Rees cabinet

For some strange reason that I can’t put my finger on, I am optimistic about the new government. I think it’s still just the good vibes left by the departure of Iemma, Sartor, Meagher and Costa.

At the risk of being boring, let me have a quick look at the new lineup, starting at the top.

Nathan Rees MP

The new top man hasn’t received a friendly welcome from the media – all I learned from the weekend papers is that he is a former garbage collector. Maybe this is a good sign – could he clean up NSW? Hell, he can’t do a worse job than the last couple of blokes. I saw him talk at a PCA event when he first came into parliament – he didn’t seem to know what he was talking about, but came across as a committed kind of guy. As long as the factions give him a bit of free reign, he’s got a chance. I think it’s either going to be a spectacular turnaround, or a spectacular failure; either way, it should be an entertaining lead up to the next election.


Carmel Tebbutt MP

Pro: she has taken on the climate change and environment portfolio, so maybe some money might start finding its way back to DECC. Con: she’s married to Anthony Albanese. I guess it’s good to get some inner west pride back into Macquarie Street, but I don’t know how effective Carmel will be. She is most famous as the pollie who doesn’t know what Australia Day celebrates.


John Della Bosca MLC

Do we know who he is? Of course we do, Johnny! Maybe you can use some of your central coast charms to fix up the mess that Reba left you in health. Or preferably, you could decide to secede the central coast from NSW, tear down the F3 and free Sydney from you fuckers for good.


John Hatzistergos MLC

Hatzistergos did his time stuffing up health before handing the burning remnants to Reba Meagher. He seems to be handling the Attorney General’s job alright, and he’s one of the old crew who came through unscathed.


Eric Roozendaal MLC

Our new treasurer. In an ideal world, he would have been on the scrapheap alongside his old mate Costa, but I guess we’ll have to wait until he does the economy what he did to roads before he is given the boot.


David Campbell MP

Campbell seems like a nice guy, but it’s going to take more than a nice guy to sort out our transport woes. This has got to one of the hardest portfolios there is. I can’t see anything improving here without some major capital expenditure, and some major vision. These two items seem to be lacking in politics these days, so don’t hold your breath.


That’s enough for now. More to follow if I can be bothered.

Step aside, CERN

In five days time, European scientists will fire up the greatest penis extension ever constructed – the 27 km Large Hadron Collider. The aim? To prove once and for all the existence of the Higgs boson, otherwise known as the God particle.

Preempting the results and moving forward a little, I would like to present my latest research paper on the Next Big Thing. No doubt, once the hullabaloo surrounding discovery of the God particle has died down, scientists will start to get bored again, and mankind will long for an even bigger penis extension. I dub this construction the Mega Large Hadron Collider. It will be 42,000 kms long, and constucted in orbit, in the shape of a Klein bottle.

After being cooled to 1/π th of a degree kelvin, the Mega Large Hadron Collider will be switched on. The purpose of this experiment? To split the God particle, of course! My predicted outcomes of this particular project are presented below.

As you can see, the neutral God (Higgs) particle created from the two colliding quarks is hit by an ultrafast χ beam. The God particle is then split into its three component Auld-Higgs particles, designated G^f, G^s and G^h. In layman’s terms, I like to call these the father, son and holy ghost particles.

Unfortunately, it will be at least 100 years before the technology exists to build the Mega Large Hadron Collider, but when it happens, don’t be too surprised if I receive a posthumous Nobel prize.

The Iemma dilemma

Morris Iemma surely must go down as a case of political suicide, falling on his own sword after sacking the man who pulls all the strings in the NSW ALP.

Will Nathan Rees dare to kick “Climates Change” Costa off the front bench? Something tells me that he’ll still be treasurer by the end of the day. In the meantime, I can hear the jostling for frontbench positions all the way from Chatswood. Fingers crossed that at least Rees has the good sense to give Sartor his marching orders.

I think the best thing to come out of this turmoil is that it might keep voters away from Meredith Burgmann next weekend. Clover Moore might be crazy, but having her in charge is a much better idea than handing the city back to developers.

Meanwhile, the ALP are now at $2.10 to win the next state election. Given the overarching stupidity of both the NSW public and the shadowy figures pulling the strings at the NSW Liberal party, I don’t think it’s such a bad bet.

Google just got more evil

Google have launched their own browser, bringing them one step closer to world domination. Now they will (presumably) be able to track your every move on the internet, even if you reject their cookie.

Rather than launch into a full-blown technical review of the browser, let me outline the reasons why we should all surrender and hand over control of the world to Sergey and Larry.

Point 1: Inevitability. Why bother going through the show of resisting Google, when they are poised to wrench power from the people any day now? A struggle will only delay the inevitable, and make the transition to Googocracy that much more painful.

Point 2: Democracy didn’t work anyway. An unpopular viewpoint in the west, to be sure, but certainly one which I have been musing over the past few months. I believe that in light of the challenges now facing the world with regards to sustainability and climate change global warming, it has become quite apparent that democracies are simply not equipped to deal with long-term challenges.

Take Masdar, the zero-waste, zero-carbon city being built in Abu Dhabi. Sure, it may just be a giant show-pony, but the technology being developed for this city will have uses all around the world, and is sure to rake in the big dollars. Without the long-term vision of Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, would this project ever have gotten off the drawing board? With an election looming in the next three years, would any sane democratic government ever commit to spending $22 billion on such a crazy idea?

Even on the issue of carbon trading we find our triumvirate of Rudd, Wong and Garrett banging their collective heads against the proverbial wall. Despite a strong green paper on the topic, I think we will find that by the time these monkeys come to implementation, the cap and trade will be so watered down by industry concessions, fuel rebates and Middle Australian tax offsets that the whole thing will be a debacle. After all, what is more important – leading the way in terms of environmental policy, or keeping the voters hip pockets insulated from the reality of trying to maintain a fundamentally unsustainable growth-based economy?

So, the solution then is simple. Hand over our entire political system to Google. Give them the keys to parliament house! Clean out the press gallery! Shut down the public service, remove taxes, and fund the entire shebang with Google AdSense revenue!

And just so that we can maintain some sense of our national pride, we should replace the G-G with an Australian monarchy to rubber stamp everything. Hold a meat raffle every 10 years, and the winner gets to serve their term as king or queen.

Democracy bites!

A room with a view

With my work in Bundaberg complete on schedule, I spent the morning at Bargara beach with my laptop. There’s nothing quite like answering your emails while staring out at the Pacific Ocean.

Off to Brisvegas now for a night out with Messrs. Karbowiak and Wilson, before heading back to Old Sydney Town on Wednesday. Photos may follow.

Sunny Bundaberg

Unfortunately, due to my recent laptop downgrade, I cannot decorate this post with scenic photos. Fortunately, due to the fact that I am currently hanging out in a motel room wearing a towel, the photos probably wouldn’t be of interest to the general public anyway.

My day started at 4am with the realisation that I had no clean clothes other than those on the line, which were all wet. 30 minutes of ironing solved this problem, and I was ready for my cab right on time.

Flying Qantas for the first time in over two years was quite eerie. I really dislike the concept of being called ‘sir’ by hospitality staff; aren’t we supposed to be living in an egalitarian society? Even more odious is the flagrant use of the title “Mr Auld”. This name is reserved for my close friends only. If you don’t know me, it’s “Stuart”, or “mate”.

Anyhow, I survived not one but two Qantas flights, replete with bland bakery products and inferior tea. Upon landing in Bundaberg I realised that I should have hired a car, and so called the bean-counting department to get things moving. 45 minutes and 3 different forms later, I was on the road.

Having had consulted Google Earth about a week ago, I was fairly confident that I would have no trouble locating the distillery. However, a dream I had on the weekend completely confused me; I caught a taxi through the middle of Bundaberg and it was full of overpasses, bypasses and used car dealerships. After driving for ten minutes and not locating anything but endless fields of sugar cane, I resorted to Plan B: drive towards the chimney stack I can see in the distance, while simultaneously calling the office for help.

It was at about this point that a friendly member of the local constabulary stepped out on the road and motioned for me to pull over. He provided clear and concise directions to the distillery, for the bargain price of $100.

Is it possible to contest a speeding fine on the basis that you were driving a Tarago? I tried for the rest of the day to get it above 60 km/h, but couldn’t manage it. How he clocked me going at 72, I’ll never know.

Anyhow, I arrived safely at the distillery and was presented with an orange vest, a yellow hardhat and a rubber strap for my boots. The tour shortly commenced.

I think that the biggest insight of the day for me was learning where these “special blend” 18-year-old one-off bottles of spirits come from. Of course, the naive punter (aka me, 24 hours ago) would naturally assume that the liquor in question has been “hand crafted from the finest ingredients, before being laid aside in premium oak barrels for an extended maturation period”. In fact, the reality is somewhat different.

Engineer: “Hey, I just found some barrels that we stored in the wrong place 20 years ago, and have been sitting here gathering dust”.

Marketing department:”$$$$$$$$$”

To cut a long story short, I shall be heading to Bargara tomorrow morning to catch some surf, before departing for Brisvegas at 2:30pm. Adieu!