Cranky Queenslander

Kevin '07

The talk of the town recently is that Julia Gillard is hatching a plan to appoint former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to a plumb job at the UN, thus removing him from parliament and shipping him off to New York.

When you add to the speculation the fact that during Kevin’s campaigning yesterday he said almost nothing, other than he would only be commenting on local electorate issues, and I think it becomes pretty clear that he knows he’s going after the election.

And all this begs the question; Why is he still running for re-election? Are we to understand that Julia will impose a by-election on the voters of Griffith within months of the current federal election?

Maybe people voting in Griffith should save them the trouble and vote for someone else.

It’s that time again, so I think I should get back into blogging and make a bit of noise. There’s certainly plenty to look at, and plenty the current government has done to damage our country.

Julia Gillard obviously has a serious credibility problem going into this election; After backing Kevin Rudd for so long, to just turn up one day and roll him shows that she’s only too happy to backflip if it suits her personally. It has to make you wonder what else she might backflip on if we elect her.

What do you think will be the big issues this time around?

Good writeup over at the ABC about Rudd’s inept leadership on e-waste. Nothing more to add really, other than you should get in touch with your local member of parliament and demand that more is done to collect and recycle this stuff.

We could become a world leader in this market with a bit of foresight from our leadership; Why send all the waste to China for some poor peasant to get cancer recycling it by hand, when we could build plants, recycle the stuff, and have the reclaimed raw materials to fuel our economy with!

Not a Queensland tale but one I thought I should comment on; This story in the Courier Mail today; A boy drowns while on a school excursion.

Here are my thoughts;

His father Laupule said he had told the school his son was to be excluded from school trips.
“He was not a strong swimmer and we did not encourage him going in the water,” Mr Levi said.

Parents around Australia should think long and hard about that. Why could the boy not swim? Was it because his parents “excluded” him from everything so he never learned? Sounds like a case of over protective parenting costing the poor boy his life.

THE parents of a Tasmanian student who drowned say they had no idea he had been going on a school excursion.

Seriously? How could they not? I would love to see some investigation of this claim, it seems pretty far fetched on the face of it.

It’s a tragedy to be sure, but the facts presented seem a little unusual.

I’m a little late to this party, but the double standard here made it impossible to let it go; Back in September Jo-Ann Miller decided to take aim at Springfield Land Corporation in a speech she gave about a piece of legislation called the Sustainable Planning Bill 2009.

It makes me wonder when a politician says something like this;

“The biggest issue that was brought to my attention was in relation to planning decisions and the naming of parks being accountable to the community”

Really? That is the BIGGEST issue? I would think if that is the big ticket complaint of Springfield residents, then they are doing pretty well.

But lets look at the real double standard here;

My understanding is that the community has not seen the final plans for this parkland and that the people of Springfield Lakes are outraged that the parkland is to be named the ‘Robelle Domain Parkland’, because it has been named after a developer and his wife and it actuallymakes no sense.

What about  Jo-Ann Miller Drive in Collingwood Park?  We people buying blocks on that street given the chance to object to the naming of it? Surely if politians can have things named for themselves, then the developers responsible for building an entire town like Springfield should be able to stamp their name on something for posterity?

Make sure you click through to the google maps view of J0-Ann Miller Drive; Have a look around and you’ll see she’s not the only one to feel the need to get stuff named after herself. I don’t mind the ones named for former prime ministers around the same area, but sitting members should get on with leaving a legacy so that after they have left parliament, someone can decide their contribution was great enough to have streets, parks or bridges named for them.

James McCullough over at CityBeat Blog brings us a little gossip about a couple of lads getting into a punch up at Suncorp.

On the one hand, this is just scurrilous gossip which probably should have been kept in house.

On the other hand, the two protagonists were told to stay home for 2 weeks as punishment for their indiscretion, but were still paid during those 2 weeks!

I guess if their boss had shown the guts to actually punish them for such behaviour in the workplace (by, lets say, giving them a 2 week UNPAID holiday instead), we’d have a union picket line outside Suncorp the very next day.

At the very least they should have been force to pay for some anger management training instead of an extra 2 weeks holiday this year; I wonder if other blokes at big companies like Suncorp might figure getting into a bit of biff just before Christmas might be a good way to get some free holiday time to spend with the family?

I am of course referring to the mother of the 12 year old girl who recently gave birth to a son after falling pregnant to her 15 year old boyfriend.

I think the morals of this case are self evident; A 12 year old is not sufficiently mature to  make decisions about their sexuality, and thus it is incumbent upon the parents to make those decisions for them.

Having said that, it beggars belief that a 12 year old would even consider sleeping with her boyfriend; That fact alone calls into question the moral quality of the mother, who provided such a poor quality role model as to point her young daughter in this direction.

And we should spare a thought for the father, who is is reported to have contacted authorities seeking intervention when he learned his ex partner was allowing this sort of thing to go on. He has been quite resilient in the face of such things, and should be applauded for trying to do the right thing in the first place, and trying to help and support his daughter after the fact;

Perhaps it’s time to look at the law’s regarding such things, and consider if we need to toughen some of them up. Should we not hold the 15 year old responsible for violating such a young girl, and charge him with rape? Should we not hold her mother responsible, and charge her with child abuse and neglect?

I’ve neglected this blog for a while, but in the interests of stopping the neglect, am now about to attempt to upgrade wordpress to the latest version; Once I do that of course, upgrading in future will be easier now that WordPress has built in auto upgrading;

Anyway, just thought I’d post this in case the site blows up

Update: Well, it blew up. So I’ve removed it all and started again, should be back to normal shortly.

Update2: Okay, I think thats more or less back to normal, now to go and find some stuff to be cranky about

News from the ABC that the ACTU have decided not only to start a campaign for “workers rights”, but they are wasting large sums of union members money to do so.

I guess if union members want to spend money on glossy TV commercials, that’s there business, but I would have thought unions like the ACTU would have learned by now that they should spend their members dues on things that help their members, not hinder their future.

When are they going to learn that if you make it nearly impossible to fire somebody, it also in turn makes it almost impossible to hire them?

If an employer doesn’t want an employee, they should be allowed to fire them. The reason should not matter. Employee’s do not have a right their job. They do have a right to be paid and treated fairly, but at the end of the day, their employer is parting with their cash, and should be allowed to choose not to.

In the fullness of time, people will figure this out, and we’ll eventually change the government… perhaps next time, everyone will not have such short memories.

Yes folks, I got a speeding ticket. On Christmas Day. This event proved to me without a shadow of a doubt that our masters, who we keep voting in, do not have our wellbeing at heart.

If the government wanted to improve our lives, it would instruct police on days like Christmas Day to pull over motorists and caution them, only booking the ones driving like madmen, which I saw plenty of on the way home.

If the government was serious about road safety, it would fix the roads. Instead, it places a single 80klm sign on a lonely stretch of 100klm highway, changing back to 100klms barely a kilometre further down the road, and simply waits until a schmuck like me misses the sign, and gets nailed.

Never mind that I spent the entire holiday break searching for speed limit signs and setting the cruise control. Never mind that I was passed countless times by actual SPEEDING motorists. Never mind that I was almost killed when a bus driver decided to change lanes over the top of a car I was following (thankfully, I leave a safe gap, and had enough time to slow down).

Oh, and never mind the fact that I was pulled over in a clearly signed 100klm zone, and told I was speeding. If you are going to pull these sneaky tactics, at least have me booked in the 80 zone you claim I was speeding through!

So I hope our government overlords had a festive Christmas, with their chauffer driven cars and tax payer funded champagne breakfasts. The rest of us continue to do it tough.