Lunacy

I remember a discussion once with a woman who told me that because I am a godless athiest, clearly I have no morals, no ethics, no kindness and no faith, because they can only be found in the bible.

My morality does not come from a book. It comes from common sense.

As for the bible. It boggles the mind that it is still some kind of precious tome of knowledge and morality. You have people like Westboro, upholding the book to the letter and claiming religious righteousness, and others telling us that most of it is "not relevant" today because we are more enlightened and know that slavery and oppressing women is a bad thing, but please go read it to make you a moral person. Funnily they are also saying the Westboro mob are batshit crazy and distance themselves from them, but they are reading the same book! I do not think, as a woman, I can learn anything from a book that tells me I am the worthless property of my husband.

Now god, apparently, has not seen fit to speak to ANYONE at all to update it in a couple of milennia. In fact, when someone claims that god has spoken to them, everyone calls them nut cases and liars.. What, he suddenly decided to stop visiting us when we developed mental health care? But there isn't a chance that 2000 years ago, a couple of undiagnosed lunatics with voices in their head started spouting a bunch of nonsense. Millions of followers with the churches some of the richest organisations in the world? The chances of anyone admitting the possibility that they are following the advice of an ancient schizophrenics insane mutterings is completely negligible.

Now I used to be tolerant of it all. I was just fine with the idea of being laid back and allowing freedom of religion while I was given freedom from religion.. but 

I am not sure what I was going to write. I started typing this some time back. I can't remember why or why I never finished it. Maybe I was called away, but you can have my half rant anyway. It is probably related to the Liberal QLD government using their religion to remove rights from same sex couple that were not harming anyone. I believe I was going to write that the problem starts where people are using their religion to interfere in the rights of others. Anyway - posting now.

Crisis of Politics

Despite a great deal of time and effort spent reviewing policy and core promises for both major parties at any election, I tend to appear to have been a welded on Labor supporter. My parents leaned towards Labor as well, so I was raised in a very grass roots Labor environment. We didn't need everything, just enough to get by, the traditional 'fair go for all'.

Recently though, my political faith has been shaken to the core. It is not until you have to start considering your other options that you truly realise how repugnant they are.

In the NSW state election, ALP had removed themselves from contention by staying one term too long, sending a wrecking ball through the cost of living in the state. It was so bad that Barry O'Farrell didn't even need to campaign very hard. The swing against the ALP was so big they were lucky to be in opposition, and the "Premier in waiting" O'Farrell made about one core promise - to to something about the cost of electricity. That promise was "It will still go up, but not as much as it was going to". He then reneged on reducing the solar scheme payments meaning that it probably is going to go up as much as it was going to.

So yes, O'Farrell won government on the platform of "Your bill will go up under us too".

Obviously, it became almost impossible to live there. When we finally crossed the boarder our bill was so extensively over our ability to pay it that we are still paying it off today. We shaved 10c per KWH off our bill by crossing the boarder, and the QLD Climate Smart package and no Mains Hot Water Systems helped reduce our bills even further.

But now we are faced with a state election here in QLD, and can I say that once again, I am not impressed with the manner in which the ALP government has left the state.

Schools are a joke. She is promising 5000 iPads to selected year seven students, but they haven't even delivered the high school laptops yet. They have had them in NSW for three years already! According to my eldest, who is in year 10, only students with high academic results are allowed access to the school laptops at her high school. The federal government could only give the state the money. The state has allowed their department to mismanage this one in the worst way.

Of course, many of us are left wondering that if there is no laptops, then where did the money go to when the primary schools are asking us to supply things like tissues, copy paper, stapled and white board markers, as well as communal pencils and glue, our childs exercise and text books AND a school contribution!

Where did all the funding go???

Perhaps the Dept of Education in QLD has its own Joel Barlow.

Who's that? Oh, that is the guy who defrauded the QLD Department of Health out of $16m in public funds. I didn't realise QLD Health had $16m in funds to begin with, but clearly they don't now and that is just to the detriment of the health system.

I'd just as soon as avoid the horror stories of Qld Health for now.

Unfortunately, the LNP are not offering much of an alternative. He has promised $40m to do something he has clearly not actually looked into doing, so that figure is iffy at best. If it blows out, I will not be surprised.

But the most incredibly pathetic news came today with "Plan C", where if Campbell Newman fails to win Ashgrove, then some poor other MP has to resign, force a By-Election and they expect Newman will just cruise to victory there. But Newman "cares" about Ashgrove.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news here guys, but you will probably lose the by-election with the voters of that electorate pissed off that you dragged them out to the polls again when you had already won the seat.

So they are my options. Awesome.

On a federal level however, my faith has taken the biggest hit.

Never before have so many been so petty, arrogant, vindictive and disgusting in such a short space of time.

And all of a sudden everyone is an expert. Such as this awesome OpEd by James Button 'We need to talk about Kevin' where he goes on about how horrible it was to work for him and how horrible a person he is, but I am still stuck on the first paragraph where he writes

"I only met him four times in that period so I don't know him well"

These people claim that Mr Rudd is arrogant and then tweet comments like this one from Steve Gibbons -

"Every non Bgo electorate email, tweet post & phone call urging me to vote for Rudd, just makes me more determined NOT to vote for him."

Even if at midday Monday the ALP once again claims Kevin Rudd as the leader, I am not sure my extreme level of disillusionment with it will manage to keep me on side. I mean you watch people like Gibbons, Crean, Swan, Roxon and Ellis destroying each other and the party, preferring to hand the Prime Ministership to Tony Abbott over Kevin Rudd - and I realise why Question Time so closely resembles a primary school yard at lunch time. Their behaviour is not only completely hypocritical under the circumstances, but utterly disgusting paraded around in the public domain. To quote Kate Ellis - you cannot reward behaviour like that.

They keep saying he has a short temper, no control, is rude and arrogant and chaotic. Yet they are the ones in the press ranting and raving and putting him down at every possible chance. How are we supposed to believe that when what we are seeing in public is exactly the opposite? They are the ones looking like angry, short tempered, out of control psychopaths.

I just can't stand watching them taking every possible opportunity to jump on the media and have another vitriolic whinge any more.

I am not sure that given how much some of them have even taken to attacking the public for supporting Rudd, that I can ever look at that party the same way and give those arrogant, self serving prats, another vote.

My alternative of course is Tony Abbott. It makes me want to vomit. This mans main campaign platform is racial vilification and scaremongering. He had be taken off the decision on RU486 - which was in his portfolio - because he is a secularist's worst nightmare. This is a man who would rather attack a dying man doing good work for other sufferers because he is too damn arrogant and proud to be in the wrong. A man so concerned about image that he participated in the CEO Sleepout in a business suit! A man who blocks stem cell research. A man who believes victims of domestic violence need to prove it before they can be allowed to divorce. A man whose only skill really is campaigning - and he isn't even really any good at that.

Obviously he is not an appropriate choice.

Sadly, though, it is at this point that when I refuse to vote for one or the other that I realise, my vote counts for very little, and I can change nothing.

An Open Letter to the QLD ALP and LNP.

The future of Australia will always be reliant on the next generation, and their futures are reliant on a good education. What hope do they have of this when there is a clear lack of essential funding of QLDs education system. Anna Bligh requested feedback on her idea of using the next resources windfall to prepare accounts for children starting school in 5 years time. Unfortunately, Ms Bligh, this is five years too late. Schools are asking parents to supply them with copy paper, tissues and whiteboard markers. The promised laptops are coming with massive price tags attached, despite each one being paid for by the federal government, showing high level fundraising being done by schools in your state. Formals and HSC certificates are being held to ransom until VOLUNTARY contributions are paid.

These are not the actions of first world public education. In stark contrast, NSW schools have much smaller voluntary contributions. All books are provided to the student by the school. There are no requests for copy paper and tissues. The Australian Government funded school laptops are provided to ALL students from year nine at no extra charge and as an educational incentive, if they remain I school and achieve their HSC they are allowed to KEEP the laptop.

I simply cannot fathom how such things are possible in one state and not so in the other without there being a serious deficiency in school funding in QLD. Or perhaps once the money has reach the department there is an incredible level of poor spending leading to essential supplies being overlooked. Surely no one in the upper echelons of educational bureaucracy is naive enough to believe a school can function without copy paper.

For this upcoming election, it is already obvious to most that we will be treated to the usual politicking, where daily we are told what the other party can't do or hasn't done. I think the Australian public made it abundantly clear in 2007 and again in 2010 that we no longer respond to this form of campaigning. We as voters would appreciate being treated with the dignity and respect of having an education, one that our children are being denied.

Queensland has been lagging behind other states for some time. The final addition of a Prep year was a step forward. Are young Queensland minds so under valued that their education is not a priority? A school so underfunded that it cannot afford tissues and whiteboard markers is a sign that there is a funding issue. But when all schools are asking for parents to provide essential supplies, it shows a government with willful indifference for public education.

By 24th of March, the voters and parents of Queensland would appreciate a substantial reply to the very simple question of, why are our schools so underfunded? and what are you going to do to fix it?