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PREFERENCE PATROL
People just won’t behave:
“While some of the reasons for not using public transport are valid, it appears the car culture still reigns supreme, with nearly 29 per cent of Sydney residents using their cars out of sheer preference alone,” an AAMI spokeswoman, Selina O’Connor, said.
On reading that, people may prefer to insure their cars with a company other than AAMI.
29 per cent of Sydney residents using their cars out of sheer preference alone
71 per cent are forced at gunpoint.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 11 at 08:21 PM • permalinkWho’d have thunk it. People prefer a mode of transport that takes them directly where they want to go when they want to get there.
All you individualists! It’s all your fault. If only you would act for the betterment of the state instead of in your own selfish interests.;)
Mrs A
Posted by Apparatchik on 2007 10 11 at 08:22 PM • permalinkPerhaps they prefer to not be beaten, robbed and raped by prowling gangs of
Lebanesethugs, or left stranded for hours on end by a system verging on collapse, or jammed in a creaking, swaying and poorly maintained sweatbox driven by a psychotic Armenian, wedged next to a dumpster denizen whose last tub was during the Whitlam era and who is keen to pass on the messages that the wires in his head receive.Or perhaps they like to pilot an asset that cost them a shitload of money, which provides convenience and freedom of choice, even if it lines Morries pockets every time it traverses a roadway already paid for many times over through fuel excise, road tax and userous registration/CTP fees.
I’m amazed at how many large companies have been infiltrated by these dingbats- perhaps they’re not as stupid as we assume- create a cause for concern, then put yourself up as an activist to combat said concern, get hired for 6 figures by evil corporation keeen to project a PR image of giving a shit about said concern.
Being subjected to Taliban rule is too good for these turds.
#2
Damn you IT. You said it so much better!!
Mrs A
Posted by Apparatchik on 2007 10 11 at 08:25 PM • permalinkIs is a coincidence that “sheer” rhymes with “sneer”?
I think not!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 10 11 at 08:35 PM • permalinkYou know, the other day I had a job interview downtown. I could have taken the bus that stops right next to my apartment complex—it would have been a straight shot to the interview location. Then I realized—hey wait a minute! I have a car! And I could leave half an hour before the interview time, not two hours before. I don’t have to take public transportation if I don’t want to. BECAUSE I HAVE A CAR. Suck it, ecobitches.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 10 11 at 08:40 PM • permalinkMemo to Selina O’Connor
From Chief Executive Officer
Re: Your job
Dear Selina,
AAMI insure cars. We do not insure trains or ferries. The odd bit of insurance on taxis and buses is a polite gesture, and costs us more than we gain. But we make our money on cars.
So, your recent survey public announcement on “crash” statistics was very interesting. You seem to sneer at 29% of our members for driving because they can. Well guess what? Those 29% pay your salary. They are your bosses. Not me, and not the shareholders. The customers are your bosses. Without them, there is no job for you.
Before you sneer ever again at your bosses, run it past me, and we’ll have a chat about it. I hear the CFMEU need a public relations manager for their coal miners concerned about global warming division.
Regards.
Some moron who used to think putting out crash statistics of their members by a dimwitted moron who sneers at our customers is good for business (until the board chairman phoned).
Speaking of cars: hilarious paranoia of some Democrats who fear catching disease from people who watch cars.
To steal from Habib, if I have a choice between sitting next to a dumpster denizen on a bus in a traffic jam with my head inches from the armpit of a short Italian woman who declines to either shave, shower or use deoderant, and sitting in that same traffic jam in my car with climate control, god knows how many speakers and seats that are actually wide enough for my body, then which option should I pick?
Personally, I prefer the option where I don’t have to watch beads of sweat running down underarm hairs and onto the shoulder of my suit. Or even worse, landing on my ear.
And don’t get me started on the fat bastard that sat down beside me yesterday and settled his ham-sized triceps full of chicken fat in my lap.
It’s been years since I last caught a bus on a regular basis, and it took me two weeks to get over my initial terror of a 72 passenger bus being thrown around corners like Fangio was doing the Nurbergering. I’m sure some of our bus drivers must get their wagons to do tail slides in the wet.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 10 11 at 09:24 PM • permalink#18 - The only bus I regularly catch is the porcelain one. It’s not everyones cup of tea, but it beats seven shades of shit out of public transport.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 11 at 09:28 PM • permalinkThere’s no point banging on about more people using public transport when, for example, Melbourne’s train network is pretty f**cked and unreliable with massive peak hour delays a regular occurrence.
Bottom line: if you have an important appointment, you can’t rely on public transport. So people won’t use it.
Posted by closeapproximation on 2007 10 11 at 09:47 PM • permalinkActually public transport is very expensive. A regular day for many, like dropping wife/kid off at work/school, then picking them up, and squeezing in a sidetrip to a shop/dry-cleaner/whatever, would cost so much in bus fare compared to the price of petrol. As for the time and logistics to do a regular day like that on public transport, it’s just sheer impossible.
Posted by Honkie Hammer on 2007 10 11 at 10:00 PM • permalinkThey could always try and solve the problem the Perth city council way.
raise parking fees by about 100% in 2 years, while simutaniously removing even the vestiges of security from car parks, bar the vulture-like grey ghosts waiting to ticket at the drop of a hat.A few years back I got my car broken into in one of their multistory car parks, the pleb scraping the earwax out of his lugholes was unintrested until I mentioned one of the items taken was a skinning knife I had under the seat.
Id thouroughly reccomend claiming something dangerous was taken from your car as a memory aid to the otherwise brain dead. He knew the culprits were most likely a couple of regular visitors to the carpark and phoned the police himself.
Remarkable what a little bit of personal danger will do…Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 10 11 at 10:40 PM • permalinkThe various government entities took over mass transit and made it “public” in the name of the “public”—I think something about revenue was involved, as it always is with those who couldn’t build a Lincoln Log cabin on their own, much less a business. Then cars won everyone’s vote—except those who ran “public” transportation. Now they want to force the taxpayers to do more than support public transportation with their tax dollars. They insist we actually ride on it! Just one more way to force our money from us, taxing our time overtly instead of through our earnings.
I have a close association with quite a number of senior people running Perth’s public transport system.
To a man they’re all mad advocates of public transport and constantly plotting ways of forcing people out of their cars. As readers of this esteemed site would guess, none of them use public transport themselves, all being supplied with cars and unlimited free fuel by the WA Government.
These guys actually work at a railway station, yet still drive to and from work.
“Do as we say, not as we do”, is their motto.
Our local bus system is shoddy at best. The routes are restricted to the main drags - were I to get a wild hair and decide to take the bus, I’d have to walk better than a mile to get to the nearest stop. There are no buses past 8 PM, none at all on Sunday, and no service during anything resembling a snowfall (if they call school, they shut off bus service). Other than a few ultra-greenie types, the only people who ride the things are our Wards O’The State, because they receive “free” bus passes as part of their taxpayer-funded goodie packages. The rest of us, exhaust-spewers that we are, prefer to use our personal vehicles, as our glorious mass transit system sucks on toast. Selina can bite me - I’ll be keeping my vehicle, thanks.
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 10 11 at 11:07 PM • permalinkBy far public transports best use is housing the mental patients that formally dwelled in sanitariums. Bus ports and train stations are also a delightful place to relieve ones self without having to take the trouble of aiming or actually using the rest room.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 11 at 11:13 PM • permalink“63 per cent of Sydneysiders would prefer to sit in a traffic jam than catch a bus or train”
What wonderful endorsement of the delight that is public transportation.
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2007 10 11 at 11:21 PM • permalink#30 - “formally dwelled in sanitariums” - delusional tuxedo wearers.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 11 at 11:26 PM • permalink130,000 of those delusional tuxedo wearers paid for this ad in the New York Times on Wednesday.
Wonder if they paid full price?
Check out the lovely Stalinist “man of steel” type photo they used in the ad, reminds me of Bryla’s pic from a few months back.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 10 11 at 11:32 PM • permalinkHey, it’s Friday afternoon in these parts, Blair is putting the final touches on his column - anyone gotta joke to share?
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 10 11 at 11:36 PM • permalink#34 - Blair’s DO NOT DISTURB sign is up and the column is getting the attention it deserves.
JOKE
On a recent transpacific flight, a plane passes through a severe storm.The turbulence is awful, and things go from bad to worse when one wing is struck by lightning.
One woman in particular loses it. Screaming, she stands up in the front of the plane..
“I’m too young to die,” she wails. Then she yells, “Well, if I’m going to die, I want my last minutes on earth to be memorable! Is there ANYONE on this plane who can make me feel like a WOMAN?”
For a moment there is silence. Everyone has forgotten their own peril.
They all stared, riveted, at the desperate woman in the front of the plane.
Then an Aussie bloke stands up in the rear of the plane.
He is gorgeous: tall, well built, with sun-bleached blond hair and blue eyes.
He starts to walk slowly up the aisle, unbuttoning his shirt ...........one button at a time. No one moves. Everyone is transfixed.
He removes his shirt.
Muscles ripple across his chest.
She gasps…...
He whispers…..
Here ya go luv - iron this and then go get me a beer….”
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 11 at 11:42 PM • permalinkThanks, paco!
Blogstrop: yeah, they’ve been promising some sort of railway area mass transit here for ages. They keep shoving money at it, but who will use it? No one who lives in the suburban areas it’s slated to go through will.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 10 11 at 11:46 PM • permalinkI think she was misquoted. Should be, “out of sheer preferencefor being alone.”
If the denizens of public transportation in Australia are anything like those in the US, that would be understandable. I haven’t seen anyone get their shoes puked on since I moved away from NYC and stopped riding the subway.
I drive a nice truck because I can afford to. I can afford to because I’ve reached a certain station in life. I reached this point through hard work and determination. I don’t want to hang out with public trans detritus anymore because it harshes my mellow, so I don’t.
I’m betting I’m saying what a lot are thinking.
The true environmental crusaders shun car, bus and train. Private jets are good that way.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 12 at 12:09 AM • permalink#28 - Ubique, I have had similar contact with many of the executives who run and have run Sydney’s public transport system.
If you go back a few years, the CEO of StateRail used to get not only a car, but a car and driver. The last CEO that I know of to take up this splendid arrangement was given a V8 Statesman with all the options, plus the go-faster chip for the engine. I heard his Pirelli’s used to last at most 8,000km. He was a petrolhead. I think the deputy-CEO also got a car and driver. That was a reduction on years gone by, when all the Chief Engineers (the general managers in effect) got a car and driver.
Most of the managers that reported to him also drove. As did the next level of management down. Great organisational bunfights were reported to break out everytime someone proposed reducing the number of free parking spaces in the CBD that managers were entitled to.
More recent CEO’s have of course started taking the train as a PR exercise. Most usually seem to prefer riding up the front with the driver, rather than out the back with the hoi-polloi.
As for reliability, a well used saying inside CityRail is that “the trains would always run on time - if we didn’t have to carry any bloody passengers”. I don’t think that those that work in public transport like their customers and more than I do. I only have to put up with them once a day - imagine spending your whole working day having to put up with bottom feeders and toothless nutbags. Ugh.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 10 12 at 12:11 AM • permalinkWhy is it that firms like AAMI - and EVEN WORSE, the NRMA - feel obliged to kick the people that they are supposed to serve.
NRMA in particular is just feral.
It consistently pushes the Green Left line on more public transport, lower speed limits, more Govt intervention, 4cyl cars, blah, blah, blah.
It’s the goddam National Roads and Motorists Association. Start standing up for more roads and what real motorists want, not the anti-car dirty Lefties who took over the NRMA.
Posted by Apparatchik on 2007 10 12 at 12:32 AM • permalink#41- The RACQ up here isn’t much better, giving a whole page of The Road Ahead each issue to this planet pandering pillock.
Why not go the whole hog, and hire this galoot as national fuhrer?
I read in the Fin Review yesterday that Queensland Rail is to spend squillions of dollars buying new locomotives and rollingstock to remove some of the existing bottlenecks in the coal export chain. They don’t want to have 50 coal ships sitting off the coast waiting anymore.
Does anyone find it funny that a Labor government, one that is usually part of the pantheon of “we’ll all be doomed” mob, trumpeting the fact that it is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to increase coal exports?
I don’t remember reading any stories about greenies lying down in front of coal trains. Which is not a good idea, because the driver can only see you from a few hundred yards away, and they take about a mile to stop.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 10 12 at 12:48 AM • permalinkOne of the women I work with was on the train coming in to work one day, when some guy behind her started pleasuring himself, and left the mess all over the back of her suit. Upon hearing this, I made a vow I’d never catch public transport ever again.
Needless to say, I gave her the rest of the morning off to go buy a new suit.
Hucbald—you sound like you think being stuck on a cheap plastic bus seat during a standoff between an armed tranny who thinks he’s Diana Ross and a few carloads of nervous LA Sheriff’s Deputies is a bad thing…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 10 12 at 12:57 AM • permalink#44- Sounds like a fine idea to me- wouldn’t want the job of hosing the dirty buggers off the cowcatcher though, especially in mid-summer.
#45- I drive everywhere, except when blotto then I use cabs; public transport is for when you can’t afford to be chauffered by some khat-chomping surly Somali with less of a grasp of English than a public school teacher.
I do like Melbourne trams though, especially in the CBD as it saves time and effort during a pub crawl.
#46- It gets boring if you don’t have a paper. Actually this seems to be a relatively common occurance- when my missus was waiting to pick me up off the train at Kuraby she spotted the (more like one of the) local village idiots bashing the bishop on a bench on the platform, filling in time before the 4.52 rolled in.
He may also have been the stationmaster.
Ash_
Please tell me he was taking great delight in his Times crossword puzzle and accidentally broke the nib off his fountain pen..
The alternative is just creepy.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 10 12 at 01:04 AM • permalink#63 - Apart from the rickshaw, the ferry is the only acceptable form of public transport.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 12 at 01:58 AM • permalinkCompletelt OT but this is a good little presentation for any lefty freaks you know regaurding Israel.
It even uses pictures and not to many big words so they might understand it.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 10 12 at 02:11 AM • permalink#66- Surely Old Fruit you must include the pachyderm taxi, and the venerable lighter than air derigible? Both have ample room for a retinue of bearers, punkah, char and gin wallahs, and some sound chaps for company. No better way to get to the hill station at old Dar, to see out the wet season.
#65
With a bit of luck I might get my car washed.
A little help from Lucielle couldn’t hurt, either.#70
Too far south for me to get any, but my barometer has fallen to 982… and the wind is blowing…and there’s this and this (click on the lightning tracker…) to keep me occupied.
Up here in Seattle, we’ve got a whole gaggle of utopian socialists running the transit system, trying to force people out of their cars by whatever means necessary. Granted, the bus service in and out of downtown Seattle works reasonably well (or at least it did back when I commuted there ten years ago) but they’re throwing huge sums of money at building a light rail link from downtown Seattle to the airport, ten years behind schedule and way over budget.
With that record of “success”, now they have a ballot measure trying to get $156 bilion in transportation funding approved over 50 years, with 90% of that going into more light rail. The whole thing is so ridiculous, even the wacko liberal county executive we have here is now opposing it. If this passes, the tax increases will be enough to force people to move.
Canberra’s most dangerous place is the Woden bus interchange (google for “woden interchange assault”).
It’s a full hundred meters from the new police station, but the coppers are too busy with organising the speed and smack trade to bother to saunter down.Posted by Honkie Hammer on 2007 10 12 at 02:36 AM • permalink#75 - Yes, the old ways are slowly dying out, but it will be a sad day when one can’t roger a native girl after a tiger shoot.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 12 at 02:57 AM • permalink75, 76, it may be unfair but the Super adventure club suddenly flashed before my eyes.
Please tell me your not members, on top of the shock of Ashs’ story (46.) it might be a little to much for my delicate constitution..
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 10 12 at 03:13 AM • permalink#77 If it makes you feel any better Frollicking, the woman involved was pretty shocked herself. So much so that after she’d bought a new set of clothes, she went back to the boss’ house and showered before she put them on.
I’d be inclined to hurt anyone who did that kind of thing on a train in front of (or in her case, behind) me.
Another sign of the end times, Gore has won the Nobel peace prize.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 10 12 at 05:08 AM • permalinkA huge relief for Gore - this will help him pay off his power bills.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 10 12 at 05:15 AM • permalink#83 I want to play a different game. I don’t understand the rules of this one.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 10 12 at 05:18 AM • permalinkHi everyone! I just got home from work after having the usual Friday afternoon panic session. This one was internal, but they usually come from people in Canberra emptying their “to do” list before the weekend. All that aside, I heard a genuine piece of comedy gold on the way home. On the ABC News they announced that the Government had assembled a panel to review the medals for bravery issued during the Battle of Long Tan. That’s fair enough; I’m firmly of the opinion that there is at least one VC in that action that wasn’t recognized. Being the ABC, they had to ask the Labor Party what they thought. The response was that they were firmly of the opinion that the members of D Coy, 6 RAR who participated in the battle should be awarded the South Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm unit citation. “That’s sounds fair enough.” I hear the people say. There are two problems with it. Firstly, D Coy were awarded a unit citation for that battle. They very proudly wear a US Presidential Citation. The second, very minor point, is that the South Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry was issued by…..wait for it…..the Government of the Republic of South Vietnam! How are the ALP going to arrange for a government that hasn’t existed for 32 years to issue a unit citation to the survivors of D Coy, 6 RAR? Is Julia going to use her communist contacts to get the present government in Vietnam to backdate one, or does Kevni have a time machine where he can go back to the 70s and ask for one? If he does, would he take St Gough out the back and quietly garrote him? Anyway, the point is that like all of the ALP’s policies so far, they sound all eco friendly and teddy bear huggy at first, but closer examination reveals that they are as useless and pointless as the people who issue them.
Posted by Richard Sharpe on 2007 10 12 at 05:18 AM • permalink#83 - Hang about. There’s been a recount and the Florida Supreme Court has awarded the prize to Bush.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 12 at 05:26 AM • permalinkIn addition, does that mean that the Australian Government can now issue foreign awards? Am I going to get a Purple Heart for dislocating my shoulder in Honiara tackling a NZ Army (Maori) outside centre in the OZ vs NZ rugby match?
Posted by Richard Sharpe on 2007 10 12 at 05:29 AM • permalinkI am not sure how many carbon credits $1.5m gets you, but it sure as hell purchases a lot of fried chicken.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 12 at 05:29 AM • permalink#93 - No. But you will get oranges at half time.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 10 12 at 05:31 AM • permalinkFire up the [url=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2VV309lbB8c]Lear Jet, Tipper [/url, we’re going to Sweden.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 10 12 at 05:32 AM • permalink#98 He was fine Ash. I, on the other hand, wasn’t. All he suffered was the disappointment of not scoring their fourth try. I had to talk my way out of not getting sent home for getting injured playing rugby on operations.
Posted by Richard Sharpe on 2007 10 12 at 05:51 AM • permalink#98 Would Kevin want to lock me up at
GuantanamoByron Bay and subject me to pan pipes and didgeridoo until I confessed to being an imperialist capitalist lap dog?Posted by Richard Sharpe on 2007 10 12 at 05:54 AM • permalinkLink to the subject of my rant is here.
Posted by Richard Sharpe on 2007 10 12 at 05:57 AM • permalink#102 He sure would Richard. But you deserve it just because you’re an imperialist capitalist lap dog.
Ash puts down “The Idiots Guide to Left-Wing Thinking”, and pushes her chair out from the desk. She sighs, then suddenly slams her head against the edge of the desk to get rid of everything she’s just learned about thinking left.
Probably Richard, but only because people like Rudd seem to think that they’d have the freedom to criticise under a government such as Chavez and his mates. They don’t realise they only have that freedom because other people are willing to fight for it.
O/T: Tonight on SBS at 8:30
As It Happened: Che Guevara - The Body and the Legend
Ernesto Che Guevara, the world’s most famous revolutionary, was killed in October 1967 under mysterious circumstances. Today, 40 years later, his image is the twenty-first century’ best-selling icon anywhere. Yet his myth has lost nothing of its force. Upon his death, Che remains vanished for more than 30 years. Was this disappearance an attempt to avoid the creation of an even more powerful historical legend? This film shows the last hours of Che Guevara, the reasons that led to the disappearance and the recovery of his remains through archives and witnesses, as well as the recovery of the body and the role that the vanished corpse with its amputated hands played in the creation of the legend of “Che”.
Might be good for a laugh… or high blood pressure.
#100 Somebody has to invent the nuclear powered car.
LOL I want one!
But actually, with nuclear power stations, an electric car is - technically- a nuclear powered car, since its power originally comes from a nuclear power station! Not quite as exciting when you think about it that way, is it?Posted by daddy dave on 2007 10 12 at 08:16 AM • permalinkRichard Sharpe,
The govt has already established a record for upgrading awards from Vietnam this year. My husband’s lieutenant, who was recommended for a military cross after his role in BCOY 6RAR’s engagement in Operation Bribie Feb 1967, was merely mentioned in despatches.
Bribie was absolutely the equal of Long Tan, 15 blokes killed, many more injured, bayonets ordered fixed for a last stand against a numerically superior VC force.
This year at the 40th reunion for the Bribie blokes Mal Brough presented him with an official citation. Not quite the military cross, but a belated admission that he had been robbed of an important honour. This man was a national service conscript who was sent to officer training and led his company with distinction. Ashley Elkins was instrumental in gaining belated recognition for him.
Hopefully every man who served in Vietnam and was nominated for valour will now be recognised appropriately.
#107
Was this what I heard about in ABC 612 Radio Friday? Many soldiers were recommended for awards however the Government department overseeing the awards ‘downgraded’ them all and only a few were given?
I didn’t catch all of it as I’d tuned in the radio in the middle of it, and was in and out of the car.#10 Andrea, you have realized that there is only ONE, finite, irreplacable resource:....TIME!
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 10 12 at 08:04 PM • permalinkmareeS,
As I mentioned, I think it is well and truly fair enough that they revisit the medals awarded. As I said, I think there’s at least one VC gone unawarded. The mindlessly stupid part is that the ALP want to a award a citiation from a long extinct government.
Ref Op Bribie, I concur. I would suggest that the panel’s terms of reference may not be as restrictive as to be able to only examine Long Tan in Aug 1966, but to look at the whole tour to include Bribie as well.
Posted by Richard Sharpe on 2007 10 12 at 08:59 PM • permalinkIIRC when AAMI commenced about 2 decades ago as a budget insurer they wouldn’t insure vehicles from Sydney’s West as they were considered a ‘bad risk’ - I bet that they don’t crow too loudly about their beginnings nowadays.
My (fat & lazy) insurer advises that sweet lil ‘aami’ is the toughest company to settle claims with.
Re #72, Vexorg, I’ve sat over here in Eastern Washington, and watched those klutzes flush money down the toilet all those years. Some of it including state tax funds, IIRC, for which I want to smack those utopian leftards along the side their heads with a crowbar.
And I notice that the Seattle traffic is getting heavier by the year…...a trend that I’m sure those clowns are wringing their socialist hands over. Too bad we can’t drop ‘em into one of the volcanic craters in the Cascades.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 10 13 at 12:49 AM • permalink
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I’ve got a hunch that Selina doesn’t catch any Sydney western line train or north western suburb bus to work.