This is shaping up to be a very interesting little bunfight.
Also interesting to see will be the Australian Senate vote on the Carbon Tax, that filthy abomination of a plan which oozed its way (just) past the guardians at the gate thanks to a bunch of people who are either incredibly misinformed, incredibly stupid, incredibly greedy, or a combination of the above.
The Opposition will of course block it - fruitlessly, because Labor and the Greens have the numbers to pass it. But the Greens are now of two sorts - the ones we are used to, and an extremely disturbed fringe that got in at the last half-Senate election, with which Bob Brown does not see completely eye to eye. I foresee a slim possibility that they will somehow contrive to wreck it as not being severe or ideologically pure enough for them. And with the Opposition now standing firm, there's no way for Gillard to get it through if the Greens in the Senate go mad and renege.
If they push it through, they will be cutting their own political throats. The damage this will do to the Australian economy and the pain it will put ordinary working men and women through, for no measurable good, will ensure their electoral annihilation. Some of those ordinary working men and women may (probably will) lose their jobs. And unlike, for example, the British in the Blitz - who had the defeat of Germany as the fixed end goal to which they could aspire - these ordinary working men and women have been informed that the measured endpoint for their efforts is sometime in the middle or even the end of this century. By the latter date, most of them and even most of their currently living children will either be elderly or dead.
The British in the Second World War individually knew that there might not be a chance they would see victory, but they knew they would see it if they lived long enough. The Australians who must suffer under the damage that the Carbon Tax must inevitably cause will suffer in the knowledge they will never see the victory, never reap the gains... and never know if the idiots who inflicted this misery on them were right. At the next election, they will rob those idiots of their jobs.
It is said that Kevin Rudd is the only Labor MP who will survive in Queensland if current polling is reflected across the board. Let him - he can sit in opposition till the end of his parliamentary days and preside over the wreckage he unleashed on his country and his party, despised along with his successor (and if rumors of Gillard's dispensability are true, also his predecessor) as the worst Prime Ministers Australia has ever had.
Monday 31 October 2011
Monday 10 October 2011
"Occupy Wall Street"
The whole business just gets more and more bizarre (second link is definitely not suitable for children and the audio is possibly not worksafe).
I suspect the movement (such as it is) is eventually going to collapse under the weight of its own unsustainable idiocy. Sure, the protesters can stay out there for as long as they can feed, clothe and (hopefully) wash themselves; but as the second link shows and Matt Labash's excellent (though tongue-in-cheek) article describes, the thing seems to have become a magnet for all sorts of crackpots demanding, advocating or promising that which is variously illegal, immoral or impossible (or at the very least inadvisable).
In addition, this article at Catallaxy Files has (or had - there seems to be a problem with it as I type this) a picture showing just how many of the protesters were sporting items manufactured by the greedy corporations they claim to loathe. (EDIT: it can also be found here, and at somewhat greater resolution to boot.)
Ultimately there is no single coherent message being sent and no coherent solution being proposed, and - it seems to me at least - nobody in this movement who is either willing or able to propose one. If I were one of the people this movement claims to champion, I wouldn't be wasting my time there - or I might give it the barest whiff of support in between filling out job applications, attending interviews where possible, and beating on every conceivable door that might offer me gainful employment. And as a last resort, if I were young and medically fit and no more desirable option presented itself, I would be approaching the armed services.
I suspect the movement (such as it is) is eventually going to collapse under the weight of its own unsustainable idiocy. Sure, the protesters can stay out there for as long as they can feed, clothe and (hopefully) wash themselves; but as the second link shows and Matt Labash's excellent (though tongue-in-cheek) article describes, the thing seems to have become a magnet for all sorts of crackpots demanding, advocating or promising that which is variously illegal, immoral or impossible (or at the very least inadvisable).
In addition, this article at Catallaxy Files has (or had - there seems to be a problem with it as I type this) a picture showing just how many of the protesters were sporting items manufactured by the greedy corporations they claim to loathe. (EDIT: it can also be found here, and at somewhat greater resolution to boot.)
Ultimately there is no single coherent message being sent and no coherent solution being proposed, and - it seems to me at least - nobody in this movement who is either willing or able to propose one. If I were one of the people this movement claims to champion, I wouldn't be wasting my time there - or I might give it the barest whiff of support in between filling out job applications, attending interviews where possible, and beating on every conceivable door that might offer me gainful employment. And as a last resort, if I were young and medically fit and no more desirable option presented itself, I would be approaching the armed services.
Saturday 8 October 2011
Roundup
News not long in from Menzies House - with only a week to go before the uselessness which is the Carbon Tax vote, the government threw open the gates to public submissions "without terms of reference", which meant that anyone who had any opinion was welcome to contribute.
OR WERE THEY? It seems something's gone seriously wrong with that process, and numerous people not happy with the government's proposal (about 4500 according to the link) had their submissions quietly junked.
The ragers against the machine continue to occupy Wall Street, and show that they are ill-organised and ill-disciplined. Some of them may not even be genuine. Mark Steyn talks here about the hypocrisy of people who scream about "corporate greed" while receiving tributes to Steve Jobs on their iPhones. I recall reading these anti-corporate persons are using the toilets in McDonald's, which is probably a good thing, or the sanitation problem detailed above would be even worse than it is now.
Elsewhere, the Australian Greens continue to show that it isn't just the environment which motivates them. Envirofascists indeed. This sort of conversation should not even be thinkable in any nation which fought in the Second World War, less so one on the winning side. Nor is he the only one to want to call in the authorities whenever a journalist disagrees with him, regarding which behaviour the editorial team at The Australian makes its point succinctly.
Meanwhile, some people seem never to suffer for their gaffes.
And speaking of those who stretch the truth and get it wrong, Jo Nova has a neat little article showing where the whole Climate Change debate is going - and where the money truly is (hint - it's not on the side of the doubters!). And while we're on the topic of money, UK MEP Daniel Hannan continues to beat his head (futilely, I fear) against the brick wall of Europe's financial woes. The sooner the UK walks away from that shemozzle, the better. In fact, the sooner the entirety of Europe walks away from the whole EU shemozzle, the better.
OR WERE THEY? It seems something's gone seriously wrong with that process, and numerous people not happy with the government's proposal (about 4500 according to the link) had their submissions quietly junked.
The ragers against the machine continue to occupy Wall Street, and show that they are ill-organised and ill-disciplined. Some of them may not even be genuine. Mark Steyn talks here about the hypocrisy of people who scream about "corporate greed" while receiving tributes to Steve Jobs on their iPhones. I recall reading these anti-corporate persons are using the toilets in McDonald's, which is probably a good thing, or the sanitation problem detailed above would be even worse than it is now.
Elsewhere, the Australian Greens continue to show that it isn't just the environment which motivates them. Envirofascists indeed. This sort of conversation should not even be thinkable in any nation which fought in the Second World War, less so one on the winning side. Nor is he the only one to want to call in the authorities whenever a journalist disagrees with him, regarding which behaviour the editorial team at The Australian makes its point succinctly.
Meanwhile, some people seem never to suffer for their gaffes.
And speaking of those who stretch the truth and get it wrong, Jo Nova has a neat little article showing where the whole Climate Change debate is going - and where the money truly is (hint - it's not on the side of the doubters!). And while we're on the topic of money, UK MEP Daniel Hannan continues to beat his head (futilely, I fear) against the brick wall of Europe's financial woes. The sooner the UK walks away from that shemozzle, the better. In fact, the sooner the entirety of Europe walks away from the whole EU shemozzle, the better.