TheGeoffRe(y)port

In the wake of the Australian Federal Budget delivered earlier this week, The Age published this article demonstrating the disappointment of some families who are earning just over the $150K threshold for “family welfare”. The means testing of the family tax benefit and baby bonus, means that once you’re over $150,000 a year as household income, you no longer receive these handouts from our government.

So begins the whining. From the article:

She and her husband Sam together earn a little over $150,000. They certainly aren’t doing it tough. But with two boys at school and rising interest rates biting, they hardly consider themselves flush.

“I don’t classify us as rich,” she says. “We all want the nice house, but I don’t call my house a mansion. I want it to be a home for my children.”

…”There doesn’t seem to be any reward for people who have put the hard effort in,” Mr Sciberras said.

…

the Government decided $150,000 would be the point at which the family welfare tap is turned off. Mrs Sciberras thinks it should be $200,000. The Brotherhood of St Laurence nominates $120,000.

(Source: “Wealthy? Not us, say this Mill Park Family… we’ve earned it” - theage.com.au)

Well I’m just about over hearing about it. Where does this sense of entitlement come from - that the government should be looking after you financially when you’re earning in excess of 150 grand. It’s pathetic. And you know what, if you’re earning $150,000 a year as a family and still believe that you’re not “rich”, maybe it’s time you got slapped in the face with a big fish called reality. I can’t understand why people would expect that they should receive a welfare payment when they have that sort of earning capacity. Shannon Knoll isn’t the only one in this country singing “What about me”, and the tune is getting pretty freaking pathetic.

Wifey tagged me on this movie meme. So I figured I’d better do it.

Name one movie that:

1. Made you laugh
Empire Records

2. Made you cry
Life Is Beautiful

3. You loved when you were a kid
The Lion King

4. You’ve seen more than once
Snatch

5. You loved but were embarrassed to admit it
Love Actually

6. You hated
How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days

7. Scared you
Independence Day (OK - I was pretty young)

8. Bored you
Hoodwinked

9. Made you happy
Batman Begins

10. Made you miserable
Last King Of Scotland

11. You weren’t brave enough to see
The Ring

12. One character you’ve fallen in love with
Amelie

13. The last movie you saw
Iron man

14. The next movie you hope to see
The Dark Knight

Had to laugh at reading this one. So there’s a global food crisis going on, and President Bush recently put out a statement attributing a bunch of the problem to developing nations like China and India experiencing economic growth, and basically finding themselves with a middle class:

During a news conference in Missouri, Bush mentioned India’s growing middle class, and said “when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.” This came on the heels of a similar statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that had already upset many in India. (Source: International Herald Tribune)

So the Indians got a little bit peturbed at being blamed for the global crisis, and told George exactly what they think is going on:

“George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics,” Jairam Ramesh, the minister of state for commerce, told The Press Trust of India after Bush’s remarks, which he said proved again how “comprehensively wrong” Bush is.

“To say that demand for food in India is causing increase in global food prices is completely wrong,” Ramesh said.

Politicians and academics in India cite various other reasons: diversion of arable land in the United States and Europe into ethanol production; trade subsidies by the United States and Europe; and the dollar’s decline. (Source: International Herald Tribune)

Issues like this are the reason it’s impossible not to wince when you hear comments from politicians (American or Australian) that talk about the importance of “protecting the American/Australian way of life”. Because while there’s a bunch of values tied up in our “way of life”, and probably some values that are worth keeping, it also encompasses a presumption of standard of living which is completely unsustainable if applied to the global population. We’ve got to recognise that the standard of living we have taken for granted in countries like our own are way beyond the resources of the world, and that any effort to “make poverty history” requires a violent reduction in western affluence).

So well done to India for telling the Yanks where they can shove it.

This is one of the most amusing attempts at gathering sympathy that I’ve heard in a long time:

“The motor vehicle industry has slammed a budget plan to increase the tax on luxury cars, saying it will hurt families struggling with the higher cost of fuel and could force makers to drop safety features.

Treasurer Wayne Swan has confirmed that tomorrow’s budget will increase the tax on cars of more than $57,000 from 25% to 33% and will affect about 105,000 car purchases a year.

The plan is part of budget cuts aimed at the wealthy.

Mr Swan said the changes would mainly affect imported cars such the S-Type Jaguar, and increase its price by $2600.” (Source: The Age - Squeals over plan for luxury car tax)

Let me just be certain that I have this correct: an extra 2 and a half thousand on cars over $57,000 is going to “hurt families struggling with the higher cost of fuel”. If families are hurt by how much it costs to fill up with petrol, maybe they should be considering a slightly more affordable vehicle. It makes me sick; this deeply embedded sense of entitlement for excessively luxurious items that has been bred through this consumer culture of ours. Because that quote there my friends would make me vomit, if I wasn’t so busy laughing.

Richmond lose by 3 points after Kelvin Moore misses a shot at goal with a minute to go. Wounded Tiger headline for the match report:

“One Moore Goal Away“

Come on, that’s gold. Anyone from the Herald Sun or The Age - just give me a call sometime and we’ll see what we can sort out.

Haven’t quite resolved the big question posed in the title there at this stage, but for the moment I’m giving Twitter a fair dinkum go. It’s taken me a fair while to work out whether or not I really care about Twitter - but after having had fun playing around with Instant Messaging and Facebook status messages for a while, I figured it’s my new chance to be hilariously funny on a micro-type level. So for the time being (at least) feel free to subscribe to my Twitter RSS, or just check out my Twitter page. You might also have noticed the “Geoff is currently” widget on the right hand side, which is obviously being fed by twitter too.

Anyone else using Twitter? Good? Bad? Indifferent? I’d be interested to know.

Thought I’d better wait until they’d announced this themselves, but huge congratulations to Scott and Christina who have just welcomed  Johanna Keren Aitken into the world. A little sister for Jemima, and just an exciting thing to tell people about. Sounds like all involved are doing well.

Photo at Scotty’s announcement post.

…not much happening here. There’s a few things in the back of my mind, waiting for a post. In the meantime,there’s a prediction for 2008 post up on The Wounded Tiger.

(image from xkcd.com)

photo credit: Howie_Berlin

Immediately after Heath Ledger died, especially for the time that it looked more likely that it was a suicide rather than accidental death, the reactions were remarkably interesting. There was the standard fan response - tributes and the like, but there was another response that I found to be remarkably interesting. It came in letters to the editor and blog comments and went roughly along these lines:

• “Why would he do this to himself?”
• “This guy had everything, and yet he’d kill himself”
• “How dare he do this?”

It wasn’t just disbelief - this was an angry response. The very same comments could be heard about Britney Spears’ latest breakdown, or whichever celebrity it is who has been caught drink-driving or checked into rehab. There is a real anger that these people would have everything - and “everything” is the word that gets used to describe it - and yet that’s not enough for them.

It seems to me that this anger doesn’t look much different to the sort of righteous indignation we get from fundamentalists at having their nicely boxed theologies challenged. Celebrity, and with it the concept that fame and fortune are somehow the pinnacle of human endeavour, is the state religion. So it doesn’t go well when someone’s actions come along and challenge that. 

For those of you who skip over the Richmond related posts, help is at hand. And for those of you who only visit in the hope that I’ve written something about our fearsome yellow and black warriors, I can help you too! I’ve decided that the next adventure in my blogging career is to quarantine off the Richmond related posts over to “The Wounded Tiger” - thewoundedtiger.com

From the about page:

The Wounded Tiger is the heartbroken lament of a Richmond supporter who has undergone far too much trauma with his team to ever give them up.

I’m mostly doing it because a) I saw a cheap deal on domain names, and b) most of my Google traffic is for Richmond related content, and I couldn’t handle forcing people who have come to find out about Richo and Browny instead looking at wedding video and theology. So tell all your yellow and black friends: thewoundedtiger.com