Kentucky Fried Finance

History will record this period as the time when as a society we capitulated to deluded fanatics. A time when fanatics competed to out do each other with dire predictions — I’ll see your inundation of coastlines by 2100 and raise you with loss of the great barrier reef by 2020. A future generation will make a black comedy about these times starring a future equivalent of Peter Sellers. Since water vapour is a key greenhouse gas, in order to emphasize the absurdity of all this, and for comic effect, the subject of the movie will be a water vapour trading scheme.

Garnaut is quoted as saying “We will delude ourselves should we choose to take small actions that create an appearance of action, but which do not solve the problem.” Does this mean he actually believes that an emission trading scheme in Australia will solve the problem of global warming — given that he believes a global warming problem exists of course?

Have you ever noticed that on the front cover picture of the DVDs of his movies, Harrison Ford always has the same expression? Doesn’t matter what the movie is, going back to the 80s.

Rumours that Dustin Hoffman will play Shane Warne in an upcoming movie. The front page of The Weekend Australian shows Dustin Hoffman practicing his leg spin.

A lot of hysteria about the upping of the salary limit at which Joe Citizen is required to take out private health insurance or suffer the consequences.

I was under the impression that we lived in a (relatively) free society that operated on (relatively) free market principles. The previous big government conservative party decided to abandon the notion of individuals being free to choose commercial products, by mandating that people on certain salaries should have private health insurance. If they didn’t they were hit with a tax penalty.

Let’s think about that: Joe Citizen, supposedly living in a free enterprise system, is told by the government that he/she has to buy a product/service. If he/she doesn’t the government penalizes them with an increased tax burden. For fracks sake! And at the same time the government hands out billions in open ended corporate welfare to the private health funds. For fracks sake!

The rationale for this is supposedly that having private health insurance takes the burden off the public health system and is therefore for the public good. Sorry but that is fracked up logic. Mandating people to buy and ride bicycles instead of drive cars would take the pressure of our public road system, would that also be for the public good?

If problems exist with medicare then they should be addressed separately. For starters the government could divert its corporate welfare from the private health funds into the public health system.

Governments should not be handing out open ended corporate welfare, period. Occasionally a case can and will be made to fork out corporate welfare but it must have limits and must not be indefinite.

Governments should not compel citizens to purchase a commercial product or service. The government has no right to force us into private health insurance any more than it has a right to force us to buy a car, take a holiday, see a movie once a week or force us to buy any commercial product or service.

And for those crying about how many people will be “forced” out of the private system because of the latest change in policy, that only serves to remind us that those same people had been forced in there in the first place by the standover tactics of government. In any case people are not being forced out of the private system. If they want private health insurance it will be there for them to buy at a market rate.

A lot of talk about the removal of the “baby bonus” for high income types. What I’d like to see is some thought given to the “baby bonus” generally. I have noticed that the “baby bonus” introduction was timed with the announcement of the switch to digital TV. Thus the government provided punters a way to obtain a new plasma digital TV for free. But we should be asking ourselves should everyone be encouraged to procreate?

Before proceeding further I am not advocating eugenics or suggesting that the government should be deciding who has kids and who doesn’t. The point is that if the government wants to encourage people to have kids it should give some thought to how much those kids will cost the taxpayer via the welfare system if the kids are born into certain demographics. Therefore rather than encourage birth perhaps we should offering an equivalent amount of cash as an inducement for not having babies.

Been at a chemical plant recently. They make toxic chemicals—insectides and herbicides. The most toxic thing at the plant though was that they permanently pipe MMM across the PA system. I have fairly commercial tastes in music but this radio station is toxic. How can anyone voluntarily listen to that shit?

Ingredients
2 slices of bread
1 ripe avocado
1 jar of vegemite

Directions
1. Toast the bread.
2. Spread avocado on one side of one piece of toast
3. Spread vegemite on one side of the other piece of toast.
4. Join the two pieces together.

Goes well with strong black coffee.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead It is not often that you see a film in which none of the main characters have a single redeeming feature.

more here.