I am a newly initiated Planning Nerd.

Sustainable, liveable urban planning is a topic with which I am newly fascinated. I am busy in my day job writing a rather involved piece on sustainability, infrastructure and the disastrous effect of developments outside the urban growth boundary in Melbourne (which are buggering up the Victorian state government's theoretically worthy planning strategy). Imagine hideous McMansions, as far as the eye can see, with little vegetation and no access to anything or anywhere by any other means of transport than automobile. I won't name names here, out of respect for the publication I write for, but I've got two words for you - C*roline Spr*ngs. Yes, they're pretty dirty ones.

Ugly, unwalkable, unbikeable, unsustainable sprawl. It is responsible for so many things - increased carbon emissions, transport poverty (a situation which can only continue to become more desperate with the upward surge in petrol prices), fractured community, deforestation, consumer excess, obesity, depression and a disinterest in the arts. At least, that's how I see it in my current obsessed state.

I have a great respect for the planning academics trying to halt outward development of Australian cities, and the designers and architects trying to make us think about functional, green building design and living. Those who know me will know that until recent times, I have hitherto given this subject little or no thought. I now believe it to be fundamental to our survival as a species.

It's a simple question. Are your 'rights' - to live in a hideous, gerry-built detached house which needs twice the airconditioning of an inner city apartment to cool your fat arse down while you glare at your expensive, power-gorging plasma, and to drive out to the living hells that are Ikea, Bunnings and DFO and fight a life-draining fight for a place to park your hotbox in a vast carpark - inalienable to the extent that you are willing to risk the extinction of human and animal life on this earth?

For many desperate home buyers in the current housing crisis, the answer is yes. It's not ultimately their fault - they don't choose the sites of these developments. In fact, they don't really choose anything about these ugly, out-of-the-box house and land packages, apart from the odd cheesy customisation. It's the nature of uncontrolled development, and most would probably prefer well designed, compact towns within the urban growth corridors - which are 25 years away from capacity, even on the most low-density projections. But people haven't been given the choice by greedy developers. And the only thing that stands in the way of gratuitous, irresponsible development by these cowboys is a hardline government planning system. That simply means planning that says 'no' to D*lfin (oops, another expletive!) when it leans, with its considerable funds, on impoverished local governments to transgress zoning boundaries.

And the more I read about the subject, the more I loathe these gated, US-style communities. They shut out reason and the rest of the world. But they can't continue to do so forever.

Thank you for your attention - you can wake up now.

www.howardfacts.com

that is all.

More of my endless angry invective, this time sprayed on the online Your Say column of that disappointing rag, The Age:

Every day that this man holds off on calling an election is another day he is allowed, by law, to spend public money (that's YOUR money, rednecks!) on advertising his party.

Once it is called, he has to stop.

Once it is called, he also has to stop making spurious last minute grabs for attention.

This latest announcement is shameless and shameful, and I trust no progressive person could fail to see it for what it is - more desperation from a government that set the course of reconciliation back 50 years.

Just shut up and call the election.

1. A young Sudanese man gets bashed to death by three white* youths.

In a filthy, insensitive, manipulative vote grab, Kevin Andrews uses the man's death to highlight the Sudanese community's 'failure to assimilate'.

2. Not long after Andrews' comments another Sudanese youth is the subject of a violent racist attack. Coincidence?

3. Today a policeman was bashed by a 'group including Sudanese youths' and Mr Andrews leaps upon it as an opportunity to give the hackneyed epithet 'un-Australian' yet another work-out.

Just imagine how it feels to be the family of Liep Gony, the young man who was bashed by members of the Australian community (NOT the Sudanese community) at the moment. To be blamed for violence by the very people who killed their son.

Are the perpetrators of the first two crimes 'un-Australian' too Mr. Andrews? Or are you really trying to say, via your high pitched dogwhistle, that Sudanese equals un-Australian? We all know the mean-spirited answer to that. And I'm sorry to say that the voters who heed the call of the dogwhistle are dogs. Scrap that. It's an insult to my dog.

It's nothing short of fucking disgusting. Andrews, you are a bigger creep than Ruddock, If indeed that's possible. It's the same tired election ploy they used with Tampa. What depresses me to my very marrow is that it obviously works.

Congratulations Australia!



*Note that you have to search the small print of the better newspapers to find out the ethnicity of these people, who are shielded by 'virtue' of being minors - but it's there. They're white.

This morning the headlines are screaming that "Federal Labor is in disarray over its opposition to the death penalty for terrorists". Interesting, that little qualifier 'for terrorists'. I wasn't aware there were suddenly different categories of death penalty. What about death being the great leveller and all that?

I am fiercely, unconditionally, eternally against the death penalty in all its forms, for any crime, in any country. It's bitterly ironic that, on the one issue where Kevin Rudd is showing some consistency, he's being made to look like a squirmer.

Stick to your guns, Kruddy, and back your minister McClelland. Give us a reason to believe that there are some issues on which you are unable to compromise - that there's an iota of ideological difference between you and Howard.

As the great Tony Benn once said, "be a signpost, not a weathervane".

Petty admin is turning me into Mussolini...

Perhaps it would help if my time wasn't taken up with knocking out letters like the one below, which I present for your edification.

I know I have said in recent posts that it is important to be nice to shitkickers, but angry letters don't count. They give me a kick, and having worked at the receiving end, I am prepared to wager that they give the pen pushers at the other end a giggle too. I love a good psycho (at a safe distance)!


Dear City of Melbourne,

Re: “Infringement” no: 404858649

At 6.14pm this evening I pulled into a park on Lonsdale Street between Russell and Exhibition Streets, opposite the church. I read the meter – there were 12 minutes left on the meter, and metered parking finished at 6.30pm according to the sign. I put 50 cents in the meter which took me to 21 minutes on the metre. If you add 21 minutes to 6.14 you get 6.35pm, so I was covered for parking until 7.30pm.

I returned to my car at 7.19pm to find that one of your esteemed officers had issued a fine because, when he inspected the meter at 7.04pm (as it says on my ticket), the ‘meter had expired’. No shit! There’s no meter payment required at that time of the night. Perhaps this idiot should check the signs that are erected for his benefit as well as ours, which clearly state that metered parking FINISHES AT 6.30pm in that area, and from then on there is a 1 hour unmetered period (for me this was until at least 7.30pm) DURING WHICH I RETURNED TO MY CAR. Get a watch!

I am getting tired of parking officers who slap tickets on cars without actually checking their own rules, in the sly hope that people will simply accept the fine when it is not their fault or they have no proof one way or the other. In this case, a ticket placed on a car at 7.04pm for ‘failure to pay a fee’ when the FEE PAYING PERIOD EXPIRED AT 6.30pm clearly shows the issuer of the ticket to be a fool. I am thankful that I’m one of the lucky folk who can prove it – rock down to Lonsdale Street and check your signage. I know I did when I parked!

This is tiresome. I will not be paying this fine and I expect it to be withdrawn. Please let me know when this has been done.


Yours sincerely,


S.

PS: I've lodged an online complaint too - to ensure the message gets through and also to increase your administrative workload out of spite.

Bah to it all

It's Saturday night tonight. I have had the night to myself. Here's what I did with it:

I trucked out to Heidelberg to see some young playwrights perform their original material after a last minute call to do a review. I cannot remember the last time I went to the theatre by myself. It is a soothing experience. Perhaps too soothing, because I needed to purchase an instant coffee in the interval to stay awake - not a reflection on the quality of the show, but on my general fatigue.

Afterwards I drove to a no-fuss Japanese restaurant I quite like, toying with the idea of dining toute seule on a Saturday night surrounded by horsey nouveaux northern suburbanites. I decided to get takeaway. I took home a delicious katsu curry and it was gone before I could even find a bowl for it. Mmmm, takeaway out of the container in front of the TV. I left a little in the container for Chris when he gets home - lucky him, I'm sure it will taste even better with beer-stained tastebuds at 2am.

I then made a cup of Earl Grey and sat down at my computer to hammer out some quick words on the theatre, but was distracted by routine checks of facebook, the papers and this here languishing blog. And though I've got a handful of half-finished rants in my draft folder that need to go up before they become atopical, I felt I could no longer look at my last post.

So yes, I am brewing up a couple of more intellectually rigourous posts, but given my current workload, I fear they might average a sentence a week's worth of my attention at the moment. Yes, it's like pulling teeth. So here's the sweetener.