Rainy weekend?

Finally the weekend is here. I’ll be spending tonight and tomorrow night playing the final two shows of Archy and Mehitabel. If you’ve got nothing better to do, head down.

Clean Coal

Most of middle Australia is probably under the impression that climate change was only invented in the last 5 years or so. Strangely, people of my generation will recall learning about global warming in primary school, 15-20 years ago. Furthermore, back in those days we were also concerned about this wonderful problem known as non-renewable energy.

Non-renewable energy is energy that is produced by using up a resource that you can’t get back. It has nothing to do with carbon dioxide, global warming or Al Gore. The simple premise is this: if we burn all our coal/oil/gas, we’re screwed.

In these days of mass hot-air generation, the non-renewable problem seems to have been forgotten, now that we have this wonderful new technology called clean coal. If it’s clean, it must be good for the environment, so let’s spend shitloads of money on developing it.

Except… fossil fuel reserves are running out. You can sequestrate all the greenhouse gases you want, but once we’ve got nothing to burn, we’re going to have to start thinking about some form of renewable energy.

Or do we? Why is everyone so obsessed with this thing we call a growth economy? I hate to state the obvious, and I know it’s certainly not politically correct to draw attention to this fact, but a growth economy is fundamentally unsustainable.

Try winning an election with that line.

A growth economy depends largely on one thing: growth. Seeing as though, even in these days of mass-acceptance of climate change, the very concept of a growth economy is unquestioned, we can safely assume that it’s going to stay that way for a while. No politician is ever going to stand up and argue the case that maybe we should be going in into a controlled recession, slowing down industry, returning to our roots, and just generally hanging out and having a good time instead of running around like crazed rodents in business suits.

Who exactly does this magical growth economy serve? Are we better off for it? The world is still in a pretty bad state. Much of Australia is suffering from some form of credit/rent/mortgage stress, even though we’ve supposedly never been better off. What if there was no credit, no Australian Idol, and no pulp mills? Maybe we can just wind back and live on the land, trading with our neighbours and generally having a good time?

Sorry, you’d better scrap that. What would all the management consultants do?

In Rainbows

Just purchased Radiohead’s new album for the princely sum of £0.00. Here’s hoping it’s worth it…

Sweet, sweet ecstacy

This is an interesting concept, isn’t it. A young couple leave some pills just lying around, their daughter nyoinks them and takes them to school, thinking they are lollies. She waits until lunchtime, before sharing the three lollies with two younger boys.

Now, kids are pretty fickle. They don’t like vegies, they don’t like fruit, and they don’t like taking strange medicine that tastes funny. 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine does not taste like a lolly of any description. Amphetamines have a harsh alkaline flavour. If an average kid took a tab of ecstacy, thinking it was a lolly, I would wager they’d spit it back out pretty quickly.

Point 2: if I stole three lollies from home, I sure as hell wouldn’t be waiting until lunch time to eat them. And I wouldn’t be splitting my find three ways with the other kids. I’d be chowing down as soon as I walked into the school grounds.

I smell a rat.

Senator On-Line

Now here’s a dangerous concept. Senator On-Line is a political party which, if elected, will run a web poll for every piece of legislation passing through the senate. The elected senator will then vote according to the result of said web poll.

Now, putting to one side the small issue that (if elected) one lucky person will be paid $127,060 plus expenses per annum to sit on their arse in Canberra contributing (presumably) nothing to the parliamentary process other than their vote (decided by the poll), let’s look at the implications of the aforementioned system.

39 seats are required for a majority in the senate. The Coalition would need 20 seats, and Labor 25, to fulfill this quota. Unlikely. Therefore the balance of power will be held by the Greens, Family First, and any other minor parties who happen to scrape through (No Pokies for example). In the highly unlikely situation that Senator On-Line (SOL) was to win a seat, they would share in this balance of power.

Readers may recall that in these tight senate situations, just one vote can be enough to swing the balance and pass government legislation (and subsequently destroy an entire political party… Meg Lees anyone?). In the situation where SOL was elected, legislation could then come down to an online poll. Assuming this on-line polling system is robust enough that they can enforce their policy of one vote per person (unlikely), we could start to see massive grass-roots political campaigns running all year around.

The long and short of it? Increased government spending on advertising, and a barrage of union officials knocking at your door 365 days per year. And that’s not even the scary bit.

With a democratically elected senator actually giving their electorate the chance to vote on policy, we would start to see some semblance of democracy being introduced to the parliamentary process. This is clearly dangerous, and should be prevented at all costs. Canberra is no place for democracy – let’s keep that stuff to Australian Idol where it belongs.

Worryingly, with the increased internetisation (yes, it’s kind of a real word) of the younger generations, it’s only a matter of time before this SOL senator becomes a reality – maybe not now, or 2010, but certainly within 15 years. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Weekend

Huzzah!

Maiden

131 days until I go and see the greatest metal band in the universe!