Lazy blogging strikes again! Join me on this journey while I pretentiously quote the newspaper, and then attach my own brand of pisspoor commentary!


Whinging Commuters

If you didn't already know, I hate commuters that do nothing but complain. Which at the moment is 90% of the Sydney commuting public. This letter from today's Herald:

Riding in one of Sydney's new Millennium trains the other day I could have believed I was in a modern, wealthy and sophisticated city, but was brought back to earth later in one of the usual antiquated carriages, full of commuters with feet on seats, bellowing into cell phones, littering their space with food scraps and plastic bottles, and crowding doorways like bewildered sheep.

Sydney's commuters, I decided, have the train service they deserve. Until they change their habits they certainly do not deserve trains that run on time, let alone the air-conditioned comfort, spacious layout, pleasing decor and silent running of the Millennium trains.

A.W. Wyndham, Exeter, January 9.

Letters. Sydney Morning Herald, January 10 2005

Marry me, A.W. Wyndham of Exeter. Mind you, it's not only poor hygiene, it's the attitude that needs to change, too. Flogging a sick donkey won't help it to get better.


Private School Fees

So parents thought that under a federal Labor government, fees would sky rocket but Howard would keep private school fees down with his policy of increasingly extravagant public funding of rich private schools.

A year's education at Sydney's wealthiest private schools will cost more than $18,000 this year with average fee rises at NSW schools more than triple the inflation rate.

A Herald survey of 48 private secondary schools reveals fee rises of up to 20 per cent and an average increase of 8.3 per cent. Not one school surveyed will cut fees and the big increases involve the most expensive independent schools and Catholic institutions run by religious orders.

Price of going private hits $18,000 a year as fees soar, Linda Doherty. Sydney Morning Herald, January 10 2005.

Suck on that. So private schools become increasingly richer as they suck more money from the taxpayer and the parents of their pupils while the public system languishes in disrepair. It seems hardly equitable at all.


Trendy wannabes

Oh it pisses me off too:-

When he came to power in Cuba as Castro's right-hand man, Che advocated the extermination of ideological enemies, ordered the incarceration and torture of many people and actively promoted terrorism.

Thankfully, he was killed in Bolivia before he had a chance to add to his contribution to mass murder. Yet I see people in Sydney streets wearing his image on T-shirts or posters of him on shop walls as if he were the epitome of chic. The equivalent would be to enjoy a film about the pre-political youthful shenanigans of Nazis such as Goebbels or Goering.

The moral blind spot that has allowed killers to become kitsch, Louise Nowra. Sydney Morning Herald, January 10 2005.

Would you wear a T-shirt with Howard on the front? Didn't think so.

(Not that I'm making a comparison between Che and John. At this point, I suppose I'd rather have John as the leader of my nation as opposed to Mr Guevara - and and woe betide anyone who dares take any part of that sentence out of context.)

Listening to:
Title: Kill Eye (Live)
Artist: Crowded House
Album/station: Recurring Dream: The Very Best of Crowded House (Bonus Live Disc)
Length: 3.19