Stop Listening to Politician Promises

In light of the last five years, I think it's time we simply stop listening to politicians' promises. The old joke, "How do you know a politician's lying? Their lips are moving," has been trite for a while, but after the countless lies on both sides of Parliament maybe it's time to view politics in a different way.

If you judged your politicians based on the promises and policies they made when going to an election, more than likely you would be disappointed with the results once those politicians got into office. I suggest a very simple way to alleviate the frustration and disappointment. Simply ignore all promises and policy. Look instead to past performance. Evaluate an entire party and disregard the words and actions of the leader and the individuals. Simply look at the way a party is perceived and make your assumptions about how they will handle any issue based on how they handled similar issues in the past.

If you hoped there would be no carbon pricing and you believed the promise Julia Gillard made about the issue, you would have been disappointed by the resulting carbon policies of the Labor government. Instead, if you had a ignored any such promises, and instead viewed the party as a group, you would have seen that on the whole they are pro policies that instigate carbon pricing. You would not have been disappointed by the resulting moves of the Labor Party to price carbon.

Similarly, if you listened to Tony Abbott promising that the Gonski reforms would remain as they were before taking office, then of course you would be disappointed by the resulting turn around they have made in the last three months. Instead, if you had ignored any of their promises and looked at the past of the party, you would see that they often have a preference for dividing funding and controlling it in a manner exactly like what Christopher Pyne is doing now.

So next election why don't we all try something new? Why don't we all just ignore what the parties say and look at how they have performed. Regardless of what side of the aisle you are on, you are sure to avoid the disappointment and frustration that has come from listening to politicians' promises. Instead, when a politician does something you don't like, you'll say, "Of course they did that! They were always going to do that! I never expected them to do anything else but that!"

Together we can fight the draining frustration and disappointment of politics. Together we can stop that tired old joke from being relevant.

New Website Coming: Wordpress Theme Recommendations?

So this site's been quiet because The X Gene has been blowing up in a good way. simonjgreen.com has lost its special free server, so I'm taking advantage of that to rebrand and change the site. This blog will change its design, too! That'll be fun as balls. Any Wordpress templates you recommend, especially if it can showcase video well.

Alternate Reality AusPol

In science fiction, there is a story element featuring an aberration in a greater force – space/time continuum, the force, fate. An event occurs that throws the natural order of things out of whack, and for the duration of the story, everything goes weird. The Russians won the Cold War, Earth was enslaved by aliens, mum and dad never got together. The hero, trapped in this strange, recurring aberration, spends his or her time trying to rectify the tear or warp or magical twitch, and in the end, everything slurps back down a vortex of time and reverts back to normal, with none but the hero any the wiser.

If Kevin Rudd wins this next ballot and returns to Labor leadership, and then his party is defeated, there’s a nice symmetry that would, in a science fiction plot, be the perfect plot device that brings everything slurping back to the way things were.

Rudd was heading to a Labor loss when Julia Gillard stepped in. The following election cycle, with its hung parliament, the constant battle between Rudd and Gillard and the invisible but omnipresent opposition leader were all so bizarre, the years felt like that warp, that tear, that divergent timeline where everything was wrong.

I hope Rudd wins the ballot, because then he’ll lose the election he was meant to lose, and all in the Labor party will be razed, torn out, slurped away as that ‘shadow universe’ and Australian politics, maybe, will return to a more regular, comfortable, predictable, forward moving world.

Only we’ll all know, and there were no heroes.

Our go at Crowdfunding

Not asking much, comparatively, and we're giving you stuff you might actually like.
UPDATE: HA! We failed! Ba bowm.

Two New Articles Online, Both Medical

I had two articles on national online publications in December. Both are about medical/disability issues. One's meant to be funny, one's serious. Enjoy, cud-chuckers!

The Funny One:

NDIS bill introduced, man buys a Mazda 6
http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2012/12/13/3653645.htm

The Serious One:

A horde of untrained doctors is no good for our health

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/a-hoard-of-untrained-doctors-is-no-good-for-our-health/

Apple Isn't Good Any More, Or, Everyone Else Is Better

Here's what I figure, after exploring for my own personal use:

When it came to phones and tablets, Apple was great. Steve Jobs, like or loathe, was central to the vision of Apple. He would say no to releasing a product if it didn't meet his standards. Sometimes, that was in conflict with traditional business imperatives. There must have been executives, marketers, salespeople urging Jobs to do anything from releasing more versions of products in a year to squeezing more out of the equity consumers had built in Apple. Steve kept the wolves at bay, so to speak.

Then he died.

Now, to me, it seems like the wolves are chewing the fat off the bones. iDevices are coming thick and fast, with substandard updates, rubbish software and unexciting advances. I remember when we'd read the list of updates to an iPhone and marvel at the changes, salivate for the differences, be pleased with the innovation. The gap each successive iPhone or iPad jumps gets narrower and narrower. It's clear to me that those in charge of Apple are taking advantage of the fact that when a person thinks of a smart phone, they think of an iPhone. They got such market share and recognition for long enough, that early adopters turned into my parents. They went from fighting for the top, to cruising the sky.

The resulting auto-pilot lead me and my girlfriend to pull our heads out of the clouds and look around.

Everyone else caught up, and they have features that either should always have been in iProducts, or far surpass them in terms of innovation and usefulness. Now, my fiancee is going to buy a Samsung Galaxy S III, and when we look around, we notice the same early adopters that got the original iPhone - the dev nerd, the media geek, the gadget aficionado - already has one. I just booted up my Sony Xperia S Tab for the first time today.

Apple was great. I'm not going to be an oversimplifying idiot and talk about cults or zombies. Instead, I'll say that when Apple was innovating, I loved the iPhones and iPads I bought, and any shortfalls were worth it because of the highlights...until they weren't.

Unhappy Australians In An Unhappy (But Well Off) Country

There were reports earlier this year about the nation experiencing a good economic and social situation in an increasingly downturned world, but that Australians were still negative about their outlook. We were seen as being out of step with reality, with other nations worse off than us coming off more positive about the future. Shorthand: we looked like a bunch of privileged, whining complainers.

I had two experiences with strangers recently that emphasised those reports.

I had my scooter towed. The man who picked us up took me into the city, and we got to talking while I bobbed along in his passenger seat.

Among the stories of identity theft and scooter efficiency, the driver decried superannuation as the biggest scam perpetrated by a government rife with business interference. I suggested that maybe it was a good thing we all had to prepare for retirement, but he insisted the money just sitting there, earning interest or making profit off investments that the superannuation owners got to enjoy was outrageous. I offered that it was a good thing we'd been given a choice of who to trust our super with. Nope, he wouldn't have a bar of it. As far as he was concerned, people using our money to make a profit was awful.

"You can always just stash it in a bank, then, or a coffee can under your bed?"

The second chap came to install our oven. We talked about the high cost of living, and he asked if I thought it was better in America. I told him it was most decidedly not. Healthcare, education, working conditions. No way. And perhaps the higher cost of living was necessary for a better life in a better country. He seemed dissatisfied with that, shrugged.

A few tweaks of his screwdriver later, he complimented the suburb I live in. We spoke about how the west of Melbourne is a growth area, that we'd bought because we thought we'd get a good price when we eventually sold. He said it still wouldn't be much, though, compared to what we'd paid and what we'd have to pay for a new place.

He shared with me the original price of his property in Narre Warren, mere tens of thousands. I remarked that now, once he sold, he'd make huge profit. Nope, because then he'd have to buy another place and lose it all. This man was actually complaining about the big profit he'd make on his real estate sale. He'd bought early, just like my parents had in the same south eastern part of Melbourne. Now that prices are so high out there, it's the perfect time for folks like him to take advantage of the market. But nope, everything's the worst.

"My mum's probably going to sell her four bedroom and get a smaller one-bedroom now that we kids have moved out, and sit pretty off the difference."

"But even one-bedrooms are too expensive because everybody wants them."

Jesus, mate, fine! The nation is holding strong, we all have jobs, homes,family, property we can eventually sell: but you're right, both of you, let's go hang ourselves!