politics

Blogocracy Blogging Experiment

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

Tim Dunlop has a little blogging experiment going on. It’s very interesting and comes just at the right time for me, because I’ve rehashed the blogs I am reading in google reader and I have some space for new ones.

The first question Tim has asked is – If you change the government, do you really change the country?

I think the answer is no. Most people in the country honestly don’t care about the government or what they are doing. People just want to live their lives relatively peacefully. Government is only interesting when they’re going to give us some money, or if they’re going to do something for us. That’s why change does not happen often.

Most people get to the polling booth, and they basically ask themselves – How am I doing under this current government? Is everything generally ok? If yes, let’s vote for the people who are in now, because nobody likes change, people are afraid of change, let us stick with what we have now.

The reason this government has been in as long as they have is, “people” remember those high interest rates when they get to the polls. Regardless of what happened in the lead up to the election, regardless of who promised what, they fear a return to interest rates they cannot afford. Many voters are home owners.

For all those who take sides and argue that “this” or “that” will change people’s minds and make them vote for one side or the other, realistically it does not. Polls don’t matter on election day. That is because voting is compulsory in this country. It is not something that only those who care about politics and the future of this country do – at least some of the people voting honestly could not care less about the election but they are forced to vote. In reality it is likely that they make up the majority of people who vote – which means the majority of people who vote could not care less.

If change happens, by some miracle, most people find it is a case of “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss”. Life will go on, the same as before. Things might get better, things might get worse, if they get worse the change will not last long, only 4 years.

Politics is a dirty game. In reality for many of us, it has nothing to do with real life. We’re more concerned with the politics of the workplace, the politics of our own homes. And fair enough too.

The other answers – from people much smarter than I. :) Very interesting reads.

Andrew Bartlett – Bartlett Diaries

Ken Parish – Club Troppo

Kim Jameson – Larvatus Prodeo

Harry Clarke – Harry Clarke blog

tigtog – Hoyden About Town

Joshua Gans – CoreEcon

Robert Merkel – View from Benambra

politics

This will not come as a surprise.

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

Ms Rein has made the decision to sell the Australian part of her business, because her husband wants to be Prime Minister more than he wants to back her up as a husband. Oh, she probably wants to redecorate the Lodge herself, so it’s not an entirely selfless choice, however it shows that an ambitious man can be the downfall of a highly successful woman. It was predictable and we all saw this one coming a mile off, but I cannot disguise my disgust.

As yet there seems to be no outcry of outraged women, which is highly surprising to me. Could it be all the feminists vote Labor and they don’t want to say anything for fear of losing yet another in a long string of elections to a man who honestly looks like he should be on the muppet show?

What is right is what is right, regardless of which party you support. The fact that Kevin has not said – she made a mistake but her business concerns have nothing to do with me as a politician and we’ll put whatever procedures in place to make sure everything is 100% above board and nobody can have any complaints of favoritism or whatever. She’s my wife, this is her business, and I don’t give a shit how politically damaging her mistakes in business can be to me, because I’m a man with a set of balls who can stand up for himself and say hey, leave my wife alone. You want to pick on someone? Pick on me.

However, he did not do that, and what he’s saying to everyone by the course he is taking is – you win. You want to pick on anyone else in my family? I’ll convince them to give up whatever you want if it means I can have the top job. Bully me some more, it’s fine. It’s perfectly ok, because I’m going to cave whenever I have to just to shut you people up.

Ms Rein, this choice you have made is absolutely a backward step for women in this country.

politics, what not to do, women

If I were Kevin’s Wife..

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

Apparently Kevin Rudd is going to have a “discussion” with his wife about whether or not she can continue to be a part of a business she created that has made her a millionaire. It’s yet another complete f*ck up in a long line of f*ck ups from a man who seemed to hold so much promise as the new leader of the Labor party. Kevin seems to be steering the Liberal party to yet another victory with his utter stupidity.

He has said the following –

“This one is tough because it affects her and her future,”

“I love my wife dearly and she’s built this up from scratch.

“So do you turn around and say: `Well, that’s the end of that, sweetheart’, or do you do it differently?”

“It’s a very hard decision to say to someone prior to an election – and we don’t know who’s going to win the election – `Offload the business’.

“This is the age of professional women who run their own companies, who have their own lives, and are not simply appendages of middle-aged men.”

I think she should turn around and say, thanks, it’s been fun, your stuff is all in garbage bags by the kerb, have a nice life, by the way you’re getting NONE of my money. It’s fairly clear from the quote above in purple that he thinks she is just an appendage who will do whatever he tells her to so he can have a better chance of winning the top job.

Hello? Women make up a large percentage of people in this country. Piss us off, and you’ve got f*ck all chance of winning the meat raffle at the local pub let alone the federal election. He may have a chick as his deputy but really K-Rudd may be all about keeping the women in the kitchen where they belong if it interferes with his job. It’ll be interesting to see what happens – I’m betting she has to give up her company. If he makes her do that, it’s all over for the Labor party as far as winning an election, so she’ll be jobless, and so will he.

Angry Snoskred, politics

Topics on my mind..

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

There’s a lot of stuff which I’ve thought I should blog about lately but none of these posts have happened. For example –

The spiders in that kid’s ears! It’s freaking me out people. I have heard that rice krispy noise in there before!

Unions. The labor scheme to sell out workers to unions concerns me. For obvious reasons.

I was once a member of a union. It was ok, not really that much money to pay and it had some good benefits, but the idea of *forcing* anyone to be a member of a union is not a good one IMO. And I hate the way Union people call those who aren’t in the union “scabs”. It’s a matter of personal choice whether someone wants to pay union fees or not. To call them names for choosing not to, that bothers me.

It bothers me that the Labor of today is still linked with these people who choose pressure and bullying as decent tactics in a work place. I think they really need to stand away from all that – otherwise the Libs will get in again. Not that I think that is a bad thing, all political parties have their good points and their bad points.

I got some Emerald Green paint because I seem to suck at mixing green, and some sealer the other day.

There’s a new house in the area we like which we might be able to look at. It’s $20 more than we pay now. That’s not so good. But it is in the street we love and might be big enough.

General Chit-chat, politics

Stuff.

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

This morning we went snorkelling in our usual lovely location. While driving there, right in front of us a red bellied black snake crossed the road. I was pointing and screaming look, it’s a red bellied black snake! They are venomous but also quite timid and very good at hiding. You could walk past one in the bush and not even know it. At Sydney zoo they have about 10 of them together in an enclosure and sometimes the keeper does a talk in there, but he usually brings in snakes in big garbage bins because the likelihood of finding any of the 10 that live in the enclosure is somewhat low. You can walk around the enclosure, looking and looking, and never see a single snake.

After the wonderful snorkelling time, and we saw *squids* which was incredible, I was chasing them around the bay, we went to vote. More snakes, in the form of the people who hand out the election pieces of paper as you try to get into the polling place, were encountered. Including one guy from the greens who got pretty upset that we wouldn’t take his piece of paper, and it almost became a fight when my other half laughingly sneered at what he said to us. I grabbed his arm and pulled him away, fast!

The piece of paper for the other house was *huge*. I have never seen anything that big. It was at least half my height, and probably almost as long as the snake we saw crossing the road. And there were parties on there I’d never heard of, including the horse riding party. What the heck? I pity the poor people who are going to have to unfold all of those, and try to read the votes.

After a morning spent with the fishes, how could I help but vote for the fishing party? The more time I spend snorkelling and watching the fish, the less likely it is I’ll ever be able to go fishing again. But the horse riding party tempted me.. somewhat.. but I had no clue what they stood for, so maybe next time they should try and get the word out there. I will be honest and say I did not choose to fill in every box below the line – I would have been there for hours.

politics, Snakes, snorkelling

One-Eyed.

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

Probably you won’t respect me when I admit, I watch The View from time to time. Personally, I can’t stand Rosie for the most part. I think it’s because of her hair, it just really bugs me. A fringe would be a better choice, I think. She has too big a forehead.

On the other hand, I can’t stand Elisabeth’s one-eyed-ness about her political party. It’s been really apparent this week because they have been talking about torture, the torture that has been going on in various places including Afghanistan, Iraq, and that Guantawhatever however you spell it place which I think is in Cuba or something.

Elisabeth seems to think that it’s ok to torture people if it’s going to stop things like 9/11 happening. If people have information which could save people’s lives, then it’s perfectly fine to do very nasty things to them. And of course, cos her party has been in charge while all this is going on, none of it is their fault, they didn’t know, blah blah.

It makes me want to slap her, and clearly it makes Rosie want to slap her as well, so I’m not alone there. But I see it a lot of times – if people take one side, they want to defend everything that one side does all the time. There’s never a perfect political party, and they don’t do everything right all the time. So I think as a person, you have a responsibility to take the side of what *is* right, even if it is opposite to your views or the views of the side you support. And when it comes to elections, you have to do the right thing as far as choose the side which is representing the most right things at that particular election.

But me not being perfect either, in the past I have been holding a grudge when it comes to voting. I’ve been holding it for some years now, and people will probably know how I’ve been voting when I say, I remember 18% interest rates. As in, I have not been voting Labor, and nor am I likely to given their apparent not having a clue. That doesn’t mean I have been voting for the party in power, either though. There are other choices.

And in fact, in one election, I voted but my vote did not count. Somehow the electoral commission fucked me over and got my address wrong, then a few weeks later called me to tell me they were going to fine me for not voting! I was like, you have to be kidding. I voted. And when I went there, they had the right address for me, and you better make my vote count OR ELSE! That was one of the nastiest telephone conversations I ever had, I was swearing at that woman like Butch Driveshaft. Still to this day I don’t know how they messed it up but apparently they gave me the wrong voting slip or something because I did a postal vote.

This weekend we have an election. I’m really leaning towards a great party. It’s called The Fishing Party. They say something that I really, truly believe in –

The Fishing Party is opposed to the massive export of our natural resources while the general public is forced to endure inferior imported products because international demand has forced the prices of our own seafood beyond the reach of the average Australian.

Yeah, I can get behind that. :)

Hey, didn’t I say I wasn’t going to post about politics here?

politics

Labor Incredibly Stupid.

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

I am stunned. Amazed. Incredibly speechless, so it’s lucky I can still type, hey.

With rents in this country going through the roof and the possibility of another interest rate rise, Labor have today announced a very *important* policy on how they’d like to waste some serious money.

FEDERAL Labor has promised to lavish $4.7 billion on what it described as a national broadband network in concert with the private sector.

This is why they are not in power, people who want to see an end to the Howard Government. Because, in an age when people are paying out huge amounts of money to landlords and cannot afford to buy their own homes, clearly it is majorly important that they be able to access the internet at faster speed. They won’t have anywhere to live, and all their computers will get rained on, and stuff, but thank God they will still have access to Pr0n and be able to download movies faster.

And in order to do this, they’re suddenly in favor of selling off the last of Telstra? Hello? Who the fuck are these people, and how did they get in charge of the Labor party?

They have no hope, again. They will not win, again, not with this kind of shit. And it’s true, the devil you know is vastly better than the devil you don’t who apparently has the priorities of a school kid.

Update January 10 2015

From Wikipedia

The Rudd Government estimated to the capital expenditure of the project initially to be A$43 billion.

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?

And I thought 4.7 billion was bad!

Think of all the things that money could have been spent on.. :(

politics

Jedimerc this one’s for you..

2 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

This comment you left a little while ago has stuck with me, and I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s from a little while ago, about the West Wing.

I didn’t care for the show not because of a speech like this (and I am in the ‘bible belt’), but it felt like NBC was trying to ‘preach’ to the US about politics.

I actually had a skype chat with Anna Falactic about this a day or two after you left it, because frankly it had me completely baffled. And I must say this, because it’s got to come out.. :) nothing personal.

When the US people watch Star Trek, do they feel they are being preached to about the best way to run an intergalactic space ship or whatever the heck it is those guys in funny outfits are doing up there?

When the US people watch Desperate Housewives, do they feel they are being preached to about life in their neighbourhoods and the state of their families and the likelihood their wife will sleep with their gardener?

What if Jed Bartlet was not the President of the United States, but the President of some fictional world power, which ran a four party system? What if it was a futuristic piece, set 100 years from now, where the parties have been abolished completely – or even if the parties remained.

Are people in the US not able to distinguish between fiction and reality in the way the rest of the world is, or are they so entrenched in their camps they cannot even consider watching a tv show that contains some of the better acting seen on tv recently, or is it something else? What if Jed Bartlet had been a republican, would it then have been ok? What would have made it ok and not like preaching?

Having watched a couple of seasons of the show now, I’ll tell you what this show does for your country for people in *my* country. It teaches us about the US political process – something I had a vague knowledge of before, but now know plenty more about. It gets them interested in what is going on politically in your country. I just was flicking around before heading off to bed, and I stumbled across Congress waiting for the state of the union, and –

– even though I cannot stand GW because I think he’s blonde on the inside and he blinks too much at the end of sentences which drives me to distraction and I hate how he talks and his little odd face thing he’s got going on there

– even though I currently have no idea what the state of things are in the US as far as elections and who is going to run etc (though I did hear about Hilary) and the only people in the room I recognised were Hilary, and GW, and GW’s wife, the vice president, Condy and Michael J Fox

– even though I really needed to go to bed, because I was tired and I’d got a lot of shit done and I was only flicking before turning off the tv and going to bed

– even though about 5 minutes into the speech I thought Bartlet is a much more convincing President and maybe if I’m going to sit here I should put on a west wing episode

– even though that thought led me to recall Michael Douglas in The American President and that he was also much more convincing

– even though I would much rather go to the dentist than listen to GW speak, I am not joking about that, ok, I’m serious!

I sat there and watched GW bumble on for almost an hour. A significant portion of that about Iraq which I felt was quite inappropriate as it is supposed to be the state of the *union* and not the rest of the world, right? Maybe 5 minutes he could have got away with, but I know it was at least 15 and possibly 20 minutes. And then I turned up here to blog about it when I really could do with some zzz’s.

If you could get the west wing on Al Jazeera or whatever that middle east tv channel is, you’d suddenly find a lot of people supporting the US. I actually believe that. The show provides one with a respect for what being a President involves, and also with a respect of what the rest of the people do. Those people in the middle east do not realise how things are run, I’m betting.

I could be wrong, the people in the middle east might not care, they might just want their 72 virgins when they die, and probably the terrorist types do, but where you shape public opinion is not with those people, but with the families, who are raising the next generation, and if the parents of those kids have some respect for the political process in the US and how things happen and the office of the President and that he’s not making decisions on things to upset them or hurt them or just out of nowhere but on the advice of many people who are well aware of the situation in their country and what the options are, and that he has to weigh all that up and try to make the best decision not only for his own country but for the *world*..

Where do I stand on the war in Iraq? Many years ago when I was in primary school there was a girl in my class whose parents had somehow managed to escape from Iraq. I was only young but the things she told me she had seen stayed with me and none of them were nice. Then some years later at work I met a customer who had been a camera man in Iraq, and he felt so strongly about the atrocities being committed he and three fellow countrymen secretly went around filming military installations and various other things. They planned to drive to the border and hand the tapes (there were a lot of them) over to the US who were *at* the border at the time (during gulf war 1) and then return home. Things went wrong, they ended up being chased out of the country, they could not return because they would have been killed and they had no idea whether they would ever see their families again. Several members of their families were killed, his wife managed to make it out alive and joined him later.

There’s a lot of places in the world where things are fucked up. Iraq was and still is one of them. They should have done the job properly the first time, I think we can all agree on that. I do not know if it will ever be sorted out or if any of the people there will ever live in peace. I wish that it could be and that was why when they decided to go, I thought it was a good thing. Now, I’m not so sure. There’s no easy answers. Some days, I’m all for let the people in the middle east fight each other until they sort it out, but then I remember my friend in school and the guy who escaped and think of the *people* involved, their hopes and dreams for a happy life, the fact that it’s not likely to happen unless someone steps in and does something.. and all the time I am grateful I was born in this country and not that one. That sounds really bad but it is the truth.

I’m now very tired and probably rambling incoherantly. I will go to bed and think more on this without being sleep deprived. But I still think Martin Sheen or Michael Douglas would be much better as your President.

politics, television shows, The West Wing

Hang on a minute..

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

You’re so going to hate me – first politics, now religion. What’s next, sex? ;) A good friend of mine from Melbourne told me about something that happened to him a few days ago –

I had no lunch all day so I went to KFC and I wanted a chicken and bacon burger. I was told “no we do not serve bacon here”. I rang KFC Head office to complain about it and spoke to the local area manager. It turns out that this store caters for the local Muslim community only. When I spoke to this manager during the conversation he actually called me a racist pig.

Ok. At what point do we give up *our* culture for someone else’s? I fear I may perhaps be turning into Pauline Hanson instead of just getting fake checks with her name on them, but am I wrong to say KFC has been serving bacon on their burgers for a heck of a long time and religion should not be a reason to change that? What’s next, Burger King and Mcdonalds? What about Hog’s Breath? Will they have to change their logo and not serve pork anymore?

Am I religionist to say I really don’t like this? I can’t be racist, because Muslim is not a race of people, it’s a religion which covers many races. But first the veil which I personally feel is insulting to women and clearly I am not the only one who feels that (you may not agree, and that’s fine) – I think women should be allowed to wear whatever they want but I do not believe they should be doing it because men cannot control themselves – That’s down to the men. While I don’t like to see crack or bellies or other body parts while walking down the street, that’s up to the women who wear those clothes to decide that they feel comfortable going out like that. But some people say this dress code is not anywhere in the Quran at all and it actually has to do with other things entirely.

While many Muslims call “Hijab”, an Islamic dress code, they completely ignore the fact that, Hijab as a dress code has nothing to do with Islam and nothing to do with QURAN.

God, the Most Merciful, gave us three basic rules for the Dress Code for Women in Islam (Submission):

The BEST garment is the garment of righteousness.
Whenever you dress , cover your bosoms.
Lengthen your garment.

Then the Mufti (a man I had never heard of at all before) goes about saying women who don’t wear the Hajib are uncovered meat –

“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat,” he said.

“The uncovered meat is the problem.

“If she was in her room, in her home, in her hajib, no problem would have occurred.”

The problem apparently was a woman who was raped. Err, that’s not a problem, that’s a *crime*. Women do not ask to be raped, regardless of what they wear. In fact no victim of a crime ever asks for it. If you forget to lock the door of your house when you go out, and people come in and steal everything you own, you are still the victim of a crime because those people *stole* your things. Had no criminals turned up to try the door, your stuff would all still be there. Am I wrong, people?

Not only that, he seems to be saying that women should stay at home, possibly in their room. Well if women are at home in their room, what need do they have for covering up? They should be able to sit there naked if they want to, it’s their room, FFS! You want to tell women what to do and what they should be wearing while they do it every minute of the day? I’d hate to be this man’s wife.

I hate to say it, but when you can’t get bacon on your burger in *Australia* – the land of put anything you like on your burger and call it good – beetroot, egg, bacon, avocado, etc – something is VERY wrong here. And when someone who calls to complain about it is called a racist pig (when this has nothing to do with race at all, it’s about religion) something is VERY wrong here.

At this stage, I agree with Pauline on one thing.. I don’t like it. What do you think?

Muslim, politics, religion

Politics and truth..

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Yeah I know, I said I wouldn’t do it. But this one isn’t so much about politics as a fact of life.

Kim Beazely is currently a shrinking man. According to a news article, he has lost 16kgs since the start of 2006. A lot of people seem to think losing weight will win him the next election. I have some bad news for those people..

Every week at the high school I went to, they had a speaker turn up and address the entire year. That was a fair bunch of people, as I’ve mentioned before, I went to a school with over 500 people in my year level alone. So these were held in the library with people squeezing into every space imaginable.

One day in year 10, a speaker from Flinders University gave a lecture entitled “Why fat people are dirty people”. By that time, I was not really that fat anymore. I had been a size 16 when I started that school in year 8, and those uniforms were literally swimming on me by now, I couldn’t wear them anymore..

I’d got down to a size 12 and realistically I was no bigger than anyone else there in the room, but I was still one of the “fat kids” and when I saw eyes begin to turn in my direction as this cruel man went on and on about fat people being dirty, I knew it would not matter if I was just skin and bones, those kids would always see me as one of the fat kids.

I mean, let us not even get into the fact that the school allowed this lecture to take place, because they should not have. That anyone should have been allowed to stand up there and say that to any group of kids is just wrong. It’s bad enough for a kid with a bit of extra weight in school. The teasing, the bullying, the nastiness, none of it is nice but it *is*. It exists. You can’t stop it. At least, not without automatic weapons, or bamboo canes applied to any kid saying something nasty, and that’s kind of taking it too far the other way.

But after this lecture it got plenty worse, especially for the largest kid in the year, a boy named Andrew who despite his outer shell was an incredible artist. He did some amazing work but nobody ever saw that, and the treatment he got caused him to become an extremely angry individual. Any teasing directed his way would generally be met by swearing and then later, punching.

He spent a lot of time in detention, with me and the deputy principal who died. I wish I could have called him my friend, but he was so busy building walls to stop people from getting close enough to him that they could hurt him, there was no chance of breaking through. And I understood that, because I’d had to do that myself at times.

Fat kids know that the outer shell really isn’t that important, because we know on the inside there’s plenty we have to offer. But in an environment where everyone sees only the outer shell, and makes judgements based only on that, you are never given that opportunity.

So when I left that school at the end of year 11, I was down to a size 10. I didn’t really like myself at that size at all. I’ll be honest with you. When I looked in the mirror all I saw was these enormous cheekbones that models would probably have killed for, but I did not like them. I thought I looked like a skeleton, and quite ill.

But moving to a new school, things changed entirely for me. I was accepted into the “in crowd”, got the lead in the year 12 play, and I was driving by this time so I didn’t have my own car but I had pretty much the use of my parents car, and it was an adult campus so it had a much more mature attitude towards things. I did subjects I really enjoyed instead of what the school forced you into (photography, media studies, catering and cooking, drama, stuff like that) and it was a great year.

None of those kids ever knew that at my old school I was considered one of the fat kids. But when the outer shell looked acceptable to them, I had a much better chance of them seeing what was on the inside, and that had not changed at all – I was still me. I was that same me at the previous school. It’s just nobody gave me a chance there.

I hate to say it, but it’s the truth – Kim Beazely is going to find the Australian public just the same. He can lose all the weight he wants. He can be stick thin, but it will do him no good, and it will not win him any elections. He will *always* be the fat kid, except to those of us who were fat when we went to school, who can see the inner shell. And statistically there’s probably not that many of us out there – there will be more and more as the years go on, but most schools only had a few back when I went to school.

So this does not bode too well for the ALP, because I don’t believe the Australian public will ever elect Kim Beazely, regardless of what weight he is. The damage is already done. I sincerely believe that supporters of the ALP have to realise they are never going to be elected with Kim Beazely at the helm. *and* I know it’s not fair, you know it’s not fair, but it *IS* – and that’s the bottom line. But..

Who do they have, who is stick thin? Who also knows plenty about the environment, a major concern for increasingly more Australians? Who may be bald, but the public don’t hold that against you like they hold once being overweight against you.

Just for God’s sake, don’t let him dance..

About Snoskred, growing up, politics, Who Is Snoskred