Where Do Irrelevant Old Women Go To Flog Their Books?
To the Zaky Mallah Show!Seriously, this has to be seen to be believed.
Zaky Mallah, the first person to be charged under Australia's terrorism laws has his very own youtube channel. As an uncovered meat, I'm way, way over the other side religiously and politically, but his subjects are quite interesting.
Jan Murray is the subject of today's interview. She had a gig for a few years on daytime television on a show called Beauty and the Beast. It was a panel-based show with one bloke surrounded by "beauties" who all ranted at one another.
I wasn't a viewer of it, and never had much opinion of it.
But we're talking about Jan. Apart from B&TB, she's probably best known for what she did with her husband on his desk a loooong time ago, and now she has a book out.
I knew there had to be a reason as to why she'd be sitting in some suburban bar in the middle of the day talking to a young fellow with a video camera.
I understand that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, but come one, Jan, everyone gets that. Especially in this day of two-hour news cycles and wall to wall information overload.
I won't offer too much in the way of kudos to Zaky, because I doubt it would have taken much (anything?) for Jan to open up. I will say well done on providing us, the book-buying public, with a worthy addition to the list of what not to buy.
Her views on John Howard and how awful he is are most entertaining, especially considering he's been out of office for 3 years and counting. She wants her book to sell like hotcakes, while hoping that John Howard's ends up in the remainder bin.
Somehow, I suspect that amazon.com tells a different tale.
Not exactly a huge presence on the world stage, is our Jan.
I'm more interested in what I consider is the money quote:
4.31 Zaky:What's the three things that really... pissed you off from former Prime Minister John Howard?
4.38 Jan: Umm. Well as I stated, the refugee situation was terrible, the GST sucks.
4.44 Zaky:So you don't like the GST?
4.45 Jan: No I don't like the GST I think the rich should pay more tax than the poor, and we're all paying the same level, it's a flat tax. I don't like the GST.
[emphasis added]
At 6.16 in the video, a snippet is shown of her television show, and she declares that she's a socialist.
So I guess we'll see here down here in Melbournistan for the Marxism 2011 conference.
What a meeting of the brains trust that will be.
The idea of a flat tax rate is (to my uneducated mind) rather sensible. This way everyone is paying the same rate. If you spend more, you'll be paying more.
The idea that your rate of taxation goes up because you happen to save/earn more than your neighbour is counter-productive. Why would I want to make more money if I know it's going to get taken away from me?
As for the GST, she can bleat all she likes, but the bottom line is that Howard took it to an election and won.
He had that most elusive of creatures... a mandate.
If she wants to complain about this high rates of taxation in this country, she should look to all those Labor State goverments who refused to drop State taxes like Stamp Duty when the GST came in.
The deal was that the States got the GST in return for getting rid of those.
Ah, the Labor Party. Australia's favourite communists...... which takes me away from Jan and into RantyLand.
One thing for Jan to think about.
Relevance.
How relevant is she feeling if she's hanging out with former terrorist suspects? How relevant is she feeling if she's whinging about a man who's not been in the public eye for years?
How relevant is she feeling if her book sales are a mighty 7-8000 copies (7.16 on the vid) when John Howard's are just that much more?
I wonder when I'll see Jan in the remainder bin?
posted by Nilk @ 8:47 PM
11 Comments:
"The idea of a flat tax rate is (to my uneducated mind) rather sensible. This way everyone is paying the same rate. If you spend more, you'll be paying more."
And if you're poor, and spend a greater proportion of your income on goods and services, you'll pay a lot more tax, proportionally.
"The idea that your rate of taxation goes up because you happen to save/earn more than your neighbour is counter-productive. Why would I want to make more money if I know it's going to get taken away from me?"
Because you're making more money even if a higher rate of it is "taken away from you". Also, that money is (or should be) going to fund useful public services that keep the country in which you live a decent place to live, rather than a crime-riddled ghetto.
The government shouldn't have to fund a stack of public services.
I've no objection to taxation paying for roads and other infrastructure, the police, defence forces and maybe some educational services, but nowhere near what government covers right now.
If the government weren't paying for arts grants, for example, then a large portion of the budget would be surplus to needs and taxation rates could be lowered.
Is that too much to ask, Jeremy?
Arts grants? Seriously? That's your solution to the budget?
Arts grants are a tiny proportion of public expenditure.
The real issue is that we still apparently can't provide all the kids in this country with decent health care - even dental care.
And we can't, apparently, afford to give all kids a first-rate education.
Nor have we managed to build decent public transport infrastructure to developing suburbs.
Tax cuts? Not while fundamental, necessarsy services are underfunded or nonexistent.
Arts grants over 3 tiers of government is not exactly nothing.
Neither is $500 million to Indonesia for their schools, or sheds in schoolgrounds that may or may not have been required.
My girl's school now has a nice new all-purpose sports building, but it took a chunk out of the land the kids play in, and came without furniture.
Or shelving in the music room and store rooms.
How many schools there?
And the NBN that Bolta is always bringing up? I don't need one of those - I've already got broadband.
If we weren't wasting money, we could provide those necessary services.
No use discussing tax etc with Jeremy. He is trying to be a vegetarian, trying to be a journalist, trying to get other people to pay for his life. All said he is very trying. It must be easy to get a Law degree these days. I tried to listen to his podcast, it was terrible. It was like listening to schoolboys trying to sound all grown up and smart, they appear funny to each other but to those around them it's not funny at all. The podcast had the intellectual stimulation of a bowl of custard.
OH no! A critic! (Also a spiteful, dishonest troll, but anyway.)
Nilk, "$500 million to Indonesia for their schools"? Link please.
At least we agree there needs to be more funding for education.
Now we just need to see what actual "waste" is in the budget that can be cut, and how much of a shortfall we'd have even if it was.
Hmmm. Let's see.
The Australian
The Australian again
And this is on top of the $1 billion that John HoWARd gave after the tsunami back in 2005.
That's a crap load of your taxes going to another country.
Unfortunately, The Australian articles don't give the Government's rationale at all. It's all right-wing critics of anything the government does ("think the BER, pink batts and the raging debate over the costs and relevance of the NBN", lol)
So I have no idea what the point of that $100m/year is.
If it's designed to improve security in our region and reduce the ability of the nutbags to recruit terrorists, which I'm guessing is Canberra's thinking, it might be money well spent. But that's the problem with partisan hacks like News Ltd - you can't rely on them to actually explain the debate so you can form an informed view.
But, seriously, it's not like the Liberals are promising to properly fund your daughter's school either, let alone the necessary services I mentioned above. They could cut all that allegedly "wasteful" spending and they still wouldn't be able to afford it, because the government is not taking enough in tax revenue to fund the services we need.
The Australian shouldn't need to give the government's rationale.
The government shouldn't be giving millions upon millions of taxpayer funds away for no return.
Altruism's all well and good, but do it with your own money. Taxation is public funding and supposedly for the common weal.
As for the services that we need, I don't believe a translation service that provides 15 different translations of the same brochure in the doctor's surgery is a necessary service, for example.
I don't believe that governments should be providing funds to charities. There are plenty of so-called charitable organisations that get a goodly chunk of their budget from the government (whatever level).
Yes, they provide a service, but again, it's not the government's responsibility to fill that need.
It can't be all things to all people, because then all it does is take up our money and throw it at every cause on the books.
Roads, rubbish collection, major infrastructure and especially defence and law and order I can get behind.
"Green" and eco-friendly claptrap I can't. There's nothing wrong with living in a sustainable or environmentally friendly manner, but don't force it down my throat.
I'd follow that up with, "Is that too much to ask?" but I already know the answer to that one.
Oh, and paying someone to get their kids immunised is bullshiite, too.
BTW, hi, SFW! :) I didn't know Jeremy had a podcast.
Link? Link??? :D
"OH no! A critic! (Also a spiteful, dishonest troll, but anyway.)"
I may be a poor critic but I don't understand why I am spiteful, dishonest and a troll. Perhaps Jeremy can enlighten me.
Here's a link - http://purepoison.podbean.com/ I really wouldn't suggest you spend much time there. I much prefer econtalk -http://www.econtalk.org/ or PEL - http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/category/podcast-episodes/ . It must be good to be a caring leftie, they are so much cleverer and better than the rest of us.
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