Hug A Fat Bastard Today

Not a post, just a wish ;-)

I'm not offended, just saddened by the lack of original thought

I saw this on a Mate's Facebook page today, and it kind of mad me sad.

PERSONALLY, I DON'T CARE IF I DO OFFEND ANYONE BY THIS!!!

I PLEDGE ALLIANCE TO THE FLAG OF AUSTRALIA AND TO THE COMMONWEALTH FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!

MY GENERATION GREW UP RECITING THE AUSTRALIA ANTHEM EVERY MORNING IN SCHOOL WITH MY HAND ON MY HEART. THEY NO LONGER DO THAT FOR FEAR OF OFFENDING SOMEONE!

LET'S SEE HOW MANY AUSSIES WILL RE-POST THIS AND NOT CARE ABOUT OFFENDING SOMEONE.

Ah, I get where you are coming from Mate, but get rid of the horrible bastardisation of American pledge of allegiance which reads "I PLEDGE ALLIANCE TO THE _AMERICAN_ FLAG AND TO THE _REPUBLIC_ FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, AND JUSTICE FOR ALL".

This is a rehash of an American call to Nationalism, bastardised to change a few words to put it in an Australian context.

We didn't recite our national anthem, we sang it with gusto, although in our day it was God Save the Queen! And today nobody is ashamed of singing Advanced Australia Fair, or Waltzing Matilda for that matter!

We aren't a Republic, we aren't one nation under God - in Australia we have separated Church from State.

I'm not offended by the sentiment, just saddened by fact that someone tried to shoe-horn a set of American sentiments onto a Australian way of living that doesn't and shouldn't need it.

Let's do one better and find a truly Australian way of expressing pride in our Country and it's achievements! ;-) Any ideas?

er, see ya at half past...

Something should be done about that...

The phrase "something should be done about that" is a cause of mischievous joy between myself and my partner when events around us occur that are considered slightly annoying or inconvenient.

We see a person without a disabled sticker park in a disabled spot? "Something should be done about that".

A man rushes into the local fast food restaurant and leaves his two year old child in the car alone and unattended. "Something should be done about that".

A person is seen drunk and passed out under a tree in the park. "Something should be done about that".

I'm watching the news tonight and looking at the riots, looting and devastation.

"Something should be done about that" just doesn't work anymore.

(Sigh)

er, see ya at half past...

So, why are we trying to blame, rather than fix?

This is a reply to a Blog posted on Canberra's Causerie today. 

It was headed "I am the greenhouse culprit. And so are you!"

I write my blog as a reply to his arguments, and I also added this reply to the comments section of the posting, but at the time of this post it had not yet been cleared by the editors. 

Drag0nista, you have written some quite insightful articles which I've always enjoyed reading here, but it is sad to see you drop the ball and push the envelope a little too far. Yes, I know, piling on metaphors is NOT a good look, but I'll press on.

The problem is that you set up one premise - deception in market research, then by inference, label truthful, balanced comments by Senator Brown as the same thing.

Lets see, are the mining industry not paying there way for a finite resources that we own and so therefore producing "excess profits"? Well, yes, actually, they are. No emotive deception there I think.

Is untrammelled exploitation of natural resources by industries with no current legal requirements to be carbon neutral contributing to climate change and global warming, and thus can these industries be branded "culprits"? Well, according to the vast majority of current scientific endeavour, yes they can be branded as such. Once again, emotive deception? No.

Now, is the coal industry “75% owned outside Australia”?  Actually, it is. But deceptive? No, but it is rightly a little emotive to some because we have lost a lot of the profits that leave the country, but not emotive because Senator Brown puts the simple fact in front of you. So no again.

The final quoted phrase "would cost Australians $35 billion in foregone revenue" was taken from a Goldman Sachs study; a company not normally associated with wild claims to back up the green movement. Just simple numbers. Emotive and deceptive? No. 

And these phrases were "honed by researchers in sympathetic think tanks such as the Climate Institute and the Australia Institute". That one had me rolling on the floor. 

Finally the usual long list of what we'll loose if we believe Senator Brown. Now I had a bit of time so I googled the phrase "they should get rid of that second fridge or the freezer/bar fridge in the garage" and tried to find a mention of the Senator extolling that requirement to be saved. The result you can guess. I gave up after the first five pages of results. Finding references to US Senators called Brown was hint that the pickings were getting slim.

Are industry, transport, households and the whole lot of us responsible for the state of the planet today? 

Yes. 

Everyone and everything is interlinked. Every decision you and your neighbours make and every option you and your neighbours take affects the world we live in, in a small way, both positive and negative. That's a given. Some people cry over the losses and other prefer to ignore them. That's also a given.

So lets look at it another way. Do we have to do all of the things on the list to be saved? For us to do a few of them would help, but what we really need to look at is why we do these things now. 

• Why do we have a fridge in the garage going all of the time just to keep a couple of bottles of beer cold? 
• Why do we leave computers on all night and all day when we aren't using them? 
• Why do we have stand-by power in appliances that normally sit right next to a power point? (don't laugh, my water heater at home does. And I switch it off ;-)
• People who use electricity at peak time DO pay more. We all do as peak load is more expensive, but the cost is spread to all consumers.
• Why do young married couples buy four bedroom homes when they don't need the space for years toy come, and for that matter why can't a single person get a decent two bedroom house with a garden and entertainment area that is not a unit or an apartment? Actually, I can answer that one. The housing industry makes the most profits from big houses on ever increasingly small blocks.
• Why do people buy large 4 wheel drives and V8s for primarily going to the supermarket?
• Why aren't cement and aluminium producers called to account for their excessive energy use, and why don't these cosseted industries pay the true cost of energy? I wouldn't mind if their production methods were carbon neutral, but they are not. They are ripping other electricity consumers off.
• Finally, I'm not sure what I can say about the last item on the list. If you are talking about animal by-products, then all I can say is that the vast majority of those food products exported are actually plant-based and so carbon-reducing. Meat products only accounts for about 30% of the value of food exports.

Actually, Senator Brown would not advocate your list, Drag0nista, because the list is reactive and flawed. He is also not promoting those actions, but it seems that you are, to create another premise, that in the end also falls down.


er, see ya at half past...

Standing up for a fair shake of the sauce bottle

Julia the PM (at time of writing anyway) was asked by a reporter in Townsville yesterday "Should tomato sauce be free with a meat pie".

Now, for some perverse reason that has become a source (excuse the pun) for much mirth in the media, but I think it needs a little deconstruction.

As this blog is all about the little things in life that bug me, it is perhaps an appropriate conundrum to investigate.

So, harking back to my youth, until these little bits of packaging came on to the scene tomato sauce was free. it came in a bottle on the counter at your local shop or a squeeze bottle at the condiments area of the footy canteen.

Now in those days you were buying a pie, not the condiments. You did not have to pay for the sauce on your pie. You did not have to pay for the salt on your chips. And you did not have to pay for the sugar in your tea or coffee. (Yes, dear reader, in my youth they sold just as much teas as coffee at the footy!) Condiments were free.

Then came packaged servings of tomato sauce in the era of economic rationalism.

Now, I like some aspects of the "user pays" system, but these goals should not be at the expense of the "server your customers well" idea.

To me, supplying condiments is a "cost of doing business" rather than a "profit centre" issue. Good business people who care about their customers and not charging a petty 10c for a little disposable packet of sauce always get my patronage. So bring back the condiments counter and the sauce squeezer please and get rid of portion control - that is what your customers want! And another thing, about those bloody disposable sauce sachets...

er, see ya at half past...

Now I'm really pissed off...

The Wilderness Society is having a go at the "missing in action" pollies on climate change and the environmental front.

Greg Hunt and Peter Garret have been AWOL since the campaign started; well it is a junior ministry! Don't even get me started with Penny 'Puppet' Wong.

I know there are many issues that we need to take into account to help the country develop, help people live safe lives and keep the world in peace.

However the single most important over-riding issue is our living environment. Without the clean earth that we live on, life cannot go on. Without clean air, we will slowly get sick. Without a way past the short-sighted rent-seekers in industries who pollute, we will loose hope.

Our grasping for every new technology has put a barrier between us and the world around us. We have become like monarchs in our castle who don't actually know what is going on really deep down in the kingdom below them. The powers that be seem only to listen to the shrillest voice - pushing short-term self interest over the interests of the planet - yet they are also locked in the castle and equally clueless.

Pollies, just listen to the people. The voters who have their say but once every three years. Just bloody fix it, get it over and done with just like the vast majority of the scientific community say it needs to be done. Don't wait until it is too late. Don't be the ones in the history books blamed for mass extinction of species.

Or are you all just too gutless?

(sigh... er, see ya at half past...)

Is today's world what Lincoln really meant?

With a Federal Election awkwardly loping up to us here in Australia, like some giant malformed directionless jellyfish, my frustration at what has been promised in the past and what has actually been delivered to us is causing a lot of us here in Canberra to question where public life is going.

Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address of only 272 words in 1863 after a Civil War schism that defined Americas' position in history. It called for a road forward that would reunite that country.

Here is my revision (humbly) submitted to the blogosphere ;-)

er, see ya at half past...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Well more than the four score and seven of Lincoln's time has past. On reflection, it seems to us today that the plans of our forefathers have become a corrupted shadow of their original noble dreams.

Surely they had no plans for the wide-spread human rights abuses and corporate corruption in a world that now values possession over humility, self-promotion over selflessness and expediency over honour.

Nor would our forefathers have planned to bring our fragile world to the brink of extinction by producing weapons with the capability to destroy our planet many times over.

These are not the dreams of our forefathers but the nightmares of tomorrow being peddled by the soulless puppets of greed that claim to represent us.

So we have the world as it is today.

We must now ask what is the great task remaining before us?

The peaceful life-affirming tenets of the world’s great religions and progressive philosophical thought must be promoted to starve the light from those who twist the symbols of peace and unity to promote fracture.

Government must realize that they are still of the people; their responsibilities to the people never diminishes.

Corporations must use their knowledge and potential to create the life we aspire to, without destroying the foundation of that life, our planet.

We, as peoples of the world, must join today and pledge to know and support our neighbours, realize our inter-dependency on each other for our very survival and support this common purpose to keep the world alive, peaceful and free.

Let the hopes and dreams of the many prevail, so that unjust power be rendered to dust.