It’s been a while since anyone wrote a (good) post.

I guess it has been an uneventful few months:

Rudd toppled the tyrant with Mandarin, Corey Worthington impressed the world with his intelligence and good teeth, Rob Mitchell officially contests the McEwen result, two relatively unknown tennis players compete in the Australian Open final, Federer was a bad sport, free porn on your mobile phone, Heath Ledger died, Oz gave up smoking again, Britney Spears is mental, Owen Wilson attempted suicide, James Packer is a Scientologist, Nicole is pregnant, David Hicks isn’t in the news, bogans misbehave at the Big Day Out, Terry Gilliam has had another movie disaster, Obama is ahead in the polls, everyone I know is getting married, the Biggest Loser is coming back to TV and Lost is coming back for yet another season.

Also, the other night at dinner I had a waitress whose name is Oneness.

So much gold!

What a bunch of slack asses.

Whilst I commend and admire Victoria’s ex-Premiere Jeff Kennett for his involvement in BeyondBlue (a truly worthwhile organisation that deals with that silent but all too real plague of our times – Depression), I cannot put out of my mind the fact that he was instrumental in weakening the health services of this state during his reign.

Each day I spend in Melbourne I am reminded that the mental health services in this state have still not recovered from those times. There is a multitude of people living on the streets and in commission housing receiving nothing but a Salvation Army or Wesley Mission visit when their stretched and independently funded resources can manage it.

Unfortunately I have had first and second-hand experiences with people who have been let down by the fact that there are too few beds in mental health wards. There was one man in particular, in the early 2000s, who had to be escorted by police to a clinic to be administered his medication. Not only a waste of the cops’ time, but they weren’t trained for such duties, and their ranks were thinned by the same government that caused the mental health crisis in the first place. The man in question was the father of a close friend. He could barely care for himself, and had had a number of violent episodes, one of which may or may not have led to (more…)

At the moment there seems to be a huge school of thought out there that very low unemployment is good.

Granted, it feels great to be able to work in a job or profession you enjoy enabling you to live a certain lifestyle and meet interesting people. But spare a thought for the percentage of people out there who haven’t found a niche, haven’t felt good about a job, or just don’t know what they want to do. They are always going to exist, and they are an essential part of our society. Dave Hughes has made a lot of money based on his dole based past. (more…)