When landlords brown you off

There's all these ads around at the moment asking people to take advantage of the rebate and get solar panels on their homes. Some are even saying it can be done for zero cost.

Needless to say, since good old Kevin has convinced me to join the Greens again, I'm quite interested in the idea of going solar. This morning I rang the real estate agent to ask about the possibility of us organising it here for the house we rent. We've been here for four years now and the landlord has been very "easygoing" you might say. If I want the fence painted or repaired, or the hole in the kitchen floor fixed, I need to do it myself, but there's no problem having a couple of cats and a veggie patch.

What surprised me was when I asked the agent about the whole solar thing. Wouldn't it be good for the agency to be nice and green and have all their rental properties switching over from polluting energy to solar? It sure would, he said, but they've sent around plenty of advices to their landlords about it, especially considering the rebate... And you know what the response was? Zero.

It's hard to imagine why that would be. Surely everyone is aware that we need to make changes to our energy usage and generation. Surely everyone would like to take advantage of a free offer to do it for nothing? Well, you'd think so. Maybe they all have shares in coal mines? Hmmm. Who would want to make money out of something that poisons the planet? Not very sporting, really, is it?

Anyways, it will take a couple of days to get a response, but please cross your fingers for us.

We hate you too, Kevin

The other day in conversation, the subject of pension changes came up. We were a little confused as to why the Government would increase aged pensions, disability pensions and just about everything else, but not single parent pensions. How does it make sense in a climate where more and more people are expected to compete for less and less jobs if a depression takes hold, and also force single parents to continue to compete for those jobs?

It was bad enough when Howard brought in his hell-spawn misconception of "mutual obligation" and forced heavier unecessary burdens on single parents and unemployed people... It was really crappy when the laws regarding single parents working were changed and put pressure on people just when they really don't need it.

For a supposed Labor Government to not only keep these discriminatory changes but exacerbate things by singling out single parents for further mistreatment is absolutely disgusting. Not only is it petty and mean spirited, it makes no sense while the economy is under suspicion.

The conclusion we came to is that being another Sydney Anglican, Kevin Rudd must have a similar religious agenda to that of the maggot Howard. Only if someone was deliberately trying to keep women dependent upon men and punish separated and divorced women, and over 90% of single parents are women, would this make any kind of twisted sense.

It's exactly the sort of thing we've come to expect from those slimy, underhanded control freaks attempting to import US style extremism to Australia. Bastards. Women have it hard enough in cock culture as it is without their added hatred and pathology.

You know, after the second world war Menzies went on a bit of a campaign building infrastructure like the Snowy River project to attempt to provide us with reliable utilities. It was seen as a pretty good thing that every Australian had a piece of this improvement to the nation's infrastructure. With stable power supplies we could build a secure community and businesses. Somehow in the 90's we were convinced that selling off all that stuff was necessary because otherwise we'd be communists. Only communists or socialists would deny the free market the chance to compete to provide Australians with utilities they already had.

It seems pretty ironic to me that the kind of thinking that implies that Menzies was a communist is behind the current financial terror.

What pisses me off is that this, in connection with equally ridiculously right-wing religion is an influence in a country that is supposedly a democracy. Why should 1% of the population have such influence to penalise and discriminate against other Australians who are down on their luck... What sort of stuck up bastard uses mediaeval morality to judge who is worthy of assistance when life has taken a turn for the worse?

The other thing is that this is contradictory even within their own belief system. Jesus specifically forbade Theocratic style Government. "The rulers of the gentiles lord it over them but it shall not be so among you." The New Testament was supposed to be about individuals relating to god, not a forced national morality drive. Add to that the fact that the very people this religion is supposed to be caring for are the poor, widows, orphans and strangers in the land... Geez, it looks like one big cock up all round really.

From those of us who have had enough of locker-room male supremacy in Australia and would rather live as full human beings without the Government under-handedly penalising us for our gender, we hate you too, Kevin.

Bah Hummer

In case you've been on Mars for the last five or so decades and don't have enough evidence yet that car culture is unsustainable, GMH have driven the point home by going begging (again) to the US Government.

We can only hope that they'll either go out of business entirely or be revamped by some kind of uber-Green group that will use the assembly line and other assets to begin some genuinely useful changes.

At a time when the planet is choking in pollution and wars over resources are killing and traumatising millions, who can have any sympathy for the people who marketed Hummers?

And on with more good news, there was a brilliant story last night on the ABC's Australian Story about Dr Maarten Stapper who's using natural microbes to regenerate fertility on farming land poisoned by chemicals. I had a bit of a laugh at one point when the journalist was interviewing a couple of really crusty old farming types who looked like you'd expect them to have little to do with any bloody hippies... It was heart warming to see the way Australian farmers are embracing a chemical free alternative to land management and erosion control. Onya! Of course Dr Stapper had been kicked out of the CSIRO for teaching farmers how to use good alternatives to the toxic waste they're expected to flood their paddocks with.

While I'm online... How about Denis Menchov! What a brilliant win after that very scary fall in the time trials. Wow, my heart skipped a beat! And his trusty mechanic had a spare bike ready for him to remount and go on to win the race. Mechanics rock.

I should write more about the Giro when I'm online again. I've just found out I have three slipped discs and two damaged joints in my spine... the painkillers are a lot of fun if you don't need to do anything for a few hours but space out. A little like computer games but you can do it with your eyes closed. In a way it was good to find out. Now I know what's causing those stabbing pains shooting down the front of my leg when I'm riding. It wasn't a hip problem at all, it was pain from a damaged facet joint. Hmmm.

Anyways. Hummer bites the dust. Fuckin eh!

What goes around comes around, the 'pig iron Kevin' edition

I wasn't sure whether to post this here or in my bitch blog... but since it's about resources, here it is.

After the second world war Menzies was referred to for a while as "pig iron Bob" in reference to his having sold iron to the Japanese before the war.

As you are probably aware, discussions are currently underway regarding the proposed sale of a Rio Tinto mine in Australia to a Chinese company. It was something of a surprise to me to see an ad on SBS in which Barnaby Joyce is advising the Government to block the sale, particularly considering how the Howard Government sold off everything that wasn't nailed down. "You sell the milk, not the cow." He realises belatedly.

But this isn't only about milk sales. For decades we've been selling primary produce overseas then buying back the manufactured products. A waste not only in terms of jobs, but also in fuel and pollution trucking shit in laps around the planet in order to bolster someone's profit margin and generate a multi million dollar executive bonus.

What really pisses me off in this case is that we're selling ore no-strings to one of the largest arms producers on earth. The US under Bush was referred to as the world's most dangerous rogue state, and we have yet to see how the military-industrial complex will fare with Obama. The US pretends to have some limits on their arms sales yet while we are called in to assist in Afghanistan and Iraq, they're actively selling the munitions that create the destabilisation. China is likewise selling guns, planes and ammunition wholesale to countries like Sudan and Zimbabwe. Profit uber alles.

According to the UN, the war in Sudan is about ethnic cleansing. That means genocide. Like the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and others in WW2. So we see that China is actively profiting from and supporting this practise of genocide.

What's worse, we're supplying and encouraging them.

If anyone were killing Jews en masse these days, or even Muslims as in the case of the war in the former Yugoslavian states, there would be outrage. But as in the case of food shortages, no one seems to give a rats that African people are being slaughtered. Sure we get a two minute spot on the evening news if something happens to a Sudanese refugee, but no mention of the arms supply, or Australia's complicity in the genocide.

After the second world war there were trials held and all sorts of repercussions for those who had exploited circumstances and profited from the war. Even today companies like IBM are mentioned in detriment as having assisted Hitler's evil empire. Without punchcard technology the death camps would not have been able to murder nearly so many people as they did.

Under the influence of "free trade" and the so called level playing field, which has been so charmingly illuminated as a complete wank by the current financial mess, countries, or rather large corporations, could pretend complete moral irresponsibility for the products or materials they manufacture and distribute.

But beyond the mere morality of all this is the fact that we live on one planet. Refugees are coming out of places like Sudan, Burma and Afghanistan, travelling illegally because that's the way refugees always have to travel when there's a fucking war. They come to countries like Australia where they hope they might be able to live in relative peace and quiet. After they've done a turn in a dog run out in the desert and been consigned to some outer urban slum. They come because they've been bombed, shot at, sometimes tortured and generally had their lives threatened. They come because someone is selling arms to the warmongers who persecute them. They come because someone has sold primary produce to the manufacturers of arms.

What really irks me is the way some retrograde white supremacist Herald-Sun readers get their fur in a bunch about refugees coming to Australia. How dare they not want to live in a war zone. How dare they seek out a life of peaceful well-being. How dare they invade "our" land.

How dare we sell the stuff to build the bombs and bullets that destroy their homes and drive them out.

Next time some Today-Tonight watcher gets going about "bloody reffos", ask them if they've bought anything made in China (clothes) or the US (Ford, Holden) recently.

Life and times.

Well it's beginning to feel like we're coming into winter. There's even been a couple of drops of rain out here, which is something of a novelty. And there's more cycling on telie. It's quite exciting having the TdF on over the Yule season. Double celebrations.

Last weekend the telecast of the Tour of Flanders was on. I'd kept up with the race itself and was also looking forward to seeing vid of it. The bf was over for the weekend again and we were planning to watch it. Of course, on the day there was a power outage. I rang the company and sure enough the only place in Australia where there was a blackout was my neck of the woods. Grumble fuck. Oh well, stay in bed for another couple of hours :D

The power came on halfway through the show, so I did get to see the women's racing, which was quite something. The crowds might not be the same, but the competition certainly is!

All this cycling has me wanting to get back on my own bike a bit more. I'll have to take it down to Dandenong to the other half's place, since he's right near the bike trails down there which are much more integrated than those around here. Riding laps up and back on the creek trail, getting multiple punctures on the broken glass all over the place got a bit boring.

When I started back at Uni I was hoping there'd be a way to incorporate some bike travel in the commute. It's a 130 km round trip in the car, which would be a pretty long ride even if the local track did connect with the ring road. There's the option of taking the bike on the train, but that would mean having it on both Connex and VLine in peak hour. Something I'm not really motivated to attempt at present. One day I caught public transport to experiment with an alternative to car travel and it took me 5 1/2 hours to get to and from a 2 hour class. Needless to say I'm distinctly unimpressed with Victorian public transport these days. Hardly a novelty, I'm sure.

So it's trips to the local shops and watching on tellie for me at present. Not too bad when you're curled up somewhere warm with someone nice to cuddle.

experiments in blogging part 85,999,832

Okay, after half an hour stuffing around with javascript trying to get a myspace link to work here... bugger it I'll just post the link.

Bad Domme

Apparently it's from some sitcom called The Whitest Kids You Know... which I don't watch, but the vid had me crying with laughter. Cheers!

Boom bikes

Ever ridden in Critical Mass and been appreciative of the bikes with speakers attached? Some of my fondest memories of Mass are of riding down Bourke St to the tune of "Flight of the Valkyries" provided by Val.

On oobject there's pics of a number of bikes with some unusual approaches to this... Among other things such as extreme truck loads and vintage analog lie detectors.

Oddly, when searching for a link for CM I got a mercedes site. Um. %-)