Archives, eh
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# I hope this is the only post I make on the topic
D and I plan our menu for the week in advance. We do this so we can work out exactly what we need when grocery shopping and because D does – and I sort of half-participate in – Weight Watchers. You need to plan so that you stay under you daily points allowance.
The added benefit is that because we do the majority of our grocery shopping in one hit, we save money by not constantly going to the shops to get things that we need. Oh and this. And that. Ooooh, and some of those.
Anyway, a week in advance. Except for lunch on November 24th, I know that one in advance, it will be sausage sizzle at one of the local schools. I like my barbequed sausage in a single piece of white bread, with onions, tomato- and chilli sauce. Mmm.
Oh yes. I have to vote as well. Not sure for whom yet. Actually, allow me to be slightly more precise; I know who will be getting the last few preferences and I expect I know who will then be getting my 1 vote more be default than my design. I’ll try not to bore those of my readers who are bored by Australian politics – which I am assuming is everyone but me, translated: nobody – but there is this little meme that confuses me. A little meme that gets noised about by the anti-ALP bloggers a lot recently and I expect I’ll be seeing a lot of from the Howard Government as well, the notion that the number of ex-union officials on the ALP shadow cabinet is a foreshadowing of disaster, that being an official of a union is a uniquely disqualifying entry on one’s CV when jostling for a ministerial position in a government.
My view of what a government minister is there for appears to have become mixed-up. I thought they were primarily there to head up and organise their ministerial departments; those large, unwieldy, hide-bound government departments. That they were the public face of those government departments.
Why is it that organising and heading up what an executive role in what a union – functionally a bureaucracy for dya-to-day matters – disqualifies one for heading up a bureaucracy? I don’t particularly like them because I suspect most of them are hacks, but this makes them indistinguishable from the current bunch of hacks that head up the government ministries. At least the ALPs hacks are yet to demonstrate that they hold nothing but contempt for the concept of Ministerial responsibility. My decision to put the Liberal candidate second last was made when the government glibly shrugged off the idea that Alexander Downer and Mark Vaile should actually take responsibility for their departments and their own gross negligence. The ALP may get my vote by default, but at least they are an unknown; it’s disturbing that being an unknown is a selling point, but when the knowns have disgraced themselves, being unknown doesn’t seem so bad.
