Category: rant’n’rave

… stop listening now!

I was nearly violent towards the TV tonight as John Howard weasled his way around Kerry O’Brien’s questions on the 7:30 Report. He is finished. They’ve had their chance and they are finished … and now it sounds like they’re manipulating Telstra’s broadband campaign to their own crafty political ends – makes me sick.

I won’t deny that the libs have kept the economy in reasonable economic shape, but that is, in the end, just sums – I’m sure the ALP have got a few people that can add up too. No, people have realised that money isn’t everything, on an evening where a corporate executive is awarded a sickening $33 million dollar bonus, folk are unanimous that a few dollars a week in the wallet is not what life is all about. We need leadership interested in more than the status quo. The libs have failed miserably on that one – please stop listening now!

As a postscript to our asian holiday, we’ve been replacing just about every credit/debit card we own (don’t even ask!). So, every couple of days a new envelope arrives from one bank or another.

Each new card is accompanied by a new PIN. For security reasons (and just plain common sense!), banks don’t send these out at the same time… well they’re not supposed to, but we’ve had three new cards from the Commonwealth bank in the last fortnight which have all arrived in the same post as the PIN envelopes.

I mentioned this to the person in the call centre when I activated the first card and was told that it was most unusual! The second time, I just rolled my eyes. The third time, I was really ticked off, so I rang them to complain and was met with a brick wall. I was told the only thing I could do was issue a formal written complaint. They didn’t really want to know.

We’ve got all our new cards now, so I’ll probably forget this little episode until next time it happens in the years to come. Grrr!

The news is making me sad. Rockets launched, bombs dropped. So called leaders standing up in front of cameras spouting pointless rhetoric.

There is no easy answer. I’m not going to venture into who is right or wrong, because when it comes down to killing and injuring children, smashing people’s peaceful lives apart, destroying beautiful countries – there is no right.

Take a few minutes to visit flickr – look up photos tagged with lebanon, then look up photos of Israel. In both cases you’ll see people sharing moments with families, proudly holding babies, protesting against war, enjoying the beauty that surrounds them. Next, get yourself a copy of Google Earth, then use this kml file to zoom in on the mountains in northern Lebanon and scroll slowly south down to the coast, cross into Israel and continue down the coast or the mountains. In fact, enhance the experience – turn off ‘Borders’ so you don’t know when you’ve crossed into Israel, because that’s how it looks best. I have to admit, I didn’t know Lebanon had ski fields and such incredibly beautiful rural areas. There are plenty of things I didn’t know about Israel either.

Once you’ve seen the photos and ‘flown’ over the countries, I’m sure you’ll be sad too. Nobody deserves a war.

The Ford GTHO was the ultimate car of it’s time… big, fast and powerful. However, if it appeared on the showroom floor today, it would be a flop. Sure, there’d still be a hard core of enthusiasts who would find it attractive, but lack of comfort, lack of standard equipment and an astronomical fuel bill would limit it’s appeal.

This is the RACV as a lobby group – stuck in the 70’s, advocating policies that it hopes will restore, or at least prolong, the golden age of motoring that saw it rise as a power. Irrelevant to an increasing proportion of it’s members and the community at large.

Why am I getting worked up about this right now? Well, over the past few weeks I’ve been annoyed by my local paper (Moreland Leader) pushing an RACV initiative to identify ‘Red Spots’… locations where traffic causes driver delay and frustration. This week my annoyance spilled over into anger as the front page of the Leader once again featured the RACV banner ad, but this time with a front page story about a bicycle commuter who had been killed by a motorist. Does anyone else spot the irony here?

Lets get back to the survey. It is nothing short of a sham… designed to elicit one-sided, knee jerk responses to problems that cannot be easily solved. The basic problem is a no-brainer: roads designed 10, 20, 30 years ago struggle to cope with today’s traffic. Gee, why would that be? The roads haven’t changed, could it be the traffic? Hang on a minute – there are more cars than there used to be! Eureka!! Lets face it, if you are sitting in a traffic jam, steaming up about the time you’re wasting, you are part of the problem!

Where is the section in their survey that deals with alternatives? Questions like: “Would you support strategies to reduce traffic on roads?”, “How often do you travel alone in your car?”, “Would you consider using public transport or riding a bicycle if you recieved a subsidy?”. All pretty relevant questions, but maybe the answers wouldn’t be the sort of thing the RACV would like to publicise. When are they going to realise that an awful lot of their members who are car drivers are also bicycle riders, motorcycle riders and public transport users? Wouldn’t that have been a relevant question? They call themselve a motoring lobby group, but their members are not just motorists.

Why is the RACV stuck in the past? That’s actually pretty easy to answer too: take a look at the board of directors totally dominated by old men in suits. Probably haven’t had a progressive idea between them in over 30 years.

How about pushing for real change – policies that reduce the number of cars on the road, because that’s the only way to fix this problem. Lets see them come out and support a congestion tax, or a halt to new roads and diversion of the funds to bike paths, motorcycle subsidies and free public transport. Then the RACV will start to look like a hydrogen powered car, something I would want to be seen driving in for the next 20 years.

I have enjoyed watching the world cup. It was great that Australia participated and didn’t make fools of themselves (well, apart from Harry). Guus has cemented himself as an honorary life member of the gallery of Australian ‘heroes’. It’s been fun.

But then I woke up this morning to make the tea and turned on the box to catch the last ten minutes of France v Spain. Almost as soon as I turned it on a French player seemed to run into an invisible obstruction on the pitch, was awarded a free kick. The Spanish player, who did absolutely nothing, was awarded a yellow card. The kick was taken, a goal was scored. Spain were forced to push forward and eventually conceded another goal. And that is how soccer failed to find a place in the Australian psyche.

Australians, I believe as a rule, prefer a fair fight. It might not be this incident, or this particular game, or even this tournament, but one by one we realise we are not talking about the great goals, or the great saves, or the great runs down the wing. We are talking about the great injustices. Sooner or later, you want something with a bit more substance.

When the teams with the best actors are the ones that win, it’s time to find a new source of entertainment.