Silver’s Corner

Just wanted to bring this excellent essay to attention.

I arranged a meeting with my local representative to discuss the Government’s ISP censorship proposal. It was a fairly good meeting, although Mr McMullan was fairly non-committal. He did say that he has always been against censorship and that he would make up his mind in due course.

I left him with this information pack (TeX source). There isn’t much new information here, but hopefully it’s presented in a way that is easy to understand.

Mr McMullan yesterday announced he intends to retire at the next election. Hopefully this makes him a little braver to speak up in his party. The only other point of note is that Mr McMullan said that he had far fewer people approach him for meetings on this than he expected. He didn’t say how many from each side, but did say that those who did see him had a considered opinion.

Today I am 10,000 days old. Yay!

What’s with the flag waving this year? In previous years, I don’t recall people flying Australian flags from their cars. The last two days, I have seen several on the roads.

This kind of patriotism makes me nervous. It is dangerous, and opens the door to bigotry and intolerance.

My first major disappointment in the new Labor government. This argument shouldn’t be about whether homosexual marriage is right or wrong, it’s about whether citizens of the ACT have the right to govern themselves. As a territory, we already do not have the full set of rights the states have. If we do not have the right to govern ourselves, then we should return to being directly governed by the Federal government.