BENNELONG bloggers! Here's yet another batch of anti-Howard pictures to raid

Photos with portable captions can be powerful political weapons. Please steal any of these pictures and distribute them on the internet... especially around the prime minister's own electorate of Bennelong.

Malcolm Turnbull can see the writing on the wall. He's clearly positioning himself for the Coalition's post-Howard era in Opposition. He's willing to eat humble pie now so he can present himself later as a courageous candidate. I don't doubt that he dreams of a future RUDD vs. TURNBULL election. Turnbull would be as much a disaster as Howard, if not even more .right-wing and hawkish.

Hey Grandpa, might it not have been better to accept more refugees instead of paying $500,000 each to imprison them on Nauru? These are people who would do Australia proud, just like Italian and Greek refugees of the 1950s. Just like you and me... we're ALL Boatpeople, John. Australia does need more people, but there's no need to be so embarrassingly racist about it.

John?

...JOHN ??

Tell John Ducklips Howard you don’t like WorkChoices. Sign this ONLINE PETITION (by GetUp.org, in a new window). The Get Up! campaign has many socially-responsible petitions and other direct actions for you to take. Visit their homepage here (also in a new window). When you're there, click on the 'Campaigns' tab for a wide array of petitions to sign, etc. Like Nicole Kidperson, we all get old before our time... even Kevin Rudd:

See another photo of an older balder Kevin Rudd (among others) when you scroll down this Un-official Portrait Gallery of Australian leaders. Eerily, a balder Rudd closely resembles John Dubya Ducklips Howard.

Howard is a right-winger, not a liberal. The well-meaning graffitist in the photo above unfortunately may not understand the vast difference between the terms "liberal" and "Liberal". The very name "Liberal Party" is yet another bald-faced lie.

Peter Costello's claim that Rudd would not be able to manage the economy ignores the fact that it was the Howard government which invented the GST, ie, what used to be your cash. That's why his 11 budgets have been bulging with fat surpluses. No previous government has ever ripped Australians off as much. And despite the promise to reduce income tax by way of compensation, July 30th is still a bad-hair-day out here in voter-land. Note that any future government will have the SAME amount of GST money to spend, and probably won't waste so much of it on futile wars in Iraq, Pacific Solutions, etc.

More anti-Howard photos are here, or you can get ALL my posts on Australian politics together on one page here. They're crammed with pictures which may help end Howard's ten-year trashing of Australia's morals and integrity. Spread them around ASAP.

And finally, as your reward, watch two more short flash-animated cartoons from Peter Nicholson of "The Australian" newspaper. The first is about Howard's leadership issue and the second is about his alleged poll bounce They're quick to load and fun.

Show & Tell: Our Trip to Malaysia

Fort Cornwallis, Penang (Pinang) Island, Northern Malaysia. The photo offers a cryptic clue to how the

ever-honest and morally-upright British Empire managed to persuade its slaves to donate their entire country to England, and to work for them - for free.
Ironically, the fort was named after General Cornwallis, who had failed miserably in the American War of Independence, so had consequently been promoted sideways and put out to pasture as the Gov-General of Hongkong. These days, the fort houses a postcard shop and cheap cafe, plus a few 'artefact' display rooms with freezing air-con escaping through wide-open doors. The wallpaper muzak was some orchestral Handel, complete with war-like trumpets. Ironically, Handel was German, and wrote Italian-style music.

As promised, here's our Official Report on our 'colonial' fact-finding mission to Malaysia. This was our first foray in our search for an alternative country to live in, given that the Thai government has, without notice, doubled its financial requirements for 'alien' retirees such as we.

Summary: Some interesting aspects, but not yet convinced. Maybe we'll need another trip ;-)

See the complete report, plus many funky travel pics here.

APEC, Camels, and other assorted Bullsh*t

Now that Equine flu has laid low Australian police horses, FunkyPix2 suggests quickly training camels imported from Afghanistan. They are accustomed to dealing with terrorists, sudden very loud noises, panicking crowds etc, so would be ideal for Fortress Australia during APEC. But they will need to be accorded the same privileges as Australian citizens, so probably wouldn't get their visas processed in time...

....... Members of FunkyPix2 join the protest:

APEC NEWS SCOOP !!! Here's a short naughty video of some members of FunkyPix2 giving Bush a collective browneye at APEC. This video, unsurprisingly, never made it to Australian television news.

(The Liveleak video is hosted, so should load quickly and begin automatically).

FunkyPix2 agents disguised as APEC workers erect anti-camel barricades.

....... An Australian citizen gets aboard a special APEC one-way bus.

Poor people waiting to hear (yet again) how Rich people are getting richer. Better to MAKE AFLUENCE HISTORY and have systems in place to ensure greater equality of opportunity. The irony is that the same thing applies within Australia itself... the number of struggling people is growing, despite the soothing cooing coming from the government. It's finally beginning to dawn on Australians that the Howard regime mainly supports wealthy elites, and the polls say they don't like it. At last! FunkyPix2 must have had an effect after all. Yee-hah!

The APEC talkfest. The Tower of Babble. Whatever.

APEC is nothing more than a pile of horse sh*t in which the rich nations get together to work out how to maintain (or preferably increase) their advantage over the poor nations. And then to deny that very thing to the media. Rich folks aren't malicious evil people - it's just that they/we are so accustomed to the duplicitous way the capitalist regime operates that they/we aren't able to imagine any alternative. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, for one, is trying to re-open idealistic doors (admittedly in a rather ham-fisted way), but is getting serious opposition from rich people and the CIA. Chavez has already been made an honorary member of FunkyPix2.

If, like Chavez, the world's rich people began truly supporting poorer people by sharing the planet's resources less greedily, they might just discover that they were actually creating new and willing customers with more money to spend* ...more than the wretched one-dollar-a-day currently earned by millions. How hard can it be to understand that poor people don't want to stay .poor?

*By saying this I'm still apparently buying into the assumption that Happiness revolves around money. But let that one go through to the Keeper for the moment - we need to keep talking in terms that richer people understand.

Brand new water-cannon trucks purchased (specifically for APEC) with OUR tax money.

Friendly smiling snipers around Sydney made everyone feel so relaxed.

.................The Queen visited Sydney to support the cops.

Thailand Immigration has DOUBLED Retirement Visa requirements for married couples: Racist, Sexist betrayal.

This stack of bricks at a building site not for from our Chiangmai condo is the perfect metaphor for Thailand’s government's mindset: disorganized, unstable and at risk of collapsing.

I’m not a happy puppy. Effective immediately, Thailand has made it twice as expensive for a foreign couple like us to get 12-month Retirement Visas. Previously they required 800,000 baht (about AU$28,500) per couple, but now suddenly it’s 800,000 EACH Well OK, it’s their country so they call the tune, but there’s been no warning, no gradual introduction or concessional period (which would have been minimally courteous, to allow time to organize the extra funds). We feel as if they regard us only as life support systems for wallets, and that leaves a sour taste.

Check the pages of dismayed responses from local expats on the Thaivisa forum.

Our own visas are due for their normal renewal in 3 weeks’ time, but the regulations state that the required bank deposits – which must have originated from overseas – should have been here for three months prior to the visa being issued. It’s a bizarre Kafka-esque impossible situation. I'll spare you the grisly details.

It’s a typical dumb Thai-style knee-jerk decision which has either not been thought through, or is deliberately spiteful, callous, racist, sexist and unfair. It's both. It certainly hasn’t been thought through, because the staff at the chaotic Immigration office here in Chiangmai don’t yet know the new rules themselves - so can’t advise. Grrr.

Here’s a comparison to demonstrate the bias. A foreign man married to a Thai woman (the most frequent type of couple) only has to be able to provide 400,000 baht or an income of 40,000 baht (about AU$1425) per month, and that is deemed adequate for BOTH to live and provide for children. So in effect, this government is saying to us that it wants 1,600,000 baht ie, FOUR times ass much from us - for the same privileges offered to its own citizens. If we foreigners could eventually earn some parallel privileges, it might be less unfair. But a foreigner can never become a citizen under any circumstances – even if they marry a Thai and have children. A foreigner can’t get full permanent residency status – even if they purchase the million baht “Elite Card”. You cannot fully own land or a business in your own name… only 49%.

The government would argue that these measures are necessary to prevent Thailand – a middle-rung economy – from being overrun by wealthier westerners and “bought out”. There’s a degree of wisdom in that, harking back to Thailand’s history of near-colonization. But to effectively exclude people like us, who are better for the local economy than some of the ratbag Foreigner-Thai cheapskate couples, completely smacks of fearful isolationism a la North Korea or Burma. They cut off their noses to spite their faeces.

Thailand Central Bank’s recent blunder in requiring 30% of foreign investments to be held by the government alerted the financial world to the simplistic and erratic Thai mindset. This latest Visa blunder is encouraging thousands of foreign couples like us to pull up roots and forfeit our apartment rental contracts, to the understandable annoyance of Thai landlords. We tell them to blame the Immigration Office. We, like thousands of others, are considering heading for other countries in the region where the mindset is more logical and ordered, where the education system encourages analytical and critical thinking skills, and the ability to question rather than learn by rote and passively accept authority.

We’re off for a week to Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Penang to check out some apartments and lifestyle options. Stay tooned…

SALISBURY COUNCIL has a solution to John Howard’s destructive interest rate hikes

More than a third of Australian household income is spent on housing. It would be comforting to think that a worker’s net wage might actually be enough to cover both rent AND food, but John Ducklips Howard’s WorkChoices ruthlessly eliminates that option. It’s becoming a case of getting two jobs - or seeing through the corporate myth of the “Aussie Dream” and choosing to downsize your options to match reality. Or escape to Thailand.

Australia is big. VERY big. Therefore it’s always surprised me that land costs SO much when Supply so vastly exceeds Demand. I know it costs developers money to build infrastructure like water, roads, electricity etc, but I also understood that’s why Australia’s 3 levels of government charge Rates, Taxes, Levies, etc.

So it’s interesting to hear of the local council at Salisbury (near Adelaide, South Australia), virtually admitting that they have excess land to give away for free. The deal is that the owner must build a dwelling (presumably something more than a garden shed?) and that the council will claim a share of equity and capital gain whenever the house is on-sold.

Here’s a completely land-free alternative form of housing… but oh shit! the fuel, insurance and repairs… and the carbon tyre-print.
PS: If you have a fetish for weird vehicles, ya juss gotta go to this page.

Presumably most of Salisbury Council’s takers will consider passing on their property in their Will rather than selling and forking out half the profit. However, a bigger trap may be that the council could see fit to increase Rates by insidiously jacking up land valuations each year. Caveat Emptor, folks.

More Australians may begin to consider this brand of budget-friendly furniture.

Even though Salisbury is not exactly a top-end housing market (in Australian terms), a property/house package can still be in the order of AU$300,000+. That’s a price which effectivly excludes a huge number of people from the "Aussie Dream". But land values are partly a social construct, as I think Salisbury Council is tacitly admitting. Making land into a market commodity like houses, cars and potatoes may have been Capitalism’s Big Mistake, especially when it now gobbles 36% of an average family’s income. Perhaps the Aboriginal land tradition of group custodianship for the Common Good worked better. More inclusive of poorer people. And certainly much better for avoiding sub-prime mortgage fund meltdowns.

Typical low end accommodation in Australia, complete with aircon and ensuite. Also see this high-class humpy. Hey, at least a derelict car-body offers more security than being at the receiving end of thumping great interest rate hikes. White picket fence is extra.

By comparison, Thailand is only about the size of the Australian state of New South Wales, and carries a population (65 million), which is about three times as large as the entire continent of Australia (only 21 million). Yet the housing/rent costs here come in at about one fifth of Australian prices. It has as much to do with population size and Economies of Scale as it does with scarcity of land. More people = cheaper costs due to larger-scale production. Australia’s infrastructure (road/rail/air networks, electricity grid, etc) are enormous yet must be funded by a relatively small number of tax-payers. Here in Thailand it’s the reverse – a smaller country with many tax-payers. But the irony is that even in Thailand there’s a lot of spare land ...and it isn’t very expensive.
Housing affordability needs to be up-ended in Oz to make life financially viable.

It's the civic duty of FunkyPix2 to present a wider range of housing alternatives…

.......... ...because housing affordability can drive you up the wall….

.............................. …or over the edge...

........................... …or up the creek...

........................... …or down the tubes...

............................... …or round the bend...

............................... ...and even to drink.

Or you could simply minimize the land-cost problem by purchasing as small a block as possible. This house in Vietnam [left] is taxed according to the width of its street frontage, and the one in Palestine according to its area actually built on the ground.

Ain’t Architecture grand?
Now FunkyPix goes into magic-carpet mode and transports you on a free whirlwind tour of housing options from around the world:

When you've chosen which house you'd like to build, contact FunkyBrix2 for cost estimates.

Smallprint: We conform to John Howard's WorkChoices ideology by hiring desperate workers (themselves with high mortgages) for less than peanuts ...so you pay less for your house!! Great deal for you and us but not them. The resulting sub-prime mortgage crisis will be inherited by Kevin Rudd, anyway.
Yeehah, let's have a house-warming Party!