Short Memories…

Why do we have such short memories?

4 short days ago, the Abbott government decided to make Australia the ONLY country in the world to remove a carbon price. Of course we knew that he was going to do this. He even won an election on the basis of it.

For some strange reason, the people in this country, in their blind determination to protest against a dysfunctional Labor party, voted…nay…actually chose to accept Tony Abbott as our Prime Minister. Bit by bit, slowly but surely, people are realising their mistakes, but at what cost and what damage will occur before we get a chance to vote the LNP out again?

Fortunately (?), we have a fellow nutbag that has been voted in as well. Clive Palmer is determined to make things very difficult from Abbott and his team and this could be a silver lining for Australia’s well-being.

So, following the obligatory cheers from the Murdoch media, everyone else set about lambasting this government over their scepticism of climate change and lack of forward thinking…and then a plane was shot down carrying almost 30 Australians in Ukraine. This horrendous act, seemingly by pro-Russian militants, has pushed local politics to the backburner as we learn about the details behind the incident. 

Following the downing of the MH-17 flight, Abbott ‘came out strongly’ saying that a “..Russian-supplied..” weapon was responsible for the crash. Of course this has angered Russia, who despite the current conflict with Ukraine may have supplied the weapons, but certainly were not directly responsible.

The US provides millions of dollars worth of weapons to countries that kill thousands of people every year. So, using the excuse that the militants were armed by Russia, therefore it is their fault, is a long bow to draw.

I digress, because this post is about short memories, and as you can see, I have diverged from this topic very easily, just as the rest of Australia have when it comes to Abbott. All of a sudden the media are talking about the strong stance of Abbott on the MH-17 disaster and the Carbon Tax repeal of 4 days ago has seemingly faded into the background.

Let us also not forget the current abhorrence that is occurring in the Gaza Strip where fighting continues to worsen, or the Iraqi invasion by ISIS which is scary as hell. Can we only focus on one thing at a time? Are we so narrow-thinking that our news must have happened in the last 12 hours for it to be relevant. It seems that we forget the past over and over again in favour of the latest news, which must be more important?

Maybe social media is to blame. Maybe we are so on the ball with news and up to the second reports from around the world that whatever happened last week is old news and barely worth reporting on. 

Apparently 47% of respondents think that Abbott is a good leader.

Leader of what, may I ask? Ambiguous question much?

In the same survey only 35% say that he is trustworthy.

So, you’re saying that you can be a good leader, but be untrustworthy at the same time? That doesn’t really compute. I would think that trust is a fairly major component of being a good leader.

Again, I have strayed off topic. 

My point, if I really need to have one, is that we need to remember. We need to remember that whatever has happened this week, doesn’t diminish what happened last week, or the week before or 12 months ago.

Sure, it may be harder to find news on that event that happened 2 weeks/months/years ago, but it’s still there and it’s still important. I don’t understand how opinion polls can swing upwards due to one positive event, with people saying, “Oh, he said something strong, he must be good now..”.

That’s not how it works!

</rant>

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9 years ago

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