shopping sickness and political nerdorama

I think I went mildly insane when I went shopping today. I don't know why, but I had this compulsive urge to just keep spending, and I came away at the end of the day feeling a little bit sick in the stomach thinking about how much money I'd spent. My goal was to buy a new coat (replacing the one I lost after a drunken escapade at Friday's last year - v messy, and one that I'd sooner forget), some smart looking work clothes, and some warm clothes for my trip to Tassie next month. I mostly achieved what I set out to achieve, but I can't quite bring myself to calculate how much I actually spent because I know it'll just make me feel sick again. It's the ignorance is bliss rule.

Well I guess I don't really go clothes shopping very often, and I did buy a few essentials. I can justify a few of the purchases. But not all of them.

Moving on to a much happier note though, yesterday I saw 'Keating!' the musical. It was brilliant, clever, witty, great music, and very minimalistic in relation to stage setup. I wish I'd done more reading about the Keating era before I went to see it, but I did quickly read through a few of his more famous quotes before going and was glad I did because quite a few of them were thrown in there. So it was great. My only complaint is some of the more unnecessary little Johnny Howard quips.

I feel like I'm one of the few people in Australia who thinks that he was a good prime minister. And this could just be my ol' right-wing political views coming through, but I honestly thing he did some great things for the economy (eg significant tax reform, superannuation reform, first home-buyers grant, bringing the country out of the massive debt it had accumulated during the Labor government) and it's no coincidence that the economy was doing so strongly for such an extended period of time under the Howard-Costello partnership. I'll be the first to admit that he did a fair few shit things though. Medicare has turned into a bit of a joke, education funding decreased to a point where Australian universities are one of the lowest funded of all the OECD countries, and environmental policies were virtually non-existent, just to name a few. But you can say shit things about every government no? At least our former supposedly "sh*t" government managed the country for one of the most extended periods of sustained growth we've ever experienced ( www.treasurer.gov.au).

To be fair, Australia has also benefited from an extended commodities boom, and it can be argued that the economy was in such a healthy state because of the boom. Maybe yes, maybe no. I can't help but think someone like Kim Beazely still could have screwed it up.

Anyway, I could go on for a long time about this. Currently I don't like the Rudd-Swan style approach. It looks like their set out to tax the crap out of the high income earners to make the system more "fair", which is I guess is in line with left-wing policies, but it's always good to remember that it's the high income earners that typically create the jobs for the lower income earners. Focusing on the "battler" may prove to be a policy that'll shoot itself in the foot. Time will tell. Or at least the budget released on Tuesday will give some sort of indication. They have set to do a full investigation of the current tax system at all levels of government, which I think is an excellent initiative. My hugest kudo for the Kevin 07 is his environmental push. Hopefully he'll keep it up.

Ok. I didn't mean for this to turn out to be a political rant. I may as well add one more note: I'm actually excited about Peter Costello releasing an autobiography at some stage. I'm dead keen on reading it when it comes out. Yes, I am a right-wing political nerd.