My Wings Are Hurting

Being lucky enough to have Sky (cable) at the moment I get up every morning and watch my absolute favourite news program in the world – The O’Reilly Factor.

Bill O’Reilly is hugely popular among conservativist Americans and while hiding safely in the comfort of his studio attacks anyone strong enough to have a differing opinion to him. In the absence of John Laws and Alan Jones, Bill is the man for me at the moment.

I thought I would involve myself in a test I prepared. The test is simple with only 1 step to it.

• Watch as many episodes of the The O’Reilly Factor as I can before I find that I agree with him (even slightly) on any of the opinions he dribbles out.

I’m up to episode 3 now and yet I believe that voluntarily smashing my fingers in a car door and getting dragged along the road at 100 kms an hour is more likely to happen.

On another note, the UK are having their general election on Thursday. It looks like Tony has it hands down but hey we’ll wait and see.

My Wings Are Hurting

Being lucky enough to have Sky (cable) at the moment I get up every morning and watch my absolute favourite news program in the world – The O’Reilly Factor.

Bill O’Reilly is hugely popular among conservativist Americans and while hiding safely in the comfort of his studio attacks anyone strong enough to have a differing opinion to him. In the absence of John Laws and Alan Jones, Bill is the man for me at the moment.

I thought I would involve myself in a test I prepared. The test is simple with only 1 step to it.

• Watch as many episodes of the The O’Reilly Factor as I can before I find that I agree with him (even slightly) on any of the opinions he dribbles out.

I’m up to episode 3 now and yet I believe that voluntarily smashing my fingers in a car door and getting dragged along the road at 100 kms an hour is more likely to happen.

On another note, the UK are having their general election on Thursday. It looks like Tony has it hands down but hey we’ll wait and see.

Nation States

Have you ever wanted to live in a social democratic Utopia or maybe you’ve felt the urge to become a tyrant dictator and enslave a race of people. Either way, with Nation States you can run your own country the way you want to run it.

You decide the way your country is formed by answering a single issue each day. Watch as your country develops and see how it ranks against other countries in the Nation States world.

Really addictive. Go play. While you are there check out my country – stickfly.

A Snake In The Bush

I have to conclude that the free world seems to be sliding backwards rather than moving forward. Despite George Bush’s sins (Iraq War, Oil interests, stupidity, etc) the American people have deemed him the best man to lead their country for the next 4 years.

I just hope he doesn’t cock it up anymore than he has already so that my friends Gerrod and Kristy don’t endure any kind of backlash while they are over there.

Howard v Latham: Round 2

Yesterday, I heard the team from Hack attempt to get an interview with both Mark Latham, and John Howard. They have been campaigning to do this for quite some time now, with no less than 19 calls to Latham’s office, and 20 to Howard’s.

Anyway, as luck would have it, both of the party leaders were in the vacinity of Triple J’s studio this week. Seizing the opportunity, the hack team attempted to bail them both up for a 5 minute interview.

Steve tried Mark Latham first, and happily obliged to the interview. To his credit, Mark Lathem interview’s very well, and I was most impressed by his answers. I think he definately won some of the younger voting crowd over.

Not so much luck with the Prime Minister! Though they tried several times, he wouldn’t say a word to them – not even to deny their request for an interview. It was pretty funny listening to the hack team being shoved aside by security, though.

Anyway, today is the big day – I’m heading off to the polls!

Howard v Latham

With the policies from both Howard and Lathem being release sporadically over the last few weeks, it’s hard to keep track of what each person is promising.

I found this site from NineMSN which does a pretty good comparison of the policies of the two parties. I found the section on water conservation particularly interesting!

Preferential Voting

Continuing on Bender’s political bend (pardon the pun), here’s a great link that explains how preferential voting works in Australia. It’s fairly short, and well worth the read. Hopefully now you’ll have a better idea about what you’re doing this weekend

Senate / House of Representatives

Ok, I’ve never understood how the Australian constitution declared our form of government so I did some digging and found this great overview of how the Australian parliament system works.

Not dissimilar to how other western democracies work (eg. U.S.A) the Australian constitution provides a seperation of powers to “keep the bastards honest”. As the diagram shows there are 3 powers that focus on different areas of government and this serves to ensure appropriate checks and balances are maintained to ensure no single branch of government oversteps their constitutional limits of power.

The differences between the two legislative powers has also alluded me, so I was delighted to find that there was quite a simple interpretation of their duties.

• Senate – Equal representation of members from each state. 12 from each state and 2 from each territory.
• House of Representatives – Members represent one of the 150 seperate varying sized electorates throughout Australia.

For a new bill/law to be passed it must have a majority ‘yes’ vote from both the House of Reps and the Senate.

I highty recommend reading the overview just to make your forthcoming voting experience a bit more exciting

Which way Left or Right?

With the Australian federal election looming I thought it might be a good idea to discuss some political terms that you hear on the tv or radio that don’t often get explained. Todays political definition deals with the political spectrum of the left and right wing.

Basically the Left represents political ideals of socialism/liberalism where the Right pushes conservative political ideals.

I have listed the Australian major political parties and placed them where I think they fit in the political spectrum.

• Liberals – Right
• Labor – Left
• National – More Right than Liberals
• Democrats – More Left than Labor
• The Greens – More Left than the Democrats

It’s entirely possible, even probable, that I could be a little wrong on my assesment.

In the good ol’ USA the Republican party are on the right and the Democrats are on the left.

To illustrate the differences of Left-Wing and Right-Wing politics in terms of the everyman -

• Left – Think Hippiesville and Commos.
• Right – Think Pauline Hanson.

Everyone else fits somewhere in between.

Click here for more information about Left and Right wing politics.