When Malcolm Turnbull called for a vote on the Liberal leadership in 2009, Tony Abbott eventually won by one vote. One of Malcolm’s supporters was in hospital at the time and was not given a proxy vote, but more interestingly, one person just wrote “NO” on the ballot paper. Whilst I can understand not being pleased with the choice on offer, what I cannot understand is how a Member of Parliament can so abrogate their responsibility as to vote informally when they are possibly choosing the future Prime Minister of Australia.

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The carbon price was introduced to encourage polluters to clean up their act or pay the price. Why was this cost then passed on to consumers on their power bills? It seems to me that the polluters got off scot free and that their customers actually footed their carbon tax bill. They should have achieved the savings they needed by reducing their pollution rather than charging us. If the government really wanted to reduce the power bills for the average Australian, why not make domestic power bills GST free since businesses can already claim the GST back?

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If you look at the entire worldwide cosmetic industry, sales reach about $170 Billion dollars a year. It’s distributed pretty uniformly around the world with ~$40 billion in the Americas, ~$60 billion in Europe, ~$60 billion in Australia & Asia, and another $10 billion in Africa. The Western world spends a bit more per person but India and Asia are quickly catching up. What an absolutely ridiculous waste of money and resources on making people feel inadequate.

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Why do footballers hug and kiss and cry so much nowadays? Remember when a handshake just involved extending your right hand to your opponent rather than clasping them to your bosom in a heartfelt embrace? Have you noticed how many athletes have emotional problems? Or gambling or substance abuse problems? Paying sports people millions of dollars to play a game has led to huge pressure on individuals, organised violence to win, cheating, match fixing, doping, infiltration by organised crime. Does a soccer player contribute more to the world than a nurse or a teacher?

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Finland has the best education system in the world but they do things quite differently to us. Perhaps we could learn a few things from them (though they did ban Donald Duck comics because he doesn’t wear pants).

• School starts at 7 years
• No homework for young children
• No exams until you turn 13
• All classes are mixed ability
• Max 16 students in science class
• Lots of break time every day
• Teacher training to masters level
• Teacher training is paid for by government

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Approximately 3.5 million people in the U.S. are homeless, many of them veterans. At the same time, there are 18.5 million vacant homes in the country. The situation is similar in Europe where more than 11 million homes lie empty while 4.1 million people are homeless. In Australia, at the 2006 census around 10 per cent of housing stock was recorded as vacant yet there are over 105,000 people who are homeless.

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The United States, Liberia and Burma are the only countries not to adopt the metric system.

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Time for a coffee