2010: PREPARE FOR SUCK!
It's time for a sequel!
A year ago I posted a blog entitled "resolutions are for ‘tards" in which I listed a bunch of resolutions.... seemingly because I'm a 'tard....
To my surprise some of them are still relevant today, in fact one of them is front page news! Yep, I am that smart. The resolution was made for my fellow Melburnians:
Promise you will not be surprised that the Myki System is: Over budget, Not released, cumbersome, broken, a bad idea and all around FUBAR.
I'm not sure if people are surprised, but MyKi was launched yesterday, over budget, three years late and guess what? It doesn't work! With an election year coming up I sure hope Lynne Kosky has her resume in order - my crystal ball can see a public speaking job in her future.
But that's last year - what about this one?
2009 was a year to forget. Many years can fit that description but this one was really - REALLY bad.
It didn't start out too bad, in January Barack Obama was sworn in as President among much fanfare. As a dizzying high as that was, it was really all downhill from there.
The wrongly titled "Global Financial Crisis" really broke in early February and markets around the world began to free fall. Corporations and banks began to panic, here in Australia major banks froze big ticket accounts to stop people getting empty their accounts - unsuprisingly the Australian Government, used to grabbing it's ankles, did nothing.
Interest rates were slashed to all time lows, a legitimate loan was harder to come by than a liberal in Mississippi - it was chaos. Massive Job slashes across the Western world uncertainty and fear were rampant.
In early February Victoria also saw the worst of nature and of tabloid journalism when the Black Saturday bushfire's wiped King Lake and Marysville off the map, hundreds died - it was a human tragedy.
By mid year the full extent of the "GFC" was known Europe and the United States entered am economic depression and there was no end in sight. In Australia fears of entering a recession caused the government to give every taxpayer in the previous financial year - living or not - $900 to spend on... well anything they wanted. People were urged not to pay bills with it, but to spend it at the stores to boost the economy. I got an IPhone and the scheme worked, by the 3rd quarter, however, it was deemed premature and probably unnecessary. Australia who has most of it's economic ties with Asia found that the "GFC" wasn't really a "GFC". Asia and Australia would go technically and comparability unscathed. In the early 90's Australia's recession was dubbed "the recession we had to have" this year the feared recession was comically dubbed "the recession we never had" .
The second half of the year saw notable people drop like flies from the King of Pop, Punk Icons to the real life "Rain Man" and celebrity starletts.
The last quarter of the year also saw disillusionment set in for the Global Environmental movement, which has been steadily growing since around 2004. The people told their Governments the environment matters, the of course ignored the people or payed them lip service - but when it looked like it could cause economic turmoil a lot sooner than predicted a mass meeting was held in Copenhagen the world watched as the fruits of our incessant bitching would be turned into a unilateral agreement of action. It was exciting until they started talking. A week of talk and in the end it was unilaterally agreed that Global Warming is a problem and carbon emissions should be cut.
That was about it. Go Government! Woo!
Around the same time in Australia Stephen Conroy - a douche I have been berating here on The Opinionation for the better part of a year - said that he would go ahead with placing mandatory moral filters on the Internet. This caused an outrage as evidenced on Twitter under the hash tag "#nocleanfeed".
Of course I'm missing other big events like the Iran election among others but, you'll get over it.
So 2009 was a pretty crappy year. So what is to look forward to in 2010?
Nothing good it seems.
- In Febuary world leaders will reconvene to try to agree to a plan to combat human caused climate change. Nothing will happen.
- Victorian Politics will heat up, with the government planning to raise the price of an average pack of cigarettes to $20. As I mentioned on a previous blog :
Socioeconomic status is known to be strongly associated with many health conditions and health risk factors, and this is particularly true of tobacco smoking. The rate of smoking is much higher in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage.
After adjusting for age differences, 33% of men and 28% of women in the most disadvantaged areas reported being daily smokers, compared to 16% of men and 11% of women in the most advantaged areas…
Trying to tax the poor in the interest of health? Good luck with that in an election year.
- Although the economic crisis is over across the globe, the little people like us won't know about it for a while yet. The economic comeback will be slowed due to lack of investor confidence. And with the Australian Reserve want to up the interest rate as quickly as they cut it, to balance out the Governments spending, watch the number of mortgage defaults skyrocket thus exposing the rental crisis when people can't find homes.
- Australian federal politics will also hit boiling point as Australians get angry that in the upcoming Federal election we will have to choose between a conservative right wing twat and a center right wing censorship kingpin. Hopefully this will give to the rise of the Greens and the comeback of the Democrats - but will most likely end in political atrophy.
- Overseas, Obama will try to get his health care reform through, which as it's now bust the debate stage will pass as the majority of the public would want affordable or in some cases free healthcare.
- The ironically self titled "Teabaggers" will find out why the world laughs at them when they Google search the term "teabagging". They will probably change their name to something less funny like "The Job Rimmers".
2010 will be known as "The year of the suck". It's hard to be this pessimistic, but there really isn't anything to look forward to - with the exception of the Large Hadron Collider.
My resolution for this coming year is for everyone, everywhere around the world:
Buckle up, and prepare for the suck
Happy New Year and all that, now go and binge drink then drive become a statistic! Just stay away from me and mine when you do.
-db
January 18th, 2010 - 00:13
Seriously mate, the greens helped to create one of those disaster’s that you mention at the top of this column and you want them to rise?
There campaigning against back burning because it was bad for the environment considerably increased the threat of those fires on that day. They were banning farmers from grazing stock in the hills around gippsland – thus leading to an increase in undergrowth – In some instances they do more harm for the environment than they bloody help
The only people that vote for the greens are people in the city’s that don’t live in the environment they want to protect – They no nothing about the environment they want to protect except some koalas or some random species of parrot lives there. It is a conscience vote to make them fell better – but doesn’t stop them jumping in there 4 wheel drives and cranking there aircon in there house so its cool when they get back. It hasn’t stopped yourself from starting a webpage, operating a server and using more electricity and increasing your own carbon footprint. The greens there voters are the biggest hypocrites in Australian politics.
January 21st, 2010 - 16:30
Whilst I welcome discussion and opinions, this is the opinionation after all, I feel I must comment on a couple of things:
Firstly, I don’t and most probably won’t vote for the Greens with their current policies. They are a “specialist” party in that their focus is on the environment and nothing (much) more.
You said:
“The only people that vote for the greens are people in the city’s that don’t live in the environment they want to protect”
Accoding to electorate results, you aren’t entirely correct there, the Greens got similar results in country towns to urban centres where they didn’t get elected and were standing.
I agree that for some it might be a conscience vote but, unless you are a Climate Change skeptic (read: idiot), you would thing that the Environment is in pretty poor shape and the Greens are the ONLY party with a comprehensive plan to save the environment – and only the environment. Their fiscal and social policies are all over the place, but the one thing they get right is Environmental issues.
“It hasn’t stopped yourself from starting a webpage, operating a server and using more electricity and increasing your own carbon footprint.”
That was a little personal. Would it make you feel better to know that I am with a web hosting company and therefore my server host hundreds of web pages and not just my own? I have chickens that provide me with eggs and fertiliser that would offset my emissions to include the 1/100th of server power I am using. How is your manually powered PC going and your car? I certainly wouldn’t want to be calling the kettle black.
The point I made I though would be obvious – but I’ll explain it here:
A two party dominated system doesn’t work – neither are socially liberal and neither really are downing much for carbon emissions. If the Senate and House of Reps were equally filled with Libs, Labors, Greens and Democrats we would have REAL debate and a chance that the majority of people would feel as if they are being heard and that the Government are actually working for the people. A multifaced Government is a healthy one.
While I do think the Greens are sometimes batshit insane they deserve to be heard because their message, while extreme, is what needs to be heard.
I am also confused by your motives… are you saying Brother Abbott and Big Kev should go virtually unchallenged as the push conservative Christian morals on us? While they allow industry, where most of the pollution comes from, to go on untouched?
Realistically there are only two major alternatives to gain any seats – the Greens and the Dems… nobody would seriously suggest that the Sex Party or the Liberal Democratic Party really have a hope. We need alternatives to the Liberal/Labor record. Besides it would make things alot more exciting.
“The greens there voters are the biggest hypocrites in Australian politics.”
Even more than “Liberals” which by it’s definition definition is a hypocritical title for the conservative party?
Oh and the “increase in undergrowth” wouldn’t have been an issue if
a) People didn’t live in areas where bushfires NATURALLY OCCOUR
b) Global Warming hadn’t caused a spike in temperature levels and created the drought that dried the land
and
c) The possibility of arson
- db