The Guardian 6 December, 2006
Dingo bytes
Another former senior member of the SAS regiment has criticised the Howard Government
over the Iraq war. Jim Phillipps was a major who commanded a Special Air Service
squadron in East Timor. In 2002 he was an operations planner in Afghanistan. He said last
week that the "coalition of the willing" had failed. Just days before, another former SAS
major, Peter Tinley, called the war in Iraq a "massive blunder" both on strategic and moral
grounds. These views were backed up by historian Professor Robert O'Neill, who stated,
"Having blundered into a hornets' nest, the intervening force and its allies in Iraq have taken
a hammering. We now face the prospect of a defeat with unpalatable
consequences."
An outfit called Kelly Services is a Fortune 500 company with its headquarters in the US. It
specialises in body hire and outsourcing and operates in 30 countries and territories, including
Australia. In a ludicrous survey to promote itself, it has found that "globally Australia ranks sixth out
of 28 countries for the best bosses" and that "two out of three workers are happy in their jobs".
And"Australia's workers ranked ninth out of 28 countries for being the happiest workers". It's a real
paradise under Howard, alright.
Going from the pure tripe above to the people who contribute out of public sight mostly for nothing
— carers. In NSW the State's peak carers' advocacy body, Carers NSW, last month celebrated its
30th year. It lobbies government for 750,000 people of all ages providing care for family members
of friends with a disability, mental illness, chronic condition or who are frail. And the number of
carers is set to increase with the number of people in NSW aged 65 and over projected to double
by 2044. The unplanned nature of the system and the short-sighted governments that run it aren't
going to deal with that.
CAPITALIST HOG OF THE WEEK: is Malcolm Turnbull. A merchant banker who has
reinvented himself as an expert on the water crisis, Turnbull's become a privateer intent on handing
what water the country has to the corporate sector. In the meantime he comes up with loopy
proposals as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister with responsibility for water. The
most recent one is a proposal pushing the privatisation line: to treat households in the major cities
like farmers, allowing them to buy and sell water entitlements. Each household would be given
"relatively cheap water" and then be allowed to buy more at a higher price if needed, and those that
saved water could then sell it back to the provider, a private company under Turnbull's scheme.
This would be under the guise of people being able to "make their choices".