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Newcastle City Council Preparing for a Fire Sale? | Our Newcastle →
To paraphrase a line from a well-known movie, I love the smell of spreadsheets in the morning.
In which I have spreadsheet feelings over our Council’s proposed budget.
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In other news, it would seem that ABC Self Harm Monday Night is in full swing, but I don’t care because my Twitter client has decided to cease functioning in its proper manner so I still can’t see people getting stupidly upset at stupidly pointless things.
Is this what winning feels like?
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It’s bad that I think my “reflection on the learning process” babble is just as entertaining as the assignment it’s describing, right?
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Or maybe I’ve just had too much beer tonight,
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Here’s a question….
There’s a constant argument amongst supporters of the NDIS Levy (note, not the NDIS itself, but the proposed method of funding it) that because Australia is inherently racist, we’re happy to pay for the government to lock asylum seekers up in camps for indefinite amounts of time and then pay some extra tax for the government to fund the NDIS. Rather than, say, close the detention camps, take those savings in the budget and use those to fund the NDIS.
And it got me thinking. Is it possible to frame the latter idea in a way that’s racist enough to appeal to the general voter but still deliver better social outome? I think it might be.
So, the argument becomes, “do you want to create more Australians who are more willing and better able to fill jobs than the boat people, even if we let them come to mainland?”
That way, asylum seekers get freedom and Australia still gets to think that we’re better than everyone else. Win-win, right?
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I was very sad to hear today that UoN is pulling out of its plan to use Newcastle Post Office for Alumni Services. I have to say, I’m not at all convinced that any of the large interests involved in Newcastle will EVER follow through on their plans. Landcom, GPT, State Government, Council, UoN…all have promised, spun, dissembled and in the end delivered not a great deal.
But I DO have great faith in the smaller business owners of the City. Slowly but surely change has come to Newcastle. When I first bought my flat Hunter Street West of Civic was derelict. I was seriously scared to walk up there at night. These days the area is mostly tenanted. It mightn’t be glamorous big retail, but solid services business. That’s OK!
I was listening to the radio on Sunday night and also heard that Church 180 (which bought the old Royal Theatre) is to become “Hillsong Newcastle”. Now I care little or nothing about religion, but I am interested to see the impact such a big religious “brand” will have on Newcastle West.
I never quite understood what the purpose was of having the Uni run Alumni Services out of the old Post Office. What was going to do exactly? Alumni already are in a fairly nice office in the recently refurbished Industry Development Centre on the Callaghan campus and the Alumni team isn’t all that big, so I never understood what all the space was going to be used for. Surely there’s a better use for the space (provided anyone ever gets enough money together to complete the required restoration work).
As for Hillsong, aren’t Church180 one of those happy clappy Christian churches that are by-and-large associated with Hillsong anyway? I suspect not much will change there.
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Independent Nonsense Revisited
You may remember that a while ago I wrote a piece detailing some rather fundamental errors in logic that I believed were been committed by up-start internet journalism publication, Independent Australia.
You may also remember that Managing Editor, David…
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GPOY
(via crushtor)
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New Zealand passes gay marriage bill →
C’mon Australia, you’re lagging behind with your narrow-minded views and policies. It’s shameful that we’re still not doing the same here.
This still all is based on the assumption that the state should have any say at all in who you can and cannot love.
Get the state out of marriage entirely if you want true marriage equality.
(via timefor-tea)
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I think I need to look into alternative forms of storage.
True. I mean you’ve only got room for one bottle of gin in that bookshelf. That’s just a tragedy.
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Oh God!
IS THAT THE SAME CAR THAT HIT ROSE TYLER’S DAD AND KILLED HIM
now let’s play the was that purposeful or do the bbc not have enough props again game
Yeah. It’s not the same car. Nice try though.
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Since December 21, 2012.
And, for comparison, here’s what it was three days after they launched this particular campaign.
Note, among other things, that the time remaining hasn’t changed.
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Their ABC is upset that they didn’t get an invite to a private dinner held by a group for their members and invited guests, even though said group is under absolutely no obligation to invite media to attend.
Freedom works both ways buddy.
The amount of lefty moaning about this dinner has been fantastic.
