My Manifesto: The Incoherent Ramblings of a Madman

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A Georgia man who drove home with a friend's headless body after a truck accident then went to bed while the remains dangled out the window faces charges including vehicular homicide and drunk driving, police said on Monday.

John Hutcherson, covered in blood and visibly inebriated, was arrested in bed on Sunday morning after a local resident out on a stroll observed a headless, bloody body hanging out of the 21-year-old man's truck, Cobb County police said.

Hutcherson was due to make an initial court appearance on Monday.

Police said that Hutcherson and his friend, identified as Francis Brohm, 23, were returning from a bar outside Atlanta early Sunday morning when their black 1992 Chevrolet Z-71 pickup hit a curb near a telephone pole.

Brohm, partially outside the window at the time, was decapitated by a guide wire on the telephone pole, according to police, who recovered his head at the crash site. "Alcohol is believed to be a contributing factor," police said.

Hmm...the guy left his dead headless friend in the car to sleep it off and the police "believed" alcohol was a contributing factor - to me it's pretty certain that either alcohol was a contributing factor, he was whacked off his brains on some type of drug, or he's a complete psychopath.

On the 7:30 report tonight:

Kerry O'brien: "you've been quoted as saying that Peter Costello has been Australia's most successful treasurer - if he's a more successful treasurer than you - what makes you think he will not be a more successful prime minister?" to John Howard - former Treasurer current Prime Minister.

John Howard: "It's about the strong team we make" giving the best answer he can muster up in reply by not answering the question at all.

The toilet episode is hilarious....for some reason it reminds me of my groundhog day - sort of bizarre in the same type of way,but my groundhog day involved sitting down for an hour waiting for my mathematics class to start and seeing this one girl walk out of the building 7 or 8 times. The building had one main entrance and one back entrance that no one ever used - it was so seldom used that you actually had to walk through the garden to get to it. She never went into the building - just out of it...just kept coming out of it...the person next me and myself were just totally freaked out! Every time she came out we would look at each other in this "are you seeing what i'm seeing?" type of way...and in agreement we replied with a "i'm seeing what you're seeing - but i'm not believing it" type of look. That day was magic.

The toilet saga continues in Iraq:

well...
let's see... the toilet thieves have struck a few more times. it's amusing in a "the gods must be crazy" way. they appear out of nowhere. they dissapear into thin air. they change places in a row, swapping spots in "line" when no one is looking. in fact it's all done when no one is looking. with as many people as we have walking around this place at any given time of day or night, I find it a little off that NOBODY and I mean NOBODY knows anything about why the toilets keep moving, where they go to when they dissapear, or when it even happens. nobody has ever seen an outhouse abduction actually occur, but we're all starting to wonder... I mean, an outhouse does not just push a magic red button that makes it implode until it feels like coming back, and at that, in whatever location it chooses. they have to be going somewhere, but nobody has ever seen one being moved, in any part of the process. no outhouse has ever been seen on a truck, forklift, flatbed, blackhawk (hey - ya never know), or any other possible form of transportation. none of these modes of transportation have been seen near them either. and I don't think that the s**t suckers (the trucks that suck the stuff out of the outhouses & put new blue stuff in them) are that powerful that they can just suck an outhouse up a 6" diameter hose and into their storage tank either. maybe they're performing some kind of ritualistic quest to try to appeal to the porcelain god of legends old, in hopes of becoming real toilets someday ...
I give up.

My friend Michelle is in Iraq in the middle of a war at peace time, she writes in her on-line journal sometimes - either she's losing her mind, or the entire military is:

let's see. oh yah another weird thing since I've gotten back. the toilets. the outhouses. somebody has this weird sick hobby ... somebody moves them every night. or at least they were up until two nights ago. yes, since I got back in july, every night, the outhouses all over the compound were moved around
sometimes a row of 15 outhouses would just vanish into thin air, leaving no trace of their existence except for the ominous blue sand & gravel blowing & kicking around the area. then the next day they would be back like they never left
sometimes they wouldn't be moved, they'd just be switched around. they are all different colors; sometimes mr toiletfetish would just swap the orange one and the blue one in the same row, just to mess with us. because everybody knows (who has been in a situation where you have to rely on outhouses or public style bathrooms, equipped with many stalls) that a person becomes territorial over "their" toilet. they always run to their "favorite" toilet first, and then, only if it's occupied, will they give notice to the others. when that toilet is changed or dissapears, it can be taken as a personal affrontation - "somebody has jacked MY toilet!!!" the one that would get me though, is when the whole row of outhouses just outside my part of the building would just randomly dissapear at say ... 10 or 11 pm ... obviously, when nobody was outside to catch them ... and then, just as suddenly, and again, with nobody there to see it, they re-appear at about 4am. 4am is the time given in most ufo sightings (and heart attacks, coincidentally). I don't think that the oddity of the situation was lost on too many others, as many Outhouse Dissapearance related jokes have circulated the gamut, and one day, we even awoke to find flyers taped to all of the outhouses depicting a red "no" circle enclosing a n image of a flying saucer lifting an outhouse in it's tractor beam. Finally, yesterday, somebody went and numbered every outhouse on the compound in english and arabic. they are numbered sequentially in each location (with a continuation between locations). for two days, they have stayed put. apparently, now that they realise that they have an address, and are supposed to stay put, the outhouses have lost their urge to wander around without supervision. riiiiight. we're all waiting to see how long before they move again. the numbers look nice to a distorted military view of the world, but in keeping with that distorted military view of the world, form and function are not shaking hands.

and I almost forgot. another thing that I've done to pass time is to look up all kinds of gerbil related information on the web. why gerbils? because some of the mice here look suspiciously like gerbils, and make me miss the one I had when I was little. so far, I've learned that you should never keep 3 or more female gerbils together, and that rarely can you keep 2 femalese together, and then it's only if they have been together since birth. you can put two males together, sometimes three, but it's not reccomended to put more than that together in any case. you can also keep a male and female together, even if there are newborn pups in the cage. gerbils are like swans - they prefer monogamy. also, the male helps rear the pups and it's good to have him there, on the other side though, gerbils will mate again as soon as a litter is born (though gestation will be delayed until the current litter has been weaned). gestation is 23 days. gerbils like to run, jump, climb, chew things, and take dust baths. they sleep for a couple hours, then they play for two hours, rotate. there are some simple tricks you can teach them. I like rodents. I am also brain dead from this hot summer sun. argh.

I need sleep
I'm going to dream of home, mark, my family, capone, gerbils (someday I will have my own office, and among other things in it, there WILL be a cage with a set of gerbils in it!), and so on and so forth.

Hmm - I agree with her on the sleep part - but she can keep her husband mark, and gerbils for herself.

The following is a list of similes that were found in Year 12 English
essays .....

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides
gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was
room-temperature prime English beef.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes
just before it throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because
of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a
formerly surcharge-free ATM.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a
bowling ball wouldn't.

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a shopping bag
filled with vegetable soup.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie,
surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Sex in
the
City" comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry
them in hot oil.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had
also never met.

Even in his last years, Grandad had a mind like a steel trap, only one
that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this
plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating
for a while.

"Oh, Jason, take me!"; she panted, her breasts heaving like a Uni
student on $1-a-beer night.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a
real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or
something.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg
behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if
she were a garbage truck backing up.

She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to
The wall.

If anyone wants to get me a present (and I have no idea why you would) you can buy me one of the following albums:

1. Pharcyde - Bizarre Ride II
2. KLF - The White Room
3. Wilco - Mermaid Avenue
4. Art of Fighting - Wires
5. Evermore - Dreams
6. The Panics - House in a Street From a Town I'm From
7. Billy Bragg - Best Of
8. Rush - Chronicles
9. Neil Young - Mirrorball, and Harvest
10. The Tea Party - Seven Circles
11. Nick Cave and the Badseeds - Abattoir Blues/ Lyre Of Orpheus

Does anyone want or need a flatmate in my area? Does anyone want to be my flatmate? Does anyone have a flat that they need a tennant?

Will Israel and Palestine ever stop fighting? Will the Jews and the Arabs kiss and make up? The short answer is – no. The long answer is – no way in hell.

The Modern Israeli Story

Israel was formed in 1943 sanctioned by a UN resolution that was strongly backed by USSR and the USA.

The story is loosely this: back in the day, well at the end of World War One, the French and English divided the Ottoman Empire up into little areas: Lebanon; Syria; and an un-official Palestine were created. Palestine was pretty much Southern Lebanon. At the end of World War Two, again, the French and the English came up with the hippy idea of doing a bit more reorganisation of the Middle East and came up with the idea of creating a country just for the Jews. Lebanon was about the only damn country in the middle east that was mainly Christian - with the lower half of Lebanon filled up with the Palestinian Muslims they were having all kinds of trouble with the little blighters; consequently, the Lebanese wanted to get rid of half of the bottom part of their country and turn it into a Palestinian state which would have solved all of their problems. However, USSR, England, and the USA were trying to work out what the hell to do with all of the Jews who fled NAZI Germany.

So USSR and the USA came up with the idea of forming a separate country to put all of the Jews. In trying to be come up with a politically correct form of racism, instead of a concentration camp with a fence around it, they chose to put the Jews back into their homeland and form Israel by taking land that was almost certain to become Palestine and surrounding the Jews with Arabs. The USSR and USA hoped Israel would take all of the Jews so that they wouldn’t have to have them on Soviet or American soil; Europe hoped that the Arabs would eradicate the Jews so that they would not have to have them on European soil. Europe had spent almost half a century trying to work out how to destroy the Jews. It took Hitler, USSR, and the USA to come up with a solution that would work.

Now, we have the USA who puts all of their foreign money into supporting Israel so that their American formed Jewish concentration camp continues; we have Europe who put all of their money in supporting the Palestinian cause so that the Arabs will destroy the Jews so that they do not have to put up with what little of them are left; we have the Arabs hating the Jews because they are on land that they were so close to being given as their own, and because, let’s face it, if you’re down and out you need a scape goat – so you may as well pick on the popular scape goat of the time, which has been the Jews for a damn long time.


The Historical Jewish Story

The Jewish people have never really been strong enough to have a powerful army – so they pretty much were restricted to being a nomadic type of people who lived in ghettos and had no homeland. They were an ethnic minority group who were excluded from almost everything, and being stuck in their enclaves, they were marginalised more so. What it gets down to is that no one knew anything about them so hated them.
The same goes for any ethnic minority group anywhere in the world today – they are all treated like second class citizens. For example, black people in America, the native Japanese people in Northern Japan – any minority group gets treated dodgy because no one knows anything about them – and ignorance breeds fear.

Conclusion

Everyone hates the Jews because they are an easy target that no one has ever taken the time to get to know because everyone in the world is a racist fuck who has to accept some responsibility. The Jews are so backed to the hilt by Americans with weapons, nuclear weapons, etc that no one in the rest of the Middle East can do anything about them now-other than bitch and moan, and use homemade bombs. The Jews don't do themselves any favours because they put a highly trained and armed military force against children who throw rocks. Hence we have the catch 22 hate cycle that we all know and erm hate.

The day the rest of the Middle East gets nuclear weapons – may god help us all. The day Israel uses a nuclear weapon - may god help us all.


The above piece should be titled "Adam's Version of World History Based on a Lot of Reading of Different Books and Some Common Sense"...

Some Bibliographical Information:

"What Went Wrong" by Bernard Lewis has been my main source combined with News Stories, articles, and a few different websites such as "www.un.org/Depts/dpa/ngo/history.html" and "http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rtanter/W98PS353498PAPERS/DUSSO.AARON.HTML" etc

Bring on the abuse! I'm ready for it!

Four Corners, ABC TV tonight: "We've all seen how the American justice system works on TV shows like Law and Order....what they don't tell you is that 95% of people never go to trial because they get plea bargains made with DA's and are represented by court appointed-lawyers who tell them to plead guilty to get a lesser sentence whether they are guilty or not"

Why is it that Australian sportspeople go well in World Championships and yet cannot step up to the challenge in the Olympics? Constantly we have our "World Champions" not living up to pre-olympics game hype. Does the media put to much pressure on them? Are they trained, entirely wrongly, to peak for the world championships but not the "pinnacle" of sporting events the Olympics? You can have all of the World Championships in the world and no one will remember you in ten years time if you don't have an olympic gold medal to back it up.

Ian Thorpe was being lauded as the "greatest Australian swimmer ever" at the beginning of the Olympics this year- he had only won one individual gold medal at that stage. Dawn Fraser on the otherhand has won three individual gold medals spanning 3 olympics games. Cathy Freeman, again, has only won one gold medal, and yet if you talk badly of her career you are labelled as being un-Australian. Why do we cling onto some athletes and miss other athletes who perform well at the Olympics? Credit should be given where credit is due.

I guess, regardless of how our athletes underperform at the olympics, they should still be commended for making it there. I know, from my own personal experiences, that it takes not only mental and physical accomplishment to make an Olympics - but great monetary sacrifice and puting your entire life, and future, on-hold while you try to achieve that glory. I chose a career over the Olympics - I sold my soul.

i want to cry... an hr of washing my stuff...i get there to hang it out...there's paper all over my clothes because i accidently washed a plane ticket...(that i need to have as proof i've flown)...and as i go hang out my paper-covered clothes... there's some guy next door throwing fertiliser around the place...so my clothes are now covered in plane ticket...and smell like an animal crawled into them and died...if i'd have wanted to smell like dead animal and have plane ticket all over me i'd have just rolled around on the ground next to a garbage bin at an airport dump :|

Letter To Elise - The Cure

oh elise it doesn't matter what you say
i just can't stay here every yesterday
like keep on acting out the same
the way we act out
every way to smile
forget
and make-believe we never needed
any more than this
any more than this

oh elise it doesn't matter what you do
i know i'll never really get inside of you
to make your eyes catch fire
the way they should
the way the blue could pull me in
if they only would
if they only would
at least i'd lose this sense of sensing something else
that hides away
from me and you
there're worlds to part
with aching looks and breaking hearts
and all the prayers your hands can make
oh i just take as much as you can throw
and then throw it all away
oh i throw it all away
like throwing faces at the sky
like throwing arms round
yesterday
i stood and stared
wide-eyed in front of you
and the face i saw looked back
the way i wanted to
but i just can't hold my tears away
the way you do

elise believe i never wanted this
i thought this time i'd keep all of my promises
i thought you were the girl always dreamed about
but i let the dream go
and the promises broke
and the make-believe ran out...

oh elise
it doesn't matter what you say
i just can't stay here every yesterday
like keep on acting out the same
the way we act out
every way to smile
forget
and make-believe we never needed
any more than this
any more than this

and every time i try to pick it up
like falling sand
as fast as i pick it up
it suns away through my clutching hands
but there's nothing else i can really do
there's nothing else
i can really do
at all...

I remember one day a while ago where I laid down in bed next to someone. There was nothing extraordinary about this day, however, I felt content. I felt happy. I felt loved. We both lay there not saying anything. Just thinking. She answered my thoughts in words without me even opening my mouth. I will never forget that day. I want to live that day again.

Hurricane Charly is attacking Florida and the Carolina's in America. They said that it was as bad as hurricane Andrew a few years back.

When I was talking to my very good friend there she said that they were evacuating the towns near her but she was staying there to ride the storm - there was no point in her leaving anyways because all of the exit routes were pretty much a traffic jam. She wasn't going to leave like "the other bunch of pussies".

Then yesterday her town got evacuated. Instead of leaving - she went to the ocean with a video camera! She's now the stupidest/greatest person I know! She's my hero at the moment! Apparently she has great footage.

"Ah I don't know what they were worrying about - it was just a little wind" she said (even though half of her town got destroyed).

I was told that my protein intake was half what it should have been - so tonight I bought eggs, chicken, fish, beans, and protein shake. The only trouble now is, the protein mix, which claims to have no flavour and actually tastes like vanilla,has gunked up my mouth in a sort of home-made glue type style. I'm going to have my lips sticking together for like the next hour! In hindsight, perhaps, I should have mixed it up with milk like it said rather than eating it straight - but that would have required actually buying milk...

At least this isn't as bad as the time I froze my sunglasses to my lip, or the time I froze an orange to my lip, or the time I froze my hand to a the top of the car...or the wanking accident incident...but they're all a story for another time.

Ah what a week!

George Bush said loosely in the press that there's not much point in taxing the rich because they get good accountants who find loopholes to get around paying it anyways - hell - if all he has to do is take this a little further - is there any point in charging drug dealers for selling cocaine? they're just going to get a good lawyer to get themselves off anyways. Is there any point in charging a celebrity with murder? They're just going to get themselves off anyways!

Goss says a few things to talk up his chances of being the new leader of the CIA in this following exert from a reuters story cited at yahoo.news.com:

"I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified," the Florida Republican told documentary-maker Michael Moore's production company during the filming of the anti-Bush movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."

"I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably," Goss is quoted in an interview transcript.

"And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day: 'Dad you got to get better on your computer.' Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have."

A huge ant colony has been found under Melbourne (according to channel 10 news) that stretches 100 km across - those damn argentinian fire ants are wreaking havoc here! Some bastard unleashed them in QLD a few years back on some mining machinery from Texas and ever since shit has hit the fan. I remember seeing a few articles on "a current affair" - yes that show of cheque-book cash for comments journalism - with silly whingers in Qld complaining that the government was trying to put bait to stop the ants from breeding in their yards and that it would affect their children - these children were playing in the middle of the road because their backyard was full of ants - their pet dog had been eaten to death overnight and their father was worried about what affect the bait would have on them - damn fools! God help our nation of whingers if they won't let science help them!

My good friend Ann Coulter (I call her this because more often than not she seems to be crazily going off on nonsensical tangents worse than mine) from www.uexpress.com has ranted about Kerry and his vietnam exploits based on a new book (John O'Neill, "Unfit for Command"), which, judging by the rest of the things he has done/supposedly done, seem to be more than likely true:

About 60 eyewitnesses to Kerry's service are cited in the book, describing Kerry fleeing comrades who were under attack, disregarding orders, putting others in danger, sucking up to his commanders, creating phony film footage of his exploits with a home-movie camera, and recommending himself for medals and Purple Hearts in vainglorious reports he wrote himself. (This was apparently before the concept of "fragging" put limits on such behavior.)

After three months of combat, Kerry had collected enough film footage for his political campaigns, so he went home. He even shot three different endings to the episode where he chases down a VC guy after test audiences thought Kerry shooting a wounded teenager in the back was too much of a "downer." After filming his last staged exploit, Kerry reportedly told a buddy, "That's a wrap. See you at the convention in about 35 years."

AND last, but by no means least my boss told me that I don't cash my work cheques in quick enough and last week I didn't iron my shirt on one day - the joke is on him - I've not ironed a shirt since I've worked for him, nor will I ever. If you hang the clothes up the right way after washing them - you damn well never need to iron them. The lapse last week was due to it being raining - damn rain. The work cheque issue, well, the way I see it, if he wants me to cash them in faster then he should either pay them by electronic transfer which costs him nothing and myself nothing, or give me an extended lunch hour so I can actually get to a bank in time to deposit them!

It is good to see Tasmania has done something right for once and gotten rid of Richard Butler. Not only is he professionally a liar, naive, or incompetent (probably all of the aforementioned) but he also proved that he's a bungling fool when it comes to being a governor of a state. Hopefully, as poor of a choice as it would be for someone who is meant to be almost regal, they get someone who is indicative of the gun-toting, redneck tasmanian population - who else would be more fitting to represent them?

There are stories of Boonie going around possibly taking up the job - again - alcoholic, has a 1940's moustache, and loves to yell racist taunts at ethnic people - he should be the man for the job !

One of my workmates was telling me about how great it was that the olympics were on tv soon. It wasn't because he got to watch the sport - it was because he didn't have to watch home and away, all-saints and all the other regular tv programming crap that his girlfriend makes him watch. The poor poor sod.

An extract from an article from yahoo.news (Mon Aug 9, 7:58 AM ET):

Can You Name All 53 States?

Students learned that Congress had two houses -- the Senate for Democrats and the House for Republicans; that the U.S. flag had not been updated to reflect the addition of Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico to the "original" 50 states; that the federal "administrative" branch oversees the Treasury Department (news - web sites); and that World War II occurred from 1938 to 1942.

There are 50 U.S. states, including Alaska and Hawaii, who are represented on the U.S. flag. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, not a state. There is no "administrative" branch of the U.S. government. The three branches are judicial, executive and legislative. World War II was fought between 1939 and 1945, although the United States did not enter the war until 1941.

The funny thing about this is that even though the article is written almost tongue-in-cheek they had to put the actual answers in the following paragraph. What does this say about the intelligence of the intended audience of the article? Who, one would hope, have actually gone to a school that teaches legitimate facts - or is that the problem? :)

What is the biggest evil we face today? (other than George Bush and the American juggernaut) - Shopping Trolleys!

These seemingly inert objects have overtaken the world by stealth. They have left no territory uncharted. They turn up everywhere! Everywhere!

When Edmund Hillary reached the peak of Mount Everest first - something that is much debated for a few obvious reasons, other than the fact that he had a guided tour to the top by his trusty Sherpa which tends to suggest he wasn't the first person there at all, but on the same point - he was being guided to the top, which means even on his trip he must've been second - but what they don't tell you in the history books is that when they ascended to the peak - there in all it's rusty glory was a shopping trolley! Complete with the ever glorious "Rollback savings" and "if this trolley is found please call 1-800-TROLLEY to report is missing". I kid you not!

The moon landing. Conspiracists will tell you that the moon landing was faked. Conspiracists will tell you that when the transmission was cut that NASA were having problems with their Hollywood studio transmission. The truth is that when Neil Armstrong was about to plant the flag, which for some reason blew in zero atmosphere (insert twighlight zone music), he had to move the shopping trolley out of the way. Man made it all the way to the moon - and as if to mock him - there was the faithful shopping trolley - first. Neil felt a fool. Mankind was beaten again by the evil that is trolley.

My own experiences with shopping trolleys. The watagans mountains national park. There was a track leading into it that had half washed away because they were car-rallying there. It was mid-winter. There were felled trees across the pathway. Leeches the size of Michael Jordans fingers (I'm presuming he has huge hands - I was going to compare them to the size of my fingers but mine are somewhat 1/4 of the size of these bastard leeches) rained down from the trees. In the middle of this place, at the end of the hiking track accessible by foot only - there lays a shopping trolley on its end. Again mocking me. Mocking me with it's evil smirk!

When left on their own - these trolleys wreak havoc in shopping centre carparks! All manner of scratches and bumps turn up on cars. The trolleys start of with minor scratches. They like to lull you into a false sense of security. Gradually, and ever more gradually they sneak up. Bumping into your car...scratching slightly and ever more slightly deeper and deeper...before you know it there's no damn paint left on your car because those bastards have stripped it clean! Stripped it clean I tell you! They feed on the paint from cars. They use it to stop them from rusting. They want you to park near them. They need your paint. They need your car paint.

Do these shopping trolleys have no shame? Is no level too low for them to stoop? Will their evil rule over the world end? Will mankind realise that they are overtaking the world? When will this chaos end? When? When?

After forcing me to sit through an hour and a half of childhood photos of friends i don't know, family I either don't know and/or don't care about , and herself Rebecca says: "After all that I'm so bored I want to kick myself in the head!"

My head hurts.

Good night cruel world.

In reply to “The following entry has been rated "f" for excessive use of……..”

You gave the following comment:

If you are going to have a rant then at least check your supporting facts, especially those that appear in the first few sentences of your argument:

1. Sydney Water IS State owned and operated.
Sydney Water is "a statutory State owned corporation, wholly owned by the people of New South Wales" (Sydney Water Corporations website).
It is true Sydney Water was changed from a State Department/Board to a Corporation in order to get it ready for eventual privitisation, however that has been put on the back burner as Sydney faces the current water crisis.

2. State Rail no longer exists: "RailCorp merges the State Rail Authority of NSW (StateRail) and the metropolitan functions of the Rail Infrastructure Corporation (RIC)". RailCorp IS a state-owned corporation.
(RailCorp website)

3. CityRail IS State owned and operated.
CityRail and CountryLink are two independent services operating under Rail Corporation New South Wales (RailCorp). RailCorp is the government agency responsible for all passenger rail services in NSW.(CityRail website).

My Reply:

Firstly, we need to begin with a definition so we can ascertain some key points: asset; an asset in business terms is something that makes money, that is, the opposite to a liability. Now, at first glance this seems as though it is simple to define. If we take a house for instance most people will tell you that a house is an asset, this is not always the case. If the house is fully owned and is increasing in value at a higher rate than the CPI increase plus the house rates and upkeep etc then it is an asset, conversely, if the house is not fully owned and increasing in value at a higher rare than the CPI increase plus the house rates etc then it is a liability. Now, if the house is par-owned and is being rented out at a rate that covers the cost of the repayment plus the increase in rates (we will presume that the house is either gaining value at the CPI rate or slightly higher than the CPI) then the house is an asset. If the house is fully owned and is increasing in value at the CPI then it is a liability because it is losing you money for upkeep and rent and the like.

Now, in the case of the abovementioned entry we will go into some history of the state rail system to see what they did own and run and what they don’t own and run now. The state government owned the entire rail infrastructure, freight (until 2002: cityrail website – just below your reference infact), passenger services, and maintenance services.

Freight Corp, the rail-freight organisation, had an increase in output of 244% per employee from 1991 to 1998. The total loss in state government employees in the same time frame is 49% of the workforce (state treasury). Effectively the state lost half its workforce during that time frame and productivity increased for this business entity. Profit and privatisation were on the cards. As you are probably well aware, although obviously not willing to admit, the state does not own the freight services anymore (city rail website).

Now for our next definition we will define commonsense: we will use a definition found at www.dictionary.com for the purposes here and define it simply as sound judgement. When privatisation begins with public owned companies/services/corporations the components of them that go first are those that are most profitable and viable as a standalone business venture – this being commonsense. It is commonsense to create a business venture out of something that makes money rather than something that doesn’t make money. Traditionally the state rail system has made its money from freight. Consequently freight was the first major component of the rail system to be privatised.

In addition to the privatisation of the freight system, the freight being the biggest money earner and the greatest burden on the rail infrastructure, the maintenance arm was separated as a government business unit known as the Rail Services Authority in 1997 (state government treasury website).

Before the state government split everything up State Rail was a government entity that lost around about $64 million per year, consequently, one of the first things the state government did when they came to power was to split State Rail into four separate entities: State Rail who would run passenger services; Freight Rail would do freight; Rail Services Authority would manage the maintenance; and Rail Access Corporation would manage the infrastructure.

In its first year the Rail Services Authority formed alliances with Brown and Root Ltd and Thiess Contractors Pty Ltd. Essentially this means that they were outsourcing the work from the beginning. Before forming the Rail Services Authority the state were outsourcing all of the work to maintenance companies such as Transfield, ABB, and other companies of this nature. These private firms were doing almost all of the maintenance on the rail system. The government realised that it was costing them a lot of money to outsource everything and then began to form their own maintenance service as a business unit to compete with these other companies for the works for the state rail system and other government services who would require maintenance services. ABB a large international were getting state government rail contracts for maintenance services from 1995 onwards (ABB website). This gave them two to three years experience in getting state government rail maintenance contracts. Transfield maintenance again have been getting contracts of this nature for as long, if not longer than ABB. These other firms not only have had more experience in beating the state government at its own game, but also had acquired all of the experienced workers from the state government in this field.

As previously mentioned, the maintenance arm of the state rail system even when it won the maintenance contracts still had to outsource to other companies because they lacked the manpower, skills, and expertise to carry out any of the works on their own. If the state government had kept the maintenance arm of the state rail system in its completeness from the beginning and not let it slide losing all of its main personnel to the private sector then the state government would not have to rely on the private sector to carry out the maintenance works – in addition to this – these other companies who were almost entirely founded for the purposes of maintenance to take advantage of public-private partnership type deals would not exist at all. Back to some commonsense – if these are companies are getting rich by doing all of the maintenance work for the state rail network – why did the state government make their own maintenance arm impotent? The maintenance arm of the government would have been an ideal business venture and would have been a huge asset had it been properly managed and implemented. Another asset the government has effectively lost.

The Rail Access Corporation was an entity who made money essentially by charging the operators access to use its tracks. In its 1997 report the chairman of the Rail Access Corporation said: “RAC was set two broad tasks: to own, operate, maintain and enhance the essential rail infrastructure in NSW; and to promote access to existing and prospective operators. Success ... will be measured by reducing the costs of owning and operating the network and building the volume of business using that network." So essentially the job of the RAC was to increase use of their system while reducing maintenance costs to make a profit as they were a business venture and they had to make money.

The state government soon realised that the system was not sustainable. With one entity looking after the tracks and the other entity using them there were different agendas at play. It was in the interest of the Rail Services Authority to spend as little money and effort on maintenance as possible to make as much profit as possible and increase the possibilities of more work. At the same time, it was in the interests of the Rail Access Corporation to spend as little money on maintenance as possible to make the most amount of money as possible. These two organisations were on different sides of the spectrum. One trying to make as much money from fixing things up as little as possible for the maximum costs to the client – the other trying to make as much money as possible by fixing up things as cheaply as possible. This was and is not sustainable. The network was failing.

In the 1999-2000 tax year the RAC paid a dividend of $75 million to the government. It borrowed $80 million.

The Rail Services Authority was merged with the Rail Access Corporation in 2001 to form the Rail Infrastructure Corporation who would run and maintain the tracks. The trouble is, that by this stage, the tracks had been so poorly managed with two different government business units with different agendas and competing means of making money that there was very little profit to be had. It made profit on the hunter line only it its first year of operation.

The key money earner of any rail system has and will always be freight. Freight is an asset. Passenger services are more often than not a liability. Freight has been privatised since 2002. Passenger services are owned as a government business unit. Maintenance services are almost entirely outsourced and managed by a government business unit had maintenance services been properly managed to begin with then they would be an asset and they would be the ones making the profits of companies such as Transfield who predicted a profit of $80 million over four years managing the rail infrastructure (Transfield report).
In 2004 Rail Corp merges from the ashes of the shambles that is the par-private run, par-government run, par-private operated, par-government operated state rail system.

What does Rail Corp do? It pretty much does everything that the original State Rail did. Fuck me dead people! We have come full circle! The problems? The problems are that the organisation is missing the key money earner of the freight division. The organisation is missing the full force of the maintenance division hampering their efforts at maintaining their infrastructure without outsourcing almost entirely and losing the opportunity to carry out outsourced work themselves for other organisations to bring private money back into government hands. AND with only half its original workforce it is made up of those dodgy management types who do not know shit from clay (see next paragraphs) and are encouraging public-private partnership or PPP as they like to call it in management circles. So after around about 10 years we have: dismantled State Rail into separate companies who competed against each other with differing agendas; encouraged the experienced qualified workforce to join the private sector; paid the private sector to do all of the work; realised that with the different organisations and the private sector are competing against each other with differing agendas that is affecting the network and decided to combine the different organisations together again for the sake of completeness to relive the glory days; only managed to combine half of what the organisation used to be when combining it all back together; because only half the organisation has been put back in it is relying almost entirely on the private sector again to do everything which was the problem in the fucking beginning – but on paper we are making money in the short-term due to staff layoffs and the PPP contract setups offsetting the initial costs – in the long run we lose the money that we used to gain from our assets.

Government agencies as business units work as a business unit, now this may sound obvious, as it is obvious to the point I am repeating myself in the same sentence. For example, the construction arm of a local council. They must compete for work with other contractors. The profit they make goes into their unit. The loss they make affects their unit. They pay a dividend of the profit to the council in a shareholder type of arrangement. Their funding comes from competing with private firms for the work, mainly council work of course. The main problem with government agencies as business units is that because governments have been outsourcing things for so long they have lost all of their competent staff to private industry and they have been getting leaner and leaner workforces as they outsource more and more of their work. (1991-1998 governments lost 49% of their workforce – see above) Most government business units are effectively managers of outsourced contractors who do the work - more often than not the government business unit outsources the management of the contractor to a consultant - so the government business unit is managing the manager of a contractor who is managing the work.

The majority of people who work in government business units are managers or from a managerial background. This leads to some obvious problems. The first being that they generally do not have a proper understanding of the matters at hand and take the word for the contractor as law, the second being that because they do not understand the matters at hand they cannot effectively manage the financial or quality aspects of the work. If we take the example of the RTA. The RTA offered an amount of $50,000 for the maintenance painting of the bridge contract I am working on. The local council decided that they would look further into the costs of such a job before accepting the $50,000 offer. The local council not fully comprehending what the works involved came back with what they thought was a conservative figure of $350,000 for the works. The council negotiated and the $350,000 was agreed upon after much deliberation. The job went to tender. The RTA maintenance arm themselves put in a bid of around 6 times the negotiated amount that the RTA offered. The RTA had no idea of the costs of the type of work at hand.

With the RTA management arm not communicating with the RTA maintenance arm none of the knowledge is shared. Each arm of the RTA works as a separate entity; that is, a separate business unit. To further exasperate the problem, there are other arms of the RTA who again do not communicate with each other. RTA has a research and technical section who do not communicate with the management side who do not communicate with the maintenance side who do not communicate with the government. Each of the business units within the RTA are competing against each other with their own agendas and means of making money – they are doing the same thing that the rail organisations do.

Sydney Water is in the same boat. They are a government agency being run as a business venture. Sydney Water has to make money. Sydney Water has sacked a lot of staff in the tried and true State Rail way, consequently, Sydney Water outsources the maintenance and management of their system to companies such as ABB (ABB website). ABB is a Swiss company. At one stage ABB managed and maintained 26 Sydney Water sites. Thiess Services has undertaken the design, construction, management, and maintenance of Sydney Water sites (Thiess website). Thiess Services has founded their company entirely on their ability to design, construct, manage and maintain government “owned” facilities. Other companies have also done the same.

A monkey can read a website that says something is government owned or run, I, on the other hand, expected more critical thinking from you. The State Rail you and I refer to are not the same entity. The State Rail I refer to is no longer whole. The Sydney Water you refer to has not been elaborated on enough on your behalf to show whether or not you fully understand its circumstances.

I’m tired. I was going to give a proper essay reply but figured there was no point anyways because you probably will never read it, or if you do, will respond with an essay reply, which in-turn will require me to respond with another essay in reply. So the abovementioned will do for now.