the steely cacophonous onslaught swoops me up in its tender arms and whirls me into infinity

I like your tone, jinnmaro. Put on your rain pants, I reckon, and rev the living rubbish out of your engine. Even the most out-of-condition zero fiddy cee-cee should be able to drop most Japanese four-cylinder cages from a standing start, and you’ve by far got the maneouvrability in heavy traffic.

singing at the top of my voice

That’s right. Inside your helmet, no-one can hear you karaoke.

And Enemy Combatant, you must be, or would be, a fantastic father.

As you have both urged, I will indeed now abandon myself to the poetry, unpredictability and assured community of the journey. I will contemplate with steadfast eye the distance between me and Scoot and the abyss of the Princes Highway and its pathway to Loftus and I will ride my chariot there, come hail or come shine, singing at the top of my voice until if need be the very moment the steely cacophonous onslaught swoops me up in its tender arms and whirls me into infinity.

Sure the RTA and the outsourced testers are bastards. To them you’re a customer to be turned for a buck, not a citizen whose pays taxes and has rights. Shits me to tears too, the ascendance of economic over community interests, but life goes on.

This country used to have swaggies. Drawing on the example of these impecunious, nomadic cultural antecedents, I suggest you obtain a tent, take all the time you like getting there, and camp on a friendly local’s front lawn near the test site on the night prior. It will be a bonding experience for you and your putt-putt. Tee up the “camping ground” a couple of days ahead, maybe your hosts will bung on a barbie for you. Everyone grousin’ bout The Man. Regular bloody bond-a-thon, mate. No wuckin’ furries.
Next morning you’ll be jinmaro on the spot, bright eyed and bushy, on time and de-stressed for your test. Take a hand held and vid the adventure. Make it fun.

Meanwhile, I really liked the quality and detail of your kvetch. Please keep us posted on your quest.

I presume you are for real and mean what you say.

Well, ‘real’ is a slippery concept in a comments threads hereabouts. I’m not pulling your leg, if that’s what you mean. I really did pass the Ps test on Monday. I really did get filthy wet riding home from it in the dark.

it is the Princes Highway I meant

Then there are heaps of alternative routes for anywhere you want to go. Nobody’s forcing you to go there.

I will ride my 50cc scooter, even in cyclonic weather, the 25kms or so to the test ,s I can’t afford to have to re-do the learners’ course.

If it’s still dangerous on Saturday, the instructors will cancel the course, and you’ll get a rescheduled test or your money back, I’d expect. They’ve got to work outside as well—which is the point, really. If they’ve got to work in the rain, why shouldn’t you do the training?
According to my SMH, winds are forecast to ease on Wed. afternoon.

if I die, I hold the RTA responsible

This sounds like a pattern, jinmaro. If you’re that concerned about your own death in traffic, perhaps it’s not that the RTA is responsible for keeping you alive, and that it’s more that a 50cc scoot isn’t for you?
Relax. The test will be perfectly safely conducted. You will be fine to get there and back. I reckon you’ll enjoy the day out as much as I did.
Remember to do heaps of headchecks—the instructors look for them.

The learners’s course and test involved at least three hours in torrential rain, in a car park, so I expect the drivers’ test could involve at least the same amount of time, in even, cyclonic weather, including in actual traffic, travelling at high speeds.

And it is the Princes Highway I meant, not Parrarmatta Road. This is a road I never intend to ride on, nor will need to. I know of many long time car drivers who say they never travel on it, except perhaps to cross it, and yet drive to and from the places they need to on a daily basis This is their democratic and probably ultra sane
choice given different given levels of confidence, age, health, etc.

If I die on Saturday, as I will ride my 50cc scooter, even in cyclonic weather, the 25kms or so to the test ,s I can’t afford to have to re-do the learners’ course.

Thanks for the advice.

To get there I will have to travel for a large part of the journey along one of the busiest freeways in Sydney -a roadway I have never been on as a driver, or rider.

Poor you. That’s what practice is for, or finding a less busy route.

Provisional P1 plates are just the next stage on to getting a full licence, perhaps yet another 2 years away, depending on age and/or whether you hold a car licence All this caution is because of the high and growing incidence of motor cycle injury and death on the roads.

My motor cycle (small scooter) driving test is booked this Sat at a site about 25 kms from where I live. I live in suburban Sydney. To get there I will have to travel for a large part of the journey along one of the busiest freeways in Sydney -a roadway I have never been on as a driver, or rider. I must do this, the RTA has ruled, regardless of the weather or I will forfeit the fee I have paid for my driving test.

I rang the RTA and asked if I didn’t feel confident or wish to ride to the test and be on my motor scooter for 9-10 hours in bad weather, likely this Saturday, could I cancel on the morning of the test and not be financially penalised. The considered answer, after referral to a supervisor, was no. To no avail was (my) talk about duty of care, or inflexible rules that could be dangerous in their application.

The test costs about $180 on top of the fee for the learners’ course, and the L license to be followed by a fee for a P1 licence. The RTA’s line to me was that the contractors expect to be paid for the enrolments and riders have to ride in all sorts of weather. I did point out that most motor scooter riders would not ride in bad weather if they could at all avoid it and would certainly not willingly keep riding their scooter, including on busy roads, in bad weather, for 9 plus hours.

Sigh.

Judging by Perhaps The Australian newspaper lives in hope that George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote is true:

“One who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart,
and one who remains a socialist at 40 has no head�

The same claptrap that was used by American Conservatives such as Linda Chavez

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Chavez

on Fox News prior to the Bush victory. The Australian & Fox News have a media mogul in common.

Chavez helped get Bush elected by promoting such reductionist BS. Look where it has got America.

If Australians don’t want to take the same road as America then think beyond cheap sloganeering & dopey quotes emanating from the mouths of the privileged.

It’s easy to hide the pain of the Workers & the Disadvantaged when you have a Corporate media obsessed w/ using diversionary tactics like promoting wealth, fame, success, celebrity, constructed ‘common enemies’, bimboes, War & their wares.

Social Democracy w/ ‘fair go’ safeguards like a decent ’safety net’, affordable healthcare, aged care, childcare & education…gives individuals the chance to expand their minds & be involved in diverse projects & find time enough for LOVE…the ‘dog eat dog’ world the Coalition are taking us down will see the focus shift to SURVIVAL…& COMPETITION & the Long, dark night of confusion. And the echoing laughter from fortresses, golden palaces & penthouses accompanying the sobs of the homeless…& anxious breathing of the Workers rushing w/ barely a cent to their name…always rushing…

for who? and what?

“One who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart,
and one who remains a socialist at 40 has no head�

Me being 31 years of age, I must therefore be half way on a journey between wearing my heart on my sleeve and keeping a head on my shoulders

If The Australian does believe this theory to be true, then at least I know what to say at a future job interview with News Limited.

If asked about my radical blogging past, I can simply say that the evolution of my writing journey was inspired by the likes of “former laborites� Brendan Nelson or Helen Coonan and “former Marxist academic turned independent neo-conservative writer� Keith Windschuttle

Alternatively, I could assert that nobody really has a monopoly over the definitions of Left and Right anyway.

This has been well demonstrated over the last month by a weekly segment on ABC Radio National’s Counterpoint, which expands on the debate in a Prospect Magazine feature that asked ‘If left and right defined the 20th century what next?’.

Actually, The Australian is my favourite newspaper and Counterpoint, also Right-of-Centre in its thinking, is my favourite ABC Radio program.

Yet I doubt that admission alone makes me Right-Wing. Perhaps I’m just slightly right-of-left……..or slightly left-of-right

George Bernard Shaw would have surely known what I am

…From Justin

JOHN Howard needed this Newspoll result showing a comeback for the Coalition and a fall for Labor.
Never have so many people waited with such expectation and anticipation for a Newspoll survey so far from an election.

Nobody is about to forget that on the primary vote and two-party-preferred vote figures in this Newspoll a Kevin Rudd-led Labor Party would waltz into government if an election were held now.

But an election is not going to be held now or for some time, with the Prime Minister confirming to The Australian last Friday that he had no plans to go to the polls before the APEC forum to be held in Sydney in September.

Link as per previous post.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21923078-601,00.html

And this from Milne:

WITH the Howard Government showing a flicker of life in the west and expectations being lowered by the Prime Minister about any dramatic poll reversals ahead of the declaration of the campaign proper, senior Liberals are now comforting themselves with the idea that this year could see a historic repeat of the 1969 election.
That was the poll where Gough Whitlam fell just short of victory, but ominously perhaps for Peter Costello, built the platform for his successful tilt at the Lodge three years later in 1972. Last week, a more upbeat John Howard told his party room that the “arithmetic” for Kevin Rudd to win the coming election was formidable.

And he’s right. Rudd has to take 16 seats to form government. No matter what the polls are telling us now, the fact is that Rudd has an effort of Augean proportions ahead of him.

Everything has to go absolutely right for a Labor win and there are already some signs Rudd may already be starting to fray at the edges in Western Australia where the mining boom is running Howard’s way. In that state, on the evidence of the latest Westpoll, Labor would lose Swan and Cowan and fail to pick up either Hasluck or Stirling. If that were to be the result on polling day, something miraculous would have to happen around the rest of the country for Rudd to win.

But it’s less the maths of the 1969 election that invites parallels to the present than the circumstances and environment in which both Whitlam and now Rudd respectively, found and find themselves.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21921436-601,00.html

Face it boys – RAtty & Co will be making appointments with their nerarest Job Network provider the Monday after the polls.

And so we have it – the full poll suite. Reliable, cross-checked, with large samples.

It may change, of course, but any swing back aint on yet. And it when it aint on, it aint on.

You know, I have this vision of the Gazette team like some dickhead dad, holding his family hostage in the rain, trying to light the barbie, demanding that the weather will shortly be fine, cos he said so, and he’s the boss …

JOHN Howard and the Coalition have got a polling breather going into the crucial last week of the parliamentary session, but Labor and Kevin Rudd are still in a clear election-winning position.

After months of hopelessly trailing the ALP, the Howard Government has picked up support and is now the closest to Labor it has been on primary votes since February.

According to the latest Newspoll survey, conducted on the weekend exclusively for The Australian, Labor’s primary vote slumped six percentage points to 46 per cent and the Coalition’s rose from 35 to 39 per cent.

But the two-party-preferred support, based on distribution of preferences at the last election, still has Labor in a position to wipe out the Coalition at the next election, 56 to 44 per cent.

Also in Labor’s favour, the Opposition Leader is still at near-record levels of personal approval and heads Mr Howard as the preferred prime minister.

The polling followed a week of parliament during which Mr Howard was accused of misusing his official Sydney residence of Kirribilli House for Liberal fundraising and Mr Rudd was accused of not understanding basic economic principles.

There was a rise in dissatisfaction with Mr Rudd’s performance as Opposition Leader – from 17 to 22 per cent – and a small narrowing of the gap in the choice of preferred prime minister.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21922704-601,00.html

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/strife-fails-to-reduce-rudd-lead/2007/06/17/1182018938151.html

Enjoy. But dont eat too much and spoil your appetite for Tuesday’s Newspoll.

THE federal government will offer close to $1 billion in subsidies to help Elders and Optus take high-speed broadband to Australians living in the bush.
Prime Minister John Howard and Communications Minister Helen Coonan will head to southern NSW tomorrow to announce that the Optus-Elders joint venture has been chosen to take broadband to rural and remote areas of the nation.

Under the second stage of its Broadband Connect program, the government was offering up to $600 million in subsidies to encourage companies to provide a high-speed internet connection for rural Australians.

However, the government is set to boost those subsidies to around $900 million.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21921155-1702,00.html

Saw it on ABC – so cant remember the primary figures, but think it was 49-38.

Basically, taking into the imagine of error, the 2PP is broadly resonant with Morgan.

The good news is the MSM wont ignore AC Nielsen.

Galaxy have done themeslves a disservice by ho-polling on commission, and may find themselves on the outer.

After two weeks of Rudd effectively taking a kip, I think this one will really shake the coalition hard; especially if Newspoll backs it.

Depsite the bloated ad budgets, the yabbering, the economic boosterism, and the free ride of the last fortnight – nothings moving their way; except the end.

After two weeks of putting up with Galaxy, Morgan narrowing, and now without the usual consolation of the OzPolitics blogging stalwarts (plus Steven Kaye and Glen for comedy relief), I had taken to pacing the house muttering “Manufacturing Consent”, “Forces of Darkness”, etc.

My only hope was that when Rudd speaks and takes centre stage the polls tend to reflect positively for the ALP, and that he has indeed been fairly silent over the last fortnight. He did this a while ago, before the press gallery started whinging about him not genuflecting before them

I guess this leads to 2 thoughts:

1) If Rudd’s a good campaigner, then victory is in sight.

2) What percentage of two party preferred is simply a measure of which party is in the news the most in the lead-up to a polling period?