Shooting The Messenger Involves Shooting
I don't have much to say about the gender-politic cries of misogyny pertaining to the mentally ill Elliot Rodgers who went on a spree-killing, and has made the headlines for the usual wrong reasons. I'm always bemused-but-incensed by the people who want to point fingers at computer games or books or music or films or TV shows for the reason a crazy person decides to go and shoot people. It's like all the boring people on the planet want to make the planet boring down to their level of boring-ness when in fact life is pretty complicated and interesting when it involves the arts.
I collect media. I'm not a manic collector, but accrue them out of love, labour and legacy; and I have done so for decades with enduring respect and joy. I haven't gone on a spree killing rampage at all. I do have my dark moods, and some pretty fucked up depressive thoughts that fucked up depressives get when the black dog comes barking. The crucial thing might not be the media I own so much as the fact that I don't have guns. The most evil movies I own, the most radically obnoxious sounds I own, the most nasty books I own have combined to make me kill zero people. And this is true of 999 out of 1000 people. It might even be 999,999 out of 1,000,000. People who own media products, does not correlate with spree kills anywhere near as much as people who own guns.
People who go on a spree kill might have all kinds of media experiences but it's not what really enables them to do it. In the case of Americans going on a spree kill, we can safely say it's the lax gun laws - and how could it be anything else, really. He had a gun in his hand. Not a DVD of Season 2 of 'Dexter'. If the 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' argument holds any water, then surely nobody ever died from a fatal playing of 'Cop Killer'.
I understand the impulse to blame something that seems like it's related in some way, but the focus people give on media products after spree killings is ridiculous. Wade Frankum who went on the Strathfield massacre possessed both 'American Psycho' and 'Crime and Punishment'. After the incident the media went to town on his possession of 'American Psycho' demanding it be banned - most likely because they couldn't realistically mount any argument to ban a literary classic like 'Crime and Punishment'. It's amazing that the very same people say they can't imagine what goes through the minds of spree killers. This lack of imagination might be alleviated if they bothered to read 'American Psycho' and 'Crime and Punishment', watched a season of 'Dexter' and played a bit of 'Grand Theft Auto'. Contrary to this banal, asinine media construction, quality media products have gone a considerable way as to enlighten us exactly how these things go.
Seriously, it's time America looked at gun law reforms.
That's Not Misogyny, That's Just Insanity
Oh why the heck not. I do have this much to say.
The other word that's getting bandied about in the wake of the Elliot Rodger shooting is 'misogyny'. It's true, he hated women by the looks of his 'manifesto'. He hated women for being women, so he probably was a misogynist. But once again there are plenty of people who go about their daily lives and don't necessarily go spree killing. Seeing that we are using the word that got so famously re-defined by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, it has to be said that even Tony Abbott - who is the walking-and-talking billboard example of a misogynist - most likely won't go on a killing spree. I don't know; it's just a hunch. You can come shoot me if it proves to be wrong.
As with the media products that get faulted so much, I would have to say the misogyny of the man had less to do with the killings than the readily available guns. Once again, it seems unlikely that he killed the 2 women out of his 6 victims with the lustful hatred for women, he used his weapons instead.
If this seems really obtuse, I should direct you to this well argued piece by Helen Razer.
A Gen-X View of the Universe.
"The Issue Isn't Pussy, It's Monkey" - from The Right Stuff
Film, Cinema, Movies, TV, Music, Rock
2014/05/30
2014/05/25
'47 Ronin'
As You've Never Experienced Before
Every few years the Japanese film industry fishes up a new rendition of the Forty-seven Ronin story. They do it because it sells. The most performed Kabuki is 'Chuhshungura', based on the Forty-seen Ronin and their revenge upon Kohzukenosuke Kira. I think I've watched upwards of 5 iterations of this story across movies TV series and even listened to a radio play. I may have even played a role on a school play where I was one of the guys holding back Lord Asano who tried to cut down the insolent Kira in the The Great Corridor of Pines of Edo Castle.
So not only is this story steeped in history, the fictional representation is steeped in its own history. Because we know the facts so well, we know who the 47 were, how they came to be the members of the revenge party, what they said when they committed ritual harakiri and where they are buried. I've even made my little pilgrimage to Sengakuji where their tombstones line up, and there's even a museum there of the equipment they used on the night of the revenge.
This movie allegedly draws inspiration from those events, but you sure coulda' fooled me!
What's Good About It
Maybe it' a good thing that even a garbled version of this story gets out to the west. Rinko Kikuchi makes for a very fetching dragon.
The usual gripes aside, it's nice to see that the cast of Japanese people are played by Japanese people. Even with the heavy accents, at least they get the mannerisms and body language and manners right. This is in stark contrast to 'Memoirs of a Geisha' which had all the production design down but the main actors were natively Chinese, and so there was a massive dissonance with the body language and mannerism that made it really hard to watch. This film is the opposite. Surrounding the actors being convincingly Japanese is a production designed sword-and-sorcery Japan that is completely bizzarro-world. Forget Keanu Reeves and his character, the 'Japan' in this film is completely out of this world.
What's Bad About It
It's pretty mind-warping, so it took about 20minutes for me to get used to the mimesis and vernacular of this film. The obvious difficulty of inserting a character Keanu Reeves can play into the ranks of the 47 presents the script with an inordinate amount of credibility issues. Call it the dances-with-wolves problem where you can't sell a story about an exotic culture unless the main character is white dude and he's really good at what the other non-white dudes do because he's either super-talented or he's the chosen one.
Yeah, I know it's a marketing problem.
Yeah, if people really wanted to know the original story they can watch one of the many historically accurate renditions with subtitles, straight from Japan. This is meant to be a sword-and-sorcery, dungeons-and-dragons sort of take on the story.
But it's just *bad* BAD bad. B-a-a-a-a-a-ad to the bone.
What's Interesting About It
It's amazing what you can do if you don't give two hoots about historic or geographical or cultural accuracy. Amazing!
It gives me immense insight into how Greeks must feel when they watch 'Clash of the Titans', 'Wrath of the Titans', 'Troy'; or how Jewish people might feel when a hyper-Nordic Jesus goes around doing his Jesus thing in your average Hollywood film. There's odd, there's wrong, and then there's Hollywood, which is odd and wrong in a league of its own.
Yeah, I knew I'd feel that going in, but still, it never hurts to spell out the things that bother you, and what exactly this all means.
Playing Oishi
In the tradition of Kabuki, the guy who plays Yoshio Kuranosuke Oishi has got the leading role. It's the role where the star gets to do his thing; it's the guy audiences have always flocked to see. So casting Hiroyuki Sanada for Oishi is actually quite classy. Of course, the Oishi in this film is given to rigid formulaic observances, indecision and prevarication, doubts and despair, living down to the stereotypes of a dutiful samurai held by Hollywood, and necessarily possesses an irrational faith in Keanu Reeves as if he knows that Keanu Reeves must be the chosen one to lead his sad lot to glory. Hamlet never suffers this badly.
This is indeed a different Oishi to the one we've come to love. The traditional Oishi is wise, patient, subtle, clever with the subterfuge, formidable with his resolve, never lost faith in his mission, carefully figured out who amongst the 200 or so Ronin from Ako, actually had the fortitude to go through with the deed and was meticulous in his planning. Instead, this Oishi is bumbling from moment to moment, making up his plans as he goes along, very much a victim of circumstance and hardly a navigator of his destiny.
It did remind me of the line, "our deeds will echo through time" from 'Gladiator'. It's true enough for Oishi and his cohorts - but sometimes the echo chamber is broken and the signal you get is really distorted. I wondered how Sanada kept a straight face through the entire venture (ordeal?). I guess it's what you call professionalism. Sanada is an interesting actor. He's invoking the name of Yukimura Sanada with his stage name.
What Are They Wearing?
I know I'm repeating myself but... what the hell was the wardrobe design doing in this film?
Lost in Asia
Keanu Reeves is in a strange career limbo where he is marketed heavily to Asia than he is back in the west. it is as if the Matrix persona of Neo has propelled him into a latter day Chuck Norris who may one day recover his standing in the west. He was in 'The Man of Taichi' playing a martial arts nut and evil head honcho in his directorial debut. Combined with this fiasco of a film, he seems he's totally on the outer. The post-Matrix years have not been great for Keanu. I liked his crooked cop in 'Street Kings' and his turn in 'Constantine' was sort of interesting but not quite. But then it's a rare script that can turn his wooden brand of acting into a credible characteriation. He may be lost in Asia for many more years to come. Or maybe this movie has completely sunk him as an action lead actor who can carry a film. He really should consider appearing in a Woody Allen movie.
Every few years the Japanese film industry fishes up a new rendition of the Forty-seven Ronin story. They do it because it sells. The most performed Kabuki is 'Chuhshungura', based on the Forty-seen Ronin and their revenge upon Kohzukenosuke Kira. I think I've watched upwards of 5 iterations of this story across movies TV series and even listened to a radio play. I may have even played a role on a school play where I was one of the guys holding back Lord Asano who tried to cut down the insolent Kira in the The Great Corridor of Pines of Edo Castle.
So not only is this story steeped in history, the fictional representation is steeped in its own history. Because we know the facts so well, we know who the 47 were, how they came to be the members of the revenge party, what they said when they committed ritual harakiri and where they are buried. I've even made my little pilgrimage to Sengakuji where their tombstones line up, and there's even a museum there of the equipment they used on the night of the revenge.
This movie allegedly draws inspiration from those events, but you sure coulda' fooled me!
What's Good About It
Maybe it' a good thing that even a garbled version of this story gets out to the west. Rinko Kikuchi makes for a very fetching dragon.
The usual gripes aside, it's nice to see that the cast of Japanese people are played by Japanese people. Even with the heavy accents, at least they get the mannerisms and body language and manners right. This is in stark contrast to 'Memoirs of a Geisha' which had all the production design down but the main actors were natively Chinese, and so there was a massive dissonance with the body language and mannerism that made it really hard to watch. This film is the opposite. Surrounding the actors being convincingly Japanese is a production designed sword-and-sorcery Japan that is completely bizzarro-world. Forget Keanu Reeves and his character, the 'Japan' in this film is completely out of this world.
What's Bad About It
It's pretty mind-warping, so it took about 20minutes for me to get used to the mimesis and vernacular of this film. The obvious difficulty of inserting a character Keanu Reeves can play into the ranks of the 47 presents the script with an inordinate amount of credibility issues. Call it the dances-with-wolves problem where you can't sell a story about an exotic culture unless the main character is white dude and he's really good at what the other non-white dudes do because he's either super-talented or he's the chosen one.
Yeah, I know it's a marketing problem.
Yeah, if people really wanted to know the original story they can watch one of the many historically accurate renditions with subtitles, straight from Japan. This is meant to be a sword-and-sorcery, dungeons-and-dragons sort of take on the story.
But it's just *bad* BAD bad. B-a-a-a-a-a-ad to the bone.
What's Interesting About It
It's amazing what you can do if you don't give two hoots about historic or geographical or cultural accuracy. Amazing!
It gives me immense insight into how Greeks must feel when they watch 'Clash of the Titans', 'Wrath of the Titans', 'Troy'; or how Jewish people might feel when a hyper-Nordic Jesus goes around doing his Jesus thing in your average Hollywood film. There's odd, there's wrong, and then there's Hollywood, which is odd and wrong in a league of its own.
Yeah, I knew I'd feel that going in, but still, it never hurts to spell out the things that bother you, and what exactly this all means.
Playing Oishi
In the tradition of Kabuki, the guy who plays Yoshio Kuranosuke Oishi has got the leading role. It's the role where the star gets to do his thing; it's the guy audiences have always flocked to see. So casting Hiroyuki Sanada for Oishi is actually quite classy. Of course, the Oishi in this film is given to rigid formulaic observances, indecision and prevarication, doubts and despair, living down to the stereotypes of a dutiful samurai held by Hollywood, and necessarily possesses an irrational faith in Keanu Reeves as if he knows that Keanu Reeves must be the chosen one to lead his sad lot to glory. Hamlet never suffers this badly.
This is indeed a different Oishi to the one we've come to love. The traditional Oishi is wise, patient, subtle, clever with the subterfuge, formidable with his resolve, never lost faith in his mission, carefully figured out who amongst the 200 or so Ronin from Ako, actually had the fortitude to go through with the deed and was meticulous in his planning. Instead, this Oishi is bumbling from moment to moment, making up his plans as he goes along, very much a victim of circumstance and hardly a navigator of his destiny.
It did remind me of the line, "our deeds will echo through time" from 'Gladiator'. It's true enough for Oishi and his cohorts - but sometimes the echo chamber is broken and the signal you get is really distorted. I wondered how Sanada kept a straight face through the entire venture (ordeal?). I guess it's what you call professionalism. Sanada is an interesting actor. He's invoking the name of Yukimura Sanada with his stage name.
What Are They Wearing?
I know I'm repeating myself but... what the hell was the wardrobe design doing in this film?
Lost in Asia
Keanu Reeves is in a strange career limbo where he is marketed heavily to Asia than he is back in the west. it is as if the Matrix persona of Neo has propelled him into a latter day Chuck Norris who may one day recover his standing in the west. He was in 'The Man of Taichi' playing a martial arts nut and evil head honcho in his directorial debut. Combined with this fiasco of a film, he seems he's totally on the outer. The post-Matrix years have not been great for Keanu. I liked his crooked cop in 'Street Kings' and his turn in 'Constantine' was sort of interesting but not quite. But then it's a rare script that can turn his wooden brand of acting into a credible characteriation. He may be lost in Asia for many more years to come. Or maybe this movie has completely sunk him as an action lead actor who can carry a film. He really should consider appearing in a Woody Allen movie.
There's Even More Not To Like
Future Brain Drain
Last night I went out to dinner with Walk-off HBP and his family and eventually the conversation turned to the politics of this budget. His daughter's finishing up high school this year, so tertiary education and its cost became a hot topic for conversation. Fortunately (and I use this word loosely), Mrs. HBP is from Denmark, so up for consideration was the possibility that the younger HBP might be better off claiming her heritage and citizenship, and heading to Denmark where tertiary education is free. It occurred to me that there might be a lot of this sort of thing going on.
The logical ramification is that Australia might be about to witness great brain drain in the not too distant future, as well as an acceleration of the aging population issues. Consider for the moment the number of people who could devise a way back to the countries of their heritage to get a less expensive tertiary education. Places like Ireland and Scandinavian countries are not the only places that offer up these option. Then think of the likelihoods they meet their spouses and setup families elsewhere on the planet and not Australia. It's like Australia is willing to give up its younger, smarter population when in fact they're the people that are going to be needed to support the aging baby Boomers and eventually Gen-X.
In the mean time our universities will be filled with stupid rich kids who will be there only because they can afford to be there, so this notion of more competitive universities seems like a pipedream on the part of the Coalition. Walk-off HBP thinks it's more of a smokescreen to entrench privilege in such a way that only the Liberal voting types get to go to University.
I've already covered the problems of carrying a 100k student debt into a professional career - you're worse off than not going to university and getting a tradie's job. We may actually be looking at a future where the ranks of varsity graduate professionals will be much lower in quality than today. I don't know about you, but I don't think these rich types are going to enjoy going to doctors and lawyers pulled from the third best minds of their generation.
Nepotism As A Way Of Life
One of Tony Abbott's daughters got a 60k scholarship. The people who gave her the scholarship claimed it was purely on merit. Another one of Tony Abbott's daughters has a plum job working fro DFAT in Geneva. A lot of people have pointed out how unqualified she is for the job, but no, her boss is an old Liberal Party member who has told us that Tony Abbott's daughter got the jobon her own merits.
In each instance the insistence on the merits of Abbott's brood seems to stretch the definition of the word 'merit'. It' a really bad look when your government is about to make tertiary education more expensive to then have a daughter get a freebie. It's a really bad look to have your daughter get a plum job in DFAT over other genuine candidates of actual merit, when your government is about to cut off 16,000 public sector jobs. Both instances speak volumes to the absence of character in his daughters, which, by extension reflect badly on the parents, who in this instance happens to be the Prime Minister. These are big favours being handed to his family.
When you consider that there is a Royal Commission into Julia Gillard's conduct as an IR lawyer and claims of $7000 for renovations of her house coming from a union slush fund; and how Abbott himself hounded Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper relentlessly through digging up dirt; not to mention the fact that all it took was for a $3000 bottle of Grange Hermitage to bring down Barry O'Farrell, it seems abundantly obvious that Tony Abbott should quit. $60,000 worth of scholarship dollars and a plum job at DFAT seems far in excess of what normal people would consider a favour for a mate.
Really, Tony Abbott should quit on this alone.
But he won't quit. Which means he's an unabashed crook. now he's saying he wants family kept out of it. I think it's a bit much that a man who would go after Julia Gillard with a Royal Commission, and hounded Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper in the manner that he did, to want his family kept out of it by the media.
No, no, no Mr. Abbott, it's much too late for that. You lowered the bar forcefully - you can try doing your limbo dance under it.
Last night I went out to dinner with Walk-off HBP and his family and eventually the conversation turned to the politics of this budget. His daughter's finishing up high school this year, so tertiary education and its cost became a hot topic for conversation. Fortunately (and I use this word loosely), Mrs. HBP is from Denmark, so up for consideration was the possibility that the younger HBP might be better off claiming her heritage and citizenship, and heading to Denmark where tertiary education is free. It occurred to me that there might be a lot of this sort of thing going on.
The logical ramification is that Australia might be about to witness great brain drain in the not too distant future, as well as an acceleration of the aging population issues. Consider for the moment the number of people who could devise a way back to the countries of their heritage to get a less expensive tertiary education. Places like Ireland and Scandinavian countries are not the only places that offer up these option. Then think of the likelihoods they meet their spouses and setup families elsewhere on the planet and not Australia. It's like Australia is willing to give up its younger, smarter population when in fact they're the people that are going to be needed to support the aging baby Boomers and eventually Gen-X.
In the mean time our universities will be filled with stupid rich kids who will be there only because they can afford to be there, so this notion of more competitive universities seems like a pipedream on the part of the Coalition. Walk-off HBP thinks it's more of a smokescreen to entrench privilege in such a way that only the Liberal voting types get to go to University.
I've already covered the problems of carrying a 100k student debt into a professional career - you're worse off than not going to university and getting a tradie's job. We may actually be looking at a future where the ranks of varsity graduate professionals will be much lower in quality than today. I don't know about you, but I don't think these rich types are going to enjoy going to doctors and lawyers pulled from the third best minds of their generation.
Nepotism As A Way Of Life
One of Tony Abbott's daughters got a 60k scholarship. The people who gave her the scholarship claimed it was purely on merit. Another one of Tony Abbott's daughters has a plum job working fro DFAT in Geneva. A lot of people have pointed out how unqualified she is for the job, but no, her boss is an old Liberal Party member who has told us that Tony Abbott's daughter got the jobon her own merits.
In each instance the insistence on the merits of Abbott's brood seems to stretch the definition of the word 'merit'. It' a really bad look when your government is about to make tertiary education more expensive to then have a daughter get a freebie. It's a really bad look to have your daughter get a plum job in DFAT over other genuine candidates of actual merit, when your government is about to cut off 16,000 public sector jobs. Both instances speak volumes to the absence of character in his daughters, which, by extension reflect badly on the parents, who in this instance happens to be the Prime Minister. These are big favours being handed to his family.
When you consider that there is a Royal Commission into Julia Gillard's conduct as an IR lawyer and claims of $7000 for renovations of her house coming from a union slush fund; and how Abbott himself hounded Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper relentlessly through digging up dirt; not to mention the fact that all it took was for a $3000 bottle of Grange Hermitage to bring down Barry O'Farrell, it seems abundantly obvious that Tony Abbott should quit. $60,000 worth of scholarship dollars and a plum job at DFAT seems far in excess of what normal people would consider a favour for a mate.
Really, Tony Abbott should quit on this alone.
But he won't quit. Which means he's an unabashed crook. now he's saying he wants family kept out of it. I think it's a bit much that a man who would go after Julia Gillard with a Royal Commission, and hounded Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper in the manner that he did, to want his family kept out of it by the media.
No, no, no Mr. Abbott, it's much too late for that. You lowered the bar forcefully - you can try doing your limbo dance under it.
2014/05/23
Fools On The Hill
Day After Day...
I kid you not, everyday brings news of something so illogical and founded on imagined notions to make you wince, getting enacted into policy by this Federal government. If they're not putting something into policy, they're telling us how they think it ought to be.
Take this cretin here.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="497"]
Another Angry Fat Man of the right-wing nutjob persuasion. Well fed and full of hate.[/caption]
Just look at that guy. Well fed and brimming with excess calories, he thinks Australians ought to be grateful they're getting the budget from hell because the alternative is an impoverished Asian country. Forget for the moment that another wing of this mean-spirited government is busily sending asylum seekers to Cambodia a country which fits such a description.
What we can discern from this is that the Liberals and Nationals set a very low bar for themselves and their governing endeavors. It's a government of people who want to invent their own facts, right from the top down. Both Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey concocted a budget emergency and part of that plank was that produtivity was stagnating in Australia. The big surprise today is that productivity is actually rocketing upwards.
In other words, Hockeynomics can go take a hike. There are other things the Coalition government are doing that would make you shake your head. Especially the bits to do with climate change. They keep scrapping and sacking things to and people to do with dealing with Global Warming and here we sit in a record-breaking month in Sydney where we've had the most days above 20degrees on record. Global Warming is clearly going on in plain sight for all to see and the fools who run the country are busily trying to expunge it from reality by sacking and retrenching people. The effects of this is that this expertise we've been investing in will scatter to the globe. It's a braindrain facilitated by a government of fools.
I lambast them daily and really, this makes no difference because so many idiots decided to vote this bunch in, so the only pleasure I can take from this is the Schadenfreude of saying, "told you so!"
Pleiades says he's sickened by what Australia has become. It worries me that Australia voted in this mob. I keep thinking just where it was that things went wrong, but it's hard to say. I used to think it was a tragedy that Tony Abbott got up over Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull by one vote; except the way Joe Hockey has gone about this budget shows that he might not have been too different had he won that day and became opposition leader. We'd still be looking at this crazy budget and insane government; just differently nuanced through Joe Hockey's boofy persona instead of Abbott's lip-licking-lizard persona.
Had Julia Gillard not been in such a rush to pull down Kevin Rudd, or if Kevin Rudd had stuck to his guns over the ETS... Maybe it was the moment Rudd put too much stock in the outcome of the Copenhagen talks. But at lest he did what he thought was best and worked hard. Abbott essentially rocked up into the top job without really doing any coherent policy work.
These are exactly the kind of hypothetical questions that teachers of history warn us against. What we have are facts - and the facts are these: Australia voted in a grossly deficient, mostly unintelligent bunch into office simply because they hated the infighting of the ALP. The chief of the idiots is running this country like he has a huge mandate when in fact there's no factual support for such a view. As a result this country is going to hell in a basket. It's really not much fun.
I kid you not, everyday brings news of something so illogical and founded on imagined notions to make you wince, getting enacted into policy by this Federal government. If they're not putting something into policy, they're telling us how they think it ought to be.
Take this cretin here.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="497"]
Another Angry Fat Man of the right-wing nutjob persuasion. Well fed and full of hate.[/caption]George Christensen, the LNP member for the Queensland electorate of Dawson, has sparked outrage on twitter after he posted a photo of an impoverished child and called for a reality check from Australians and their first world problems.
“Aussies should do a tour of Asia & live like locals to put these 1st world complaints re budget in perspective,” he wrote.
The tweet prompted an immediate backlash with one user tweeting “Translation: Aussie battlers should take a glimpse at LNP model for Australia's future”.
Mr Christensen did not taken kindly to the criticism, and replied that Australians concerned about tough budget measures needed to realise how “minuscule” their complaints were on a global scale.
He followed up his original tweet with: "Try getting any serious form of welfare in Thailand or other SE Asian nations."
Just look at that guy. Well fed and brimming with excess calories, he thinks Australians ought to be grateful they're getting the budget from hell because the alternative is an impoverished Asian country. Forget for the moment that another wing of this mean-spirited government is busily sending asylum seekers to Cambodia a country which fits such a description.
What we can discern from this is that the Liberals and Nationals set a very low bar for themselves and their governing endeavors. It's a government of people who want to invent their own facts, right from the top down. Both Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey concocted a budget emergency and part of that plank was that produtivity was stagnating in Australia. The big surprise today is that productivity is actually rocketing upwards.
The good news is that labour is already performing. The counting of that is yet to catch up to the performance, but it is happening.
Well, I think it's good news. Given the government's narrative preferring doom and misery, maybe that isn't good news for the current leadership - it doesn't support their usual story of Labor's labour reforms destroying the economy.
In other words, Hockeynomics can go take a hike. There are other things the Coalition government are doing that would make you shake your head. Especially the bits to do with climate change. They keep scrapping and sacking things to and people to do with dealing with Global Warming and here we sit in a record-breaking month in Sydney where we've had the most days above 20degrees on record. Global Warming is clearly going on in plain sight for all to see and the fools who run the country are busily trying to expunge it from reality by sacking and retrenching people. The effects of this is that this expertise we've been investing in will scatter to the globe. It's a braindrain facilitated by a government of fools.
I lambast them daily and really, this makes no difference because so many idiots decided to vote this bunch in, so the only pleasure I can take from this is the Schadenfreude of saying, "told you so!"
Pleiades says he's sickened by what Australia has become. It worries me that Australia voted in this mob. I keep thinking just where it was that things went wrong, but it's hard to say. I used to think it was a tragedy that Tony Abbott got up over Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull by one vote; except the way Joe Hockey has gone about this budget shows that he might not have been too different had he won that day and became opposition leader. We'd still be looking at this crazy budget and insane government; just differently nuanced through Joe Hockey's boofy persona instead of Abbott's lip-licking-lizard persona.
Had Julia Gillard not been in such a rush to pull down Kevin Rudd, or if Kevin Rudd had stuck to his guns over the ETS... Maybe it was the moment Rudd put too much stock in the outcome of the Copenhagen talks. But at lest he did what he thought was best and worked hard. Abbott essentially rocked up into the top job without really doing any coherent policy work.
These are exactly the kind of hypothetical questions that teachers of history warn us against. What we have are facts - and the facts are these: Australia voted in a grossly deficient, mostly unintelligent bunch into office simply because they hated the infighting of the ALP. The chief of the idiots is running this country like he has a huge mandate when in fact there's no factual support for such a view. As a result this country is going to hell in a basket. It's really not much fun.
2014/05/22
The End Of Enlightenment
The Dark Ages Beckon Once More
I've been thinking that maybe one of the things the Abbott government wants the Federal government to do is get out of education; And as with such ideas, it always is worth asking what one might mean by 'out' and 'education'. The growing trend in Australian society since the reintroduction of fees in the early 1990s has been to measure the value of a course against the earning capacity of the graduates. Then, trying to figure out "if it is worth doing the course." Unsurprisingly, a great many courses cease to commend themselves once you apply the Return-On-Investment line of thinking and if one is truly driven by money alone, it is easy to suggest arts courses are not worthwhile. Why would somebody do Fine Arts if it were about earning capacity? How many jobs can there be, in something like curating for a gallery?
There are any number of courses for which graduates would find an inordinate amount of difficulty in placing themselves in employment in that field. Like, graduates in music or archaeology or theatre or literature or philosophy. In fact there is a vast shortage of jobs that specifically require arts education and pay well enough. The dirty secret of the stat that approximately 90% of graduates do not work in the area of their tertiary study is that the jobs simply were not there to absorb those graduates.
The great irony is that in trying to put a value on education, we've managed to destroy the worth of education. It didn't exactly start with Tony Abbott's current horror budget. It started when we started conflating vocational training with getting an education - and for that we can lay the blame at John Dawkins and his reforms where they started to hand out bachelors degrees for test-tube washing. With the Dawkins reforms came the vast delusion of mass professionalism in the workforce when really, the politicians just wanted to keep Gen-X off the unemployment statistics.
The legacy of it is the expansion of tertiary places accompanied by the devisement of fees to off-set the expense. While it might have been the smart move at the time it commodified the education into a grand vision for vocational training for everybody. It was 'Educating Rita" on a grand scale as part of that bargain. And with it came the unfortunate other irony that you can put a price on the education through projected future earnings. It was a crock - but for some reason we all bought it. Maybe we didn't choose to look too closely lest it reveal the fundamental asymmetry that the education you get has very little to do with the money you end up making.
The thing that really stands out with this notion of deregulating the universities so they can charge whatever they like, is that it squarely places education out of reach from people. The only way in which you can successfully assess the worthiness of a course hinges on it vocational merits. And if our society were to commit to that vision of education, then we may as well kiss the enlightenment goodbye. Of course, this would suit the fear mongers and hate mongers of the Murdoch press; They keep baying for this kind of vision that locks in inequality.
IPA Stands For 'Ideological Propaganda Agency'
If you watch 'the Drum' like I do occasionally, you'll notice they always aim to get some commentator to explain just what is good about the so-called *thinking* of the Liberal Party. They usually get some right-wing toad from this 'Think Tank' (and you would have to use the term 'think' very loosely when it comes to these people) called the Institute for Public Affairs to parrot the official line. It's often unapologetic Thatcherite pap that it makes you scream at the television set the way Sophie Mirabella used to make us scream whenever she was on TV.
The IPA is full of terrible suggestions and explanations it makes you wonder if they actually grew up on the same planet as the rest of humanity, let alone in this country. Just how crazy are these people? You should look at a sample. Walk-Off HBP was kind enough to send this link today and well... it's pretty self explanatory.
Top of their list is abolishing the 'Carbon Tax', followed by abolishing the Department of Climate Change and the Clean Energy Fund. Clearly they're climate change deniers. What other possible explanation could there be? And this is an important point. Climate Change deniers have no science to back them up except for those soul-less sell-outs in the employ of the oil lobby who cherry pick stats to make it look like the world is cooling. It's not a scientific position. So it really makes me wonder why 'The Drum' has to invite such intellectually deficient cretins to argue this kind of insane oppositional view just to make it look balanced. Especially when the same said cretins are calling for funding cuts and breaking up the ABC. Why give this bunch of Morlocks any airtime at all? Would the ABC give a Holocaust denialist or KKK member 'equal time'?
No.
Then why this mob? The only thing that makes them respectable enough to talk to is the fact that they haven't hurt anybody - yet. But if they had their way, they would hurt a whole bunch of people. If we were to follow their pan-Galactically stupid recipe, it would cause so much damage to our society we may never recover. I don't know why the rest of Australia is being made to take this cretinous collective seriously.
I've been thinking that maybe one of the things the Abbott government wants the Federal government to do is get out of education; And as with such ideas, it always is worth asking what one might mean by 'out' and 'education'. The growing trend in Australian society since the reintroduction of fees in the early 1990s has been to measure the value of a course against the earning capacity of the graduates. Then, trying to figure out "if it is worth doing the course." Unsurprisingly, a great many courses cease to commend themselves once you apply the Return-On-Investment line of thinking and if one is truly driven by money alone, it is easy to suggest arts courses are not worthwhile. Why would somebody do Fine Arts if it were about earning capacity? How many jobs can there be, in something like curating for a gallery?
There are any number of courses for which graduates would find an inordinate amount of difficulty in placing themselves in employment in that field. Like, graduates in music or archaeology or theatre or literature or philosophy. In fact there is a vast shortage of jobs that specifically require arts education and pay well enough. The dirty secret of the stat that approximately 90% of graduates do not work in the area of their tertiary study is that the jobs simply were not there to absorb those graduates.
The great irony is that in trying to put a value on education, we've managed to destroy the worth of education. It didn't exactly start with Tony Abbott's current horror budget. It started when we started conflating vocational training with getting an education - and for that we can lay the blame at John Dawkins and his reforms where they started to hand out bachelors degrees for test-tube washing. With the Dawkins reforms came the vast delusion of mass professionalism in the workforce when really, the politicians just wanted to keep Gen-X off the unemployment statistics.
The legacy of it is the expansion of tertiary places accompanied by the devisement of fees to off-set the expense. While it might have been the smart move at the time it commodified the education into a grand vision for vocational training for everybody. It was 'Educating Rita" on a grand scale as part of that bargain. And with it came the unfortunate other irony that you can put a price on the education through projected future earnings. It was a crock - but for some reason we all bought it. Maybe we didn't choose to look too closely lest it reveal the fundamental asymmetry that the education you get has very little to do with the money you end up making.
The thing that really stands out with this notion of deregulating the universities so they can charge whatever they like, is that it squarely places education out of reach from people. The only way in which you can successfully assess the worthiness of a course hinges on it vocational merits. And if our society were to commit to that vision of education, then we may as well kiss the enlightenment goodbye. Of course, this would suit the fear mongers and hate mongers of the Murdoch press; They keep baying for this kind of vision that locks in inequality.
IPA Stands For 'Ideological Propaganda Agency'
If you watch 'the Drum' like I do occasionally, you'll notice they always aim to get some commentator to explain just what is good about the so-called *thinking* of the Liberal Party. They usually get some right-wing toad from this 'Think Tank' (and you would have to use the term 'think' very loosely when it comes to these people) called the Institute for Public Affairs to parrot the official line. It's often unapologetic Thatcherite pap that it makes you scream at the television set the way Sophie Mirabella used to make us scream whenever she was on TV.
The IPA is full of terrible suggestions and explanations it makes you wonder if they actually grew up on the same planet as the rest of humanity, let alone in this country. Just how crazy are these people? You should look at a sample. Walk-Off HBP was kind enough to send this link today and well... it's pretty self explanatory.
Top of their list is abolishing the 'Carbon Tax', followed by abolishing the Department of Climate Change and the Clean Energy Fund. Clearly they're climate change deniers. What other possible explanation could there be? And this is an important point. Climate Change deniers have no science to back them up except for those soul-less sell-outs in the employ of the oil lobby who cherry pick stats to make it look like the world is cooling. It's not a scientific position. So it really makes me wonder why 'The Drum' has to invite such intellectually deficient cretins to argue this kind of insane oppositional view just to make it look balanced. Especially when the same said cretins are calling for funding cuts and breaking up the ABC. Why give this bunch of Morlocks any airtime at all? Would the ABC give a Holocaust denialist or KKK member 'equal time'?
No.
Then why this mob? The only thing that makes them respectable enough to talk to is the fact that they haven't hurt anybody - yet. But if they had their way, they would hurt a whole bunch of people. If we were to follow their pan-Galactically stupid recipe, it would cause so much damage to our society we may never recover. I don't know why the rest of Australia is being made to take this cretinous collective seriously.
2014/05/21
Slack
I've Been Slack, Yeah
The writers' guild called me on my mobile today wondering if it was their administrative error or my lapse that I hadn't paid for my membership this year. I told the lady it was a bit of both - that I decided to let the thing slide while I thought about it. She asked what I had to think about and so I asked her if she wanted the short version or the long version. She said I should try the short one first.
The short version is that I made all of $1000.00 writing a draft for a screenplay this year. This $1000.00 is an advance against if-and-when the film gets up. The rest will be paid if and when the film gets up. Out of which if I paid my GST, and then full guild membership, I'd be left with about $550. Which makes me wonder why I'm handing over so much for my only writing income. Especially when they did nothing to help me negotiate my contract. I wouldn't have and couldn't have called upon them because their standard contract would have been laughed out of the room.
Besides which, the producer was my friend from Film School. I had to help him get the script sorted before he footed a bill to fly to Cannes to try and raise finance, another process in which the guild would prove utterly useless. Thus, it's really hard to justify the guild membership when there's so little to show for it; and a bunch of workshops and discussion groups and a newsletter and a glossy book each year where screenwriters get interviewed about writing... simply isn't much value. For that money I could head to the pub and hang out with people of my choosing, and the ensuing conversation might actually be more interesting.
The industry has changed greatly. It's not the bustling hive it once was where development led to things. Only a handful of films get made - and none of them get made without the government funding production costs. It's really hard to conceive of a guild in the context of an industry that's only there as an extension of the government.
I then asked her if she wanted the long version and she declined. I can't say I blame her much. I told her it's not something I hold the guild responsible for, but really it couldn't be just me, and the industry couldn't be supporting so many writers to call the writers guild a guild. And hence I told her I was thinking whether I should stump up the money for the membership or just spend it on my dentist - which, would have literally palatable results compared to a membership in a clan of writers equally hungry, disenfranchised, and broke as I.
She said she would relay back to management my concerns. I have no idea how 'management' is going to respond to my feedback. I doubt they would have anything to say. I'm not expecting anything, but at least they got a piece of my fucking mind.
The writers' guild called me on my mobile today wondering if it was their administrative error or my lapse that I hadn't paid for my membership this year. I told the lady it was a bit of both - that I decided to let the thing slide while I thought about it. She asked what I had to think about and so I asked her if she wanted the short version or the long version. She said I should try the short one first.
The short version is that I made all of $1000.00 writing a draft for a screenplay this year. This $1000.00 is an advance against if-and-when the film gets up. The rest will be paid if and when the film gets up. Out of which if I paid my GST, and then full guild membership, I'd be left with about $550. Which makes me wonder why I'm handing over so much for my only writing income. Especially when they did nothing to help me negotiate my contract. I wouldn't have and couldn't have called upon them because their standard contract would have been laughed out of the room.
Besides which, the producer was my friend from Film School. I had to help him get the script sorted before he footed a bill to fly to Cannes to try and raise finance, another process in which the guild would prove utterly useless. Thus, it's really hard to justify the guild membership when there's so little to show for it; and a bunch of workshops and discussion groups and a newsletter and a glossy book each year where screenwriters get interviewed about writing... simply isn't much value. For that money I could head to the pub and hang out with people of my choosing, and the ensuing conversation might actually be more interesting.
The industry has changed greatly. It's not the bustling hive it once was where development led to things. Only a handful of films get made - and none of them get made without the government funding production costs. It's really hard to conceive of a guild in the context of an industry that's only there as an extension of the government.
I then asked her if she wanted the long version and she declined. I can't say I blame her much. I told her it's not something I hold the guild responsible for, but really it couldn't be just me, and the industry couldn't be supporting so many writers to call the writers guild a guild. And hence I told her I was thinking whether I should stump up the money for the membership or just spend it on my dentist - which, would have literally palatable results compared to a membership in a clan of writers equally hungry, disenfranchised, and broke as I.
She said she would relay back to management my concerns. I have no idea how 'management' is going to respond to my feedback. I doubt they would have anything to say. I'm not expecting anything, but at least they got a piece of my fucking mind.
2014/05/17
Everybody Hates This Budget
Everybody Except Ballerinas
Who decided that out of all the arts practitioners that ballerinas in particular were the most hard done by and could not be cut any more? Who's daughter or niece is studying to be a ballerina? Didn't they think we'd notice that everybody in the sciences, arts and manufacturing gets funding cuts but the ballerinas are going to get a special scholarship fund for their boarding needs? Has there been a bigger joke and probable cause for investigating a conflict of interest than this item in this year's budget?
But no, there won't be a federal equivalent of an ICAC, so we may never know. I sure hope the findings in the NSW ICAC about this North Sydney Forum brings down Joe Hockey. Screw him and the tutu and shoes he came dancing into town with.
How Do The Nats Cope?
It struck me that the budget would hurt the rural base of the national Party as much, if not more than people in urban areas. Consider youth unemployment is higher in rural areas, so these cuts to the dole and changes in arrangements would affect more rural families than city ones. Making tertiary education more expensive adds a burden on to families that have to send their university student children to cities to board and study. If at the same time the Federal government is pulling 80billion from healthcare and education from the states, then clearly they're more likely to feel the pinch when the State governments cut health and education in far flung rural areas before they cut in urban areas.
Which ever way you dice this, this budget is not good for the bush at all, and even if they built all these roads, it's the sort of spending that is one-and-done with nothing to follow up. There's really nothing in it that helps the bush at all, and so you wonder what exactly keeps the Nationals in the fold with the Liberals except for an extreme kind of social conservatism. Even then you wonder how much the bush can take of this before they say, "bugger the principles, we're not going along with this crap"; It may already be happening because the amount of support given to a rogue national party member like Bob Katter teaming up with mining magnate Clive Palmer suggests the rural vote is already looking away from the Coalition in search of a better choice
I spoke to Pleiades today who tells me people on the backbench on the government side are hopping mad at Tony Abbott. Tony Abbott is putting it on the MPs to go and sell this to their electorates, but the MPs weren't consulted about any of these radical changes. If it's not a fiasco, it sure is a looming disaster.
OMG, A Medical Research Fund?
It's pretty clear the current Libs have attitudes that date back to when Galileo started moving the earth and Darwin conjured humanity from monkeys. The thing that has Pleaides incensed is that this mob have come to power and shut down the environmental agencies, cutback the CSIRO, and research areas an starved science of funding in the name of budget surplus. They say it's about the budget surplus, but actually they just don't like science for embarrassing the church. Pretty soon they'll be ramming (un)'Intelligent Design' into the classroom and wanting to support the church through public funds - in fact they're already paying for chaplains to be in schools.
These people don't really believe in science. Think about that for a moment. They don't even have a minister for science. Their vision for the future revolves around building roads and presumably keeping driving fossil fuel vehicles as if the world does not change. Not only are they in denial about Climate Change, they're in denial that anything changes at all. so how much credibility is there when the very same people who have taken an axe to science turn around and say they are going to have a medical research fund?
It immediately begs the question qui bono - who benefits? It's no conspiracy. It has got to be the pharmaceutical companies who have been lobbying the government to keep their entitlements under the current medical entitlements even if the Australian people lose theirs. Oh that, and maybe Joe Hockey doesn't want to die of an obscure cancer.
It will be too late to reach for your torches and pitchforks when they start giving out textbooks with humans and dinosaurs cavorting together. You heard it from me right here.
Captive To Idiocy
I know name-calling doesn't help but it's worth calling things by their proper name: The Liberal Party in Australia has transformed itself into the Conservative party and are decidedly Tory in their bearings. Just as with their overseas conservative counterparts, there's nothing terribly liberal about this Liberal Party at all. It's no coincidence that Tony Abbott wanted to bring back Knights and Dames. However when it comes to economic policy the only textbook they had to go on was the austerity practiced by the UK Conservatives and the sort of belt tightening imposed on Greece.
Of course, austrity has not worked at all, and Greece saw its economy shrink to such an extent that it ended up owning more money as against their GDP. The experience in the UK has been such that they couldn't run austerity program enough to sustain infrastructure so they only half implemented it and mostly talked about doing it. The very notion that austerity would lead the economy back to health is built on the simple assumption that if government debt is reduced to zero and goes to surplus, the economy would once again be free to make capital investments.
It's a lie. It's stupid. And quite frankly it's so wrong and stupid, it's evil and a danger to society. And yet that's our federal government
The problem with our economy and what has hindered our recovery is that people have not been able to deleverage their private debt from their peak in 2007. That's it. Even if the Australian government went back to zero debt, as long as Australian households are in debt up to their eyeballs and Australian industry is in debt up to their eyeballs, there won't be any more big capital expenditures in the wake of the mining boom subsiding. That's really it in a nutshell.
But the desire of industry is always to privatise profits and socialise losses so to this end they lobby governments for special treatment. In the current government we have a bunch of idiots who want to do exactly as the lobbyists ask, believing this is the remedy to a problem that does not actually exist, when in fact it utterly fails to address the problems that do exist. And if that's not captive to idiocy it's hard to imagine a better example.
Who decided that out of all the arts practitioners that ballerinas in particular were the most hard done by and could not be cut any more? Who's daughter or niece is studying to be a ballerina? Didn't they think we'd notice that everybody in the sciences, arts and manufacturing gets funding cuts but the ballerinas are going to get a special scholarship fund for their boarding needs? Has there been a bigger joke and probable cause for investigating a conflict of interest than this item in this year's budget?
But no, there won't be a federal equivalent of an ICAC, so we may never know. I sure hope the findings in the NSW ICAC about this North Sydney Forum brings down Joe Hockey. Screw him and the tutu and shoes he came dancing into town with.
How Do The Nats Cope?
It struck me that the budget would hurt the rural base of the national Party as much, if not more than people in urban areas. Consider youth unemployment is higher in rural areas, so these cuts to the dole and changes in arrangements would affect more rural families than city ones. Making tertiary education more expensive adds a burden on to families that have to send their university student children to cities to board and study. If at the same time the Federal government is pulling 80billion from healthcare and education from the states, then clearly they're more likely to feel the pinch when the State governments cut health and education in far flung rural areas before they cut in urban areas.
Which ever way you dice this, this budget is not good for the bush at all, and even if they built all these roads, it's the sort of spending that is one-and-done with nothing to follow up. There's really nothing in it that helps the bush at all, and so you wonder what exactly keeps the Nationals in the fold with the Liberals except for an extreme kind of social conservatism. Even then you wonder how much the bush can take of this before they say, "bugger the principles, we're not going along with this crap"; It may already be happening because the amount of support given to a rogue national party member like Bob Katter teaming up with mining magnate Clive Palmer suggests the rural vote is already looking away from the Coalition in search of a better choice
I spoke to Pleiades today who tells me people on the backbench on the government side are hopping mad at Tony Abbott. Tony Abbott is putting it on the MPs to go and sell this to their electorates, but the MPs weren't consulted about any of these radical changes. If it's not a fiasco, it sure is a looming disaster.
OMG, A Medical Research Fund?
It's pretty clear the current Libs have attitudes that date back to when Galileo started moving the earth and Darwin conjured humanity from monkeys. The thing that has Pleaides incensed is that this mob have come to power and shut down the environmental agencies, cutback the CSIRO, and research areas an starved science of funding in the name of budget surplus. They say it's about the budget surplus, but actually they just don't like science for embarrassing the church. Pretty soon they'll be ramming (un)'Intelligent Design' into the classroom and wanting to support the church through public funds - in fact they're already paying for chaplains to be in schools.
These people don't really believe in science. Think about that for a moment. They don't even have a minister for science. Their vision for the future revolves around building roads and presumably keeping driving fossil fuel vehicles as if the world does not change. Not only are they in denial about Climate Change, they're in denial that anything changes at all. so how much credibility is there when the very same people who have taken an axe to science turn around and say they are going to have a medical research fund?
It immediately begs the question qui bono - who benefits? It's no conspiracy. It has got to be the pharmaceutical companies who have been lobbying the government to keep their entitlements under the current medical entitlements even if the Australian people lose theirs. Oh that, and maybe Joe Hockey doesn't want to die of an obscure cancer.
It will be too late to reach for your torches and pitchforks when they start giving out textbooks with humans and dinosaurs cavorting together. You heard it from me right here.
Captive To Idiocy
I know name-calling doesn't help but it's worth calling things by their proper name: The Liberal Party in Australia has transformed itself into the Conservative party and are decidedly Tory in their bearings. Just as with their overseas conservative counterparts, there's nothing terribly liberal about this Liberal Party at all. It's no coincidence that Tony Abbott wanted to bring back Knights and Dames. However when it comes to economic policy the only textbook they had to go on was the austerity practiced by the UK Conservatives and the sort of belt tightening imposed on Greece.
Of course, austrity has not worked at all, and Greece saw its economy shrink to such an extent that it ended up owning more money as against their GDP. The experience in the UK has been such that they couldn't run austerity program enough to sustain infrastructure so they only half implemented it and mostly talked about doing it. The very notion that austerity would lead the economy back to health is built on the simple assumption that if government debt is reduced to zero and goes to surplus, the economy would once again be free to make capital investments.
It's a lie. It's stupid. And quite frankly it's so wrong and stupid, it's evil and a danger to society. And yet that's our federal government
The problem with our economy and what has hindered our recovery is that people have not been able to deleverage their private debt from their peak in 2007. That's it. Even if the Australian government went back to zero debt, as long as Australian households are in debt up to their eyeballs and Australian industry is in debt up to their eyeballs, there won't be any more big capital expenditures in the wake of the mining boom subsiding. That's really it in a nutshell.
But the desire of industry is always to privatise profits and socialise losses so to this end they lobby governments for special treatment. In the current government we have a bunch of idiots who want to do exactly as the lobbyists ask, believing this is the remedy to a problem that does not actually exist, when in fact it utterly fails to address the problems that do exist. And if that's not captive to idiocy it's hard to imagine a better example.
2014/05/15
Block Supply, Bill Shorten!
No, Really, We Mean It!
This is a pretty shitty budget brought down by the Coalition. No matter what the Coalition is claiming and will continue to claim over the next little while, there's no way this budget was what the Australian electorate voted for in September. Abbott clearly lied or changed his mind. In either case this budget has no legitimacy. Lots of people are unhappy with this thing.
The only thing that can be done to stop it dead in its tracks is to block supply - and then Governor General Peter Cosgrove can sack Abbott as Prime Minister.
Come on Bill Shorten, show some balls.
This is a pretty shitty budget brought down by the Coalition. No matter what the Coalition is claiming and will continue to claim over the next little while, there's no way this budget was what the Australian electorate voted for in September. Abbott clearly lied or changed his mind. In either case this budget has no legitimacy. Lots of people are unhappy with this thing.
The only thing that can be done to stop it dead in its tracks is to block supply - and then Governor General Peter Cosgrove can sack Abbott as Prime Minister.
Come on Bill Shorten, show some balls.
2014/05/14
The Schadenfreude Budget
Nothing To Delight In But Pain Of Others
This is going to be a mean budget. I was talking about it today with some people and they were saying yes, it's going to hurt but that they hope it hurts other people too. Like Liberal voters who thought voting for Tony Abbott was such a good idea. If you're a left-leaning voter, this budget promises to be a pile of misery heaped upon with fear-and-loathing sauce. The only sweetness will be the bitter-sweet Schadenfreude of seeing others suffer.
In my case, I'm hoping for a big scythe like the one carried by death to hack a swathe through Screen Australia, which may or may not according to leaked information, get rolled into one entity with the Australia Council. That would be cool to seethe perennial same people who always get the funding, go without for once. Screen Australia's a bit of a bug bear because they keep funding the same people and they keep rewriting the rules so nobody else gets a look in for funding. In other words, it's more a rort and a slush fund than a proper funding body these days so... heck Joe Hockey, cut away with impunity. I'd rather see it get the full-arse chop than a half-arsed trim. I really would enjoy those people "having to look for a job in the real world". Screw them.
On a more general scale, you ave to think that Abbott and company are going to make the kinds of cuts that the ALP could not. This would be true, particularly in health and welfare. And while the rhetoric is that this targets the weakest in our society, I think we've all seen a few cases that have made us do a double-take. If you think about it, 6million people are on some kind of Centrelink payment. Then, Julia Gillard's government added Family Tax Benefit B as a bribe to lather through the Carbon Price. It was classic 'Keep it Greasy So It Goes Down Easy'. As a single person who got nada out of that deal because I have a job - even though I'm in the "low income bracket" according to the tax office - it sure wasn't a break that was headed my way. So, I wouldn't miss Family Tax Benefit B disappearing. heck, cut away, I say.
Be that as it may, there are plenty of things that piss me off that are mooted in this budget. The wholesale destruction of environmental agencies and science and technology funding seems beyond the pail. I'm just hoping if the cuts hurt everybody enough they'll be motivated at the next election to vote these bums out.
Retiring At Seventy
I didn't know this until the good folks on Insiders pointed it out but 70years old is going to be oldest retirement age in the OECD nations. Most nations are topping out at 67 or 68. The average life expectancy in Australia is currently 81.85 so assuming that goes up a little bit until 2035, one would think the government is hoping to keep the lid on the retirement years at about 15.
The budget is talking about offering $10,000 incentives to hire people over 50. Right now, people over 50 are Baby Boomers. I can't imagine the government could fund such a policy forever into the future, given the logic of how little tax they could get back from such a worker, so once again we see the government trying to feather the nests of the Baby Boomers, just to get this idea over the line.
I keep trying to imagine myself at say, 65 going for a job interview to find work that will take me up to 70. I keep wondering what that job might be and whether there would be a 10k incentive to hire me then (or if that 10k would be worth anything in that future). Having spoken to a number of my fellow Gen-Xers the feeling is "fuck off, we're going for a revolution!" You get the feeling that the inter-generational conflict is going to heat up from here on in. The Treasurer sure lit a fire there.
We're Dumb Ignorant And Uncultured, But We Can Build Roads
The carrot dangled in front of Australia for all this budget pain is that the Federal Government will spend 40 billion on roads for the next 4 years. This is going to be matched by 42 billion from State governments and the private sector. 82billion over 4years is a lot of road building. And the look of smug satisfaction as they've been leaking this bit has been a bit much.
Most countries that try to stimulate their economy by general construction end up building white elephants. This is true of Asian countries and European countries. Bridges to nowhere and ghost cities of apartments with nobody living in them happen exactly because a government thinks a general construction spending spree will stimulate the economy. It would have in the 1950s but clearly in an age when GM, Ford and Toyota are closing up factories, we're entering a post-industrial phase of the economy, like it or not. If you are going to build 82 billion dollars' worth of infrastructure, are roads really where you want to put your money?
Keep in mind that this is the same luddite government that wants to dumb down and dismantle the NBN, another infrastructure project that might be more appropriate for our stage of development.
It's also 82 billion that's not going into education and training because this government wants to get out of tertiary education altogether and make it completely user-pay. It's 82billion that's not going towards building a metro in our major cities, and it's definitely not going towards an inter-city bullet train. What it is, is a decidedly backward looking commitment to build more of the same on the assumption that Australia's economic needs are going to be roughly the same as they were in the 1950s and1960s under Menzies. It's willfully stupid because clearly "more roads" is not what Australian needs more of over the other options that do not even get a look in.
And this is before we even look at the problems of petroleum as fuel for cars, and the economics of crude oil going into the future where we're spending increasingly greater amounts of money to extract the same amount of crude oil. When we cease to be able to afford the oil, we'll cease driving our petroleum-engined cars. When that happens you wonder what good these 82billion dollars' worth of roads are going to be for an economy moving away from moving things around on the back of the petrochemical industry. Nobody in government has even looked at the ramification of higher energy costs on this economy and whether it is a smart move to put all our baskets into roads in anticipation of even greater road transportation. Even with a multiplier effect, this 82billion is going to be money badly spent.
This is going to be a mean budget. I was talking about it today with some people and they were saying yes, it's going to hurt but that they hope it hurts other people too. Like Liberal voters who thought voting for Tony Abbott was such a good idea. If you're a left-leaning voter, this budget promises to be a pile of misery heaped upon with fear-and-loathing sauce. The only sweetness will be the bitter-sweet Schadenfreude of seeing others suffer.
In my case, I'm hoping for a big scythe like the one carried by death to hack a swathe through Screen Australia, which may or may not according to leaked information, get rolled into one entity with the Australia Council. That would be cool to seethe perennial same people who always get the funding, go without for once. Screen Australia's a bit of a bug bear because they keep funding the same people and they keep rewriting the rules so nobody else gets a look in for funding. In other words, it's more a rort and a slush fund than a proper funding body these days so... heck Joe Hockey, cut away with impunity. I'd rather see it get the full-arse chop than a half-arsed trim. I really would enjoy those people "having to look for a job in the real world". Screw them.
On a more general scale, you ave to think that Abbott and company are going to make the kinds of cuts that the ALP could not. This would be true, particularly in health and welfare. And while the rhetoric is that this targets the weakest in our society, I think we've all seen a few cases that have made us do a double-take. If you think about it, 6million people are on some kind of Centrelink payment. Then, Julia Gillard's government added Family Tax Benefit B as a bribe to lather through the Carbon Price. It was classic 'Keep it Greasy So It Goes Down Easy'. As a single person who got nada out of that deal because I have a job - even though I'm in the "low income bracket" according to the tax office - it sure wasn't a break that was headed my way. So, I wouldn't miss Family Tax Benefit B disappearing. heck, cut away, I say.
Be that as it may, there are plenty of things that piss me off that are mooted in this budget. The wholesale destruction of environmental agencies and science and technology funding seems beyond the pail. I'm just hoping if the cuts hurt everybody enough they'll be motivated at the next election to vote these bums out.
Retiring At Seventy
I didn't know this until the good folks on Insiders pointed it out but 70years old is going to be oldest retirement age in the OECD nations. Most nations are topping out at 67 or 68. The average life expectancy in Australia is currently 81.85 so assuming that goes up a little bit until 2035, one would think the government is hoping to keep the lid on the retirement years at about 15.
The budget is talking about offering $10,000 incentives to hire people over 50. Right now, people over 50 are Baby Boomers. I can't imagine the government could fund such a policy forever into the future, given the logic of how little tax they could get back from such a worker, so once again we see the government trying to feather the nests of the Baby Boomers, just to get this idea over the line.
I keep trying to imagine myself at say, 65 going for a job interview to find work that will take me up to 70. I keep wondering what that job might be and whether there would be a 10k incentive to hire me then (or if that 10k would be worth anything in that future). Having spoken to a number of my fellow Gen-Xers the feeling is "fuck off, we're going for a revolution!" You get the feeling that the inter-generational conflict is going to heat up from here on in. The Treasurer sure lit a fire there.
We're Dumb Ignorant And Uncultured, But We Can Build Roads
The carrot dangled in front of Australia for all this budget pain is that the Federal Government will spend 40 billion on roads for the next 4 years. This is going to be matched by 42 billion from State governments and the private sector. 82billion over 4years is a lot of road building. And the look of smug satisfaction as they've been leaking this bit has been a bit much.
Most countries that try to stimulate their economy by general construction end up building white elephants. This is true of Asian countries and European countries. Bridges to nowhere and ghost cities of apartments with nobody living in them happen exactly because a government thinks a general construction spending spree will stimulate the economy. It would have in the 1950s but clearly in an age when GM, Ford and Toyota are closing up factories, we're entering a post-industrial phase of the economy, like it or not. If you are going to build 82 billion dollars' worth of infrastructure, are roads really where you want to put your money?
Keep in mind that this is the same luddite government that wants to dumb down and dismantle the NBN, another infrastructure project that might be more appropriate for our stage of development.
It's also 82 billion that's not going into education and training because this government wants to get out of tertiary education altogether and make it completely user-pay. It's 82billion that's not going towards building a metro in our major cities, and it's definitely not going towards an inter-city bullet train. What it is, is a decidedly backward looking commitment to build more of the same on the assumption that Australia's economic needs are going to be roughly the same as they were in the 1950s and1960s under Menzies. It's willfully stupid because clearly "more roads" is not what Australian needs more of over the other options that do not even get a look in.
And this is before we even look at the problems of petroleum as fuel for cars, and the economics of crude oil going into the future where we're spending increasingly greater amounts of money to extract the same amount of crude oil. When we cease to be able to afford the oil, we'll cease driving our petroleum-engined cars. When that happens you wonder what good these 82billion dollars' worth of roads are going to be for an economy moving away from moving things around on the back of the petrochemical industry. Nobody in government has even looked at the ramification of higher energy costs on this economy and whether it is a smart move to put all our baskets into roads in anticipation of even greater road transportation. Even with a multiplier effect, this 82billion is going to be money badly spent.
2014/05/13
Why Education Opportunities Will Fade
They've Faded In America, And We Want To Be Like Them!
I got asked why I was so pessimistic about the future of education in this country. People keep on saying that education makes for better people and better people make for a better society. While I agree with that principle, I've been having difficulty telling 18year olds and 19year olds why this might be the case. The truth is, the value of education itself is going to be eclipsed by the value of the HELP debt. It's increasingly hard to say it's financially viable to go study arcane or obscure or interesting things.
Christopher Pyne's thing is telling us that our tertiary sector should be allowed to charge what it likes, and the competition would make them better courses. His model for this line of thinking is the American Tertiary sector which to date has two trends; one is increasing fees and the other is the increased indebtedness of the students. When you analyse this rationally, you understand that the competition that Christopher Pyne talks about only exists in a way to burnish the reputations of the various schools, which they then turn around and turn into higher fees because that would be more profitable. So the universities can give scholarships to students who they think will make them proud but they pass that cost on to other students who want to be brand-consumers of the school's prestige. The students who cannot get a scholarship in turn have to borrow from their futures to purchase the prestige value of the tertiary institution together with their education.
More closely, you only have to witness the skyrocketing private secondary schools' fees in Australia to see how such a market would play out. And while Christopher Pyne insists that students should pay because 60% of their fees are funded by 60% of the population who do not get tertiary education, it seems rather obtuse to insist that the students transfer their future earnings to present day bottom lines of tertiary institutions. The problem is twofold - going to a prestigious tertiary institution is no guarantee you will get a better education than at a lesser school, and the workplaces the graduates will be applying for will more often than not be looking at the school's prestige as much as the marks. The asymmetry is such that the tertiary institution is far more assured of receiving money than the student receiving a good education, and then a career based on that education.
This is made worse by a statistic that came out some time ago that pointed out that 90% of university graduates end up doing something unrelated to their courses in their careers. While I would not argue that this is a bad thing, it sort of shows that the eduction being offered actually has no correlation to the imagined earnings of the graduate. If it's not 'working' now, how on earth does Christopher Pyne think the sector is going to do better than it has to date to justify the money it is charging?
Anyway, I want to point something else from the American experience that doesn't seem to get discussed all too much. Two of the areas where costs have skyrocketed in the USA are health and education. This is not totaly unrelated to the fact that they are untransferable services. So while exporting jobs that can be transferred to places like Chindia has resulted in cheaper imports, the jobs that can't be sent overseas have seen their costs rise. If you average it out, you can claim the inflation has been 3% (or whatever central banks want it to be) but taken individually, health and education have increased at a much higher rate. The question is, is this unique to America?
Australia is fast losing its manufacturing sector (with great assistance from the Abbott government). We keep counting inflation lower to encourage investment, but this investment has ended up in housing as a bubble. Tertiary institutions will opt to charge more for courses that lead to lucrative careers. The private debt carried by the Australian public is putting a huge brake on future growth. Chances are you won't be able to find a job in the area of your choice. You can just see the opportunities for education fading rather than widening. And if they fade, we won't be doing much good with it before long. The outlook is pretty bleak - and I don't even work in that sector.
I got asked why I was so pessimistic about the future of education in this country. People keep on saying that education makes for better people and better people make for a better society. While I agree with that principle, I've been having difficulty telling 18year olds and 19year olds why this might be the case. The truth is, the value of education itself is going to be eclipsed by the value of the HELP debt. It's increasingly hard to say it's financially viable to go study arcane or obscure or interesting things.
Christopher Pyne's thing is telling us that our tertiary sector should be allowed to charge what it likes, and the competition would make them better courses. His model for this line of thinking is the American Tertiary sector which to date has two trends; one is increasing fees and the other is the increased indebtedness of the students. When you analyse this rationally, you understand that the competition that Christopher Pyne talks about only exists in a way to burnish the reputations of the various schools, which they then turn around and turn into higher fees because that would be more profitable. So the universities can give scholarships to students who they think will make them proud but they pass that cost on to other students who want to be brand-consumers of the school's prestige. The students who cannot get a scholarship in turn have to borrow from their futures to purchase the prestige value of the tertiary institution together with their education.
More closely, you only have to witness the skyrocketing private secondary schools' fees in Australia to see how such a market would play out. And while Christopher Pyne insists that students should pay because 60% of their fees are funded by 60% of the population who do not get tertiary education, it seems rather obtuse to insist that the students transfer their future earnings to present day bottom lines of tertiary institutions. The problem is twofold - going to a prestigious tertiary institution is no guarantee you will get a better education than at a lesser school, and the workplaces the graduates will be applying for will more often than not be looking at the school's prestige as much as the marks. The asymmetry is such that the tertiary institution is far more assured of receiving money than the student receiving a good education, and then a career based on that education.
This is made worse by a statistic that came out some time ago that pointed out that 90% of university graduates end up doing something unrelated to their courses in their careers. While I would not argue that this is a bad thing, it sort of shows that the eduction being offered actually has no correlation to the imagined earnings of the graduate. If it's not 'working' now, how on earth does Christopher Pyne think the sector is going to do better than it has to date to justify the money it is charging?
Anyway, I want to point something else from the American experience that doesn't seem to get discussed all too much. Two of the areas where costs have skyrocketed in the USA are health and education. This is not totaly unrelated to the fact that they are untransferable services. So while exporting jobs that can be transferred to places like Chindia has resulted in cheaper imports, the jobs that can't be sent overseas have seen their costs rise. If you average it out, you can claim the inflation has been 3% (or whatever central banks want it to be) but taken individually, health and education have increased at a much higher rate. The question is, is this unique to America?
Australia is fast losing its manufacturing sector (with great assistance from the Abbott government). We keep counting inflation lower to encourage investment, but this investment has ended up in housing as a bubble. Tertiary institutions will opt to charge more for courses that lead to lucrative careers. The private debt carried by the Australian public is putting a huge brake on future growth. Chances are you won't be able to find a job in the area of your choice. You can just see the opportunities for education fading rather than widening. And if they fade, we won't be doing much good with it before long. The outlook is pretty bleak - and I don't even work in that sector.
2014/05/11
How Did We Get Here?
Vicariously, Cannes
It's a weird sort of thing, but I have a project headed for Cannes to look for financing this year. It doesn't happen every year and it's been a while since I've had a script doing the rounds so it feels strange. The producer-director is an Australian citizen, a fellow graduate from AFTRS but he is a migrant from Lithuania, way back when it was a communist satellite state. He is, however, also a member of the European Film Academy. He's somebody in Europe, as opposed to a struggling borderline unemployable middle aged person back here in Australia; and this owes no small thanks to the complete retreat of the Australian government from supporting the Australian Film Industry.
We have approached Screen Australia for support but the answer we got was that the project was not going to be Australian content so we had no chance of getting any such support. We pointed out that 'The Great Gatsby' was hardly Australian content but received millions in investment from Screen Australia, all on the back of its creatives being Australian and it being shot in New South Wales. The answer we got was "that was Baz and his team. You're not Baz."
In other words, Screen Australia supports only that which is already successful and doesn't need support. No surprises there. Who wants risks in the film industry? Crazier still, the institutional narrowness of having such a selection 'criterion' - while well known and understandable - can be a big filter that weeds out successful projects. It seems to be the negative imprint that matches the tremendously unsuccessful commerce that is the Australian Film Industry. Honestly, on some simple level my producer-director ought to be getting more support than he is, just as other producers I've worked with ought to have received more support, from their own government agency.
Frankly, it's a disgrace.
I've been wondering about how things came to this path for him and I. Obviously, I am neither European or the sort of screenwriter that aspires to the kinds of art house fare that is being planned with this project, but it still seems to me quite absurd that people properly credentialed as Australian film makers should have to go look for funding overseas. I will point out that this is the third project in my life that the principal money would have to come from overseas before an Australian bodies would look to support it.
This is my blog, so I'm just registering my bubbling discontent right here. But really, I ought to be happy that my producer-director has hocked his whole life to get to Cannes on his own to look for funding. No? Instead, all I feel is a desire to kick Screen Australia in he crotch.
I guess if my producer-director does get his film up on the back of his trip to Cannes, that would be a kick in the crotch enough.
AUD At US 90c
As David Byrne famously sang "How did I get here?" Here's a random bit of information. Fox Studios in Sydney still has 22years left on its 40 year lease. For the last 18years it has been going, the second half has been marred by the high Australian dollar. In other words, the service subsector of the Australian Film Industry that faced America, has been knocked out by the mining boom and the subsequent high Australian Dollar. Screen Australia had to pay Baz Luhrman to shoot in Fox Studios in Sydney. The structure of investment right there is "good money after bad", without even getting into the quality of the project or the returns. In fact Julia Gillard as Prime Minister put money into 'The Wolverine' from her office to secure the shoot in Australia.
The irony might be compounded by the fact that the NSW Government gave 20th Century Fox a very favourable deal in that 40yar lease in the hopes that it would lead to a constant churn of projects at the Fox lot in the middle of Sydney, transforming the service sector and infrastructure. Back then, nobody thought the Australian Dollar would rise to parity or that it would stay over US 90cents for so long. The back of the envelope calculations that made it competitive and viable had the Australian Dollar between US45c and 55c.
It's easy to see that one of the most well equipped studios in the Southern Hemisphere is actually a bit of a white elephant infrastructure; a bit like an expensive Rolls Royce that only gets taken out on a rare Sunday. The Australian Film Industry's service subsector servicing Hollywood will not get viable again until the Australian Dollar practically halves in buying power again. There's really no other solution to the structural problem there.
It's a weird sort of thing, but I have a project headed for Cannes to look for financing this year. It doesn't happen every year and it's been a while since I've had a script doing the rounds so it feels strange. The producer-director is an Australian citizen, a fellow graduate from AFTRS but he is a migrant from Lithuania, way back when it was a communist satellite state. He is, however, also a member of the European Film Academy. He's somebody in Europe, as opposed to a struggling borderline unemployable middle aged person back here in Australia; and this owes no small thanks to the complete retreat of the Australian government from supporting the Australian Film Industry.
We have approached Screen Australia for support but the answer we got was that the project was not going to be Australian content so we had no chance of getting any such support. We pointed out that 'The Great Gatsby' was hardly Australian content but received millions in investment from Screen Australia, all on the back of its creatives being Australian and it being shot in New South Wales. The answer we got was "that was Baz and his team. You're not Baz."
In other words, Screen Australia supports only that which is already successful and doesn't need support. No surprises there. Who wants risks in the film industry? Crazier still, the institutional narrowness of having such a selection 'criterion' - while well known and understandable - can be a big filter that weeds out successful projects. It seems to be the negative imprint that matches the tremendously unsuccessful commerce that is the Australian Film Industry. Honestly, on some simple level my producer-director ought to be getting more support than he is, just as other producers I've worked with ought to have received more support, from their own government agency.
Frankly, it's a disgrace.
I've been wondering about how things came to this path for him and I. Obviously, I am neither European or the sort of screenwriter that aspires to the kinds of art house fare that is being planned with this project, but it still seems to me quite absurd that people properly credentialed as Australian film makers should have to go look for funding overseas. I will point out that this is the third project in my life that the principal money would have to come from overseas before an Australian bodies would look to support it.
This is my blog, so I'm just registering my bubbling discontent right here. But really, I ought to be happy that my producer-director has hocked his whole life to get to Cannes on his own to look for funding. No? Instead, all I feel is a desire to kick Screen Australia in he crotch.
I guess if my producer-director does get his film up on the back of his trip to Cannes, that would be a kick in the crotch enough.
AUD At US 90c
As David Byrne famously sang "How did I get here?" Here's a random bit of information. Fox Studios in Sydney still has 22years left on its 40 year lease. For the last 18years it has been going, the second half has been marred by the high Australian dollar. In other words, the service subsector of the Australian Film Industry that faced America, has been knocked out by the mining boom and the subsequent high Australian Dollar. Screen Australia had to pay Baz Luhrman to shoot in Fox Studios in Sydney. The structure of investment right there is "good money after bad", without even getting into the quality of the project or the returns. In fact Julia Gillard as Prime Minister put money into 'The Wolverine' from her office to secure the shoot in Australia.
The irony might be compounded by the fact that the NSW Government gave 20th Century Fox a very favourable deal in that 40yar lease in the hopes that it would lead to a constant churn of projects at the Fox lot in the middle of Sydney, transforming the service sector and infrastructure. Back then, nobody thought the Australian Dollar would rise to parity or that it would stay over US 90cents for so long. The back of the envelope calculations that made it competitive and viable had the Australian Dollar between US45c and 55c.
It's easy to see that one of the most well equipped studios in the Southern Hemisphere is actually a bit of a white elephant infrastructure; a bit like an expensive Rolls Royce that only gets taken out on a rare Sunday. The Australian Film Industry's service subsector servicing Hollywood will not get viable again until the Australian Dollar practically halves in buying power again. There's really no other solution to the structural problem there.
2014/05/08
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Throwing Punches Above The Intellectual Weight
Captain America is back once again, even amidst the rumours that Chris Evans can't wait to be done with his 6 picture deal with Marvel Studios playing the Captain. Chris Evans has actually been lucky compared to the three actors who have played The Hulk, and is possibly benefiting from the hard earned success of the 'Iron Man' movies. The usual game plan with these superhero numbers from Marvel is a 90 minute action-packed, sort-of-suggestive-of-meaning costumed action romp. This one actually gets to a lot more topical political ideas than even 'Iron Man'.
When you include the phantasmagorical success that was 'The Avengers', then this is the second Marvel Studio movie that hits a high water mark.
As usual, here's the spoiler warning: 'warning, spoiler alert'.
What's Good About It
The first Captain America movies was rushed to screen in time to beat the release of 'The Avengers'. Apart from the usual issues of origin stories, the first film seemed perfunctory and going through the motions. It really was a prequel for 'The Avengers' more than anything else and together with the first 'Thor' movie, felt like it was doing it by the numbers. The interest always lay in what la ahead, which everybody knew was going to be 'The Avengers'. This film has the luxury of coming after the main event, so it has narrative space to explore the character a bit more, ad we do get shown the anxiety of a man out of his time.
The film is thematically strong as it explores the limits of the states' powers when exercised through covert organs, as well as links it to the imperatives of winning World War II being the seed of the current state of affairs with spy agencies and security agencies running rough shod over citizen's rights. It also comes with a compelling feel for how even a figure like Captain America might have to go rogue from a state apparatus hell-bent on control.
The thrills and spills of the combat scenes are there, and the story hurtles along from one set piece to the next and you really don't feel the 136minute length. There's enough story there to sink your teeth into and the effects are really good.
What's Bad About It
It's hard to pick a fault with corporate entertainment like this except that it is corporate entertainment, and as such, it never comes to truly dangerous conclusions.
There's a scene towards the ed where Natasha Romanoff fronts up to some kind of Senate hearing and tells the politicians that they need her more than they need to lock her away and walks away. It would have been much better to engineer a scene where Captain America had to take the stand and answer political questions. It is such a missed opportunity, it ranks as a very black mark in the conception of the film. By letting the Senate question Natasha, the film never lets America confront itself. even though that is exactly where the story is pointing.
Where I come from, we call those a cop out.
What's Interesting About It
One wonders what on earth the American security apparatus is up to every day. Just looking at something like the Ukraine and you know they would have agents and station chiefs and advisors and freelancing mercenaries on the ground being 'security contractors'. We know this because the Americans had them in Cuba prior to the revolution, in all of Latin America for the better part of the last 120years, and even in South Korea and Vietnam leading up to the Korean War and Vitenam War respectively. It gives me no comfort whatsoever to know US intelligence and security people are doing their thing in Ukraine as we speak. Even if one of them actually was Captain America, I'd still feel the same un-ease.
And this is the exact un-ease with which Steve Rogers has to tangle in this film. The things that worked for the Americans in World War II didn't necessarily work for them in Korea and Vietnam. Consequently, the manner in which America conducts its wars has become very different. The film is able to posit a kind of moral litmus test about the military might of America and the uses to which it has been put since World War II.
Estrangement
Captain America, the public persona is alienating for Steve Rogers. The film works in many ways to parse the gap between the persona of Captain America, as the man in that uniform, and Steve Rogers, a man who is transported 70years into the future through coldsleep. On some level, Steve Rogers' anxieties are very much like the anxieties of Woody Allen's character Miles Monroe in 'Sleeper'. The main frustration comes from the fact that he recognises the America he left behind, but he cannot digest the parts that are different. Thus he is alienated not only from his public identity, but what that pubic identity represents.
A similar identity crisis overcomes Natasha Romanoff when she realises that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been infiltrated and transformed by Hydra. The revelation robs her of the self-validating conviction. Nick Fury having to fake his own death also suggests nick Fury's need to bury his public persona in order to work through the problem. We have seen superheroes in doubt prior to this film, but I don't think we've seen superheroes who have been this alienated from their raison d'etre.
This disembodiment is not limited to the heroes. The Winter Soldier himself is a victim of brainwashing and has lost his original identity. Zola makes a appearance as a disembodied mind in 1970s IBM mainframe (sort of referencing 'The Billion Dollar Brain'). The only person that seems well adjusted in all of this Robert Redford's character Alexander Pierce. Of course, Alexander Pierce is very close to Alexander Pearce, the Tasmanian cannibal, so maybe this hints at Redford's character being a total psychopath, in which case it would make sense that he is fine in his environment.
Where Are The Snowdens Of Yesteryear?
The most human moment of Captain America might be when he visits Sam, who is counselling a group of ex-soldiers for their PTSD. I've often wondered why superheroes don't get PTSD more often, but I wonder no more. Captain America is clearly suffering from PTSD from his war time experience, but he chooses not to acknowledge it. This is entirely like Yossarian in 'Catch-22', especially the film adaptation which keeps cutting back to the scene where Snowden dies in Yossrian's arm on the bomber. In one sense, the PTSD becomes undeniable when he realises the Winter Soldier is the transformed Bucky Barnes, who he lost in a mission in the first Captain America Movie.
This might be the most interesting aspect of the characterisation of Steve Rogers/Captain America because it plugs directly into the tragedy of a man taken out of time, but still asked to serve the state - and in this instance, a state that has been subverted by the very intelligence apparatus he is serving. Don't look now, but Steve Rogers in this film at least, is the Edward Snowden in us all. it's interesting how the name 'Snowden' matches up isn't it?
Anyway, I think this might be a positive sign that the comic book movies can actually address the grownup's ideas inherent in the stories. Certainly, these movies can afford to be more mature without losing their audiences.
Captain America is back once again, even amidst the rumours that Chris Evans can't wait to be done with his 6 picture deal with Marvel Studios playing the Captain. Chris Evans has actually been lucky compared to the three actors who have played The Hulk, and is possibly benefiting from the hard earned success of the 'Iron Man' movies. The usual game plan with these superhero numbers from Marvel is a 90 minute action-packed, sort-of-suggestive-of-meaning costumed action romp. This one actually gets to a lot more topical political ideas than even 'Iron Man'.
When you include the phantasmagorical success that was 'The Avengers', then this is the second Marvel Studio movie that hits a high water mark.
As usual, here's the spoiler warning: 'warning, spoiler alert'.
What's Good About It
The first Captain America movies was rushed to screen in time to beat the release of 'The Avengers'. Apart from the usual issues of origin stories, the first film seemed perfunctory and going through the motions. It really was a prequel for 'The Avengers' more than anything else and together with the first 'Thor' movie, felt like it was doing it by the numbers. The interest always lay in what la ahead, which everybody knew was going to be 'The Avengers'. This film has the luxury of coming after the main event, so it has narrative space to explore the character a bit more, ad we do get shown the anxiety of a man out of his time.
The film is thematically strong as it explores the limits of the states' powers when exercised through covert organs, as well as links it to the imperatives of winning World War II being the seed of the current state of affairs with spy agencies and security agencies running rough shod over citizen's rights. It also comes with a compelling feel for how even a figure like Captain America might have to go rogue from a state apparatus hell-bent on control.
The thrills and spills of the combat scenes are there, and the story hurtles along from one set piece to the next and you really don't feel the 136minute length. There's enough story there to sink your teeth into and the effects are really good.
What's Bad About It
It's hard to pick a fault with corporate entertainment like this except that it is corporate entertainment, and as such, it never comes to truly dangerous conclusions.
There's a scene towards the ed where Natasha Romanoff fronts up to some kind of Senate hearing and tells the politicians that they need her more than they need to lock her away and walks away. It would have been much better to engineer a scene where Captain America had to take the stand and answer political questions. It is such a missed opportunity, it ranks as a very black mark in the conception of the film. By letting the Senate question Natasha, the film never lets America confront itself. even though that is exactly where the story is pointing.
Where I come from, we call those a cop out.
What's Interesting About It
One wonders what on earth the American security apparatus is up to every day. Just looking at something like the Ukraine and you know they would have agents and station chiefs and advisors and freelancing mercenaries on the ground being 'security contractors'. We know this because the Americans had them in Cuba prior to the revolution, in all of Latin America for the better part of the last 120years, and even in South Korea and Vietnam leading up to the Korean War and Vitenam War respectively. It gives me no comfort whatsoever to know US intelligence and security people are doing their thing in Ukraine as we speak. Even if one of them actually was Captain America, I'd still feel the same un-ease.
And this is the exact un-ease with which Steve Rogers has to tangle in this film. The things that worked for the Americans in World War II didn't necessarily work for them in Korea and Vietnam. Consequently, the manner in which America conducts its wars has become very different. The film is able to posit a kind of moral litmus test about the military might of America and the uses to which it has been put since World War II.
Estrangement
Captain America, the public persona is alienating for Steve Rogers. The film works in many ways to parse the gap between the persona of Captain America, as the man in that uniform, and Steve Rogers, a man who is transported 70years into the future through coldsleep. On some level, Steve Rogers' anxieties are very much like the anxieties of Woody Allen's character Miles Monroe in 'Sleeper'. The main frustration comes from the fact that he recognises the America he left behind, but he cannot digest the parts that are different. Thus he is alienated not only from his public identity, but what that pubic identity represents.
A similar identity crisis overcomes Natasha Romanoff when she realises that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been infiltrated and transformed by Hydra. The revelation robs her of the self-validating conviction. Nick Fury having to fake his own death also suggests nick Fury's need to bury his public persona in order to work through the problem. We have seen superheroes in doubt prior to this film, but I don't think we've seen superheroes who have been this alienated from their raison d'etre.
This disembodiment is not limited to the heroes. The Winter Soldier himself is a victim of brainwashing and has lost his original identity. Zola makes a appearance as a disembodied mind in 1970s IBM mainframe (sort of referencing 'The Billion Dollar Brain'). The only person that seems well adjusted in all of this Robert Redford's character Alexander Pierce. Of course, Alexander Pierce is very close to Alexander Pearce, the Tasmanian cannibal, so maybe this hints at Redford's character being a total psychopath, in which case it would make sense that he is fine in his environment.
Where Are The Snowdens Of Yesteryear?
The most human moment of Captain America might be when he visits Sam, who is counselling a group of ex-soldiers for their PTSD. I've often wondered why superheroes don't get PTSD more often, but I wonder no more. Captain America is clearly suffering from PTSD from his war time experience, but he chooses not to acknowledge it. This is entirely like Yossarian in 'Catch-22', especially the film adaptation which keeps cutting back to the scene where Snowden dies in Yossrian's arm on the bomber. In one sense, the PTSD becomes undeniable when he realises the Winter Soldier is the transformed Bucky Barnes, who he lost in a mission in the first Captain America Movie.
This might be the most interesting aspect of the characterisation of Steve Rogers/Captain America because it plugs directly into the tragedy of a man taken out of time, but still asked to serve the state - and in this instance, a state that has been subverted by the very intelligence apparatus he is serving. Don't look now, but Steve Rogers in this film at least, is the Edward Snowden in us all. it's interesting how the name 'Snowden' matches up isn't it?
Anyway, I think this might be a positive sign that the comic book movies can actually address the grownup's ideas inherent in the stories. Certainly, these movies can afford to be more mature without losing their audiences.
2014/05/06
Dumbing Down The Future
What Good Is Tertiary Education If You Can't Afford It?
After days of commentary regarding the Commission of Audit's report, I'm a little stuck on the notion of education being possibly irrelevant in this country's future. When you consider that this country used to have free education, it's pretty alarming to see that the thinking behind the conservative, economic 'dry' people is to jack up the price of Tertiary education and saddle more people with HELP debt. The kinds of fees have gone up considerably since the days of HECS.
Just as an aside, I had an early HECS debt from my time at AFTRS worth $6,600 when I left. I had no obligation to pay any of it back until my annual income hit $30k. It was indexed to CPI, which was measured the old way and by the time i was making $30k, it had ballooned out to $12,700, which is roughly double. It took me about 5years to pay it off, but when you look at the total time it took from when I graduated, it took a decade.
The worst thing about paying it off was that it was money that got taken out after tax, but before you made any financial decisions. If you were earning just over 30k, the take home pay would be substantially less as a result. It became a sort of disincentive to earn the $30k, just to keep your finances going. It seemed unfair that the tax man got 2 bites of the tax out of you. The only reason you get an education is so you can get work, then it seems only fair that they take the HECS out first as if it were a business expense, and then figure out the income tax. I had this argument with the ATO a number of times to no avail, but at least I got it off my chest. It was a right pain in the rear and all it did was just start off at a measly $6,600.
Christopher Pyne - the minister for Poodles and limp Noodles - was on Q&A tonight making the claim that the average HELP debt of university graduates was in the order of $16k, so it's not a big deal for graduates to pay back. His argument was that 60% ever get Tertiary but they pay for universities through their taxes so university students ought to be more grateful for the very low loan they are getting
When I look at some of the sums of debt people are being hit with for HELP, I am left staggered. A lot of specialist arts courses like animation or design are running at about $40-50k. You wouldn't want to do a course like I did at AFTRS for $50,000 (not that it exists any more). Given the figure there, I would think it would take a good lifetime to pay off a specialist arts education. When you take into account how terrible your employment prospects would be, you'd have to wonder just what in the name of all that's good you are doing, lumbering yourself with the pricetag of a family sedan before you even enter the rat race.
Then there are careers in things like social work where you would be hard-pressed to earn the $50k salary before you start paying off - but based on my experience it would mean that the social worker would only start paying it back when their pay reaches $50k through inflationary adjustments and bracket creep; and by then their HELP debt has ballooned out to several times the original sum. If vocational courses present such problems, then you sure as hell would be wary of doing a general arts degree.
The point of all this is to say what we've got going is financially disincentivising education. And the more we try and slug money out of students, we're going to skewer higher education towards the wealthy. Contrary to Christopher Pyne's rant about competition being good for the education sector, the competition would be for students willing to take on the debt - and if this population is diminishing in numbers through disincentivisation, then we can expect the "second tier teaching colleges" to hit a financial wall. In fact, that's exactly what's happening to many US teaching colleges.
Christopher Pyne's argument that students can pay more is also misleading. By that argument, the rich can afford to pay more because they have the most capacity to make money through ownership of capital. But you sure don't hear that coming out of Pyne's mouth or the IPA spokespeople. What's really clear is that the conservatives of this country strongly desire a future where Australia is less educated, with fewer opportunities for people as being the ideal. To that end, they'll make education more expensive and less rewarding, except for those who come from wealthy families. While it is no surprise, it does seem to be one of the many things that are going to entrench inequality.
After days of commentary regarding the Commission of Audit's report, I'm a little stuck on the notion of education being possibly irrelevant in this country's future. When you consider that this country used to have free education, it's pretty alarming to see that the thinking behind the conservative, economic 'dry' people is to jack up the price of Tertiary education and saddle more people with HELP debt. The kinds of fees have gone up considerably since the days of HECS.
Just as an aside, I had an early HECS debt from my time at AFTRS worth $6,600 when I left. I had no obligation to pay any of it back until my annual income hit $30k. It was indexed to CPI, which was measured the old way and by the time i was making $30k, it had ballooned out to $12,700, which is roughly double. It took me about 5years to pay it off, but when you look at the total time it took from when I graduated, it took a decade.
The worst thing about paying it off was that it was money that got taken out after tax, but before you made any financial decisions. If you were earning just over 30k, the take home pay would be substantially less as a result. It became a sort of disincentive to earn the $30k, just to keep your finances going. It seemed unfair that the tax man got 2 bites of the tax out of you. The only reason you get an education is so you can get work, then it seems only fair that they take the HECS out first as if it were a business expense, and then figure out the income tax. I had this argument with the ATO a number of times to no avail, but at least I got it off my chest. It was a right pain in the rear and all it did was just start off at a measly $6,600.
Christopher Pyne - the minister for Poodles and limp Noodles - was on Q&A tonight making the claim that the average HELP debt of university graduates was in the order of $16k, so it's not a big deal for graduates to pay back. His argument was that 60% ever get Tertiary but they pay for universities through their taxes so university students ought to be more grateful for the very low loan they are getting
When I look at some of the sums of debt people are being hit with for HELP, I am left staggered. A lot of specialist arts courses like animation or design are running at about $40-50k. You wouldn't want to do a course like I did at AFTRS for $50,000 (not that it exists any more). Given the figure there, I would think it would take a good lifetime to pay off a specialist arts education. When you take into account how terrible your employment prospects would be, you'd have to wonder just what in the name of all that's good you are doing, lumbering yourself with the pricetag of a family sedan before you even enter the rat race.
Then there are careers in things like social work where you would be hard-pressed to earn the $50k salary before you start paying off - but based on my experience it would mean that the social worker would only start paying it back when their pay reaches $50k through inflationary adjustments and bracket creep; and by then their HELP debt has ballooned out to several times the original sum. If vocational courses present such problems, then you sure as hell would be wary of doing a general arts degree.
The point of all this is to say what we've got going is financially disincentivising education. And the more we try and slug money out of students, we're going to skewer higher education towards the wealthy. Contrary to Christopher Pyne's rant about competition being good for the education sector, the competition would be for students willing to take on the debt - and if this population is diminishing in numbers through disincentivisation, then we can expect the "second tier teaching colleges" to hit a financial wall. In fact, that's exactly what's happening to many US teaching colleges.
Christopher Pyne's argument that students can pay more is also misleading. By that argument, the rich can afford to pay more because they have the most capacity to make money through ownership of capital. But you sure don't hear that coming out of Pyne's mouth or the IPA spokespeople. What's really clear is that the conservatives of this country strongly desire a future where Australia is less educated, with fewer opportunities for people as being the ideal. To that end, they'll make education more expensive and less rewarding, except for those who come from wealthy families. While it is no surprise, it does seem to be one of the many things that are going to entrench inequality.
2014/05/03
Body Without Organs Part 2
Thunderous Objections Continue
You know a document has hit some kind of mark if the people against it are lining up to make their views heard. One gets the feeling the journalists covering this document were all pretty aghast at what was being presented, straight-faced and brazen, to a greatly sceptical audience.
Peter Martin slammed it saying the underlying assumption is that the only way Australia can get back to surplus was through cuts while leaving the current tax system untouched, while it even answered questions it was not asked like drastically cutting the minimum wage.
Michael Pascoe was just as pointed describing its approach as "casual brutality". He also pointed out the notion that if the states ought to compete with one another, it would result in putting the states falling behind now in a worse position, not better; and that those states would end up having to pay more. Australia is - last we checked - still a 'commonwealth' and not a 'competition of states'.
Steve Keen was more in a demolition derby mood as he pointed out the fundamental stupidity of Australia worrying about getting back to a surplus now, given the context of the world economy. The fundamental assumptions underlying the very exercise seems to be dodgy, while the preconceptions going in were just as misguided.
I know from Pleiades that the AFR s not happy either calling it 'illogical hostility' and decidedly critical of the notion of abolishing key industry support programs. The AFR is also reporting that customers are taking action, protesting the four major banks for their support of fossil fuel investments. Some of these are major funds looking to allocate funds to companies and projects that are genuinely eco friendly. The Federal Government is flying into a storm with its contrarian position on Climate Change, and its stated desire to shut down all these green initiatives.
Basically there has been a loud chorus of boos from the press gallery, which probably doesn't mean much to the man in the high office. But it's interesting to note some of this is spreading out to the world and will have consequences for Australia's economy. If you look at the document it appears it is not that different to the sort of position statement that might come from the US Tea Party, and it would certainly be interesting to see how this document looks when lined up with the Tea Party's position statement. After all, as Michael Pascoe points out, it appears Tony Abbott really wants to turn Australia in to a facsimile of America.
Gen-X Will Retire At 70
In amidst all the brouhaha about the Commission of Audit and its audaciously hostile report, was the gem that Joe Hockey announced that the pension eligibility will be raised to 70.
The line he drew in the sand?People born after 1965. That's pretty much saying Gen-X onwards. I was going to lambast him for being born in 1964, but it turns out he was born 1965. So if you're an old school mate of Joe's you can thank him for that gift. He'll be drawing on his generous Parliamentarian superannuation as soon as he leaves Parliament while some of his mates might never reach the age of drawing a pension. If there is such a thing as poetic injustice, it might just be in there somewhere.
If you thought demographics was crap, and that distinctions like Baby Boomers and Generation X and Generation Y and Millennials were just marketing brackets then the line in the sand drawn by the Treasurer might just give you pause. I've pointed out before that Generation-X were the first to get hit with HECS after the Baby Boomer generation went by on free Tertiary Education. It's really no mistake that the boom is falling on the queue just in front of Generation X, because the Baby Boomers are fitting up the social cost of their lives and their education and their retirement on to Generation X.
I don't know if this is going to work. 2035 is 21 years away, and there's a lot of politics to be played out between then and now. It's long enough for another generation to grow into maturity and look at all the social costs being passed on to the latter generations and tip the balance the other way. I've pointed this out before but the ALP is already coming into the next Federal election with a front bench dominated by Generation X, headed up by Bill Shorten. The script might be written, but this movie is far from shot, cut and mixed. :)
Oh, Let's Cut All of It!
One of things that got put on the table for cuts was Screen Australia. Naturally there was an outcry from the usual voices.
You mean it would upset your gravy train perhaps?.
The people most vocal about it are the people who have received the most support from the funding bodies over their careers. Honestly I'd like to see all of it abolished just to see what would happen. I've got no love for film making in Australia any more, so I really don't care if it goes to the dogs. Heck, if I can't have it, let them not have it, is how I feel. Screw the bastards with their mouths firmly attached to the government teat and above all, screw the film bureaucrats. They can go find a job in another industry and work until they're 70.
Yeah, don't cut it in half, cut the whole damn lot.
You know a document has hit some kind of mark if the people against it are lining up to make their views heard. One gets the feeling the journalists covering this document were all pretty aghast at what was being presented, straight-faced and brazen, to a greatly sceptical audience.
Peter Martin slammed it saying the underlying assumption is that the only way Australia can get back to surplus was through cuts while leaving the current tax system untouched, while it even answered questions it was not asked like drastically cutting the minimum wage.
Michael Pascoe was just as pointed describing its approach as "casual brutality". He also pointed out the notion that if the states ought to compete with one another, it would result in putting the states falling behind now in a worse position, not better; and that those states would end up having to pay more. Australia is - last we checked - still a 'commonwealth' and not a 'competition of states'.
Steve Keen was more in a demolition derby mood as he pointed out the fundamental stupidity of Australia worrying about getting back to a surplus now, given the context of the world economy. The fundamental assumptions underlying the very exercise seems to be dodgy, while the preconceptions going in were just as misguided.
I know from Pleiades that the AFR s not happy either calling it 'illogical hostility' and decidedly critical of the notion of abolishing key industry support programs. The AFR is also reporting that customers are taking action, protesting the four major banks for their support of fossil fuel investments. Some of these are major funds looking to allocate funds to companies and projects that are genuinely eco friendly. The Federal Government is flying into a storm with its contrarian position on Climate Change, and its stated desire to shut down all these green initiatives.
Basically there has been a loud chorus of boos from the press gallery, which probably doesn't mean much to the man in the high office. But it's interesting to note some of this is spreading out to the world and will have consequences for Australia's economy. If you look at the document it appears it is not that different to the sort of position statement that might come from the US Tea Party, and it would certainly be interesting to see how this document looks when lined up with the Tea Party's position statement. After all, as Michael Pascoe points out, it appears Tony Abbott really wants to turn Australia in to a facsimile of America.
Gen-X Will Retire At 70
In amidst all the brouhaha about the Commission of Audit and its audaciously hostile report, was the gem that Joe Hockey announced that the pension eligibility will be raised to 70.
The line he drew in the sand?People born after 1965. That's pretty much saying Gen-X onwards. I was going to lambast him for being born in 1964, but it turns out he was born 1965. So if you're an old school mate of Joe's you can thank him for that gift. He'll be drawing on his generous Parliamentarian superannuation as soon as he leaves Parliament while some of his mates might never reach the age of drawing a pension. If there is such a thing as poetic injustice, it might just be in there somewhere.
If you thought demographics was crap, and that distinctions like Baby Boomers and Generation X and Generation Y and Millennials were just marketing brackets then the line in the sand drawn by the Treasurer might just give you pause. I've pointed out before that Generation-X were the first to get hit with HECS after the Baby Boomer generation went by on free Tertiary Education. It's really no mistake that the boom is falling on the queue just in front of Generation X, because the Baby Boomers are fitting up the social cost of their lives and their education and their retirement on to Generation X.
I don't know if this is going to work. 2035 is 21 years away, and there's a lot of politics to be played out between then and now. It's long enough for another generation to grow into maturity and look at all the social costs being passed on to the latter generations and tip the balance the other way. I've pointed this out before but the ALP is already coming into the next Federal election with a front bench dominated by Generation X, headed up by Bill Shorten. The script might be written, but this movie is far from shot, cut and mixed. :)
Oh, Let's Cut All of It!
One of things that got put on the table for cuts was Screen Australia. Naturally there was an outcry from the usual voices.
"Culturally it would put us back in the stone age," said John L Simpson, producer and founder of the film distribution company Titan View of the Commission of Audit's recommendation. "I thought that Australians had got over the cultural cringe, the idea that the only culture engaging with is the culture imported into this country, but that's what's going to happen. We'll be a cultural backwater if we don't invest."
"It would have a devastating effect on the Australian film industry," said film producer and director Sophie Hyde. "It's already a very underfunded industry. We do so much with the small amount that we get, but I think that would effectively decapitate it."
Robert Connolly, a filmmaker and former board member of Screen Australia described the recommendation as "catastrophic". He said that Screen Australia receives around $100m a year and has funded some of the most successful homegrown television of recent times. On 9 February, he said, "there was the INXS biopic and the Schappelle Corby one and there were almost five million Australians watching drama that Screen Australia had invested in.
You mean it would upset your gravy train perhaps?.
The people most vocal about it are the people who have received the most support from the funding bodies over their careers. Honestly I'd like to see all of it abolished just to see what would happen. I've got no love for film making in Australia any more, so I really don't care if it goes to the dogs. Heck, if I can't have it, let them not have it, is how I feel. Screw the bastards with their mouths firmly attached to the government teat and above all, screw the film bureaucrats. They can go find a job in another industry and work until they're 70.
Yeah, don't cut it in half, cut the whole damn lot.
2014/05/02
He's Your Mate
Complaining Now? Wait Until It Gets Worse
Something I don't really like to leave alone here is the fact the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald Darren Goodsir advocated voting for Tony Abbott and the Coalition in the 2013 Federal Election. At the time, it made no sense and the editorial itself hardly had anything to commend for itself logically, let alone anything in the wisdom stakes. Yet, there it was in broad daylight. He was saying, don't vote for Kevin Rudd, vote for Tony Abbott for a change. A change to what? I ask you! To the worse, as it turned out?
What really pisses me off to this day is that when Rupert Murdoch and his bought minions were doing their best to bury Kevin Rudd's government, "fair and balanced" would have been to back the incumbents and not join in with the Murdoch press, like the so many intellectually barren sycophants that came crawling out to hear Tony Abbott's victory speech.
Of course "hindsight is 20-20", but if you're one of the Cassandras that saw this complete schmozzle we call the Abbott Government coming the only remaining delight we have is the delight we take in punishing Darren Goodsir for backing this dud government. Thus it is with great Schadenfreude that I present yet another instance of the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald having a whinge about the Abbott Government - yes, the Government they recommended because it would make a nice change.
Blah, blah, blah, and so it goes on for another 14 pathetic paragraphs, offering up reasons why raising taxes would be bad. It's totally laughable because we knew before the election that there was no way that the Coalition was going to be able to make their numbers work, especially if they were going to spend on things that they said they would. I would like to write "and hilarity ensued", but quite frankly, this is no laughing matter. If people thought the Rudd-Gillard government was dysfunctional, they haven't quite swallowed the fact that this is a mendacious, malicious and incompetent government.
The biggest irony of all is how the editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald no less thought that these people were fine upstanding people who would be able to make adult decisions and behave like adults. So tell us how all that has worked out for you Mr. Goodsir?
Something I don't really like to leave alone here is the fact the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald Darren Goodsir advocated voting for Tony Abbott and the Coalition in the 2013 Federal Election. At the time, it made no sense and the editorial itself hardly had anything to commend for itself logically, let alone anything in the wisdom stakes. Yet, there it was in broad daylight. He was saying, don't vote for Kevin Rudd, vote for Tony Abbott for a change. A change to what? I ask you! To the worse, as it turned out?
What really pisses me off to this day is that when Rupert Murdoch and his bought minions were doing their best to bury Kevin Rudd's government, "fair and balanced" would have been to back the incumbents and not join in with the Murdoch press, like the so many intellectually barren sycophants that came crawling out to hear Tony Abbott's victory speech.
Of course "hindsight is 20-20", but if you're one of the Cassandras that saw this complete schmozzle we call the Abbott Government coming the only remaining delight we have is the delight we take in punishing Darren Goodsir for backing this dud government. Thus it is with great Schadenfreude that I present yet another instance of the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald having a whinge about the Abbott Government - yes, the Government they recommended because it would make a nice change.
Let there be no bones about it. A levy, temporary or otherwise, is a tax, and if the Abbott government goes ahead with such a measure on middle- and high-income earners, it will be a shoddy way of trying to repair the budget, and will do little to improve the productivity of our economy.
The political hypocrisy of Prime Minister Tony Abbott contemplating such a tax, after explicit promises of no new taxes and three years of lashing Julia Gillard over her broken carbon tax pledge, is breathtaking. But it is more serious than this.
The Australian Industry Group and other business leaders are already warning that lifting tax rates will slow the economy.
Blah, blah, blah, and so it goes on for another 14 pathetic paragraphs, offering up reasons why raising taxes would be bad. It's totally laughable because we knew before the election that there was no way that the Coalition was going to be able to make their numbers work, especially if they were going to spend on things that they said they would. I would like to write "and hilarity ensued", but quite frankly, this is no laughing matter. If people thought the Rudd-Gillard government was dysfunctional, they haven't quite swallowed the fact that this is a mendacious, malicious and incompetent government.
The biggest irony of all is how the editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald no less thought that these people were fine upstanding people who would be able to make adult decisions and behave like adults. So tell us how all that has worked out for you Mr. Goodsir?
Body Without Organs
Commission Of Cu(n)ts
In its own way, the Tony Abbott government has proven to be extraordinarily surprising. It never ceases to amaze us as to just how low it would stoop, just how mean it will be, how misplaced their sense of balance might reside ,and just how good they think the awful deeds they do look to themselves. It is a bit like the fictional Oz, wherein the people in charge of the body corporate are without brain or heart.
Given that they are bereft of coming up with actual ideas as to how to reform the tax system in this country, and by extension reform this economy, they have - in true Tory style - outsourced the thinking to a bunch of ideological wonks to come up with suggestions. Of course, they would choose a panel loaded with people you would describe as ideologically motivated in the way that you might describe Margaret Thatcher was ideologically motivated.
If the worst member on the list is Amanda Vanstone (she of the sandwich-and-milkshake back in the Howard ministry days and who had only 1 year experience as a minister of anything to do with economic policy), the rest of the members of this Commission of Audit delivering up their suggestions seem to be not much less Tory. The only people who can imagine impartiality or fairness from these people are the people set to benefit from their suggestions and that would be big business.
Since their report was released at 2pm today, the headlines have gone crazy with the details of their recommendation.
Cut minimum wage by 133.30 a week.
Scrap Family Tax Benefit B and 35 Agencies.
Call to increase university fees.
More Health shake-up.
This doesn't include the bit where they're going to cut pensions and recommendation to not pay Cadbury what Tony Abbott said he would fund Cadbury. You can just feel all those journos collectively drawing a breath and diving into this sewer channel of a document.
Needless to say the recommendations from this Commission pretty much tear up the social contract in Australia. John Hewson's Fightback didn't go this far into the land of user-pay society and entrenching wealth and privilege. It's totally bizarre as to just what kind of future these people are envisaging if education is priced out of the middle class, minimum wages are cut, there are wholesale cuts to welfare and cutting access to healthcare. One imagines this is the Tea Party kind of vision Tony Abbott has brought back from 'Murica' and encouraged amongst his brethren, but this is nothing short of the kind of class warfare they fear.
Not to mention the fact that if our society becomes totally user-pay as is the dream of these fascists, they'll be turning Australia further into a two-tiered economy where the privileged make mag-bucks while the majority will be doing menial jobs or be unemployed. it looks like an out and out attempt to entrench privilege for the privileged and destroy social mobility at all costs - and by costs we mean social and demographic. Australia's not ever likely to be the kind of country that goes all revolutionary but really, this Commission of Audit report is a declaration of war against the 99% from the 1%.
While I'm at it, I should relay to you this link from Pleiades about privilege.
Anyway. Pleiades was telling me today that there's serious consternation amongst the Liberal and National Party about the mental health of the Prime Minister. The indication I got was that the party is surprised Tony Abbott is pushing ahead with a very hairy ideological agenda that could (and would) seriously damage their chances for re-election. That Tony Abbott is either seriously deluded about the extent of the validation and the meaning in his election victory and is going full on, or he is simply mad.
I guess we'll see just how much electorate damage this report does to their credibility.
In its own way, the Tony Abbott government has proven to be extraordinarily surprising. It never ceases to amaze us as to just how low it would stoop, just how mean it will be, how misplaced their sense of balance might reside ,and just how good they think the awful deeds they do look to themselves. It is a bit like the fictional Oz, wherein the people in charge of the body corporate are without brain or heart.
Given that they are bereft of coming up with actual ideas as to how to reform the tax system in this country, and by extension reform this economy, they have - in true Tory style - outsourced the thinking to a bunch of ideological wonks to come up with suggestions. Of course, they would choose a panel loaded with people you would describe as ideologically motivated in the way that you might describe Margaret Thatcher was ideologically motivated.
If the worst member on the list is Amanda Vanstone (she of the sandwich-and-milkshake back in the Howard ministry days and who had only 1 year experience as a minister of anything to do with economic policy), the rest of the members of this Commission of Audit delivering up their suggestions seem to be not much less Tory. The only people who can imagine impartiality or fairness from these people are the people set to benefit from their suggestions and that would be big business.
Since their report was released at 2pm today, the headlines have gone crazy with the details of their recommendation.
Cut minimum wage by 133.30 a week.
Scrap Family Tax Benefit B and 35 Agencies.
Call to increase university fees.
More Health shake-up.
This doesn't include the bit where they're going to cut pensions and recommendation to not pay Cadbury what Tony Abbott said he would fund Cadbury. You can just feel all those journos collectively drawing a breath and diving into this sewer channel of a document.
Needless to say the recommendations from this Commission pretty much tear up the social contract in Australia. John Hewson's Fightback didn't go this far into the land of user-pay society and entrenching wealth and privilege. It's totally bizarre as to just what kind of future these people are envisaging if education is priced out of the middle class, minimum wages are cut, there are wholesale cuts to welfare and cutting access to healthcare. One imagines this is the Tea Party kind of vision Tony Abbott has brought back from 'Murica' and encouraged amongst his brethren, but this is nothing short of the kind of class warfare they fear.
Not to mention the fact that if our society becomes totally user-pay as is the dream of these fascists, they'll be turning Australia further into a two-tiered economy where the privileged make mag-bucks while the majority will be doing menial jobs or be unemployed. it looks like an out and out attempt to entrench privilege for the privileged and destroy social mobility at all costs - and by costs we mean social and demographic. Australia's not ever likely to be the kind of country that goes all revolutionary but really, this Commission of Audit report is a declaration of war against the 99% from the 1%.
While I'm at it, I should relay to you this link from Pleiades about privilege.
Anyway. Pleiades was telling me today that there's serious consternation amongst the Liberal and National Party about the mental health of the Prime Minister. The indication I got was that the party is surprised Tony Abbott is pushing ahead with a very hairy ideological agenda that could (and would) seriously damage their chances for re-election. That Tony Abbott is either seriously deluded about the extent of the validation and the meaning in his election victory and is going full on, or he is simply mad.
I guess we'll see just how much electorate damage this report does to their credibility.
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