Sonic gets shrill

Hargreaves was something alright this morning – if this is him sober, someone get him a drink! Haven’t heard Ross Solly so flabbergasted!

Perhaps Stanhope should tell HIS peeps to shut up!

Despite being handed things on a platter by the council to be used to beat said council round the ears, our limp-lettuce-leaf opposition can’t rise to the occasion.

Same at federal level

Hmmm I read the CM’s release. The thought of a Steve Pratt as AG does quite scare me.

If the guy thinks cleaning up legal graffiti sites in storm drains is a priority for the ACT – imagine what kind of laws he’d dream up.

Anyone want to revive a Hargreaves Memorial Pothole thread, with user submissions?
(now with possible Google Earth references)

Hargreaves is nothing but an idiot.

Brendan Smyth has responded with the ‘oh so witty’ How Can You Trust Stanhope With Financial Management?

http://www.canberraliberals.org.au/html/s02_article/article_view.asp?art_id=334&nav_cat_id=168&nav_top_id=55

“The release of the latest report card on the financial performance of the Stanhope Government shows, once again, that the Canberra community cannot trust anything that the Chief Minister says on financial matters, according to the shadow Treasurer, Brendan Smyth.”

I think my problem is that I look back at the 1993 Federal Election as a benchmark for the intellectual and ideological battle that an election should be. Considering that was a high point for Federal politics in Australia, I can hardly expect it for the ACT.

Still, it’s a nice dream that one day we’ll have a dearth of talent to choose from.

There’s an air of fragile tempers developing isn’t there?

Hargreaves’ bullying style on the radio was quite something this morning.

There seems to be a new tactic of slagging off the Opposition as the main priority. On ABC radio this morning I heard (1) John Hargreaves responding to questions about the new transport strategy by his usual swaggering rubbish along the lines of “you ask about that, well I’m sure the Opposition will be getting into me soon…”; (2) Cranky Jack (aka Sonic) throwing out a totally gratuitous comment about who would be Minister for what in a Liberal Government. I don’t care about the Opposition (who have problems of their own making) I want to hear what the Government is doing! Hargreaves is the worst offender, always wanting to be a working class hero when all we want is a decent bus service or potholes fixed.

Now he’s blaming God – heard on the Chief Minister talkback this morning!

Turns out the extra money is all God’s fault because it’s all down to the fact that they put some money away in case there was a hailstorm or other Act of God . . . which there wasn’t this year, so guess who’s responsible for that windfall?

(He doesn’t sound very thankful to the Almighty though- could it be that Stanhope is now suffering from a whopping dose of Jiminy Cricket? After all we have been awash with other strange phenomena, such as school closures, cranked up emergency service levies and water abstraction charges . . .)

From the release, it sounds like the projections were off 1% which is fair enough. This is a matter for treasury not the legislature/executive.

As for the rest of it, well never a better example of how ACT politics is nothing more than big egos, small heads, and a council chamber that’s too big for its boots.

To be fair, it isn’t the MLAs who sit down and crunch the financials – it is staff.

But I note Katy Gallagher saying that the lion’s share of the correction was due to unexpended insurance provisions. I’d guess though that the number crunchers should have known when they were putting the budget together just a few months ago that there were the allowed-for number/size of insurance claims on the horizon – these things do have a rather long lead time after all. Thumper and Evil are right – someones’ game needs lifting.

On Stanhope bristling up – yes he sure does, and has pulled it with me a few times – most recently at the lunch with community council reps, talking over me and diverting from the actual topic to something quite unrelated. And the only way for me to pull it back on topic was to be pretty rude back.

The release talking about “honesty” was interesting given that Mr Stanhope questioned my honesty in the Times after the announcement of the GDE upgrade. At the time Megan Doherty called me to confirm what she’d been told by people from another communiy council that Stanhope said at the above meeting – that all the advice he was being given was that the GDE upgrade wsn’t needed now and wouldn’t be needed for at least 5 years. I confirmed with Megan that this was also my recollection of his statement.

The article as it appeared had me saying this rather than confirmed what someone else said, but then had Stanhope saying “that simply isn’t true”. Even though there are around 10 other community council reps (and a numbr of senior staff) who were there and could confirm it.

Now I’m happy that the GDE upgrade is coming, and no amount of public transport improvements would have negated the desparate need for this to happen.

But if Mr Stanhope wants to make honesty and trust election platforms, he should be a little more careful with his own words – especially when questioning the honesty of community volunteers. I’ll work with whomever is in government to achieve better outcomes for our community, and chose not to pursue the matter at the time. But it’s not forgotten.

I was much impressed by Zed on the weekend. He approached a man, who was at least in his 80’s, and used the opening gambit of “Have you heard about our small class size policy?”

I’m thinking he needs to target his policies better.

And work on his chat-up lines.

verbalkint said :

Still, building two new schools is hardly ripping the guts out of community schooling.

You are either new to town or have a short memory. There have been many more schools closed by Labor and the communities who no longer have a school are not joyful about it.

So cut stamp duty on houses already, you miserable scrooges. 🙁

When you are comparing something to nothing it is eminently easier to make fun of something. At least you have some idea what the ALP stands for, all Z stands for is that getting his head on tv is a good thing.

Still, building two new schools is hardly ripping the guts out of community schooling.

I’m more concerned about how a Govt keeps ‘finding’ extra money from the budget like this!

Are their financial skills so bad that they really have no idea what kind of income the ACT is going to make each year?