The Poor You Will Have with You Always Especially if you can make sure they stay that way. Liberal Party policy seems intent on punishing the poor for being poor. The latest float: a co-pay for doctor visits. This doesn’t seem so controversial at first glance, but when you consider it in the overall context it demonstrates just how far market-based economics reaches into LNP policy. This is a political party that believes all the wrong lessons Tony Abbott has learned from the Jesuits: To him who has, more shall be given, for example. Along with the approved rate rise in private medical insurance cover, the highest in seven years, it’s clear that this government, like the Howard government before it, is intent on the elimination of Medicare. Private cover is, effectively, mandatory. If you don’t have private cover, you pay a tax surcharge, on top of the Medicare tax itself, and the longer you wait to take out private cover, the higher the penalty and premiums. Effectively, even though we have Medicare, everyone has to pay additional. And private cover, like in the US, pays out very little on claims, especially on anything that can be deemed elective, such as doctor visits. This year’s rate increase is already sending people to their insurance providers to adjust their deductibles, which means an increase in out-of-pocket costs. Meanwhile, the number of doctors who bulk-bill has and continues to shrink, which means that poor people already have less access to health care, and this would only be exacerbated by requiring even a small co-pay. The Liberals hate Medicare. They use it. They benefit from it. They hate it. They hate it because it was, by far, the most successful Labor policy initiative of all time. They hate it because it means that they have to pay for someone else’s benefit. They hate it because it helps the poor. They won’t say it, but it’s true. They’ll say: “personal responsibility,” as if getting sick was a character flaw, and they’ll say that until it’s them that’s ill and needs help. Of course, if they do get sick, they’ll go to their doctor and pay for it, go to the hospital and get a private room and jump the public queue and pay for it – if they can. The irony is that many of the public who support the LNP are, in fact, poor and middle class and will struggle or be unable to meet the expenses of private cover. They will, in fact, go to bulk-billing doctors and be admitted to public hospitals. What drives their thinking is merely selfishness and delusion.

TV & DVD I didn't get into watching Breaking Bad right off, so ended up watching the whole thing on DVD. Now that I've caught up with the rest of the world, I can finally talk about it. This has to be the best show ever. Well, o.k., sure, there were other shows out there that at the time were the best show ever, like Buffy or Hill Street Blues, and nobody can deny how far The Simpsons has penetrated the zeitgeist. But Breaking Bad was so enthralling, even as you knew it shouldn't be. I don't know that I'll watch it through again, now that I know how it all comes out, but if an episode is running when I'm scrolling through the channels, I'm likely to linger. Update O.k., so, in response to the comment received, why is this so good? Well, there are no extraneous characters for one thing. Across the entire season, everybody ties in, serves a purpose, either in the plot overall - and from beginning to end - or in pushing the character development of the majors. Take the tweaker friends who hang around Jesse; by the end they still drive the plot and Walt's character forward, although in Walt's case, backward may be more appropriate, since they are now contributing to a kind of redemption. The structure of the episodes is also very tight; even the less cliff-hanging endings still are cliff-hanging enough to make you want to know what happens next, and season-ending episodes more so. The idea that this is a show that somehow celebrates a descent into evil misses the point. Yes, Walt does in fact go, like Michael Corleone, deeper and deeper in, and although some of the more heinous acts are committed by others they are often committed on his behalf, whether directed or not. But what's fascinating about this is the way he clings, at least initially, to the idea that his actions harm no one who would not otherwise have been harmed. The meth-heads would still have been meth-heads; he just gives them quality, and helps his family as a result. Drug dealers and higher-ups get killed, but that's the life they chose and they deserve it, don't they? Unlike Walt, he justifies to himself, that is. And Walt's development as a character is mirrored, in different ways, by his wife, his brother-in-law, and his partner-in-crime, each having an arc equally fascinating to watch, and sometimes devastating. There are the drug cartels, the lawyers who practice to the letter of the law but not its spirit, the easy marks, the easy money, the police taking shortcuts and the police doing the hard yards. And there's the society in which it takes place and the politics, at least implied, that have gotten us there. So, tightly drawn characters and plots over a short timeframe, with insights that can be applied in a variety of socio-political real-life issues. What's not to like?

Cruel, not Unusual Do I care about The Race That Stops the Nation? No, I do not, except that it is cruel and enriches parasites.

Sydney’s Gatwick There’s a long-standing call for Sydney to have a second airport. The traffic through the existing airport is stalled by capacity and by the curfew. Eliminating the curfew is one option, but the position of the airport means a lot of people would be seriously inconvenienced by the late-night noise, so it’s unlikely to pass the palatability test among the political set. There’s also, however, another issue, one that isn’t addressed by any of the proposals for a second airport: the capacity to funnel those travellers into the city. All those additional cabs and private cars aren’t going to do much for any of the motorways in existence, already carrying more traffic than they were designed for, and then what are you going to do once you hit the actual city limits? As it is, four-lane traffic reduced to two lanes at the margins causes considerable pain. The single train servicing the existing airport is inadequate, as is the rest of Sydney’s commuter rail, so don’t expect that to get better anytime soon. Successive governments have failed to address the issues other than by redefining what constitutes “late” or reducing service. Imagine what building an airport further out would entail, and what that rail system would look like. Oh, the pain. Forget it. Virgin’s dummy-spit over international-to-domestic transfers, calling the current system at the current airport ”third world” isn’t so far off, although at least some parts of the third world, like Singapore, do quite well, thanks. I had more trouble in Switzerland transferring terminals, although that also involved an additional security check and customs. (What did they think I did after the first security check and while I was on the plane? Build a rifle out of cheese and biscuits?) There is effectively no existing infrastructure to transfer between terminals. But let’s think about that in relation to travelling to Australia. How many times will an international arrival require transfer to a domestic flight? If you’ve come to Sydney, more often than not you are not then on your way to Melbourne or, for that matter, to Wagga Wagga or Albury. It’s possible; it will happen; but enough to build a light rail transfer facility? Maybe not. A Virgin Airways executive may do it, in order to bounce around the places his or her planes go to in Australia, but business travellers more generally will come to Sydney to be in Sydney etc. There just isn’t the same level of international commerce headquartered in the regional cities and towns that’s going to see a lot of flight-hopping. If the conversation prompts improvements, let’s start with fixing the problems the current airport presents. This could mean building that second airport as a replacement for the majority of international flights, leaving Kingsford-Smith for the domestic – so long as there’s a good transfer function built, of course.

Travelogue, last leg After Rome, we flew to NYC, caught a cab to LaGuardia, and visited Mom & Dad in North Carolina. Then, after a too-brief visit, back to NYC. We stayed in a Holiday Inn in Long Island City, with a very nice view across the East River. As much as we wanted to see everything, we couldn't, with only two-and-a-half days of tourism available to us. We missed a few things due to a lack of prior research and no local expertise beyond my memory of the subway system. Luckily that was enough, mostly, for a few highlights. I don't often miss living in NYC and doubt I would be successful transitioning back, as the up-front costs would be extraordinary, but it was nice to see the old place, including many of the new things I've read about. So much new; it was good to see. So much old; it was good it's still there. (The subways, however, need a serious upgrade. Rome and Berlin were so much quieter and cleaner. Although their maps aren't as good as the MTA's.)

Travelogue, part 4 Rome, the Eternal City. Absolute chaos. More tourists than I've seen outside of the Louvre, in Paris. Our hotel wasn't great, but it was less than 2 kilometers from the Colosseum, another 2 to the Vatican, so we had no trouble getting around and seeing as much as we could in two days, which was a lot. Romulus' & Remus' mom doesn't look too impressed, but she's everywhere. The Swiss Guard really do dress like 1970's McDonald's employees, but with spears and metal hairnets. You cannot escape the crowds at any time of day.

Travelogue, part 2 Christo. I've missed all the installations he's done since I first learned of him, including the Central Park "Gates", so I didn't, even after reviewing the web site, have much sense of what the "Big Air Package" was going to be like. We trained out from Berlin to Oberhausen, where a disused "gasometer" stands, and where Christo has previously had an installation. It was built in 1929 and was the largest in Europe. It is indeed enormous, a tourist destination in its own right, apparently. Christo's installation on this occasion was an "air package", which is the format he started out with, back in the sixties, and has come back to now and then since. This is the biggest. There is no clear way to describe the experience other than "awesome".

Travelogue, part 3 So, after Berlin, we flew to Pisa, where we didn't stop, but caught a train up to La Spezia and then on to Riomaggiore, the southernmost town in the Cinque Terre region. This was a true highlight of the trip. The landscape was incredible, mountains straight up out of the sea, terraced for olives and grapes, but much of it still wild, too, with each of the five towns along the coast being perched and clustered right on the edges. Italians seem to like their cats, too.