Dingo bytes
Here's one of the many practical uses the $50 billion-plus military budget is being put to: Readers will be pleased to know that "the nation's soldiers are to be given a tough new helmet to keep them safer in war zones". This helmet "promises more protection against ballistics, high velocity fragmentation, small arms fire and blunt trauma". Howard's little dictum, "relaxed and comfortable", is looking a bit limp.* * * Educated guess #1. We have an under-funded education system beginning to adopt the ludicrous behaviour of big business i.e. frenzied get rich schemes. Thus Victoria's TAFE colleges lost around $3 million in a failed bid to win a $1 billion education contract in the Persian Gulf state of Oman. Not only that, it was an operation to train the military called the Defence Joint Technical College.* * * Educated guess #2. The University of Southern Queensland has been forced to write off a debt from a dotcom venture. The university invested $110,000 in an educational web program, setting up its own company, Indelta. Then along came a business consortium that offered $5 million, not for Indelta, but for 50 percent of the intellectual property it contained. Using a bit of imaginative accounting, the uni wrote the money into its books as a profit. Then a combination of the dotcom crash of 2001 and "competition" for web-based intellectual property from the big internet players saw Indelta's intellectual property written down to $3.5 million. There followed another write down, this time from the university's investment in irrigation futures. Now its faculties and departments have been told to look for "efficiencies" and that all plans for new positions have been scrapped.* * * The ACTU has lost the plot, if it ever had one aside from working to get the ALP elected. What the country needs is the creation of secure, full-time jobs with proper wages: lots of them. Employers, with the aid of governments, have successfully pursued a strategy of casualisation of the workforce, reduced wages and have generally increased the exploitation of labour. So, what's the latest from the ACTU? They're promoting more flexible working hours for women so they can attend to family needs; more time off work for men to attend to family emergencies; more "choice" for women to take part-time work; and extra family payments.* * * CAPITALIST HOG OF THE WEEK: is James Hardie Chief Executive Peter Macdonald. As asbestos victims and their families struggle to gain some compensation from the criminal asbestos producer, Macdonald was chilling out in his mansion in a "gated community" in California. His $6 million digs overlooks the exclusive Laguna Beach, home of many members of the rich and famous club, all kept safely away from the riff raff behind security fencing and guards. When asked about the inquiry into Hardie skipping the country and leaving thousands of people without compensation, Macdonald declined, saying it would be "inappropriate" to comment.