So I’m excited because I’m finally using Pages on my Mac, and the OS X Mavericks install went off a treat with no ex- or implosions of a computerly nature. Sherlock is finally showing in Australia, after much coyness about the air date by our “friends” at Channel 9*. The Day of the Doctor was really damn good, even if The Time of was less so**. I’m nearly six subjects down on the degree, and I’m about to start the seventh and eighth. Husbandly and small lad are both proceeding swimmingly, happy as clams.
*You wouldn’t think it would be hard to publish an air date, but given that the show has started at least ten minutes past the official airtime both times so far, I don’t know why I was annoyed. Oh, wait...
**I didn’t want Matt Smith to go out in a hail of bullets (or at all), but it was still a bit of a mumbler…
And for the most part, I have nothing to feel particularly, personally, glum about.
But mostly, I'm down. Our very interesting governmental effluvia since September. I’m starting to hate my facebook feed. Twitter not so much, I seem to have a more of a balance there. To sum up for anyone who comes across this blog by accident:
- Asylum seekers are being towed back to Indonesia (their usual starting point) by our Navy and being “processed offshore”. The logic behind this actually escapes me (and I am trying to be brief); instead of embracing anyone worse off than ourselves, we are, as a country, promoting awful treatment of the already-disadvantaged because they came here by boat. The official rhetoric is that it's an attempt to prevent deaths at sea because they come in shonky boats (but we seem to be ignoring anyone who comes by plane). Despite violating our agreement with the UN, our government - and since we elected them, the Australian people - don't seem to have a problem with this.
- Our “new” government have decided that the Barrier Reef and World Heritage forests in Tasmania are no longer worthy of protection, because after all, there’s coal and timber in them thar hills, respectively. (There isn’t actually coal in the Barrier Reef, there will just be dumping of waste there.)
- We can’t have a carbon tax, because it disadvantages our … economy. The planet doesn’t matter.
There is so much more, but I’m running out of steam, and there just isn’t enough wine in the world.
To top it all off, I stupidly engaged with someone about how the disadvantaged are, well disadvantaged. Apparently it’s because they’re fat, get drunk and use drugs. And this from an Arts student, which just goes to show that education isn’t worth shit if you don’t bother to learn anything from it. Or put another way, empathy is clearly for the overly-emotional masses.
Unfortunately I was one of the overly-emotional this morning. I refused to continue the argument, because I was getting upset and could hear my voice register about to rise several octaves. Plus I hate engaging with idiots. All that happens is an argument, and nobody’s mind is changed. Well, the other participant is usually a nobody - and not because they disagree with me: the sheer lack of empathy in the above opinion should tell you all you need to know - rich tapestry, everyone should have their opinion, but…unkindness should never rule social decisions. Practicality, sure; lack of understanding, no.
I could talk about it, but the accumulating months are piling up and really, the thought of three years of this hat-full of arseholes is enough to drain anyone.
What concerns me more than anything (with my way-more-involved-grasp), is that if a new election started today, this Government would get in again. Never mind the backflips on educational funding (guess…a repeal of Gonski, not a repeal of Gonski, commitments to funding that only half-addresses the promised funding: so the poor get poorer (with little education), and the rich get subsidised…nice), or the sheer lies about “no cuts” that are somehow now cuts.
I had a friend post that once KRudd ousted Julia Gillard “we” had a chance of winning the election. I didn’t disabuse them, but all I could think was the government would lose for sure now. Deposing Julia Gillard ensured that the Labour party was not to be trusted. And since Bill Shorten is a relative unknown, Labour is in a pretty crap position. I liked Julia, and not because she was a woman in politics, or our first female PM*. I liked her because she was a great politician: managing a hung parliament, actually getting legislation through. I didn’t always agree with her, but if I’m agreeing completely with a politician, I probably need my head read.
*Apologies for the sidebar, but given the Arts degree, I was reading about how women are under-represented in early science fiction and graphic novels (I got Sandman for Christmas...I just took the girls as read. Apparently that's...err...wrong). And looking back on what I've read in early sf, yeah, you bet: girls are pretty much overly sexual man-hunters, or completely absent as actual characters. But as I read those stories, I'd transpose myself into the main character regardless of gender: I either decided or intuited that equality is equality, I'm not sure which. I also didn't read a lot of the overly-sexual-manhunter ones, they annoyed me. I was always looking to escape, and I think this is where I confess I always wanted to be Luke Skywalker when I grew up...although I always wanted to be less of a drip. What I've carried over from those long-ago days is that I couldn't care less what your parts are, I look at what you are doing or can do first. Ahem, back to it.
Tony Abbott being any kind of lying whatever is less of a concern than Labour betraying their own. Once, they could get away with: I think (I don’t know, but I think) that us great unwashed believed that Rudd-O was having problems actually governing, so Julia taking over was pretty crap but still viable. Again, great politician: getting the legislation on things like the NDIS through would, could, have made more difference at the polls than any predictions could have owned. But the double betrayal (of Rudd, then Julia) inside the party made all of them untrustworthy.
I could, of course, be talking completely out of my backside. Not deliberately, strangely enough (I like making things up), but because of what I think about the Griffith by-election. I was hoping against hope that Griffith would be a clear indicator that the current government was crap…but the swing went towards the Liberals. Labour won it, but not by a landslide.
I suppose it was naive to hope for that, but really, I was hoping for…hope. Five months, and there’s no end in sight. We will be years undoing the damage this government is doing, and there is a day of reckoning, or at least apology, in our future, not our government’s, over our treatment of asylum seekers*…and everything else.
*Apparently our Stolen Generation weren’t shameful enough. We’ve decided to do it again.
I have no end phrase. Thanks for reading.
