What’s Ahead For 2007 And Beyond?
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It’s two days to go until the New Year is upon us. Here in Sydney, many people are enjoying their annual holiday break and most businesses and government departments are running on 3 out of 4 cylinders. That’s just one of the reasons it gets called the Silly Season out here.
More Traffic. Less Power. Less Water…
Over the past few weeks while I’ve been busy elsewhere, I note that the infamous Cross City Tunnel has finally died the death - or at least the original operators have. It’s up for sale since the company couldn’t make its own interest payments, but who in their right mind would want to buy the thing? The overpriced white elephant has been avoided by Sydney motorists in their hundreds of thousands. Most, like me, were outraged at the high price they expected to get, and also at the way regular vehicular traffic was cynically manipulated to make it difficult to avoid the new unwanted tollway.
The politicians have already made changes to the opening plans for the similar tunnel in Lane Cove. It’s obvious to Blind Freddy that the bums are delaying opening until after the next state elections, so the poor stupid voters won’t know haw badly they’ve been screwed until it’s too late.
And speaking of our cynical Aussie politicians, the NSW state government has just sneaked in a new law which allows gambling operators to run poker machines (slots/one arm bandits) in Sydney’s shopping malls. Can you believe it. This is from a government which had previously dismissed the proposal as “distasteful and inappropriate”.
The silly season is a good time for sneaking laws like this into parliament. Joe Blow Average is too busy partying or watching the Lotto results. Isn’t there some saying about people always getting the kind of government they deserve? I ask you.
Our glorious Prime Minister, (little) Johnny Howard, has just said he backs nuclear power fas a solution to Australia’s looming energy crisis, and that nuclear power is so nice he’s be perfectly happy to have a nuclear power plant in his own backyard.
Does that mean the next one in Sydney will be built in the backyard of Kirribilli House? Or perhaps Little Johnny intends to move his prime-ministerial home to Lucas Heights?
If I hear anything more on the subject, I’ll keep you informed in here. Of course. 
Meanwhile, the debate about our drinking water supplies goes on and on. The pollies are yapping on about recycling our sewage, and that has most people pretty polarized about the subject. I won’t join that debate but… let me throw my 2 cents worth in.
When we live in one of the dryest continents on earth do we use agricultural practices what turn forest into either salt pan or desert? And why are we set up to flush one gallon of pure drinking water down the ‘loo every time we flush a toilet?
The unsustainable society we live in was founded mostly by Britons 200 or so years ago. they came from a place with immeasurable excesses of water and a small population at that time.
Isn’t it time our planners recognise we can’t afford to waste drinking water to water our plants or wash the car? Recycling is energy-expensive and probably impractical. I believe it’s a politicians’ furphy to lull the voters into believing they are doing something - when actually they are not.
How about we do away with water-flushed toilets completely? I’m not suggesting we bring back the old fashioned dunny men and the “honey carts” which used to cart away the raw sewage. There are composting toilets and solar toilets, for example. These don’t use water, and the end product is safe to put on your plants in the garden. (Any pathogens are destoyed in the cooking or composting process.)
The future awaits those who have the guts to go for it.
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