fright, so to deliver on that we point you to Your New Democracy's short piece of the continuing triumph of faith over reason in the US. You can click through a couple of links and get something like this:

"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"

Fortunately we don't have quite that level of undermining the Reason Project in Australia - not yet anyway.

Here's something sort of different, just to cheer you up after that apocalytic vision - Jeremy Clarkson drives the Peel P50 - no, I hadn't heard of it either. Via The Spectacularly Obtuse Blog, so wonderfully named and to my mind what the intertubes are all about. How or why someone spends time looking for this sort of stuff is utterly bewildering, but I'm very glad they do.

mexican radio

So I'm going between floors today, we have to swap lift lobbies in our building to do this between the low floors and the high floors. Into the lift I go with two young people, a stringy be-goateed bloke pushing a trolley stacked with boxes, and young girl who just looked a bit...alternative.

They're talking about Mexican metal. As we get out of the lift at the lobby-swapping floor, I ask them what Mexican metal is. They look at me a bit askance: after all, I'm in my late 50s, grey, and without any features that might distibguish me as a Mexican metal fan. I'm Don Henley all the way, with everything that this brings. They look at each other, shrug, and the bloke says "Rodrigo y Gabriela".

Then, "the 'e' is spelt 'y'".

"I know," I respond, "it means 'and'".

He looks at me like I'm an idiot - I get this frequently so it all washes off, but maybe one day I'll learn to be a little less patronising - and he says "Gabriela has only one 'l'". "Look them up on Youtube."

So I do, and look what I get - this is bloody fantastic.



Go there and look at some of the others.

And of course you go to wikipedia and find out how recognised they are.

But then at lunchtime I go to JB Hi Fi and buy this. And it's really good, too. Fogerty seems to have gone back to some country roots that weren't all that apparent in Creedence. I'm only halfway through the album, so far it's simple chord structures and some very familiar guitar work. Classic middle aged bloke music: after all the last CD I bought was JJ Cale and Eric Clapton, and it was very familar.

i hear a symphony

In a world full of of phony, it's wonderful to hear a symphony.

Especially when you can drink along.

Well done VB.

You have my vote.

That's too short for a post, so have a joke to go along with it:

The top 10 Country & Western Titles of all time:

10. I Hate Every Bone In Her Body But Mine

9. I Ain't Never Gone To Bed With an Ugly Woman But I Sure Woke Up With a Few.

8. If The Phone Don't Ring, You'll Know It's Me

7. I've Missed You, But My Aim's Improvin'

6. Wouldn't Take Her To A Dogfight 'Cause I'm Scared She'd Win

5. I'm So Miserable Without You It's Like You're Still Here

4. My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend And I Miss Him

3. She Took My Ring and Gave Me the Finger

2. She's Lookin' Better with Every Beer

1. It's Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chewed My Ass Out All Day Long

And not only that, but an online thingo to help you do some international comparisons, using a variety of indicators, between various countries over time. There are lots of little tricks to play with - truly absorbing.

treat me gentle

Only one set of trick or treaters tonight, they got an "oh shit, go away" and to their immense credit they read my response and expression correctly, and ausgefuckened pdq. Then I shut the front gates.

That said, enjoy The Assumption Song, if you've never heard it before it'll challenge them. Your assumptions, that is.

it's my party

Jeez politicians who stay on message to the extent of just repeating the same words all the time give me the shits. Hence, Nicola Roxon could have really scored big time over Abbott when he failed to show up on time for the 'debate' at the National Press Club. Instead, we got "this shows how out of touch the government is." If you're halfway decent as a pollie, surely you can come up with some alternatives while still staying true to the point the party machine and/or leader wishes you to make? In this case, how about:
- "arrogant";
- "disorganised" (as in, if you can't organise to catch a flight, how can you run the health system?);
- "useless";
- "dismissive of the media and democracy."

Enough of "out of touch" thank you, it needs a freshen up.

My services are available, at minimal cost (ie beer).

Everybody touch some wood, now. We wanted to hold a little soiree to mark the election. One couple can't come because of a belief - informed by bitter, bitter experience - that every time they go to an election party, Labor loses. If they stay away, Labor wins. Happened with the NT election that Clare Martin won. Hmmm...maybe if we don't call it a party...

bad to the bone

So, this blogging thing is mainly about regurgitating with or without 'value adding', also known by its more common appellation, 'smartarse commentary'. Here at Chateau VVB we say that we came, we saw, and we thought it was worth said regurgitation.

Beauty, in this case more than in most others, is in the eye of the beholder. Yet the number of blogs would indicate that beauty is relatively easily found.

So, where are we going? Today, Crikey.com.au gives us an unpleasant little peek into the mind of the so-called Attorney-General, a closet nazi by the name of Philip Ruddock. The First Law Officer (incorrect appellation but even if correct, woefully misapplied in his case) is unable to discern the differences between (a) open society and people in gaol and (b) those who are in gaol as a result of a prescribed legal process and those who are picked up in bits of Australia that are, for the purposes of the law, no longer in Australia and thrown into a gaol masquerading as a resettlement centre without the process of law.

He is unable to understand that a young man, incarcerated in such a gaol, may not wish to be separated from his parents and sent to another place whose details haven't been explained.

In Ruddock's own words:

Well, I'm not sure why one would argue that the policy of detention should be reviewed because detainees aren't prepared to observe normal standards of behaviour that we would expect in the Australian community. I mean, that would be like saying that you would close a jail because some people who had been convicted of offences didn't like being detained.

Words utterly, utterly fail me on this one. This man understands absolutely nothing (except perhaps the continued re-election of the Parliamentary Liberal Party, a message he's evidently had belted into him with a piece of 6x4 by the littlest liar).

Even if half true....

Is this another Tampa steaming over the horizon? After all, these people are foreigners...

Finally, via Facebook, a message for the rest of us...

i was a lover a leader of men

Well I took the test and this is what I got.



I hope certain people - particularly people who may live in Jindalee and have some views about how I respond to anonymous comments - take this on board and start spreading the word about how great it is to work with a leader of men. And women. And robots.

The loving', we can leave to another discussion.

Also, it's great to catch up with old friends and workmates and in effect create new interpretations - no, not the correct word but my brain just died - of those relationships. It's all one big long story and when you get an opportunity to start a new chapter it's at the one time both very reassuring and a little bit exciting.

There must be a word for that.

Perhaps in Finnish.

one story town

The Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party has been extremely successful in creating a credible story about the Labor Party and economic management. Only a few days ago Costello artlessly dropped the "recession" word into an interview. No factual basis for it, of course, but it reinforced the automatic association between Labor and "recession we had to have" and, by extension, Labor's record of economic stewardship more generally. $96 billion: ring a bell or three?

It has been stunningly successful. Every time you kick out a Labor government, the country's finances are in a mess: inflation, foreign debt, unemployment and so on.

It is not the purpose here to go into the rights and wrongs. Once you dig beneath the figures you get a slightly different story (eg global economic conditions as a major factor behind the recession we had to have). And when you look to actual acts of government (eg the Accord, tariff reduction, a competitive banking sector and the big one, floating the dollar), you get another perspective on which party had the vision and the guts to make the changes that actually affect things.

Rather, it's the power of stories, and this particular story has been very successful.

It seems to us here in Chateau VVB (awaiting a Brisbane storm, bring it on) that there is a similar story that can be told about conservative Australian governments.

It goes a bit like this. When you come to the end of a period of conservative (Liberal, or Coalition if you insist***) government, there is also a pattern of how the situation can be perceived. You usually have sections of the populace doing it hard or actively discriminated against (eg aborigines, pensioners, carers, gays); this has started leading to a fracturing of society; we are in an unpopular or unnecessary war; and overt interference in personal choice is becoming more evident, especially if it involves what you do with your rude bits or which art you prefer.

It's of course a gross simplification and it's only partially true, which makes it a good match for the opposite story. But it could be made into something awfully compelling, couldn't it?

"Remember Vietnam? Remember Iraq? Who got us into those? Do you see a pattern?"

Now, we've said before that Chateau VVB is no political strategist. And it's easy to see why. Certainly you wouldn't run a whole campaign around such a story (oh, that's what Howard is doing now? really? well, let's see what happens then...). But it could conceivably be worked up into one of those narratives that you could usefully drop into a speech or a retort here and there, to some cumulative effect. What do you think?

In the interests of fairness, I must provide the counter argument. Remember last year when Downer tried to run a line about how the Liberals were the party of big, outward looking, international ideas, not Labor? It sank without trace because the dominant narrative has always been the opposite. Even Keating's comment about flying over South East Asia to get to Paris didn't damage that understanding. So, there are evident difficulties in trying to get traction on a new story.

(***) Finally, they have higher interest rates in the bush. Words fail me on the Nationals, they do not have a clue. It's not in Chateau VVB's nature to feel sorry for John Howard, but every time Vaille or one of his intellectually challenged mates opens his mouth, Howard must just cringe.

Finally, finally. It's raining. Send 'er down, Huey.

heart of gold

Via the inimitable JT, a quiz to determine how you'd fit into a sci-fi crew. The only problem with doing this for me is that while I recognise some of the names, I am not intimately informed about the minutiae of roles, rationales, the 'big picture' or point of the story, and so on for most of them. Anyway, I feel relatively relieved to end up in the Hitchhiker's Guide, it sounds about right. Although shamefacedly I admit I've never read it, but various friends are intimately knowledgable and have sort of filled me in.

Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in with?

You scored as a Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
You are a light and humorous person. No one can help but to smile to your wit. Now if only the improbability drive would stop turning you into weird stuff.
Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy)
81%


-->
Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) -->
81%
Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)
81%


-->
Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) -->
81%
Serenity (Firefly)
75%


-->
Serenity (Firefly) -->
75%
FBI\'s X-Files Division (The X-Files)
75%


-->
FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) -->
75%
Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)
69%


-->
Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) -->
69%
SG-1 (Stargate)
63%


-->
SG-1 (Stargate) -->
63%
Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)
50%


-->
Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) -->
50%
Moya (Farscape)
50%


-->
Moya (Farscape) -->
50%
Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)
44%


-->
Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) -->
44%
Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)
44%


-->
Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) -->
44%
Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)
38%


-->
Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) -->
38%
Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)
31%


-->
Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) -->
31%
Enterprise D (Star Trek)
25%


-->
Enterprise D (Star Trek) -->
25%

animeme

Mark Lawrence tagged me to do an 'animeme'. I had to look it up on Wikipedia (no, not really, but my first thought was that is was something associated with manga :-)

Preface, disclaimer, namby-pamby obfuscation of a relatively simple issue.

In this context, the word "interesting" shall be taken whatever I want it to mean. If I rate an animal as interesting but you disagree, kindly don't complain, just mumble to yourselves.

An interesting animal I had

Here he is: 'Pup'. What an exceptionally inventive name, I must have been such a dull child - the other extant toy from those days is 'Ted'. Pup would be about 50 years old by now I guess, I got him before I got my memory. Now I'm losing my memory, but I still have Pup. Offspring number one got a few years' companionship from him and now he awaits the possible grandchildren.


That's another story.









An interesting animal I ate

One of our neighbours is a distinguished zoologist. Some years ago he and his wife hosted an Australia Day barbeque where at least some of the meat had been relabelled - at least we think they had renamed it. Along with the beef and lamb we had possum, emu, kangaroo, wombat, echidna, crocodile, lizard and....koala!

A wonderful night with wines to suit. Actually no, the wines were unrelabelled.




An interesting animal in the museum

Not that long ago I wrote that the song Cicada that Ate Five Dock had popped into my head, but at the time I couldn't remember how and why. Now I recall (there's that memory thing again). Prior to visiting the Sydney motor show the other weekend, a mate and I went to spend a couple of fascinating hours at the Museum of Natural History and, of course, that's where I saw the cicada. So talk all you like about word association, and the differences that unite us all in our individual idiosyncrasies, but the first thing I thought on seeing the cicadas mounted on the board was that song by Outline. Eee Eee Ee Eee.


It makes perfect sense, nicht war?




An interesting animal I did something with or to

I've probably written a couple of times about the two Abyssinian kittens we had, both of whom succumbed to fatal meetings with cars on our busy street. They both brought immense joy into our lives, even for the brief time we had them. Here's the first, Baxter, preventing me from floating away while I scan the newspaper. Abbies like to get up high and Baxter was the expert. Often we'd be washing dishes at the sink and get the feeling we were being watched, and there would be a kitten on the fluorescent light fitting above us.


An interesting animal in its natural habitat

A...well you tell me what it is, a lorikeet? or whatever - do I look like an ornithologist? - in the garden of a place we stayed up at Mount Tambourine a couple of years ago. Very tranquil, cool, refreshing and obviously a source of the restorative feelings one gets in a natural environment. Mrs VVB was out taking the air and snapped this multicoloured birdicule. Some kind of parrot.





Here's another animal in its natural environment (ha ha).










Now the way it works is I have to tag someone. So I tags Pants, Anne O'Dyne and Armaniac. 'Cos I think we'll get three very individual responses. In the fullness of time.

say my name

Via Ampersand Duck, here is the Peculiar Aristocratic Title for your humble author.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Reverend Lord Phil the Sonorous of Kesslington under Ox Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

I'm a bit worried about this Reverend bit. As has become screamingly obvious, Chateau VVB (containing both Mr and Mrs) is not in favour of organised religions. The only religions I subscribe to are cat worship and fast cars. Isn't that enough?

However, there are plenty who'd agree with the Sonorous bit.

light my fire

A quick one. Mrs VVB and I just saw the 6.30 shock! horror! show (Today Tonight) which included a piece about the Catch the Fire Ministries holding some kind of service in Parliament House. There was waving and fainting and someone blowing some kind of horn and lots of people earnestly proclaiming that Australia needs to bow to Jesus and the particular God that they associate with Jesus. A theocracy, in other words.

How the fuck do our taxes go to making Parliament House available for any religious service, let alone this pack of extremists?

Even allowing for the shock! horror! element that characterises these programs, and that we don't have all the facts (what facts do we need, I wonder?) this is wrong on so many levels it defies description.

Who authorises this kind of thing? And who (cue sinister Twilight Zone type music) gives an implicit nod and wink? Given that Danny Nalliah has had private 'audiences' (presumably in reverse, at least based on how audiences with the Pope work) with the "PM and Treasurer, but the Uniting Church can't get a look-in (read that somewhere the other day, can't find a reference now), what degree of influence is being peddled. In, as Howard is so fond of saying, "our name".

This, as Mrs VVB so perceptively pointed out, is extremely bad for Australia. She's always right, is Mrs VVB, but she's especially right on this. Not in our name.

innervisions

I was at the car wash this morning. You know, I never thought I'd see the day when I would pay someone to wash my car. The old man must be revolving in his grave at the thought. But the introduction of really savage water restrictions coupled with, of course, a strong $1.1 trillion dollar economy of which I got my share man, I've been everywhere, I've been to stalagtite, sodomite, Corangamite....oh, sorry, I mean if I want the car to be clean, I have to pay someone to make it that way. And so, we end up at the car wash, which is staffed for the most part by a revolving band of scrofulous teenagers whom you'd no more likely let loose behind your steering wheel than invite in to meet your female relatives.

So today, there was a Bentley Continental GT getting the treatment. When they came to move it outside to chamois it down, I was looking for the owner. Surely he wouldn't let one of these young vandals actually move it? But no, the head girl (who'd been barking orders at all the others but who still seemed to be only about 18 and, for what it's worth, looked vaguely Sudanese), jumped in and confidently moved it around to the vacuuming bay.

And my god did it sound great.

And then, all of a sudden (just like in Enid Blyton books I would imagine), the owner materialised out of somewhere, maybe a wicker basket or a cocktail shaker, and started applying the final polishing touches with a fine cashmere rag. I kid you not.

Then, he tries to open the boot. It obviously has an electrically-controlled mechanism for opening it, but he presses the button and - nothing. He presses again, similar result. A third time. He looks around and I silently go "yeah baby! schadenfreude!" and he leans against the boot like he's just pretending to stretch. Nothing! So he has to go into the cabin to press the inside button.

Schadenfreude is a despicable notion but by golly it feels good in the moment.

Anyway, what a car. Just have a gander at this red beauty. Wouldn't you look pretty damn flash taking one of these to Woolies for the weekend shopping?

Anyway, it's the same today with Jeremy Clarkson who has had a Jaguar revival and reckons it feels good. The man certainly has a way with words, such as I sometimes think that if you stole a Lexus, you’d be able to drive it around for a year or two before the owner remembered that he had one, and that it was missing.

The reference to Thia teenagers is way off, though, no wonder he attracts the attention of the half of the world who don't think like him.




This afternoon we had music at the Powerhouse, for now we have visions of Bentleys.


Tonight we have debate. I think we'll be watching Idol. Yes really. I couldn't take the cringe factor of the young pretender and the old foxrodent. It'll be yuckworthy to the max.

dancing in the dark

I think I've stumbled on to the reason that Howard instigated the nonstop campaign earlier this year/decade/century, or possibly even last century. It means that by the time the 'official' campaign started, we'd all be so bored by politics that we'd switch off and vote for him just to make it stop. Because even if we voted the other lot in, you could bet he'd still be there, popping up in advertisements, at any sporting contest, funerals, anything that didn't really need a comment from him, reminding us that we should have voted for him.

Nefarious, no?

Fortunately , the inventive Fairfax Press have brought you whack-a-pol.

Anyway, Chateau VVB doesn't have cable TV so at least we'll be spared the frightful debate we had to have on Sunday.

Something I've banged on about a few times is the marketisation of everyday life. My favourite example is the white pages online, which has 'business' rather than 'residential' as the default setting. There may well be a legitimate reason - maybe the research showed that everybody had their most commonly dialled residential numbers programmed into their home phones and mobiles and the next most frequent usage was for business numbers. Maybe all elements of life have been outsourced so that even calling your sister-in-law (for example, not mine...) becomes a business transaction.

Whatever, it's a pain. And people are slowly waking up to the realities of gloabalisation, what unrelenting competition means to daily lives. So we are increasingly hearing "I live in a society, not an economy."

Jobs and wages have always been a central figure of budgets, along with what we used to get ("beer up, cigs up"). But current ads referring to "Australia's $1.1 trillion economy" actually sound pretty bizarre. Gee, that's a big number, isn't it? I feel proud about our $1.1 trillion economy.

"How big was the economy when you were a boy, grandad?"
"Oh, back then we just paid more for beer and cigs."
"What's a cig, grandad?"

Except I was at a lunchtime talk by the Chief Scientist, Jim Peacock, who quoted the amount that the US government is devoting to stimulating research and development in that country. I'm sure I heard $43 billion. Peacock then went on to list the depressingly familiar list of things that Australia ought to do to improve productivity. Invest in education, infrastructure, innovation. It must be galling to have to trot out the same stuff over and over again, especially to an audience of true believers (regardless of political persuasion, I mean, not light on the hill types but just people who understand that there is a genuine role for government in doing these things). Finland does it, Peacock told us. Even the Productivity Commission, whose main purpose in life is to do the Treasurer's job for him by coming up with any suitable argument against government intervention, was conditionally supportive of more investment in these areas.

Anyway, the economy probably became central in our lives around the same time that we started becoming Human Resources. Insidious, isn't it?

Look, I'm sorry if this little rant is just a rehash. The main problem is that the interesting stuff that I run across to comment on usually happens in the morning and by the time I get to blogging time, it's gone.

So, I could have sworn I saw something interesting in the paper this morning, but evidently not. I did, however, run across this, which I found highly reassuring. You can never have too much social coffee.

Finally, a little Springsteen cover love for youse.

throwing copper

In lieu of blubbering about election related things or ranting about the gross inequities that John Howard has perpetrated upon our fair country*, allow me to post a deeply offensive rascist joke that I got today.

A London lawyer runs a stop sign and gets pulled over by a Glasgow copper. He thinks that he is smarter than the cop because he is a lawyer from London and is certain that he has a better education then any Jock cop. He decides to prove this to himself and have some fun at the Glasgow cop's expense.

Glasgow cop says," Licence and registration, please."
London Lawyer says, "What for?"
Glasgow cop says, "Ye didnae come to a complete stop at the stop sign."
London Lawyer says, "I slowed down, and no one was coming."
Glasgow cop says, "Ye still didnae come to a complete stop. Licence and registration, please."
London Lawyer says, "What's the difference?"
Glasgow cop says, "The difference is, ye huvte to come to complete stop, that's the law, Licence and registration, please!"
London Lawyer says, "If you can show me the legal difference between slow down and stop, I'll give you my licence and registration; and you give me the ticket. If not, you let me go and don't give me the ticket."

Glasgow cop says, "Sounds fair. Exit your vehicle, sir."
The London Lawyer exits his vehicle. The Glasgow cop takes out his baton and starts beating the cr*p out of the lawyer and says, "Dae ye want me to stop, or just slow down?"

*Why should I do it when others do it so much better?

any old iron

Irony, actually.

Out walking at lunchtime I saw a business's utility truck being attended to by the RACQ - a new battery, perhaps. The name of the company? Programmed Maintenance Services.

Caveat emptor, I would advise.

paperback writer

With the latter day rise of the blogosphere and other various new age variants on the broadcasting if not sharing of the news, the spotlight has fallen on the quality of the mainstream media. In p0articular, and this was a discussion I had with offspring no 2 only last night, any notion of investigative journalism seems to have died, possibly with the Y2K bug if not the end of the Cold War.

As for analysis, it's not so much a cesspit as a vacuum. For every Akerman there's an Adams (well, not exactly, the right is everywhere on the opinion pages) but there are few opinion columns you'd read without knowing, in pretty fair detail, what it was going to say. As a case in point, let's look at Joshua Frydenburg today. It's not so much the tilt of his column that's annoying as the lazy dot-point interpretations he puts on his 'facts'. The link is here but if you have a sensitive stomach, don't bother visiting, simply understand that it's all about how Peter Costello will make a wonderful PM - at the appointed time, of course.

Costello is the undisputed architect of Australia's $1 trillion economy, having
overseen its growth by more than 50 per cent since 1996. In that period he has
safely steered Australia through challenging times, including the Asian economic
crisis, the dot-com boom and bust, the post-September 11 fallout and, most
recently, an extended devastating drought.

So, what exactly did he do to "safely steer" us through the challenging times. What were the policy levers (so beloved of Keating, of course) that he pulled? '

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has praised
Australia's commitment to structural reform as "a model for other OECD countries"; leading economist Paul Krugman labelled Australia the "miracle economy"; and most recently America's distinguished former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, referred to Costello in his memoirs as someone who is "unusually perceptive on global issues".

So, we're cleaving to the TINA/Washington Consensus approach, then. What a surprise that turned out to be, have to rustlethrough a lot of rubbish bins to find that out? Yes, we adhere to the OECD model, more than other countries, and come what may. That, to my mind, makes us seem rather inflexible.

And, once Costello has been unusually perceptive, what precisely does he do with his perceptions?

Indeed, should Labor continue to focus on Costello's ascension to the leadership, it will offer the Government an important opportunity to showcase the Treasurer's breadth of experience and expertise beyond economic matters. Having previously referred to himself as a "Burkean-type liberal", Costello has made the primacy of the individual the centrepiece of his political thinking.

From the time of his maiden speech to Parliament in 1990, he has emphasised the subservience of government to the citizen, warned against the danger of ideology and made it clear that his allegiance is to the individual over monopoly control.

Anyone accusing the other side of being more ideological than the current band of Libs in Cabinet should take a long hard second look at the words and deeds. Ideology writ large, none more so than on IR.

Like Howard, Costello has also shown a willingness to take the hard decisions to
advance the national interest, irrespective of their popularity. Witness his commitment to the GST, industrial relations reform and the strict fiscal discipline required to bring the budget back to surplus.

He has an ideology that he finds easy to maintain is more likely the interpretation. How about comparing this list (and actually, he's never been the minister for employment so whatever his view on IR, the "plaudits" should go elsewhere, if we were being honest) to the major decisions of the Hawke and Keating governments. In fact if you plot the rise in GDP over time you'll see that floating the dollar in 1983 has had the single biggest impact on economic growth (at it did last time I looked a year or so ago).

So too on the international stage, Costello has completed more than a
traditional apprenticeship. As a proponent of Australia's engagement with Asia
and a longstanding advocate of our alliance with the US, he has been a regular
visitor abroad.

So he's a bit ahead than George Bush was, then, on travel before assuming office. Not a strong argument, one would have thought. All those APEC Ministers meetings.

But it was at last November's G20 meeting in Melbourne that Costello assumed a pivotal role. His chairmanship of this international gathering of finance ministers and central bank governors from economies representing two-thirds of the world's population was the scene of some substantive discussions on the pressing issues of energy security, aid and debt relief, and demographic change.

And the substantive discussions resulted in what, exactly? Doesn't the chair normally sum up the arguments and gain agreement on actions? What were the actions?

Top piece of non-analysis, Joshua. Why didn't you save yourself the 30 minutes and just post the media release?

cicada that ate five dock

That song, linked on youtube here, has nothing to do with today's post but somehow while in Sydney I was reminded of it, and hence the link to make your day. I always reckoned it was magic, it's still good.

Today two pieces of campaign material oozed into the letterbox. Kevin07 has a "plan" for "Australia's Future", possibly to follow the pointless trend to capitalising all Nouns until we could almost be Germans. A Trend which, if continued, will Surely Result in an even More insidious Attack of our traditional Grasp of Grammar.

Kevin07's pamphlet is a single folded A4 sheet which is the colour of (badly) recycled paper but makes no claims to be so. It just looks Cheap. It doesn't say Much and it repeats that he has a Plan three times. The local candidate, Ross Daniels, gets 1/6th of the pamphlet. We're going to maintain our national security, possibly by keeping the Iranians out of the Leafy Western Suburbs. It's deeply unimpressive.

Michael Johnson's pamphlet is multicoloured in blue and green hues, not traditional Liberal colours I would have thought, but that's because it's all about how only the Howard Government can "responsibly manage the challenges of climate change while protecting Australia's economy and protecting local jobs." That'll be all the Jim's Mowing franchises, I imagine, because everybody else works in town or at the Univeristy of Queensland.

In a first for any Michael Johnson promotional material, no photos appear of Michael with the PM, although Howard does get a quote and his signature reproduced. The rest of it is about what you can do about climate change. Ask not what your country can do for you, indeed.

So first round points to Michael, I guess.

And the national campaign? Tax breaks? Looks like any investment in any class of infrastructure is off the agenda for another few years.

back in the ussr

Well we're back safe 'n sound. The forecast hangovers indeed eventuated, particularly after 8 schooies of Reschs at the Fortune O'War.

But we had two fabulous breakfasts at one of the many coffee shops on King Street, Newtown and last night the three amigos also had a top fang at a Chinese place in Chinatown. Salt and pepper prawns, yeah baby. And a crispy skin chicken that was also superb.

I have thirty zillion photos of the motor show with which I won't bore you, except this one because of all the loverly things that were there, this Maserati Qauttroporte was without doubt the prettiest.

So while we were away the PM called the election and tonight we have an advertisement that has Rudd ands Swan with L-plates and Julia Gillard as the plaything of the union bosses and she's never had a proper job.

It's going to be a long 6 weeks, fortunately I have lots of work to distract me.

Finally, having spent several hours at the airport this arvo, a comment on the announcements they make. "Unsullied Airways is making an urgent call for Balderstone Longbottom, a passenger on our wonderful flight to Oodnagalarbie. Our flight is fully boarded and we are awaiting your immediate arrival for its departure."

So, if Mr Longbottom is not on the plane, it isn't really fully boarded, is it? And we await your arrival for our departure. Yeah, we know what you mean but your construction could be more felicitous, could it not?

son of a preacher man

We have to admit to kind of, you know, like, sort of bogan tastes here at chateau VVB, particularly in relation to TV. Although well out of the target demographic by virtue of our advancing ages, Mrs VVB and I are constant Ch 10 watchers so there's a fair bit of Australian Idol watched.

Apologies to those who'd picked us as ABC TV and Radio National types. And SBS, although SBS is just another mainstream TV channel nowadays.

Anyway we got mightily excited about the accusations that Australian Idol was in the pocket of the Hillsong crew. Not just voting, we mean in the pocket.

Well after the token efforts on Sunday and Monday at "addressing" (really?) the issue on the show, we immediately came to the conclusion that yes, the show is in the pocket.

What this means is another thing. There's a fair bit of angst around about the increasing influence of religion, particularly the more 'fundamentalist' type of religion, on public life. In reality, any influence on a bogan TV show shouldn't be of concern. But in any contest for hearts and minds, any hill you take is hard won ground and accordingly Mrs VVB and I are less than happy should the religiously obsessive be getting their sticky fingers in where they ain't needed.

Gospel is fine - in fact, I luurrve gospel. Subliminal conditioning - nup. Proselytising - definitely not. Overreaction? Maybe. But chateau VVB is trying desperately to see all sides whenever we're looking at anything apparently monolateral. Is that a word? Who knows? I certainly don't mean unilateral, I think. Have we lost the plot? Yup, again.

Anyway, we're - actually I'm - off to Sydney for the motor show and annual boys' weekend away this weekend. Annoyingly, I have a work thing on Friday morning (which I could have sworn was originally on Wednesday) to show up at first, before a mad dash to the airport.

This is of course just an excuse for one beer too many in a decreasingly convincing attempt to kid ourselves that the three of us are still 20. The following morning/s will be the test, and I can guarantee we will be found wanting, if not utterly dehydrated.

Still, the aim is to be here at 5pm on Friday for the first of a refreshingly lumpy Reschs, served damn cold. After that, it will be all downhill.

Also, how much bloody advertising are we going to get once the election campaign actually starts? If Kevin07 tells me one more time that he's an economic conservative, the TV will not be safe. There will be more than swearing. As for the other bloke - eeeugh. You know it.

shout

I have alluded in the past to an increasing habit of shouting at the television whenever certain heads appear and/or certain whiny, hectoring voices seep from the speakers and insinuate themselves into your brain..."born to rule, born to rule, listen to me, we were born to rule."

Anyway this insidious habit has really got a hold on me (hmm, there's a great line for a song..) and so I find myself doing it without thinking.

Or, to be more accurate, Mrs VVB finds me doing and reminds me of how much it annoys her. Which is a lot, a real big lot.

So, Sunday, there we are watching the leadup to the Great Race (tm used to be Ch10, now tm Ch7) and bugger me dead, there's Mark fucking Vaile and Brendan fucking Nelson! Where on earth did they come from? Can I recall a pollie ever being at Bathurst before? Well, they may well have been (don't think it was Keating though, your average Louis XIV clock can't measure thousandths of a second) but I certainly can't recall any.

So, of course, I started 'commenting'. Without listening to whatever rubbish they were spouting. So Mrs VVB starts at me. Not without provocation, I have to admit. So I turn the sound off (both me and the TV).

Thrilling end to the race, but.

Anyway I keep checking the ABC news online for details of the governing that the PM claims he is still doing, but all I find are references to pissing money up against the nearest (marginal) wall.

This is not governing.

It's not much of a blogpost either, but I checked the stats the other day - not something I do all that regularly - and it seems about 20 deluded souls pass this way every day. If it's the same souls, they are indeed deluded.

Nonetheless, I feel some sort of obligation to give youse something to read and, today, this has been your bloomin' lot.

Not quite. Here's another Burma story from today's SMH. What you have to realise is that the 'authorities' - the junta, the State Peace and Development Council - do this sort of stuff every day and have been since 1988 (yes, when they were the State Law and Order Restoration Council).

more on Burma

This report from the Guardian rings very true. How do you like the junta's description of "systematic control"?

It is very hard for people in free country such as Australia to actually comprehend what it feels like to live under total repression, where the army is used to subdue the populace, not guard against external threats. Secret police are the same everywhere they exist, of course.

Anyway it's comforting that, despite the junta's continuing effort s to shut down scrutiny, that Burma remains on the world's agenda. It's the least we can do.

mountains of Burma

There was a small rally for Burma today at Queens Park in Brisbane. Not checking the the PA equipment was working was a bit of a mistake - most of the speakers were inaudible above the 100 odd people there.

I said g'day to Senator Andrew Bartlett and would agree with his assessment that direct action is problematic but showing support is simple and utterly necessary.

I'd taken a photo album of some of our time in Rangoon to work and people are very interested to see what the place looks like. Unfortunately the photos don't show things like your phone being (extremely obviously) tapped, the 'secret' police hanging around suburban corners and so on.

But this issue can't be allowed to slide under the carpet under the State Peace and Development Council's intranisgence and game-playing. Even Lee Kuan Yew (Senior Mentor? I love it, there's a role for Gough!) thinks the situation remains untenable over the longer term.

strange days indeed

Weird, man.

Found via Stereogum.

blogday for Burma

Late in the day, but nonetheless:

western union man

Offspring no 2 and I were going into town today and outside the Brisbane City Council's colourful new offices we saw one of their vehicles, adorned euphemistically with the explanation "Business Logistics Solutions."

We looked through the rear window at what was inside, summed up the driver and translated this as "delivery man".

They should have put the word 'strategic' in the title.

We got a different delivery in the postbox - Michael Johnson and John Howard: A Strong Team For Ryan.

The election must have been called.

Mr Johnson says we must invest for "safer roads, cracking down on local crime and improved education standards", the PM says we can only do this in strong economic times 'cos there'll be none of the Keynesian counter-cyclical nonsense around here, thank you very much.

real life

The Olympics Blogger left a comment a couple of postsd ago saying s/he doesn't support boycotting the Olympics. I tried to leave a comment but got a rejection message and as I don't comment at blogs that require registration, f.w.i.w. my rebuttal ran along these lines:
- the Burmese people chose a popular government in 1990 but the military refused to acknowledge the result, put the legitimate winner under house arrest in 1990 and continued to rule. So an argument that the Burmese have the government they're happy with is egregiously untenable.
- The military has continued to rule by force and repression, which does not permit armed or unarmed resistance without intolerable consequences (as was also proved in 1988).
- Yes it would be preferable that the Olympics not be politicised, except that understanding was abrogated in 1936 and in 1980.
- The Burmese military can only be induced to change - or something similar - at one degree of separation, in this case through putting pressure on China.

Interestingly, I had lunch today with a long time friend who had visited Burma earlier this year. He pointed out, quite rightly, that even if Aung San Suu Kyi was released and some accommodation with the junta was found, she is of an age that is a generation now stepping down, yet she is without experience in government. Burma needs a new generation of leaders, but no identifiable leader has emerged because of the faith still put in AASK.

He had been impressed by the hospitality of the Burmese people (true) but also the amount of economic freedom (ie small business) allowed.

I'm still sceptical as you have to live there to appreciate the extent and pervasiveness of political control through the 'secret' police, who are everywhere.

..at this stage there was a short break while I watched Spicks and Specks with Lloyd Cole set up to sink a putt against a lookalike Alice Cooper, complete with rubber chicken in his mouth - it seems that Lloyd has the same golf handicap as Cooper...

meanwhile back in the real world...

and in the other real world with which we are more familair, some questions arise about the Government's hospitals plan...

...while some people have simple, neat answers.

Unfortunately, they're not alone:

Market method only way to fix problems in health

It has been appalling to see recent news items showing people suffering and dying in hospital waiting rooms, in hospital toilets, and in waiting ambulances. Doctors threatening to resign and some very sick people even advised to go home.
Every politician from former Queensland premier Peter Beattie to Federal Health Minister Tony Abbot and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd have said they will fix the hospital system.

The administrative problems from which people suffer can never be fixed
while medical care and hospitals are run by the bureaucracy. Senior officials have admitted this. There are only two ways of rationing economic goods: By competitive price the market method. By queues the socialist method. In the socialist method, the queues will get so long and the service so poor that the value of the "service" falls to its direct cost to the recipient zero.

The real cost, to the suffering taxpayer, will keep rising forever. When
and where permitted to do so by the state, the market system produces all items.
Entrepreneurs emerge and supply the market with what it wants at competitive
prices, whether it be health services, water supply, educational facilities,
welfare services or any other good.
Ronald Kitching, Frenchville, Qld

This bloke needs to learn about why the private sector won't supply goods and services from it can't exact a commercial return - known as spillover effects. The poor can't afford health care at any price, that's why we pay taxes to ensure an equitable availability of such goods and services. If we want the law of the jungle, let's make it obvious and have a referenddum question rather than an election.

They should also remember that answers that are simple and neat are usually bracketed with 'wrong'.