On Politics
I just reread my “Read Me” (About) page, and noticed that I said I’d never vote Liberal. Well, on Queensland’s election on Saturday I did (as a second preference to Greens, of course), because I think for myself and my loyalty towards a party only lasts as long as they actually deserve it.
Labor lost me on two key issues: removing the children’s hospital from the Royal Brisbane, and persisting with the travesty of Traverston dam. Not to mention that they are prepared to keep running Queensland into debt (hey we need some savings for the yearly cyclones and floods that always seem to take the QLD Labor party by surprise and they react to them as a “disaster” instead of already having emergency money set aside) and their answer to when they think they will start paying back their billions of debt is “when we can” (how many banks would accept such a vague answer?). Essentially they are taking a dangerous childish approach (an approach that gets many young people into financial trouble in the first place before they learn to save and budget): spend, spend, spend even though our state is already in debt (What if those in our society already struggling under debt took that advice? They will be even worse off and have less of an emergency savings buffer). (I am so against their policies that I am not even going to tag Anna Bligh or Labor in this post.) Also, why doesn’t Anna smile in her posters?
Springborg had pages and pages of itemised budget showing exactly how and where he was going to cut costs to save Queensland a billion dollars each year and get us both out of debt, and with a savings buffer to survive recessions and disasters. Springborg talked to economists who told him that the predict the recession (and people unlike what Labor scare-mongered you into thinking, right now unemployment is at 5% whereas in the Great Depression unemployment was at 40% - so yes it’s a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but it’s not an absolute disaster) to last three years, and his plan is four years long.
On University
I feel like I need to get this out of my system so I will. This is purely my personal subjective opinion (and in this situation I am only trying to praise one thing, but am not remotely interested in criticising its noble competitors who are still good secondary options if my first preferences did not exist) so unfortunately you can’t take my words as scientific fact and its up to you to decide to what degree I am biased and thus whether my words have any importance to you at all. You do not have to accept everything I say here, I admit that some things I say here have more backing behind them than others, so feel free to pick and choose which advice helps you and which does not. I won’t be offended if you decide to ignore my words, and I’m not interested in arguing my points further beyond this argument. As I said, this rant is more for the emotional health of my brain and perhaps after I have gotten these passionate words of advice out of my system I can chill out and stop seeing this as such a crucial issue for year 12 students.
On Values
Or perhaps this post should be titled “On Tolerance” or “On Acceptance” or even “On Supporting Other People In Their Lives Without Judgement”. It’s in the “God” category because, guess what, I think God gave people their values. And because people are different, it follows that God gave different people different values, so that hopefully they wouldn’t all live their lives exactly the same way and thus he wouldn’t end up with a bunch of teachers or a bunch of artists etc.