ramblings of a wandering nerdan aimless amble on a winding road

I must admit, as poor as a lot of TheAge journalism now is, their opinion section is still interesting and often highly amusing. I particularly enjoy the guest writers.

Here is some of what John Hewson wrote today;

Liberal or Labor – has had you as unelectable. This should be enough to convince you but, if not, then you should have an honest look at yourself. You are bone lazy. Just count your output – press releases/conferences, speeches, electoral visits and other examples of your work ethic or “availability” – compared with, say, Paul Keating when he was treasurer.

I also doubt you have the skills, experience or self-confidence to have accepted the obvious job after losing the last election, namely shadow treasurer. You’d be lost without Treasury. You may have delivered 11 budgets but ask yourself honestly how many of them were actually yours, rather than Treasury’s. I am told Treasury is now drawing a sharp contrast between your little interest and involvement and that of Wayne Swan.

He was of course talking about Peter Costello.

I love it. The Great Gutless Costello. Treasurer or homework thief? I’ll leave you with this;

You didn’t have the balls to seize the moment then, leaving the leadership by default to John Howard. And you haven’t had the balls, or the numbers, since.

Wonder what shade of red he’s turning.

Well nothing earth shattering about this, but I’m HOT! Seriously HOT!

It was a really really really slow start to summer but it is here now, and fighting back big time. There’s been heaps in the news and blah blah blah not much you can do about it.

With trains canceled at an incredible rate I’ve taken to the road and am carpooling with a friend. On the way in this morning, I heard our brilliant Premier suggest that if we didn’t have to, don’t go to work today. I found this strange for two reasons.

Firstly, if I didn’t have to go to work, I can promise you I wouldn’t be. I don’t go there for fun, I go there to get paid. I don’t need him telling me that;

But more interestingly, the reason for staying at home I can only imagine is because of the trains and the fact that they don’t really work in the heat (or the wet for the matter). But seriously stay at home? I’m not sure the power companies would be all that keen on this suggestion. If you stay at home, you turn your air-conditioning on. And who’d have thought. Now we don’t have enough power.

I am an ALP man and I’m not ashamed to admit that, but honestly, is Brumby for real? Is he really the idiot we want running our state? What about his useless transport minister. Absolutely incompetent. And actually trying to sell a $32billion plan to improve transport in Victoria is a joke. How in gods name would we ever find a Government capable of delivering that. If one did exist (and I’m not sure it does) I’d wager we wouldn’t find that government in Victoria!

OK apparently the ‘read more’ link was annoying so I’ve removed it. Back to full sized posts.

On another note, two interesting Apple articles in two days. Day one. Day two.

Now more interesting than Apple is Obama. Is he going to be everything we want him to be? We’ll have to wait and see. Lets hope the suspense doesn’t kill us.

As Bush exited, there were a couple of interesting articles about him. Differing views – Worst president ever. Not the worst president ever. From the ‘not the worst’ article was…

THE presentation of a US Presidential Medal of Freedom today to former PM John Howard is yet another indication Iraq is at last moving in the right direction.

Interesting. I would have thought the giving of the ‘medal of freedom’ was yet another indication of how far Howard has his head stuck up Bushs’ arse, but anyway.

They’re both worth a read.

While I haven’t known many US presidents, and certainly don’t know enough about US history to state a position, I can confidently say this. I hope George W Bush IS the WORST president in my lifetime. And in the lifetime of my kids and their kids come to think of it.

I’ve been fascinated by news and current events/politics for a long time. Dinner time as a child was ALWAYS spent in front of the news. Dad was (actually still is) addicted to the SBS World News, ABC News double feature every night and now, as an adult, I read the paper any way I can, whether it be hard copy, on the Blackberry on the way into work, or on the net. It’s usually the first thing I do in the morning. 

It’s probably boring but if I was addicted to anything, it’d probably be that. 

I remember my school teacher saying ‘Remember this day, you’ll be able to tell your kids you were watching it’ when talking about the Berlin War being pulled down. I remember being in Melbourne on holidays with my parents and watching their worried faces as the first Gulf war started. I remember well the call I got from a friend at midnight the night the twin towers came down, as it happened. I was up all night that night glued to the TV. 

There have been so many events that have happened and thousands more still to come in my lifetime that will no doubt have me glued to whatever medium I’m using at the time. It would be a great industry to work in, irrespective of the left wing/right wing stations and arguments of bias and journalists selling out. At the end of the day, there would be so many reasons to get up in the morning. Imagine being the first to know, getting the information straight off the wire.

But I digress, this is not where this was headed.

As I mentioned above, my fascination is only escalating, and politics, both global and local, is a developing passion. I found this article yesterday and, when you see the words nurses and prostitutes in the same headline, well you just have to read.

So what the hell is this all about? Reading about the problems nurses face, and thinking about the $38billion dollars Brumby has promised to spend in Victoria on transport, putting roads in places that annoy some groups and please others, the balancing act of trying to keep the automotive industry afloat both here and in the US, the constant struggle Governments face winning or keeping world class events like the F1 GP, the FIFA World Cup and many others, mining uranium, dumping uranium, spending money on education, solving the problem with Melbourne’s CBD drinking problems the list just goes on and on and on. 

It dawned on me. The planet is just one gigantic game of Sim City!

I’m quick to criticize, and to be honest Bush and Howard are practically criminals, but some of the decisions they’ve made have probably been hard for them, and obviously hard (or harder) for those most affected. But seriously, as a politician (major decision maker) how the hell do you make them? You’re guaranteed to annoy a large percentage of the population because it’s basically impossible to please everyone. 

Of course, Sim City never had war. (Only alien invasions!)

And when you stuffed something up and annoyed your citizens, you could always start over.