Wednesday, September 30, 2009

This is serious stuff

This is what happens when you provide a direct stimulus and also what happens when you avoid providing a direct stimulus.

The Australian housing market is now on the precipice and is so finely balanced that it has managed to corner all those who have tried to keep it from imploding over the past couple of years. Now those well meaning souls are between a solid rock and a very hard place.

Whatever the government does in the near term will end up being bad for someone - or some special interest group who will then demand to be compensated - because they made dumb decisions.

Good luck to you all and may the best lobbyist win. For the rest of us - may I recommend Telstra shares ;-)

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Consistent double standards

"The Australian" is deep into two major campaigns at the moment.

They are in denial about climate change and use every opportunity to *explain* how Penny's carbon pollution reduction scheme will disadvantage Australia. It's just crap. But the interesting thing is how their nonsense is impacting Malcolm's Liberals - who are all over the place because they seem to believe the view that Chris Mitchell is pushing. It amazes me how these elected conservatives can't undertake any real analysis of their own and end up parroting the view of the ultra right.

But this is not about that - "The Australian's" second campaign is around industrial relations. As we all know, it was the Murdoch press who was chief cheerleader for little Johnny in his failed attempt to impose "WorkChoices" on the nation. Johnny was deposed but Mitchell hasn't given up.

Today there is another BS story about those poor young electical apprentices who apparently will be disadvantaged as a result of Julia's new workplace laws. I don't know if that is true - or not. My initial reaction is to treat anything "The Australian" says about industrial relations with a grain of salt. Actually - I simply don't trust them to promote a "fair and balanced" point of view - they are just incapable.

Especially when during the previous conservative government, the IT industry in Australia lost over 72% of it's head count between 2000 and 2005 - with not even a little peep out of the Murdoch press.

So here we have them lamenting the fact that structural changes might end up impacting electrical apprentices and yet they couldn't be bothered to report the massive collapse in technology jobs under the previous conservative regime.

Double standards - absolutely. Consistency - no way.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Exposed - the Australian real estate scam

Finally, someone has done the work to understand the Australian real estate scam and exposed the details - here. Read it and weep.

Some quotes from the report:

"The country that promised limitless land, cheap housing and near universal home ownership to all comers now has the most expensive housing in the world amid very tight housing and land markets and little prospect of restoring the balance."

"As long as the government, the public and the media remain in denial, and self-congratulatory rhetoric continues that Australia has cleverly avoided the housing market correction it needed to have, there is little chance that matters will improve."

According to the Author’s, Australia’s housing market is in "a very dangerous and unstable situation which has received little adverse attention."

I suppose that it is not so difficult to understand how we got here given that there are so many vested interests - all aligned to feed-off those poor unsuspecting and often naive house purchasers.

The state governments, the banks, the media, the real estate industry, the multitude of service providers and all their associated hangers on - are quite merrily feeding at this trough - as though there is no tomorrow.

And then we have the ludicrous situation of various federal governments delivering a cash hand-out and calling it the "first home buyers grant" - supposedly to help some of those poor unsuspecting souls buy a house. In reality all it has ever done is push house prices higher. It should be renamed the "first home sellers grant" because that is what it is.

It’s quite amazing that when in opposition, all political parties promise to fix the problem but as soon as they are in government they revert to form and shovel cash at the *haves* while purporting to help the *have not’s*.

And the real tragedy is that almost no-one will actually get to hear the details of the problem because the vested interests will do their best to keep this "bad news" out of the news because they don’t want anyone upsetting their cozy little scam.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Steve Fielding is a Genius

So Steve the Senator can’t spell and he is dyslexic but apparently he has an engineering degree and an MBA - good on him.

As an aside, I wonder if he also has a HECS debt?

Just a minor niggle on my part - doesn’t one need to be able to read and write and spell and demonstrate some level of articulateness and communicativeness before those degrees are awarded?

I don’t know about his education but they did with mine.

Perhaps this explains a little about why his science degree was unable to prepare him for an understanding of the carbon problem and has now turned him into a climate change skeptic.

Or perhaps his dyslexia is in control again and he really is a supporter of the science - but is unable to articulate it. Who knows what to believe - certainly not Steve the Senator.

Sorry Steve - "Credibility is now shot to pieces".

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Independent Science shows Media Bias - in favour of Coalition!

My god - an independent and scientific study has found that media bias exists and it’s the coalition who benefits.

According to the study - "Newspapers are left wing, television is right wing, and the media as a whole tends to favour the Coalition".

I can just see Rupert’s headlines tomorrow.

Those crusty old coalition fossils who bleat incessantly about media bias and how it favours Labor will be all over the media with their "press releases" telling the world how *wrong* these conclusions are.

That’s the thing with these people - they don’t understand science and wouldn’t know a slide rule from a tongue depressor. Many don’t read or write and some have had their heads firmly planted in a dark orifice for so long that they really need sunglasses indoors.

But they do have a *gut* feeling that this study is wrong and that is reinforced by their peer group who think similarly because - "well we just know that it is wrong".

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Fer Christ sake - its time for revolution

Not only do we have some of the world’s most incompetent government in Australia - but they also have no shame and happily announce their stupidity to the world via press release - which then dutifully gets reprinted word for word in Rupert’s version of the news. It’s just hilarious.

What it really says of course is that these incompetent state governments are so convinced that Australians have turned off politics that they will say and do anything - knowing that even if it finds it’s way into the public domain that no-one will react - because apparently we Australians don’t care about truth and facts and governance and accountability.

Well I am here to tell it differently.

There are a couple of items today demonstrating that at least two of our state governments need a dose of reality - preferably administered via enema and hopefully with a double dose.

Item 1 - In NSW we have the Health Minister (John Della Bosca) resigning because he was found out to be having an affair with a 26 year old - my immediate reaction is good on him - and then I remember that he was supposed to be looking after the public health system - oops. I guess he has plenty of time for these frolics now that he has NSW Health humming along like a well oiled machine - not.

Item 2 - And in SA we have the Acting Premier (Kevin Foley - but some of us know him as ...sorry can't be said here) announcing how the state has been screwed royally by a water contractor and is now going to sue them for millions. Now this announcement really is stupidity at it's best.

The simple reality is that the South Australian government couldn’t get out of it’s own way in time to manage either water policy or water operations.

A previous government - populated by those intellectual giants from the Liberal party - decided in their wisdom to sign a long term contract with United Water - hoping that magically this would offload the water problems that permeate the state and that they could then float around like fairies - without a care in the world - doing what conservative politicians do best - SFA.

And since that time there has been crisis upon crisis with water but the locals have been reassured that the state has everything under control because they have United Water and SA Water looking after things - thank goodness for that.

Now of course the state Labor Government is hoping to cruise back into power next year by pointing the bone at those Liberals who signed the deal and accusing them of incompetence.

Never mind that Labor have had nearly 8 years to understand the problem and do something about it.

Especially since they have brought two previous Liberal Premiers (John Olsen and Dean Brown) into the "old boys club" gravy train as high priced advisers on how best to run the state and the water system and god knows what else.

So if two ex Premiers, a current Premier and an Acting Premier have no idea about managing the state water system and resources - then what hope is there?

Fer Christ sake - its time for revolution.