cartoon … occupy wall street

My latest over at goldcoast.com.au … ‘Winners are grinners’

You can read this here, or you can read it here:

YOU beauty!

Saturday morning’s decision to award the Gold Coast the 2018 Commonwealth Games is the best thing to happen to the city since the glory days of the IndyCar racing — and then some.

You won’t find a bigger group of cynics than a newsroom full of journalists, and I’m not ashamed to say that in Friday afternoon’s editorial conference there weren’t too many of us in the room who thought the city would win the bid.

Not only that, we didn’t think many people would show up yesterday morning at the Broadwater Parklands either.

I’m pleased to say we couldn’t have been more wrong.

Not only have the comments on goldcoast.com.au since the win been overwhelmingly positive, but at least 5000 people turned up to cheer the result and celebrate some rare good news for the Gold Coast.

Good on you!

Of course there are the whingers and the Negative Nellies who want to remind us all how much it’s going to cost, and how awful the traffic’s going to be and how much higher the rates are going to be.

Apart from the traffic, I think the rest of those complaints are just complaining for the sake of complaining.

Of course it’s going to cost money. Infrastructure always does.

I’ll tell you what else it does — creates jobs, creates confidence and creates facilities we’ll still be using 50 years for now.

If anything, winning the Games has accelerated the process of making this city the best it can be.

Get over yourselves, whiners!

Would you rather we not get that infrastructure at all? Or at a slower rate, on a whim of a politician who may or may not need our votes?

This way the politicians — regardless of stripe — are committed, publicly, legally, GLOBALLY, to providing top-class facilities by April 4, 2018.

Where’s the loss in that?

One thing’s for sure, if we all sit around grumping about how awful it’s going to be, it will be.

The Commonwealth Games, and the World Expo six years later, turned Brisbane into a fantastic place to be. I was in my last year of high school. Trust me, it was AWESOME.

The same thing will happen for the Gold Coast if we throw ourselves into this wholeheartedly.

So, c’mon, whingers. Get up off your miserable backsides, and head out into the sunshine and feel how excited this city is, suddenly.

Give it a shot.

stay strong – no millionaire bailouts

this from moveon.org:

best newspaper headline of the decade

from the irish Daily Star:

on the worth of the Gold Coast 600

this is my latest blog post which appeared on goldcoast.com.au:

THIS is the one weekend of the year when the pro-Indy/SuperGP/GC600 lobby get to prove their point and the anti brigade need to grin and bear it for the Gold Coast’s sake.

The argument has always been this: Is closing down a swathe of the Gold Coast’s so-called ‘glitter strip’ to public traffic, filling it with revheads, both foreign and domestic, and alternately pissing off and/or thrilling the locals, ultimately good for the Gold Coast?

Speaking as a sports fan, and an ex-sport reporter, motor racing is my least favourite sport.

It always seems to me to be the anti-sport. You need buckets of money to do it, the athleticism of the human in the middle of all that machinery is the minor determinant in winning or losing, and when it’s done right it’s intensely boring.

But thousands love it, so clearly I should just shut up and let them have their fun.

After all, I don’t expect them to agree with me on the joys of women’s basketball, a sport I could watch for hours at a time. And do.

But is the GC600 good for the Gold Coast?

Getting anywhere other than the race precinct becomes a royal pain in the aspidistra.

But then, we’re used to that, aren’t we?

We’ve got arguably the lamest public transport in the country, coupled with a dysfunctional road system that makes getting north and south easy but travelling east and west, diabolical.

So a week of extra rat running around the track isn’t that much of a trauma, let’s be honest.

It’s noisy. But then who does that affect? The tiny minority of Gold Coasters who live close to or inside the track.

Sorry, Main Beach and Surfers, but the rest of us can’t hear a thing.

It’s bad for business, apparently.

Really?

Let’s say the GC600 organisers get their wish and they get the 165,000 punters through the circuit that they need to break even this weekend.

Those 165,000 have to sleep somewhere, eat somewhere, buy their alcohol somewhere, park their cars somewhere, buy their Berocca somewhere.

And my guess is they’re not doing it in Brisbane, Ipswich or Tweed Heads. Not this weekend at least.

We keep hearing what a dreadful slump the Coast is in.

The fact is, like it or loathe it, the GC600 brings vital cash flow and newcomers in to the city, many of whom will be around, spending their money, for the better part of two weeks.

Let’s show them a good time, greet them with a smile, take their money with grace and who knows?

Maybe they’ll come back, bringing their friends and relatives and their wallets.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Gold Coast. We can’t afford to.

published on goldcoast.com.au on Saturday, October 23, 2010.

book: ‘the return of depression economics’

economics … it’s hardly thrilling stuff, eh? but paul krugman, nobel prize winner and columnist for the new york times, is a freaking genius at making it interesting.

not just interesting, enthralling.

this is the updated edition, written since the 2008 global financial crisis.

if you ever had a feeling that globalisation sucked, but you could never put your finger on, or articulate why, let krugman do it for you. if you ever thought milton friedman and alan greenspan were twats of the highest order, but couldn’t quite figure out why, let krugman tell you.

this man should be US secretary of the treasury, not that ex-banking failure tim geithner. i suspect krugman’s got more sense than to get involved in politics, however. but jesus, i hope obama’s listening, reading or absorbing somehow the commonsense that krugman talks.

read it. seriously. krugman could make maths interesting, and coming from me, that’s saying something.

Worldometers … awesome statistics site

sometimes the people on this planet scare me, seriously.

here’s the link.

the sol trujillo brouhaha

i have decided that ex-telstra ceo sol trujillo is that rare combination – both a muppet and an arseclown.

here’s a guy who comes here full of the worst kind of american BS and arrogance, being paid well over the going rate to run one of our iconic national corporations, supposedly the backbone of communications in this country.

let’s see … he ran graviton, a start-up, that he also saw close down. he ran orange sa, named in 2007 (after he’d left) as the worst ISP in the UK. then he took over as ceo of telstra.

during his tenure, the share price dropped from $5.06 to $3.60, the company failed to secure the National Broadband Network contract despite supposedly being the industry leader in this country, and 10,000 telstra employees lost their jobs, with at least another 2000 to come as a result of his ‘transformation plan’.

in 2007 trujillo’s salary was over $11 million. he left the job two months early with over $30 million in his pocket.

and now he’s bitching that australia is a backward racist country?

well, y’know what? good riddance to really crap overpaid rubbish. so, the prime minister said ‘adios’ when he learned you were leaving. so what? if you were french he’d've said au revoir.

oh and every time an american says ‘g’day’ when they meet me, am i to assume they’re racist?

fuck off sol. you raped us, ripped us off and now you’re ridiculing us. go your hardest, son. your record speaks for itself.

how it affects me

i have to work till i’m 67. and we might actually get a light rail system on the gold coast. and i’m not really sure what all that superannuation stuff meant, because whenever i hear the word superannuation, i hear high-pitched whining that only fruit bats can interpret.

channel 7 aren’t helping by having renowned arseclown david koch doing the reporting. ugh.

budget 09

so … here we go. this could get ugly.

* who is that curly-headed minx in the second row? cute.
* snowy mountains, forged in the fire … make up your mind, swannie.
* 8.5% unemployment by june 2011 … oh joy. conservative estimate, btw.
* 35,000 building sites? one for every drunk football player. goody.
* first home owner’s grant … extended for a further 6 months … only half at the full rate tho. cunning.
* assistance for small businesses … um … double dutch to me. lol.
* $22 billion in infrastructure … gold coast’s first mention! huzzah! … broadband around the nation … nation-building. corrrrrrrrr. i’m so turned on right now.
* $8.5 billion for road and rail. $365 million for the gold coast light rail …
* $3.4 billion … network 1 … melbourne to cairns.
* $4.5 billion clean energy initiative … they;re going to decapitate malcolm turnbull. no, wait … solar.
* increased uni places … not gonna complain about that.
* k-rudd looks a little pique-y … ya think he’s a bit nauseous? someone else is driving the bus.
* $3.2 million to expand and modernise hospitals … that’s not a lot.
* $731m over 5 years … paid parental leave scheme … 1 jan 2011 … lol … post election, presumably. lol. cynical much.
* pension boost from 1 september this year. carers $600 per annum supplement on top of pension increase, for each eligible person in their care.
* nett debt 13.8% of GDP in 2013/2014
* curly-headed minx still has me fascinated.
* here we go. the bad news.
* pension age increased to 67 years by 2023.
* superannuation gobbledook.
* private health insurance … 1 july 2010 rebate reduced for higher income earners.
* surplus by 2015/16
* brutal force etc. jesus swannie, get a grip.

the end. well at least it was quick.