"CANBERRA RANKED AMONGST THE WORLD'S MOST LIVEABLE CITIES
Published: ACT Chief Minister's Dept. May 27, 2010
Section: Jon Stanhope, MLA | Media Releases
The results of a new survey just released have proven what most Canberrans already know; we live in one of the world's most liveable cities, says ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope.
The Mercer Worldwide Quality of Living Survey ranked Canberra 26th globally, the fourth highest ranked Australian city behind Sydney (10th) and Melbourne (18th) and Perth (21st)."
Canberra is NOT one of the most livable cities in the world.
Canberra is a bogan-filled country town with all the shit that comes from living in country towns and none of the benefits of city-living.
Just like moving from the city to a country town:
- you're living with bogans
- everyone drives with their lights on during the day
- the shops close early
- on Sunday the whole city is shut
- there's only a small range of goods and services available
- what's available is shit
- it takes ages to get served
- there aren't enough people around to help
- there aren't any late night pharmacies for when the kids get sick
- there's nothing to do
- the TV is full of ads about sheds, sheep and what gets farmers excited
- the locals are classless and tasteless
- there's a general inclination to revert back to very low standards
Just like moving from the country to the city:
- you pay stock-broker prices for basic necessities
- you can't believe the cost of living
- rent as high as Inner East and North Sydney
- restaurants charge 5 star prices for 2 star food/service
- people are pretty unfriendly
- everyone tail-gates (there's even local government warnings telling locals to stop it)
Everything costs more in Canberra
- car rego is higher
- petrol is higher
- childcare is higher
- GP visits
Canberra is a country town in a desert:
Canberra is the driest, hotest and coldest city in the country. It never rains. Every day is the same as yesterday, blue skys, no clouds, no wind, rain just boring bright empty blue skies - just like a desert. The ACT has the same climate as central Mexico.
Canberra is infested with the ugliest tree on earth:
Gum trees are not beautiful, they are ugly. Gum trees are grey/white skeletons that make you thirsty just looking at them. They represent the emasciation that comes after death. Gum trees kill all flora on the ground around them and turn the earth to dust. Canberra is covered in gum trees. Non-green, lifeless kindling covers the rock and dust ocean to reflect the hopelessness of those stuck in Canberra.
Canberra's "nature reserves" are also ugly, dry, emaciated, desiccated moors covered in dead or dying flora, rocks, dust and dirt. Canberra sits on an enormous gum tree farm. There is no indigenous grass in Canberra. What grass there is, if any, is flown in from New Zealand and stuck on top of the rocks and dirt during the night, when no-one is looking.
Canberra is a country town:
Like a country town, everyone dresses like farmers and bogans dress like farm hands. And when they go out shopping, for dinner or any of the three things you can do in Canberra, they dress up in twenty year old fashion or if they can afford it, an outfit carefully chosen from fashion houses such as Target and K-mart.
Like a country town, when you go to look at cars on the weekend, you will find all car sales shut on Sunday. You will find any remaining shops shut at 4pm on Sunday. Not that you'd want to buy anything in Canberra.
Unlike a city, you will pay more than double for your annual car registration - which funds the cheap-arsed country roads that link stupidly far away suburbs with specially designed tail-gating lanes (one lane, all the way).
Canberra has big city qualities:
Retail prices in Canberra are on par with Sydney and Melbourne, except you will find the range significantly smaller, the quality less, the after-sales service negligible, if you can even find what you're looking for. You will usually have to settle for whatever they have available, which is almost always floor stock at the same price as in the box.
Like a big city, you will pay Sydney CBD restaurant prices for poor quality breakfast, lunch and dinner. Having been served something microwaved from frozen, served by a dead-eyed student and just as tasteless, that you would expect to eat in a pub in Moe, you will leave the restaurant starving, regretting having ordered the meat main and puzzling over why you were billed by Lygon Street.
Motivational Poster
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Lollypop Music - Justin Bieber Vs Jim Morrison
What do you call that pathetic musical genre of the 2000s?
What do you call those gay, pussy-arsed songs sung by those sweet little girl-boys who dominate the charts?
What one phrase concisely captures the essence of the new wave of pre-pubescent, over-sensitive dweeby wusses on the radio whining about the love they have for some teasing little tartlet?
Where have all the Men gone in music?
Don't get me wrong, baby. There have always been softies in pop music: the Righteous Brothers, John Farnham, the Eagles, Kenny Rogers, George Michael...
There have always been hard-arses: Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, The Doors, AC/DC, Metallica, Nirvana, Linkin Park, Nickelback...
What they had in common was that they were all Men - fully grown, life-experienced, full-blooded specimens from the spectrum of masculinity.
And yes, like Karl Popper, I realise that when someone says all swans are white, the first thing people do is look for a black swan. I refer to the hermaphroditic gender-neutral/gender-dubious experiment that was New Wave and New Romantic music. The early 80s music scene was attacked by a plethora of gay hair-dressers who weren't really gay or hair-dressers (except for Flock of Seagulls):
Adam Ant, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, A-Ha...
Okay, so some were actually gay. But they were still gay Men, not gay boys. They were not sweet or soft, easily drawn to tears, still living at home with mummy and daddy to pwotect dem fwom da big bad world. These gay Men were incisive, confronting, garish, risk-taking, brave-hearted. And this constitution was reflected in their music and lyrics.
Alright, alright. Yes, later on in the 80s we saw the rise of the man-perm that was Hard Rock:
Def Lepard, White Snake, Poison, Twisted Sister, the Cult
But this is also different! They weren't actually the pansy little princesses their gay hair-stylists tried to make them. They were severely talented and visionary young men who were testing the boundaries of society's appreciation of art and expression. They were still men under all that make-up.
Today's factory-produced talentless whiner is designed to sell "records" and merchandise to the wuss market - from 5 to 25 yr old girls and their fellow girl-boys.
These are not Men!
This is not the music of Men!
There is an emerging attempt to fuse lollipop boys and wussiness with masculinity. Check out the half-thawed rawness, the roughness and homelessly bestubbled disguises worn by wussy older blokes:
Franz Ferdinand, Kings of Leon, Snow Patrol, Eskimo Joe, Wolf M
other...The new genre of the 2000s is sweet, caring, cuddly, mothering. It is the pre-pubescent, impotent, immature and weak wailing of a teary-eyed mummy's boy.
Their only talent is to look sweet, sing sweet and taste like lollipops.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Australia - Land of Heroes
(Achilles was never awarded a Bravey Decoration even after destroying the Trojan Army, choking the rivers with all the men he'd killed)
(Maureen Crawford was awarded with an Australian Bravery Decoration by the Governor-General Quentin Bryce for her actions that saved a pilot’s life.)
Australia. In your incessant desire to celebrate mediocrity, you again overstep the mark. Not everyone can be a hero. If everyone is a hero, then the title becomes meaningless and adds no value to the description of the person. However, all I hear in the media, including vox pop interviews from real people, is the ordainment of yet another Aussie hero. And every single time the same media asks the hero how they feel about the title, every single time, the accused responds in a half-arsed thinly veiled attempt at false modesty, "I'm not a hero. Anyone would have done it."
Real Heroes:
Achilles
Ajax
Theseus
Hercules
Maureen Crawford
Heroes in General:
People who attempted to save someone but didn't
People who attempted to save someone, didn't and then died
People who didn't attempt to save anyone, but thought about it
Heroes Invented to Inspire Greatness, but only inspire kids to wear their clothes wrong:
Spiderman
Superman
Batman
Captain America
X-Men
Bogan Man
Pseudo Aussie Heroes:
Every child with a terminal illness
Most professional footy players
Victims of the Bali Bombs
Victims of the Bali Belly
People who did something good for the community
People who did something good for the community, and died
All our athletes who won an international sporting competition
All our athletes who died during their sport, even if they'd won nothing
Kids who call 000 when their parents have heart attacks
Kids who call "1311166" Pizza Hut when their parents have heart attacks
Kangaroos who call O'Briens Glass Repair when their owners collapse
Soldiers who fight in war and then somehow die
Horses that win national horse races, even the ones from New Zealand
WOOMELANG resident Bev Wall has been named the Local Hero of the Year in the Australian of the Year Victorian awards. Not only had Ms Wall taken over the post office when it was about to close but had also helped organise groceries and fuel for the town when those services folded. (The Wimmera Times - 19 Nov, 2008 10:04 AM)
Wow!
Dinky-di Aussie hero
(The Age.com -Aussie heroes left to history
- Mark Juddery, The Courier-Mail, November 16, 2007 11:00PM
Aussie 'heroes' land crippled plane
- ABC News, Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:51pm
I'm no hero says Aussie soldier with VC
- Julian Drape and Cathy Alexander, January 16, 2009
Tania Morrison – A True Aussie Hero
- From 0 to $2.5 Million Dollars in Property in 3 Years
- Realwealthaustralia.com
Jessica Watson's hero homecoming
- All Australian Media, May 2010
It’s time we had true blue hero: Adam Gilchrist
- Phillip Hudson, the Herald Sun, January 25, 2010 6:58AM
'Aussie hero' Private Ranaudo farewelled
- Sydney morning Herald, July 31, 2009
Aussie Hero
- An Australian brand of microwavable burgers and rolls
For god's sake, Australia. Heed the tenets of our great thinkers. Listen to the immortal wisdom of the ancient philosopher and wig-stylist
Tina Turner, "We don't need another hero."
Why Do We Send Our Kids to School?
The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered. --Jean Piaget
The positive emotion which should supply the motive in education is curiosity, but the curiosity of the young is severely repressed in many directions—sexual, theological, and political. Instead of being encouraged in the practice of free inquiry, children are instructed in some brand of orthodoxy, with the result that unfamiliar ideas inspire them with terror rather than with interest. --Bertrand Russell
If we agree that the purpose of education should be civilisation, then we need to overhaul the Government's current schooling approach, which Piaget and Russell refer to above - 80 years ago.
Civilisation has, without any surprise, changed since the days when children were given the tools to live and serve within their social class and no more. It is time to change the way we educate the young accordingly.
Today's civilisation involves battling a daily onslaught of complex problems created on purpose or by accident by a complex society that demands far more from its citizens than just paying taxes. Unlike our Grandparents, we are constantly tricked, teased, baited and deceived into having all our money taken from us - even money we haven't earned yet. Unlike our Grandparents, we are constantly bombarded by the media, which we are already dependent upon for our knowledge of society, with the fear of death and morbidity from a thousand different and new diseases, accidents and horrors in the work-place, at home, on the streets and overseas. Unlike our Grandparents, both modern parents work full-time and for long hours, coming home to chores and commitments that piled up while they were away, being driven more by guilt than other feelings to spend what little time is left with their children.
Should we prepare our children for the horrors and complexities of modern living, or leave them to it? If we should prepare them, why aren't we? And if we aren't, how do we do it? Status quo?
And who teaches them? Parents? What are teachers for?
When will parents have the time to sit our children down and teach them how to be intelligent and prudent consumers, and responsible informed citizens?
From what text will average Joe Dad refer to in teaching little Jimmy the pitfalls of owning bank accounts, managing a budget, mitigating debt, investing in shares, saving for a mortgage (if the ability to buy a house is even possible by the time their generation grows up)?
How do we find the time to detail the warning indicators of corruption, of pernicious commercial behaviour and how to council strangers, to manage difficult personalities, to make friends more easily, to identify and deal with inimical approaches, to argue more cogently, to speak publicly? How does a labourer prepare his children for litigation, receiving a court summons, finding a lawyer, signing a contract? How does a lawyer prepare her children for dodgy workmanship?
If schooling aims at the social objective of improving civilisation, improving the way individuals act with each other, thus improving people's lives and then the health of society, and all this through education, then should we not look very carefully at what we are teaching them and ensure it will actually achieve these grand goals?
Or should we just drop the kids off cause the law says we have to, and pick them up when they're eventually let out? Scold them for poor reports and buy them prizes for good ones? Read over their maths and English homework like a conveyor-belt worker at the local assembly plant?
Perhaps we should pay no attention to whether basic school education produces a prepared citizen. Perhaps we should recall alternative reasons for schooling. As Sir Humphrey observed, the reason the British school-leaving age was raised to 16 was to keep jobless teenagers off the streets.
The positive emotion which should supply the motive in education is curiosity, but the curiosity of the young is severely repressed in many directions—sexual, theological, and political. Instead of being encouraged in the practice of free inquiry, children are instructed in some brand of orthodoxy, with the result that unfamiliar ideas inspire them with terror rather than with interest. --Bertrand Russell
If we agree that the purpose of education should be civilisation, then we need to overhaul the Government's current schooling approach, which Piaget and Russell refer to above - 80 years ago.
Civilisation has, without any surprise, changed since the days when children were given the tools to live and serve within their social class and no more. It is time to change the way we educate the young accordingly.
Today's civilisation involves battling a daily onslaught of complex problems created on purpose or by accident by a complex society that demands far more from its citizens than just paying taxes. Unlike our Grandparents, we are constantly tricked, teased, baited and deceived into having all our money taken from us - even money we haven't earned yet. Unlike our Grandparents, we are constantly bombarded by the media, which we are already dependent upon for our knowledge of society, with the fear of death and morbidity from a thousand different and new diseases, accidents and horrors in the work-place, at home, on the streets and overseas. Unlike our Grandparents, both modern parents work full-time and for long hours, coming home to chores and commitments that piled up while they were away, being driven more by guilt than other feelings to spend what little time is left with their children.
Should we prepare our children for the horrors and complexities of modern living, or leave them to it? If we should prepare them, why aren't we? And if we aren't, how do we do it? Status quo?
And who teaches them? Parents? What are teachers for?
When will parents have the time to sit our children down and teach them how to be intelligent and prudent consumers, and responsible informed citizens?
From what text will average Joe Dad refer to in teaching little Jimmy the pitfalls of owning bank accounts, managing a budget, mitigating debt, investing in shares, saving for a mortgage (if the ability to buy a house is even possible by the time their generation grows up)?
How do we find the time to detail the warning indicators of corruption, of pernicious commercial behaviour and how to council strangers, to manage difficult personalities, to make friends more easily, to identify and deal with inimical approaches, to argue more cogently, to speak publicly? How does a labourer prepare his children for litigation, receiving a court summons, finding a lawyer, signing a contract? How does a lawyer prepare her children for dodgy workmanship?
If schooling aims at the social objective of improving civilisation, improving the way individuals act with each other, thus improving people's lives and then the health of society, and all this through education, then should we not look very carefully at what we are teaching them and ensure it will actually achieve these grand goals?
Or should we just drop the kids off cause the law says we have to, and pick them up when they're eventually let out? Scold them for poor reports and buy them prizes for good ones? Read over their maths and English homework like a conveyor-belt worker at the local assembly plant?
Perhaps we should pay no attention to whether basic school education produces a prepared citizen. Perhaps we should recall alternative reasons for schooling. As Sir Humphrey observed, the reason the British school-leaving age was raised to 16 was to keep jobless teenagers off the streets.
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