Federal Election

   It would be wrong of me not to get involved in politics with a Federal election looming, even though the usual tendency would be not to advertise my thinking in case of alienating some readers.

   I mean, is it worth the effort?  George Monbiot said recently, "The purpose of today’s technocratic politics is to make democracy safe for corporations: to go through the motions of democratic consent while reshaping the nation at their behest".

   In a similar vein (?), W.C Fields apparently said "Start every day off with a smile and get it over with", so let's go with that.  I've finished smiling.

   This post has been prompted by a couple of graphs, which are sourced from the Federal Treasury department and are therefore presumably and eminently non-partisan.  They both show that Tony Abbott, Alan Jones and his shock-jock mates, the Australian, and many other "commentators" are simply telling lies when they allude to the economic credentials of the Labor government (or the ability of any Labor government to do as well as the Liberals).

 

   The first graph shows Federal revenue as a percentage of GDP, the amount of tax that the government collected as a per cent of the total economy.  It shows that in the Howard years the tax average came close to 26% of GDP.  When Labor took control the tax percentage reached a low of 22%.  We're asked to believe that Labor taxes us to the hilt to finance its spending!!

 The other myth is that Labor spends taxpayers' money as if it was going out of style!  The second graph shows spending as a percentage of GDP.  This graph shows that the aberration of high Labor spending in 2008-9 was due entirely to trying to mitigate the effects of the GFC and for other years it has been little different from the Howard years.  Ask not about profligate Labor spending, but about the middle-class welfare that accounts for much of the Howard spending, or that Howard spending was boosted by selling off Commonwealth assets.

And that's enough guff on the election from me.  I don't like people propagating lies to the extent that they are believed as fact.  On the other hand, I have no hesitation in further broadcasting the views of this person, from an online news forum, the origin of which I've now lost (apologies to the author for lack of attribution) :

"I cannot believe how incredibly stupid Abbott is . I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid, so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. He is Trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. He emits more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. . Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on.

Anf finally---------------Aboat you swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you. You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, and a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, and a big suck on a sour lemon. I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, and a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell? END OF RANT"