Journal Entries
Election Night Special
Posted Oct 9, 2004
The Australian Federal Election is on today; polls close in half an hour, and the TV coverage of the results starts soon after that. I thought I might use this thread for my own comments as the count progresses. This may be boring for those without a stake in the outcome; consider this a warning, and an indication that I'll quite understand if you unsubscribe.
Here's a quick summary of the situation. The current government is a coalition of the Liberal and National parties; it is right-wing, with crypto-fascist tendencies. A bit like the US Republicans, in fact. The main opposition, and the only other party that has a real chance of defeating the government, is the Australian Labor Party. (For some reason, they use the American spelling of 'labour'.) The ALP is further to the left than the US Democrats or Tony Blair's party, but not by much. I'm hoping for a Labor win, even though I voted for the Greens.
Under the Australian system of preferential voting for the House of Representatives, the voter numbers all candidates on the ballot in order of preference. If the first-preference candidate is knocked out of the race, the vote is transferred to the second-preference candidate, and so on until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote. My first preference was Green, second ALP, third Australian Democrats, and so on. I expect my own electorate will be held by the ALP.
The Senate is a messier situation, which I won't attempt to explain. Suffice it to say that we won't get a clear Senate result tonight. It is likely that the eventual result will give the balance of power in the Senate to a minor party - if I'm lucky, it'll be the Greens.
So - now I just have to sit here and twiddle my thumbs until the polls close and the count starts... 
will help me through this.
This is, in my opinion, the most important election we've had in years. We'll either get another three years of the current government, led by an intellectual midget who is a toady to GW Bush, or we'll get a fresh government that might do something to restore Australian independence.
I hope I don't end the night thoroughly depressed...
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Latest reply: Oct 9, 2004
Another bombing
Posted Sep 9, 2004
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1195760.htm
The Australian Embassy in Jakarta has been bombed.
I'm not entirely surprised; I'm amazed the Embassy lasted this long without a direct attack. I don't condone the bombing at all, perish the thought, but it's our foreign policy that is directly responsible for this happening.
Our ludicrous and embarrassing Prime Minister will no doubt try to make political capital out of this, during the current election campaign. This is the same cretin who claimed that dragging my country into an illegal war as an ally of the evil empire would make Australia a safer place. Yeah. Australia's perfectly safe - it's just that our closest neighbour hates us.
Once upon a time, an Australian passport was a guarantee of safety overseas. Not any more... and we have our current vile government to thank for it.
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Latest reply: Sep 9, 2004
A week of liberty, or something like that.
Posted Sep 3, 2004
I've taken next week off w*rk. I'm not going anywhere in particular, or making any great plans; I'll do a bit of gardening (in a bone-dry garden with rock-hard soil), and sort out all the cupboards that are still in the state of chaos that arose when I moved in here three years ago. I might even clean the place. I'll also do some shopping, hang around the art gallery, stroll around the lake...
The thing is, I'm badly in need of some time to myself. I seem to spend my life doing things for other people. That's an occupational hazard when one works in the welfare sector, but lately things have gotten out of hand. Usually I enjoy helping people who need help, but just lately I'm feeling somehow obliged to help too many people here in Real Life. It makes me wonder where my life's gone, and why I'm not in better control of it. An entire week of doing whatever I want, whenever I want - it's a rare luxury.
I need to work out what my priorities are...
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Latest reply: Sep 3, 2004
Not really here...
Posted Apr 19, 2004
While my laptop's off being repaired 
, I only have hootoo access here at w*rk. This means I won't have nearly as many chances to talk to people; I'll have to wait until there's nobody behind me... I just thought I'd mention this, in case anyone thinks I'm ignoring them at any point.
I don't know how long the laptop will be out of action, and I don't know how much the fix will cost either... but that's a separate issue. Anyway. Having finally gotten a hootoo-only email account, I don't have access to it, so anything that anyone's sent to that account will just have to mount up for a while. What a masterpiece of bad planning, on my part.
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Latest reply: Apr 19, 2004
Email ?
Posted Apr 10, 2004
Just a quick one, this. If you have my email address, could you please email me? You see, I've had to rebuild this computer a couple of times, and one of the results is that I've lost all the email addresses I'd saved... Naturally, I never wrote most of them down anywhere. *slaps self*
(If you don't have my address but for some odd reason would like it, please let me know and we can start haggling over how to share such information without posting it here in the public domain.)
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Latest reply: Apr 10, 2004
Ivan the Terribly Average
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