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The Future ...
Dec. 14th, 2013 09:12 pmAustralian Federal Coalition Government[*], you suck.
Yesterday they renamed the NDIS disability support "launch sites" as "trial sites". They swear there’s no associated change in function, which is true this week at least, but it doesn’t sound positive for the future. A "trial" is something you decide has been passed or failed - I don’t believe for a second that the promise-breaking Coalition isn’t going to try to trim back the NDIS, if not gut it altogether. Language matters, and why would you bother changing something like that unless you had some other plan - in isolation it's not even worth changing.
Why would I disbelieve the Coalition when they promise stuff? Here’s a good reason: As somebody who’s largely bedridden/housebound, the forthcoming National Broadband Network with high-speed internet would have been awesome for me. Unfortunately the Coalition have reneged on their election promises that it would even happen in my current location. Even during the election they were saying they would deliver less than what Labour were promising, but they’ve even gone back on that much-reduced promise and cancelled roll-out of fibre in HFC areas.
"HFC" is the cables that deliver cable television and similar. Like many folks in the nominal HFC area I can’t actually access cable TV because my particular unit isn’t hooked up[**], though I understand that the unit in my block closest to the road probably is. Even after my unit is (in theory) fully hooked up, HFC apparently acts like a weird sort of internet party line where it only works decently if most of your neighbours aren’t also using it… I have heard many sob stories about hideous HFC services. Here’s another HFC sob story (written a year ago so ignore the bits about what it says will happen with the NBN).
Coalition, you suck so much I am all out of words for it …
No love,
r
[*] The Coalition government in Australia is a mostly our conservative party, but the conservative's official name is the Liberal Party, which is sufficiently confusing that I hate writing it because I know bunches of you are not in Australia and aren't used to mentally translating "Liberal means Conservative" in your heads.
[**] Cable TV is not commonly used in Australia. I have never used it and don’t know anybody who has it available either. Much different to the USA situation.
Yesterday they renamed the NDIS disability support "launch sites" as "trial sites". They swear there’s no associated change in function, which is true this week at least, but it doesn’t sound positive for the future. A "trial" is something you decide has been passed or failed - I don’t believe for a second that the promise-breaking Coalition isn’t going to try to trim back the NDIS, if not gut it altogether. Language matters, and why would you bother changing something like that unless you had some other plan - in isolation it's not even worth changing.
Why would I disbelieve the Coalition when they promise stuff? Here’s a good reason: As somebody who’s largely bedridden/housebound, the forthcoming National Broadband Network with high-speed internet would have been awesome for me. Unfortunately the Coalition have reneged on their election promises that it would even happen in my current location. Even during the election they were saying they would deliver less than what Labour were promising, but they’ve even gone back on that much-reduced promise and cancelled roll-out of fibre in HFC areas.
"HFC" is the cables that deliver cable television and similar. Like many folks in the nominal HFC area I can’t actually access cable TV because my particular unit isn’t hooked up[**], though I understand that the unit in my block closest to the road probably is. Even after my unit is (in theory) fully hooked up, HFC apparently acts like a weird sort of internet party line where it only works decently if most of your neighbours aren’t also using it… I have heard many sob stories about hideous HFC services. Here’s another HFC sob story (written a year ago so ignore the bits about what it says will happen with the NBN).
Coalition, you suck so much I am all out of words for it …
No love,
r
[*] The Coalition government in Australia is a mostly our conservative party, but the conservative's official name is the Liberal Party, which is sufficiently confusing that I hate writing it because I know bunches of you are not in Australia and aren't used to mentally translating "Liberal means Conservative" in your heads.
[**] Cable TV is not commonly used in Australia. I have never used it and don’t know anybody who has it available either. Much different to the USA situation.
