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BUDGETBUDGETBUDGET
Everything Budget.
And stay in one of these? Rupert’s turned into a tightarse since he made smoochy with Kruddy and tried to buy the WSJ.
There was a lot of interesting stuff in the budget; I’m surprised you didn’t milk it for more than “just a Grey Power bribe”, Tim.
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2007 05 09 at 02:34 AM • permalink$500? Might have to make an extra visit to Nana this year. Hope it’s not paid to close to Christmas, that’d be inconvenient.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 05 09 at 02:57 AM • permalinkSince this has absolutely nothing to do with me (unless for some odd reason it includes a tidy sum to the “nuke the Western US” fund) here’s a quick OT:
Just when you thought the Earth-saving Honda F1 cars couldn’t look any more ridiculous…
#15 Oh, man! Poor Tim. I recommend several stiff drinks.
Posted by dean martin on 2007 05 09 at 03:39 AM • permalinkOh well, when Labor gets in the Birkenstock brigade will get their dues no doubt.
Or (not and) a 200kmh shot down a straight highway with Motorhead played loud. Strictly for medicinal purposes.
Posted by dean martin on 2007 05 09 at 03:59 AM • permalinkSome confusion here between being elderly and on a pension, Tim. Unless they were public servants, politicians or defence personnel, most people on an age pension these days missed out on a big super payout. And those who did get a massive super payout can’t get a pension. It’s means tested.
The fact is most age pensioners have to survive on $220 a week, which is not even enough to cover life’s necessities such as food, power and upkeep of a house. $500 is a lot less than you or I earn in a week, Tim, and I do not understand how you can begrudge a $500 “gift” to people who worked for 50 years with no retirement package.
You joke about pensioners blowing it at bingo halls. If pensioners did have money, they could afford a better class of entertainment than bingo. Bingo, fourth rate entertainers and bus excursions is all you get when you live on a pension. Maybe, just maybe, they will spend the $500 on something like a new heater and blankets for their bed.
Sorry, Tim, your wit this time has come across like an elitist Age columnist.
Kevin from QLD:“The core challenge is: how do you build Australia’s long-term prosperity for that time when the mining boom is over?”
The problem with this argument is that it ignores the extent to which Australia’s mining boom is the result of Howard’s policies.
Other countries in the world have the minerals, but not the mines. We do because Howard has made Australia so attractive to invest. Consequently, we are to grab the lion’s share of the surge in demand (note, there is no indication that the surge is going away. Why would China suddenly shrink?).
The confidence that miners have in Australia would not exist had the enviromental whack jobs in the Labour Party had control of the situation.
Many of today’s elderly folk actually had the courage and the commitment to have children and stay married. They reared and scrimped for todays arriviste McTrumps who make lots of money, live with their “partners” till they’re 55, have few if any children and consider themselves to be role-models of prudent financial management despite having less adult responsibilities than their forebears. Certainly these older folk deserve to share in the nation’s current prosperity in some small way; they helped build the nation and many of them fought for it. Well done, Mr Costello.
Mr Humayun said: “I am hopeful, but at this stage I have realistic expectations. I don’t expect to be getting out soon.”
And I’m sure he will get bored with his current partner and shop around ..
C0ntrail - the handout story was very tongue in cheek. I took it in good humour, as should the oldies.
My mother struggles on her pension like everyone else, and this $500 will go to pay off some of her credit card debt. Nice of the bank (which bank?) to give her a credit limit of $4,000 while on the pension with exactly $0 savings and a record of late payments. I have bailed her out before and with other things, but this time she needs to learn the hard way (while making sure she can still eat!).
To those knocking my immigrant mum for not saving - well her wage had to support a family of 7, and her super disappeared paying off living and health costs - sorry - she did her best working in so many different jobs, from estate agent, manufacturing, sales, etc, all with limited written English. She raised 5 kids, who turned out to be a doctor, lawyer, accountant, banker and federal agent. Not bad in my books! If she preferred to see us succeed over saving for her retirement, then that is a sacrifice she was happy to make. And she doesn’t whinge about the pension. Just gets on with living. And we will look after her.
So everyone take a deep breath and relax about generalisations and be nice to old people :)
We are now however getting the first lot of bingo afficionados who have been on welfare their entire lives. No-one in my circle (icluding my surviving parent) gets a pension, and the only benefit is a small reduction in the tax they continue to pay, having done so for well over fifty years. Certainly there are people who’ve expended all their incomes on raising kids and such, but there’s a lot who’ve never paid tax in their lives, and have a colossal sense of entitlement. I reckon it’s time for a poll tax, or bring back the property (or better still contribution) franchise. How many footy clubs let you vote if you’re not financial? See how much attention government gives to rent-seekers when there’s no votes in it.
Completely OT and greetings from cold,damp western Mongolia.
Offline for a while due to computer crash.
jack (AKA jack from Montreal and jlc)
Posted by Jack from Montreal on 2007 05 09 at 06:01 AM • permalinkHey, how come Tim’s not home yet.
Stuck at the airport perhaps?
Congrats to Mr and Mrs Prez. If you have a choice, I always go for one with a tap.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 05 09 at 06:06 AM • permalinkYou could spend some of that extra cash and build the world’s first contenintal sea wall.
Ring Australia with a 50 foot high, 30 foot thick anti sea rise wall.
You know, for when the ice caps melt.
In the middle of Oz, you could build a really big giahugic wind turbine on a gimbol mount. This way you could force all the warm glowballs of storms to redirect away from your shores too.
26. Razor
My only quibble with your point would be this man.
My old man lost most of what he had during “the recession we had to have”, fortunately now hes turned that around. Many, many people went to the wall that didn’t have to around that time. Anyone under 40 hasn’t got any excuse though.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 05 09 at 06:25 AM • permalinkCongrats to the Prez and Mrs Prez on the new Prez to be.
Another rwdb in the making, I trust.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 05 09 at 07:11 AM • permalinkOK, this is without doubt the stupidest spin I’ve encountered for a long time. So much so that it must have been formulated while its proponents were on the sauce. Labor is arguing that by putting five billion dollars in a Higher Education Endowment Fund, the Treasurer has stolen from the Future Fund by not putting the five billion in it instead. Lindsay Tanner concludes: “One thing we can take out of this, that the debate over Labor’s broadband proposal is over.” No, Lindsay. What we can take out of it is that you’re a mendacious blockhead.
razor, Habib,
Most people over 75 in this country never had the means to save for retirement. My father worked for 65 years for the basic/minimum wage. No superannuation, no scope to save, just a relentless struggle to make ends meet. That was the world then for a man who grew up in a slum and left school at 12. No complaints, just work, work, work.
Now people want to deny these old folk a share of the country’s abundance. Thank Christ Costello isn’t one of them.
From A. Bolt at 8am today:
A word of caution: it was interesting that the vast majority of the “typical” Australians selected by The Age and Herald Sun to talk about the Budget’s effect on them took the goodies for granted and complained about the lack of something dreamily big - like stopping global warming.
On tonight’s ABC TV (often more bolshie than their radio brethren) the same syndrome was at work. Various convenient vox populi.We slide people who shouldn’t need it off the pension in advance, leaving it easy to pension those that need it.
That’s what I said to Costello. He was smitten with the plan. Hence all the pretty obvious bribes to get self serving buggers to pay for their own retirement while they can- so we don’t have to chop ‘em off at the knees sometime when they can’t.
What’s with he inane cartoons today? At this hour of the morning? I’ll have bugger badger budget bugger badger budget going through my head all day.
I know, I’ll inflict it on someonelse [evil grin]
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 05 09 at 08:17 AM • permalink#43 Contrail. You are right of course.
And those of us in that age group who were able to earn more than the minimum, keep ourselves off welfare all our lives and in my case paid tax rates as high as 63 cents in the dollar to pay for wrinklies’ welfare when we were young, now very much enjoy the thought that we might be ripping a bit out of the pockets of some boomer in his Beemer.#42 C.L. In question time at the National Press Club today, Costello very easily and effectively rebutted that crazy suggestion when it was put by one of the jounos.
I missed the early part of his address but caught the finish (much applause) and the questions.
He seemed to enjoy trouncing all the usual suspects asking him their usual stupid questions.His (Howard’s) inaction was destroying the Great Barrier Reef, drying up the Murray-Darling system and threatening the economic wealth of future generations.
- Greenpeace chief Steve Shallhorn
Howard and his team needs to stomp on this rubbish, which I keep hearing bandied round of late from the mouths of Greenpeace, The Greens, Labour, and Ecoapocalyse Experts, all of it unchallenged, for the most part
You don’t have to be a skeptic to know that whatever Australia does with its emissions, it’s not going to affect our local climate one way or the other. It’s GLOBAL warming, idjuts, and if Kyoto controls were to miraculously have any effect, it matters not if one piffly 1.5% contribitor to the party toes the line or not. Hang them for heresy, for their lack of solidarity, but don’t pretend local CO2 emissions have anything to do with local climate change. It’s a fact undisputable on both sides of the scietific debate (or, if you prefer, is accepted amongst the consensus) and any science teacher 5th grade or higher can tell you why, so why do we keep hearing it as fact??
Howard, in my opinion, needs to serve it straight back at them whenever they declare “The coral’s bleaching because of Mr Howard’s inaction, etc…” In plain, simple, language, he should challenged them to explain how it is “he” who has “caused” the problem, or how it can be “he” who fixes it. If it’s a “need to get serious now or else we all die” claim, then spell it out how the worlds MAJOR CO2 emmitters need to nut out the problem first, because if they can’t, there’s SFA wittle old us can do about it, other than adaptation.
Rudd and Garrett’s and the rest of them’s sound bites need a good hard dose of the cluebat, before the less informed sections of our society really do start believing what we’re doing here in Ausralia, about climate change, over the next 10 years, actually means a damn. It’s an argument so easy to refute, don’t waste it, John!
(PS: anyone read the letter in today’s Courier Mail, warning us that Earth will become uninhabitable like Venus if greenhouse gases aren’t reduced. Give that man a cluebat!)
Bolta may be cynical about “the vast majority of the “typical” Australians selected by The Age and Herald Sun to talk about the Budget’s effect on them” but at least Crickey found a ridgy didge one -
“For most of the year I can convince myself that I’m actually a pretty ordinary Aussie citizen, but there’s nothing like a Budget announcement to show how little I matter—as a partnered, childless, middle-income-earning lesbian, writes Jody Ekert.”
A budget totally unfair to ordinary, childless, sapphists. Is there no limit to this Government’s powers of discrimination?
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2007 05 09 at 09:35 AM • permalinkI’m great Kae, and yourself?
I’ve been stuck up here in Brisbane, meeting with people who want to sucker me into awarding them a contract that could earn them $13m over 3 years.
Needless to say, they’ve been extremely kind to me… well, most of them. The one who called me fat has made it onto my kill list.
Good luck with the work stuff, Ash_
I’ve been in Sydney since Friday last until late tonight - arrgh, withdrawal from Tim’s!! But I survived! (Only just.)
Mum got her Australia Day gong today, and I had a dinner date on Monday night - what a night! I met up with a group of old friends, acquaintances and fellow weblog fans. It was the best night! I have to write a thankyou for our hosts.
I’ll be going horizontal soon, though. Thank God I don’t have to work tomorrow.
Take care.
Thanks Kae. I already know who my recommendation to my boss is going to.
It’s pretty rare that a bunch of men will be 20 minutes early to pick up a lady, and won’t even flinch when she opens the door without any clothes on.
But that’s what happens when people arrive just after I get out of the shower.
Did your Mum have fun?
Lucky you, not having to work. I have to fly back to Melbourne, then go straight to class. No doubt Professor Moonbat has another excellent spiel lined up for me to snicker at.
#36- monkey glands. Failing that, a Monty Burns/Keef Richards total blood transfusion. by the way I drink, smoke, ride motorcycles, drive fast cars and take the Who seriously, I’m unlikely to make it to dotage, and even if I do I’ll be working until i kark and still will be being stolen from by douchebag politicians to get themselves re-elected. I’ve got more chance of simultaneously winning Gold Lotto, the Melbourne cup (as a runner) and Miss Universe than I have of ever obtaining any benefit from the poultice I’ve been forced to hand over to Canberra. I don’t mind paying for anything as long as it’s something I want and is of value- I can’t think of much provided by government that meets this criteria.
Mmmm, female forms….certainly the only form-filling exercise I enjoy.
Ah, will ever one day that special gal capture the tinkling cash register that we fondly think of as Habib’s heart (most hearts go lub-dub, his goes ka-ching!), and tie him down in a never-ending life of golden wedded monogamous family bliss?
/curse on Habib.
Now, back to the Budget, even if the forms and figures aren’t quite so interesting.
And who’d like to hazard a guess just how many members of Sydney’s esteemed Lebanese Muslim community are self-funded retirees?
Just look at the willingness to contribute from this demographic to the substantial cost of evacuating them from a war zone- bugger partial recovery, it should be full cost, and garnishhe any benefits until settled- we may well be a wealthy country, but I don’t think anyone likes being hosed by people we didn’t even invite.
(BTW- a sizeable number of non-citizen and dual nationality pensioners reside in their country of origin while picking up Australian benefits, while not even kicking in some GST revenue; if we must have it, welfare should cease at the border).
So you’ve be reduced to merely directing net traffic?
Posted by Miranda Divide on 2007 05 09 at 10:04 PM • permalink#96 - And you’ve been elevated to washing windscreens at traffic lights. Congrats! It’s a big step up from using your mouth as a glory hole in Hyde Park.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 05 09 at 10:25 PM • permalink
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