Lies

The government that was elected on a platform of lower taxes has brought us today...
Increased taxes, again. Check it out at your local petrol pump.
But wait, there's more!!!
The government that campaigned as being fiscally knowledgable and competent plans to dedicate the tax increase to projects that provide no return on the investment. In fact, for every dollar invested they expect a return of 20c to 80c.

Violent Femmes - The Blind Leading the Naked, 1986

And She Was

Australia has a new Prime Minister, or, at least, tomorrow Australia will have a new Prime Minister.
It's a measure of how immature Australia still is (and we are hardly any better) to see how poorly Julia Gillard was treated as Prime Minister.  I came across this website (Anne Summers), with an analysis of just how bad things really were.  Here's a link straight to the youtube video.

NOTE - Not Suitable For Work, even remotely.

Tackling sexism seems to be one of the really notable things Julia Gillard did as PM.  Her demolition of Tony Abbott last year was a sight to behold, and made me wish we had politicians of her calibre here.

It's a poor reflection on NZ, as a nation, that two of our best political leaders have been Australian.  All we get served is the vanilla custard leaders of the two big parties, with the main difference is that Labour's is flavourless and watered down, whereas National's has sat in the hot sun for too many days and is rotten.

So, tonight it is farewell to a ground-breaking leader, in some pretty dire and undeserved circumstances.  And unfortunately Labor is still toast, of the "golden brown" variety.

Talking Heads - Little Creatures, 1985.

One Eye Opened

I've been polled twice in the last month.  Once by Ipsos, and the other time by Roy Morgan.
From experience I know that Roy Morgan do call mobile phone numbers.

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3Ds - Hellzapoppin, 1992.

Immigrant Song

Why are we importing people when unemployment is so high?  Because Christchurch needs to be rebuilt?  Because we don't have the skills that the people we are importing have?  Why not?  We've failed to prepare for the future.  This failure doesn't just do the untrained and unemployed a disservice, it also does the disservice to the people who need their city rebuilt.
How has the government supported people to get into training, and develop their skills over the last few years?  Patchily, at best.

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III, 1970

Nausea

Once upon a time my grandparents paid for a dam to be built.  When they died, they gave the dam to my parents.  And when they died, they gave the dam to me.  The dam is willed to my children when I die.  Or it would be, but the government confiscated half of it, and sold the half they confiscated to their mates.  They told me I should be happy with the half I still have, lest they confiscate that and sell it, too.  And that in exchange, they would use the cash they received to purchase things that governments tend to purchase anyway.  Seems like a bit of a con to me.  However, that's not my gripe.

My grandparents paid for the dam.  When my parents inherited it, it had been paid off.  Sure, it cost a bit to run, things like oil for the moving bits, de-silting the dam, overhauling the generators every decade or so, replacing worn turbines, that kind of thing.  But overall it was pretty cheap.

Then along comes a peacock called Brent Layton, a bloke with a vested interest if ever I saw one, who puts up this hypothetical argument.  Essentially what he's saying is that I should pay the operational cost and the cost of the dam as if it were new.

Well, I sure as hell don't do that with my car.  It's well paid off and all I pay for is oil, petrol and tyres.

So why should I do it for my dam?  No abstract answers accepted.

Therapy? - Nurse, 1992

Damn Shame

There's plenty of others talking about Aaron Gilmore and I'm going to add my bit.

A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude - Oscar Wilde

Being rude to bar staff, waiters and shop assistants is not OK.  Aaron Gilmore, who has never been in the limelight for good reasons, has destroyed his career as an MP.  This would be a reason for celebrating if I was sure that there were not a hundred others waiting to replace him.

I'd like to see him stay in parliament, as a National MP, until the next election.  The more damaged goods, like John Banks, that the government collects on the way to the next election, the better.

At a fundamental level it is clear enough what he has done wrong.  But there are other things.  He has shown the born-to-rule tory attitude that pervades National at present.  The PM and his senior ministers have done an excellent job of hiding it (as opposed to destroying it) and they will be mightily upset that the most junior of their team, their most marginal MP, has undone their work.

Verlaines - Some Disenchanted Evening, 1990

Milkshake

Recently it occurred to me that dumb advertising bugs me.
I bought my first bottle of milk in Fonterra, the dairy farmers' collective, have been plugging recently. It was more expensive than before; I should have expected that.
The advertisement is dumb. Transparent cows, hollow and half filled with milk, tryind desparately to avoid sunlight. For goodness sake, there is so much wrong with this.
Cows are made of meat and bone and sinew and skin. They are not hollow.  Anthropomorphising them dissociates the link between cows and cheap beef mince.
Cows hold about twenty litres of milk in their udders before it becomes very painful. They do not hold the hundred or more  litres and it does not slosh around theiir bodies
Cows seek shade for their own comfort, even though we breed them with black hides and cut down trees to make the grass grow better. They don't seek shade so their milk tastes better to us.
Cows lactate for the benefit of their offspring, not for humans. It is a curiosity of nature that we drink the milk of other species.
Once it gets to our houses, milk spends most of its time in the fridge. Once the door of the fridge is shut it is totally dark on the inside. Whether the milk bottle is opaque or not becomes irrelevant.

Triple layer light-proof milk bottles. Pointless technology introduced solely for the purpose of justifying price increases.


Kelis - Tasty, 2003