A different way to look at things

Recently Injustice Gilganixon moved from the centre of politics, back to the centre-left. This moved occurred before the repulsive behaviour of anarchists at the g20 summit, and was reversed immediately afterwards.

I'm attempting a shift of my own. I don't mean changing my position from what could vaguely be described as Labor Right, I mean ceasing to divide people into such categories to begin with. I think most of the people one would meet on the street only give a crap about politics during an election year, or when something is going on the directly affects them, like Industrial Relations. The rest of the time, they go to work, spend time with their families and generally try to have a nice life.

They cannot be accurately slotted anywhere into the left-right spectrum, and leaving them out altogether makes the whole categorisation process rather pointless.

I am changing to a different spectrum, with smart at one end and dumb at the other.

Even this is flawed as there are people who are simultaneously capable of staggering genius and shocking stupidity. Ideas and policies, rather than people, tend to fit in with this spectrum better.

From the left:

Devotion to public education and hospitals is smart. A sick, slack jawed population is of little use for any purpose.

Multiculturalism is dumb, but first a disclaimer:

Accepting migrants from all corners of the globe is great. It is not multiculturalism. Having an Indian restaurant across the road from a Chinese resturant in the outer suburbs is awesome. It is not multiculturalism. Having my corner store run by Russians, who took over from Chinese, who took over from Germans is magnificent. They were all hard working, decent people. It is not multiculturalism. Having Chinese New Year festivals, Greeks diving into the ocean to recover a crucifix and Germans getting tore up in the parklands makes our community a more interesting place. It is not multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism means allowing people in your society to follow mutually exclusive sets of values and principles, side by side. In practice, it requires the country to have no culture of its own, and to be no greater than the sum of its parts. Any national culture that develops (against all odds) must be subservient to any new arrivals. We have socially progressive people who lose their shit over Christmas decorations in shopping centres. They say it is culturally insensitive.

Leaders of non Christian groups- to their credit- say that it doesn't bother them. I appreciate that but it really doesn't matter, we don't just turf our own traditions to satisfy new people. Any disagreement they might have should be considered unfortunate, but ultimately immaterial.

Enough about multiculturalism and the Left

From the Right.

I like very much that the budget is in surplus. I am impressed that the Commonwealth Government has finally dragged itself out of debt. Prudent economic management is smart because it leaves us with enough cash to satisfy our needs, and minimises our exposure to risk. It also puts us in a good position to borrow if we really have to (Think long term infrastructure loans, rather than short term overdrafts to fund Centrelink.)

Not investing enough in Higher Education, research and development and trade skills is dumb. This is not Right generally, just Howard Government specifically. They're not encouraging Australia to be intelligent or innovative. For example, nobody overseas is saying

"Hey do you know how Australia generates power? They burn heaps of coal, how cool is that? How did they ever think of that?. That's just awesome." or

"Do you know how they earn foreign exchange? They pull shit out of the ground and export it, losing it forever, they rip up old growth forest and sell it to Japanese paper mills. God damn it must have taken a genius to think of that. It must be all the reality TV they watch."

I like to talk to intelligent people of all kinds, I don't like to encourage others to be fools, like the Labor's anti GST campaign did, or Howard's interest rates scare in 2004.

Stupidity is the new enemy, and it must be fought on all fronts.

Bling.

I done gots me a new kind of time keeping device.

As a reward for finishing my degrees, my folks got me an Omega Seamaster. It is 22 years old and was bought for far below replacement cost, its replacement cost being enough to feed a lot of people for a long time.

It doesn't really bling very much though, being understated, subtle and elegant. With a stainless steel case and black leather band it looks a bit like a Samsonite briefcase.

It is otherwise very similar to the one my dad bought for half price in the mid '80s when a container load of them was black-balled by customs in Argentina and sent to Australia to be dumped for salvage price.

The other benefits of finshing uni are starting to sink in. Dreams I had of livin' large only a few years ago are a reality now. My employment with The Man makes a serious fucken career much less hypothetical than it used to be. I look at the employment section of the Financial Review with a lot less longing and a lot more "Damn, I'll be having that within the next ten or so"

I'm preparing a list of things I don't give two shits about anymore

1) Going to a Northern suburbs public school that produces so few uni students that Adelaide Uni will give any of us 8 points on top of our TER for affirmative action.

2) Having such a pitiful TER that the affirmative action still wouldn't have been enough to get into AU

3) Taking six years to finish a four year degree, partly because of involvement in some kind of Corporation

4) Everything else that happened in this Corporation

5) Suffering repeated age discrimination when looking for casual employment (Getting a real job often has that kind of cleansing effect)

6) Leaving my home ridiculously early to attend exams at Wayville, having arrived home ridiculously late from those exams the previous evening.

7) All other 45 minute bus trips, performed twice daily.

8) All other things that have failed to stop me



Mistake T. Schrempp

Degree in Land Raping
Degree in Finding Loopholes in Business Law

Legacy member of the commercial class.

Changes to uni support

I have a suggestion that would change the higher education system.

It would increase the status of university students in the eyes of the public and it would improve the lives of students who are serious about their degrees. It is a plan to give Commonwealth support to students based on performance.

Higher education is something well worth funding with tax payers’ money. There is no better investment than to help somebody become a professional at something that benefits our economy or society. The investment is repaid in monetary terms by big tax bills. Many of us will end up paying the top marginal rate and therefore be members of the top 25% of income earners that finance 65% of the public spending. Those that do not will contribute in other ways, by being teachers, social workers and nurses. Even the students whose degrees don’t relate to any specific occupation will learn how to research and critique ideas and will learn the terms of civilised debate.

Despite the clear benefits of having a society full of highly educated people, university students are perceived by the community to be one small step above heroin addicts- and that’s only on the days when a distinction can be made.

Part of this is due to bad press that we get whenever a student in a white jumpsuit smashes up a police van, or when some lunatic in a Corolla mows down a fence at a detention centre.

Understandably, people who pay tax (like working families on ultra tight budgets) do not like to see their cash being spent subsidising this shit. Accordingly, whenever a politician wants to come along and cut money out of higher education, he is greeted largely by either indifference or praise.

This makes life harder for students who put the work in, only to be sneered at by proles who lump them in with anarchist retards. Every time this motivates them to bugger off overseas, Australia is poorer by one smart person.

Performance based support would turn this around. The students who make a genuine effort and achieve results would be rewarded. Those who choose university as a “Lifestyle” and could not be bothered turning up to class or doing assignments would get nothing.

Hey presto- everybody who thinks smashing the state is more important than coming to class is cut off. Any Young Liberals who get too carried away with their meetings and figure their pappys are going to set them up anyway would suffer a similar fate.

Everybody has freedom of political opinion and expression, but that doesn’t mean the community should have to subsidise it.

There are two basic ways that performance related support could be administered

Through a Centrelink allowance that is universally paid above a P2 Grade Point Average, but falls to zero below this. This would be in addition to current entitlements for those with P2 or above GPA but students with a fail average would lose all education related Centrelink entitlements

and/or:

Each subject would be charged in arrears at

- The full fee paying rate for a failed subject
- The current Commonwealth supported rate for a P2 score
- Half the Commonwealth rate for a credit score
- A quarter of this rate for a distinction or high distinction

The change is designed to make people on a P2 average no worse off than before. A P2 average is deliberately chosen as a soft target for anybody who puts at least a minimal effort into all assessment pieces. Allowances would need to be made for people whose poor performance was a result of illness or family trouble. Those who study part time due to other commitments would be supported in proportion to their study load and performance.

The objective of the change is not to make life difficult for people who work hard, but struggle.

The objective is to stop paying for people who don’t give a damn about studying, and to start rewarding people who do.

If people want to do good in society, that is commendable. They should pick a degree that would get them in a position to do this and study like hell. This change should only encourage them to keep their mind on the job.

Spooking horses is easy. Doing something useful is hard.

OK the London bombing didn't stop G8 last year, so I'm not sure that some assaulted horses and broken police windows will give the G20 much trouble.

I don't think a lot of the people who went there expected they would really stop the G20 either. Many of them probably didn't really even know what the hell it was, beyond what they'd heard from the fetid cake-holes of their anarchist masters. The G20 was set up in the wake of the asian crisis to be a more inclusive and representative collection of the world's finance ministers. As well as the obvious players, (The EU only counts for 1 of 20) there is India, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa.

Stopg20.org talks about India's GDP per capita being $700 odd when America's is $40,000 odd. Fair enough, and I think the Indian representative might have something to say about that this weekend because INDIA IS A PLAYER, NIMROD!

If something big is going to be done about global poverty, the solution is likely to be talked about here.

I think this is immaterial to a lot of protestors. For them, protesting is as much a social activity as it is anything else, it's like going to the cricket.

There are people who will say that at least they're doing something about poverty. Wrong. Something would be what's happening inside the G20, or on aid projects. Something is not some sanctimonious, marxist half wit causing a McDonald's to be shut down on McHappy day near the epicentre of the protest.

I've made a few posts about this sort of shit on this blog, so there's little point in repeating the stuff. "People who actually do good are rarely referred to as do-gooders" from January 2005 remains accurate.

I will add this. Worldvision think the G20 will be productive. These are people who, I'm told not only know and care a bit about poverty and equality, but from time to time actually do something about it.

Their approval says all about the the validity of the G20 that really needs to be said.

A Rabbit

John Kerry has either done something very stupid, or something totally brilliant.

His remarks about a lack of education and forward vision leading to invading Iraq were directed at Bush, not America's men and women in uniform.

Even if John Kerry believed military personnel to be rubes (As some progressives no doubt do) he would not be stupid enough to say so in public.

It's also hard to imagine that he can fuck up the delivery of a fairly simple joke about Bush. (Bush not being a particularly difficult guy to take the piss out of).

So what's happened?

Republicans, who have been infamous for their smear are now focusing it on some guy who isn't even running for congress.

Look at it this way. They're going to smear Democrats anyway. Most of the smear will be lies, as the Swift Boat for Truth thing was in 2004- but they're going run a nasty, oversimplified disgrace of a smear campaign anyway, so why not offer up some rabbit for them to chase?

Hillary gets to go on TV and say how much she supports the troops, every other Democrat gets a chance to distance themselves from this spent presidential candidate. Everybody's happy.

If he did this on purpose he's a fucking. genius