Over the weekend the government failed to rule out introducing a debt levy. Of course this means they’ve all but ruled it in. What is a debt levy anyway? Simply, it’s stupid.
We know tax revenue is pooled together to pay for services (health, education etc etc) and a levy is basically a tax for a specific service or purpose - to pay for Medicare or to help with reconstruction after the recent Queensland floods. Even if we don’t access the services ourselves we know someone, somewhere is. A debt Levy does neither. No service is being rendered and you don’t get something for nothing as Joe Hockey said last week. Paying down government debt should not be responsibility of the taxpayer.
We’re told the proposed levy would only affect high-income earners and I’m all for making the top end of town pay a fairer level of tax. But should they have to bail out - which is what this boils down to - the government’s budget crisis (particularly when said crisis is, at least in part, manufactured)? I don’t see people copping that on the chin.
If they really insist on ‘fixing’ the budget the Coalition should do what it was elected to do: cut spending. We’ve seen much of that. At least not in the media. We’ve had penny-pinching from war orphans which was later abandoned, a bid to reassess DSP recipients which will humiliate people whilst bringing in a whopping nothing to government coffers, a proposed sale of the one government asset that makes money and a retooled NBN that isn’t national, uses decrepit tech and isn’t really any cheaper. We don’t know what's happening with Gonski or health but expect savage cuts.
There are cuts that can be made before insisting people foot the bill. An overly generous and expensive PPL for one. Giving Rio Tinto $100m to build a mine in South America is another. And ALL the other subsidies the mining industry receives. Then there’s the planes, my god, the planes. $12 billion for Joint Strike Fighters and knowing our luck with military procurement the canopy won’t close or one of the cross-beams will go out-of-skew on the treddle or something rendering them shiny paperweights.
‘You gotta spend money to make money’ doesn’t fly (heh) when you have your hands in the pockets of the people.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
A Monkey On A Rock
A few months after my older brothers had moved out I finally got to have the good bedroom. While the room itself was actually smaller, it was at the back of the house, away from the main part of the house. The new digs afforded relatively more privacy and, more importantly, it had an antenna socket meaning I could have a television. And for my birthday that year, my fifteenth, I asked for and got one.
It was a dinky little twelve-inch affair that sat high on my dresser and watched down on me as slept. At last, I could watch what I wanted, when I wanted. Mostly. The good bedroom shared a wall with my parents' bedroom so late night viewing needed to be covert lest I wake them. The TV’s volume control didn’t have numbers it had notches and when secretly watching TV late at night the difference between notches seemed like a million decibels. Three notches was audible enough to hear and not be yelled at. Unfortunately late night free-to-air TV was/is mostly a wasteland and in Australia, in the late 90s consisted of infomercials, SBS and The Late Show With David Letterman. He would eventually become one of my comedy heroes.
As a talk show The Late show is ok. Monologue in the front, guests in the back. Of course there were stand-outs - episodes with Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray or Martin Short - essentially an hour or so of light entertainment to fall asleep to. You’d be forgiven for thinking that’s all The Late Show is.
Where Letterman excels however is when he pushes outside the format. A perfect example being “Is This Anything” - a talent contest segment where performers would do their act flanked by a hula girl, and a woman using angle grinder on herself. After 30 seconds the curtain would come down and Dave and Paul (his long term offsider/band leader) would decide if what they just saw was in fact anything. It never was. It was this kind off-kilter pythonesque humour mixed into the aging talk show format (it was already well established when Carson came to it in the 60’s and had become stale by the time he left) that made the Letterman show special.
Unobvious fake guests, rambling surreal phone bits without punchlines, the frustrated neighbour that lives in an apartment next to the studio, Mike Singletary, Alan Kalter getting beaten up and Top Ten lists where the top entry is always the least funny all had a profound impact on my teenage sense of humour. Up til that point I had been bought up on the comedy of Britain - Python, Rowan Atkinson, and The Goodies. Dave, along with The Simpsons, was my first real gateway into the American comedy scene. Fifteen years later and both shows remain part of my routine, watching Homer at dinner time and seeing Dave before bedtime. And now that’s coming to an end.
Last Thursday Dave announced his retirement and while part of me knows it’s time another part wonders if I’ll ever be able to fall asleep without him.
Thanks Dave.
It was a dinky little twelve-inch affair that sat high on my dresser and watched down on me as slept. At last, I could watch what I wanted, when I wanted. Mostly. The good bedroom shared a wall with my parents' bedroom so late night viewing needed to be covert lest I wake them. The TV’s volume control didn’t have numbers it had notches and when secretly watching TV late at night the difference between notches seemed like a million decibels. Three notches was audible enough to hear and not be yelled at. Unfortunately late night free-to-air TV was/is mostly a wasteland and in Australia, in the late 90s consisted of infomercials, SBS and The Late Show With David Letterman. He would eventually become one of my comedy heroes.
As a talk show The Late show is ok. Monologue in the front, guests in the back. Of course there were stand-outs - episodes with Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray or Martin Short - essentially an hour or so of light entertainment to fall asleep to. You’d be forgiven for thinking that’s all The Late Show is.
Where Letterman excels however is when he pushes outside the format. A perfect example being “Is This Anything” - a talent contest segment where performers would do their act flanked by a hula girl, and a woman using angle grinder on herself. After 30 seconds the curtain would come down and Dave and Paul (his long term offsider/band leader) would decide if what they just saw was in fact anything. It never was. It was this kind off-kilter pythonesque humour mixed into the aging talk show format (it was already well established when Carson came to it in the 60’s and had become stale by the time he left) that made the Letterman show special.
Unobvious fake guests, rambling surreal phone bits without punchlines, the frustrated neighbour that lives in an apartment next to the studio, Mike Singletary, Alan Kalter getting beaten up and Top Ten lists where the top entry is always the least funny all had a profound impact on my teenage sense of humour. Up til that point I had been bought up on the comedy of Britain - Python, Rowan Atkinson, and The Goodies. Dave, along with The Simpsons, was my first real gateway into the American comedy scene. Fifteen years later and both shows remain part of my routine, watching Homer at dinner time and seeing Dave before bedtime. And now that’s coming to an end.
Last Thursday Dave announced his retirement and while part of me knows it’s time another part wonders if I’ll ever be able to fall asleep without him.
Thanks Dave.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)