Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sleepe I am actually on holiday in Durban and have been spending most of my time on the beach, working on my tan while definitely not wearing lycra or budgie smugglers. So I have been trying to keep tabs on this thread which is rapidly spiraling out of control. Definitely my favourite kind of thread.

I agree with a lot of what is being said but I do take exception to somehow being at fault when an elected representative is corrupt. We elect these people to act in our interests so that we don't have to do that ourselves and we place certain duties and responsibilities in their trust. We trust them with those. It is their duty to act in our interests but they don't. If more of these people got exposed and fired or impeached then the practice would become a lot less prevalent.

I think the system is faulty - we need more monitoring of our elected officials and we need to be able to drop kick them out of office if they are corrupt. We might also want to change our political systems to make things like lobbying illegal and stop many of the types of behaviour that are currently accepted as "the way things work". There are far too many laws being passed telling citizens what they're not allowed to do instead of laws that tell politicians what they're not allowed to do.

Regards, Martin.

I have not heard the latest on East Timor. Don't remind me about how long ago high school was...

It is not fault it is responsibility.

If you child breaks something it could be your fault but it might not be (depends on the child, what was broken and were you appropriately supervising). Regardless it is always your responsibility.

Politicians are adults (although they may act like children) and as such have to bear some responsibility them selves.

Just like with consumer goods and services, when you buy a product or a service, you can legally expect the product or service will perform and complete the task it was designed and purchased to do..

I am buying a service from these people along with every other tax payer, they should perform their services to a certain level. If I hire a plumber to fix my toilet, I expect that they would have the skills to fix my toilet, I would expect that they can fix my toilet without me interfering.. I should not have to tell them everything they need to do, I shouldn't have to watch over them, and I can expect them to perform their service to a reasonable standard.

If they don't perform their services, they get kicked out and you get another plumber who can do the job properly.. If they break things, cause flooding through the house etc, that is not my fault. Not only is it not my fault, but the plumber will fix whatever problems they have caused at their cost (or through their insurance).

By your logic I'd have to watch over the plumber.. When he does something wrong, a technical plumbing issue I know nothing about, it's my fault or responsibility for not informing the plumber he was doing something wrong?

I've always found it odd that politicians get portfolios to oversee that they have no qualifications for. I agree that politicians should be held more accountable for serious "errors" but that's unlikely to happen. I,m all for having a greater input into what the government does and I have always thought that issues that the government wants to legislate (go to war, apply another levy, deal with boat people, become a Republic and so-on) should be decided by the Australian people via a non compulsory online referendum. It's would be so easy these days to have secure online voting and for those who don't have internet access the traditional methods could still be applied.

I don't mind the semi-direct democracy model, the Swiss system seems alright.
Can't find a good link to it but it seems better than a representative system, like we have. Because they don't represent us one little bit.
Pretty sure charging corrupt politicians with treason would stop too many parasites rising to the top. (I want to link to a Regurgitator song "I ****ed a lot of **** to get where I am" but it's NSFW or this forum I suspect... but you can find it despite the *'s if you're interested )

And Stuart, I'm not sure it's what you meant but the idea of self managed superannuation being a social/political protest appeals to me quite a bit.

One other thing has me feeling the need to share. (overshare? )
All this talk about our electoral system and memories of the recent discrepancies in several electorates in the recent past reminds me of something I once witnessed.

As a young fella I was a scrutineer for a federal election.
Since you have the power to recheck any pile of counted votes I decided to do just that.
The invalid vote stack was particularly interesting.
Approximately 4 out of every 5 votes were actually valid votes.
Scrutineers from the major parties were sneaking valid votes ,usually for minor parties but not entirely, into the invalid pile.
I rectified it and then rechecked the invalid pile again half an hour or so later.
With the same result.

In the end any time anyone discarded a vote I just picked it up in front of them and checked.
Funnily enough the mistakes stopped almost straight away. (Stubborn cheaters they were...).
The incidence of votes accidentally making their way into the wrong stacks (particularly when it came to preferences) was remarkably high as well.
No other scrutineers checked each others work and it appeared almost like there was an understanding between them regarding this.
Until some kid came along and messed with them that is...

Actually this example is just what I am talking about.

Ultimately if a company is producing dodgy products or harmful products then ultimately the directors or responsible. If the shareholders allow them to keep their positions then they are abrogating their responsibility and ultimately they will pay the price through reduced dividends and loss of capital.

In a democracy when we abrogate responsibility we let our representatives conduct themselves in any manner they so choose.

The jobs, role, and responsibilities of civil servants can be equated to employing a plumber but not the roll our political representatives play.

Actually self managing your super is one kind of response that is exactly what I am talking about. The things is you still need to make sure you vote at company elections for new directors and the chair and also give your directors input on how you think the company should be run. eg we want you to pay the CEO more so they don't leave because they are doing such an amazing job. or if you twist give that CEO a bonus I will be at the forefront of shareholders revolt that will elect new directors.

Just like in political democracies you have to get organised and inspire the citizens/shareholders to over come their apathy.

Too many people are handing over political/financial power to "professionals" who they are expecting to look after their interests. While they should be they aren't and we as a society are to blame.

For example this GP surcharge of $6 rubbish. First most of the money is going to disappear because it is going to cost a fortune to administrate. Second if only a small number of people don't go to their GP but go to an emergency department instead all the collected revenue will evaporate. Admittedly this is probably unlikely given emergency waiting times and that the "poor" won't have to pay but what is more likely is that minor symptoms will be ignored things like early warning signs of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and the like. This will mean that rather than a GP initiating early interventions to head off these and a host of other conditions they will remain undetected and land people in hospital which of course will cost a fortune.

If the Liberal party were the economic rationalists that they claim to be they wouldn't be coming up with such EXPENSIVE policies but would instead be initiating extra spending in preventative medicine and mental health to reduce medical expenses and in the case of mental health would also reduce the cost of the legal system and prison system. The problem for both Labour and the Liberals is such reforms would take a good ten to fifteen years to have a really noticeable effect. Since we as the voting public don't require our politicians to act strategically beyond the scope of the electoral cycle we let them get away with short term policies that don't actually fix much of anything.

This is mostly our fault because we are not demanding more of our politicians but we are also not demanding more of the media who are the ones that are meant to be a big part of this. AND before anyone goes off about the power of the Murdoch press he wouldn't have that power if people stopped (financial democracy again) buying his media products.

Maybe this should be in the venting thread

How bout those Shimano derailers...

I prefer disraeli gears myself; but apparently the expert is sunning himself so we will have to wait.

Yes, we should keep this thread on track... cycling wasn't it?

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/t ... 6875892294

From the image it seems he is big in Japan.

mmmmm gone from cycling fish and then 3 pages of hitler war etc etc I must be on the wrong thread

I agree Stuart but the problem is people can't see the results or the plans because everything is hidden. Why can't we see what government programs are in progress and what the stats are? They're all hidden behind mind numbing jargon so that we don't start asking inconvenient questions and expecting actual results.

Regards, Martin.