This series keeps delivering on its product. The cinematography and production design remain top notch. It doesn't quite feel like the sagas because the emotional lives of these characters are so much more intense and seem to have more in common with bikie gangs than say, Njal or Guunnar from 'Njal's Saga'. All the same, the violence is great, and the battle scenes glorious. The action cues really pump and the stakes are always abstract as well as practical. The writing is pretty snappy and in many ways the cast are hiding their stride playing these characters. In some ways I think this series appeals to me more than even 'Game of Thrones'.
Some of the events the series is based upon is beginning to overlap with events sourced for 'The Last Kingdom' which is Netflix's own series about medieval England around the time of the Viking invasions. 'Vikings' is inevitably aiming at showing us the Great Heathen Army, while 'The Last Kingdom' is working towards the reign of King Alfred in defiance of the Vikings who settled in England. It's all so interesting viewing if you're into medieval history.
The thing is, when i was studying medieval history back in high school, I never really got just how much blood guts gore, violence and sex there was in all of this. I wish I'd known - I'm sure I would have paid more attention.
Bullshit For Everybody
Trump is spreading the love. Okay no he's no, he's spreading evermore bullshit, possibly in avid to distract the world from probing further into his Russian connection. His current flavour of bullshit is that President Obama was wire-tapping him in Trump Tower, which sounds as preposterous as... oh I don't know, Area 51 housing alien corpses.
Of course, if President Obama had used the powers of his office to do so, there would be a trail of paperwork to make it so, and of course there isn't; the FBI have said they've done no such thing, and you'd think that would be the end of it, but no. The Donald is pushing for an inquiry, which is a bit like asking for people to officially sniff his butt to see if his bullshit indeed stinks.
There are days where I wonder where the world is going. Today I know I don't have to wonder at all, it's obvious it's going straight to hell in a hand basket full of deplorables.
The Vested Interests Of Politicians
The government likes to talk out housing affordability but isn't willing to actually do anything that might make a difference. Yes, that's right, they won't because all the gyrations of the RBA combined with shoring up the banks during the GFC (and including the debt-monster Macquarie Bank in that set) had everything to do with shoring up asset prices, and in most instances, those asset prices were homes. Why on Earth then would the government feel an incentive to knock down housing prices when the incentives are pointed in the other direction?
Here's an article that lays it all out.
The federal government's problem with making housing more affordable is that it becomes, by definition, cheaper. And that's not something that the federal government wants to see happen for some very understandable reasons.
Back in the Howard era Australians were encouraged to invest in housing as a form of wealth creation, partially as a way of addressing rental strain and mainly as a way to ensure people had assets and therefore didn't go selfishly claiming pensions later on. That's when the negative gearing and capital gains exemptions were introduced that made buying property such a sweet deal.
So now there are a lot of Australians who have put their retirement eggs in the basket marked "leveraging the hell out of my mortgage to buy more investment properties" for the last couple of decades and who will be therefore disadvantaged if the value of housing drops.
And then there's pure self interest at work too, since between a third and half of all our representatives have investment properties - the PM himself owns seven properties, for example. How keen would you say that our parliamentary representatives are to make their portfolios drop in value, especially for something as stupid as the greater good?
Also, as well we know thanks to the efforts of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, the NSW Liberals are so beloved by property developers that the party went to some effort to find a way of accepting donations from them despite those donations being completely illegal. If they suddenly become the party that makes property less lucrative, there'd be no donations to justify the creation of opaque entities like the Free Enterprise Foundation.Yes, they are part of the vested interests do with the Property Bubble. No, they won't be doing what needs to be done so that too will be left to the market.
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