anna bligh is smarter than the average australian, and thats why I hate her.

Ill try to keep this short, well short er....

But have you noticed that Bligh has had nothing but poor management for god knows how long,
they have no money, and they have people complaining that they arnt spending any. She needs money, and uses the same technique over and over again and its so damn obvious.

Step 1
Play out a problem to be bigger than it actually is
Step 2
Dont come up with a solution to prevent the problem from occurring,
but make sure money is made from the problem.

This has been done multiple times, here are some examples;

Gambling - Instead of making a system where people can only spend so much time in a pokie room, or limiting the number of pokies, or forcing pokie places to have someone who wanders around and makes sure grandma Harris isnt there for 23 hours. Change the times to a bit later, to keep the oldies and family types out.
None of these things, or anything that even remotely aided the situation was done, instead the tax was increased on the machines. Even if a hotel or pub doesnt make a single cent from a machine, the fact that people are in there buying alcohol etc is enough to justify their existence.

Speeding - If you actually go to the Australian death toll statistics page, released by the government, which is actually behind for some mysterious reason (its not a very mysterious reason), although you can get 2007.

from here - http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/roads/safety/road_fatality_statistics/index.aspx
I recommend the anual summary. (refernce to images from this site, things to note, middle aged drivers are the fastest increasing in deaths, the highspeed vs low speed death rate, the fact that younger drivers are decreasing not increasing like the news papers tell you but are actually the fastest decreasing rate and have been for sometime.)

here is another web page showing the NEGATIVE effect of the speed camera approach
http://www.caradvice.com.au/2852/road-toll-statistics-australia-getting-worse/

Firstly, in 2007, out of every 100,000 Australians, 7.7 people died in a road fatality, from the age of 0 - 100+, this might seem significant, but actually works out to be, 0.0077%. Which is actually a very small figure, its one of the lesser causes of death by a LONG way. Your more likely to die by contracting a disease visting a freind is hostpital, than you are in a road fatality.

Secondly, the rate of deaths has been decreasing at around 5 or 6% fluctuating for some time, which in relation to the 7 or 8% increase in cars on the road is quite good BUT, this is how it effects police, government, and us. Because the death toll is decreasing (although now at a much slower rate in 2008, around 2%) the government can say what they are doing is working, even though they are dececreasing, the decrease if you will.
Because the number of cars on the road increases, and their proximity to each other increases, the death toll increases. Even though statistically death rates are getting better. For this reason police can say they need to do more, and be harsher with penalties and fines.

Where does this leave us?
In a road system that is actually one of the worst of the 1st world countries and is declinging at a rapid rate since the new anti speed campain has been implaced. Because the government didnt try real tactics like better education, better testing for new driver, current drivers having to re sit tests, television specials dedicated to education on safe road driving that goes further than idicating, gaps between cars and speed zones. If they wernt doing it for the money why are the fines there. Why not community service, why not just demerit points. Its obvious that a uni student caught doing walking speed over the speed limit is going to be affected more financially than a marketing exec in his mercedes doing $1.30 in a 100 zone.

It has been proved irrefutibly that the radar equipment is not even close to accurate, hence the reason police have tape recorders on them when they pull you over, to get admittance of guilt. When they ask you why were you speeding and you say sorry officer I didnt realsie, there is your admittance. If you say you wernt and mention your speed that is legal, they have now physical evidence to make you pay your fine, and can thus be aquitted in court.

If you look into those statistics, you will notice such things as, there are less deaths per year in high speed zones 80-1oo than there are in the low speed zones, 0-8okph, the death rate has been steadily decreasing until recently (speed cameras are having a negative effect, making drivers hesitant, bunching up closer to each other and generally forgetting other road rules) but all of a sudden its an epidemic? Facts like police classify more than speed under speeding prefix in road fatalities, such as poor roads, wet roads, failure to judge another vehicles speed and driver error. Even with all these factors falling under speeding, its still over shadowed by drugs and alcohol which clearly make up almost 70% of accidents.

But because this is dragging out ill summarise, something thats not really a problem, exadurated, a proper solution deliberately ignored, money made. People like car enthusiasts who make up the smallest minority of road users are victimised, words like hoons over used, people opinions become falsified with ignorant journalist articles in papers etc. I was actually pulled over by a policeman in my track car (everything is legal and engineer approved) who actually said to me "your the type the news papers are telling us to look for" I was shocked, since when did police officers get their information from a newspaper and not their senior at the station. It is nothing more than sheer bs. But this leads you to wonder, why type of person in society becomes a police officer? They wernt the ones at school with the clean record and the good grades, they were the ones who didnt get into university, couldn't decided what they wanted to do and missed the apprentiship boat, ended up doing a 3 weeks tafe course and sucked straight into the uniform. What makes YOU think that they are trustworthy law enforcers. They might just be doing their job, but you have to remember, they are sworn to uphold the law, at THEIR disgression.



Alcohol -
The problem that was supposed to be alcohol, which ill be the first to admit I dislike the drinking culture Australians posess, but there was supposidly a problem. Binge drinking in youths. Now instead of there being a solution, where only a limited number of standard drinks could be sold to someone under the age of 21, or limiting the amount of alcohol that a company can put in a pre mix, or doing a decent education campain that goes through the science behind the problem as does more than mention that, its bad mkay.

No instead they raised the taxes, knowing full well the sales would be exactly the same, kids would turn from premix to mixers also.

Pools -
A child drowns in a pool, the government jumps onto it, its an epidemic, its happening everywhere, we wont use better education for pool owners, we wont stress the importance of a good fence, we wont fund the councils to have somebody inspect them. Instead a $250-$300 dollar payment must be made annually by pool owners. Where the money goes, who knows, does the pool get checked nup, does it prevent any future occurances, not really.

Why does the government do this -
Well the average Australian is pretty stupid, its not a statement, its science. The government gets a win win situation, people are happy because they think the Government is proactive and fixing problems, people that are in the industry get more attention and respect government for taking notice, and the government gets a nice slice of the pie. How much? Well its estimated that around $150,000 a day is made in speed fines in QLD alone, around 75,000 people in QLD have a pool which works out to be 75,000 x 150 (err on the lesser side to prove a point) = $11250000, which to a government who is struggling financially through poor management is tasty pie indeed.

What can we do? -
Stop buying newspapers, there are very few that actually have real information that arnt swayed towards the government in one way or another. Where I live there is a paper called the Sunshine Coast Daily, I dont even classify it a newspaper, more over a paper magazine, all the middle agers go out and buy it and end up with these wierd contrived world perspectives. Attitudes like if they do the speed limit they are a safe driver. They do nothing more than make monitary gains out of other peoples missery, it is simply imorral. Tv is also significantly bad. Remember when you parents used to say dont watch that it will rot your brain, well now the parents are the ones watching it, and their brains are rotten.