Sunday, October 04, 2009

Should you prepare your plans before making announcements?

I read with amusement that Ms. Julia Gillard has travelled to the USA to find out how to create Green Jobs. As we all well aware, the USA is the home of the Green Movement and is clearly the greenest country on earth. The undisputed green leader of the free world I don't think.

The other amusing part of this is that KRudd announced the creation of 50,000 new green jobs in July, reference link.

"The plan will consist of the creation of a 10,000-member national Green Jobs Corps, where long-term young jobless will take part in six months of training and work experience.

Labor plans that 30,000 apprentices will be trained with green skills, while there will be an additional 4000 training places for insulation installers.

There will also be another 6000 jobs from environmental sustainability programs in priority local economies."


but when you look at the actual figures here the only new jobs here are the temporary insulation handlers and the very airy fairy 6,000 jobs from environmental sustainability programs. Whatever that means.

The rest is an addition to existing apprentice's training and a work for the dole scheme with green tinges. So the 50,000 new jobs is in reality 10,000 temporary and speculative ones.

So if they were planning this back in July, why is Julia going off to the USA now to find out how to do it? What would be wrong with asking the local green movement, they just might have some useful ideas. Certainly would be cheaper than whatever the USA will come up with since their attitude is almost always to throw lots of money at a problem.

What this really shows clearly is that, as usual, the Rudds have no clue about what they are doing. They make policy on the run, without thinking it through at all, based on some sort of focus group and very bad polling.

So where does the $100 million cost of these jobs come from? Seriously even with 50,000 new jobs that's $2,000 per job or if it's only 10,000 newish jobs it's $10,000 per job. I remember the cost of my TAFE courses in 2000. They were $2,500 per term. So $10,000 covers fees for one year for one person. I would love to see their accounting on this but I doubt it will ever become public. Puts the mocker on the pre-election bleating about fully costed policies.

Media Mike Mashes Magazine and Makes Headlines.

And yet again he gets caught out in a lie. The man just can't help himself. He and KRudd are so alike it's scary. Both go for the lie and spin before the truth regardless of whether the truth can hurt them or not.

Whenever you get caught out in a lie your credibility is damaged and there is no recovery from that, the constant drip drip drip of the lie drops falling into the clouded eyes of the voters. Eventually the fog clears and the vision is restored. That's when the the BS folk get their come-uppance.

The real shame of this in the world of politics is that they have voted themselves a permanent pension even if they are doing a paid job elsewhere. That rort must be stopped. The idea of being able to access an early pension is the claim that many politicians have left good jobs to take up the position and may find it difficult to get re-employed afterwards.

I don't have an objection to that, I think the unemployment benefits they give themselves are excessively generous but I agree with the concept. But, just like with the rest of us, if they get a job the unemployment benefits should stop while they are being paid.

Sorry, slightly off track, in the real world if you ge caught out in a significant lie you lose your job and probably your severance pay. Politicians just keep spinning it along.

Coming into an election we are going to get bombarded with and absolute plethora of BS. So much so that I had an idea after reading an article recently which I cannot find to reference for you. The article was about the massive amount of spin we are going to get and suggested that the media, instead of just printing it, should put a big warning sticker on it calling it BS. My idea was that we could all have a bunch of big red stickers to stick on the posters on the streets and shop windows.



And here it is, if you can produce a better one please do and comment with a link, I'll put into this post for sharing with like minded people.

How to use this. If you have access to a serious label printer then you'll know exactly what to do to produce unlimited stickers of any and all sizes.

For the rest of us it's a matter of getting sheets of sticker material from the local supplier, printing them and cutting out the circles by hand. Yes you have my permission to print these out and distribute them. I don't mind if you sell them to cover printing and handling costs but if you want to go into heavy commercial operation you should get in touch with me first.

Pollute the pollies posters with these. Have fun.