By Scott
Cross-posted at GrodsCorp
Andrew Bolt loves to cry about how teh evil Leftists are running this state into the ground.
Water:
MELBOURNE’s summer water storage levels have slumped to their lowest point in 25 years… Yarra Valley Water managing director Tony Kelly, said Victorians were now using an “unacceptable” amount of water…Power:
TENS of thousands of houses sweltered through the night as sizzling heat caused power outages across the state…. “These extreme temperatures and excessive use of air conditioning can impact on the electricity distribution network,’’ Mr Batey said.Transport:
MELBOURNE’S train system buckled under the strain of Wednesday’s heat, forcing maintenance workers to cool the rails with water… But commuters were left boiling mad after enduring more than 150 cancelled services in one of the system’s worst days in recent memory…PUBLIC Transport Minister Lynne Kosky has blamed ”underinvestment over a long period of time” as a key factor in the poor performance of Melbourne’s public transport network in recent weeks.
But it’s not actually teh Leftists, it’s extreme weather events.
Water:
Melbourne has experienced below-average rainfall for the past decade.
Power:
Melbourne is sweltering through a once-in-a-century heatwave that is placing enormous demands on power supplies, with interruptions due to fuses blowing and not lack of supply.
Transport:
I’m no real fan of Connex, but when rails are physically buckling and breaking due to the extreme heat I do tend to understand that problems are largely out of their control.
Maybe the weather is leftist?
One thing regarding the buckling of tracks. It is a result of the train drivers.. oh wait sorry, it is due to vandalism.. no? is it due to government underfunding? yes that will do it.
hilarious! and when the liberals take over and the same problems continue, which they will, what then?
John Faine told one text messenger today that he/she was being nostalgic when he/she claims that the publicly owned Met operated better than Connex. I must be suffering nostalgia too. I’m sure the system used to be more reliable.
“but when rails are physically buckling and breaking”
Must be due to cheap, filthy, commie Chinese steal???
‘hilarious! and when the liberals take over and the same problems continue, which they will, what then?’
Years of neglect under incompetent Labor State Governments!
I remember going to a one day cricket match in about 1990 when it was 40+ degrees and the rails buckled near Armadale station. We had to catch a tram to the MCG and the Aussies were 4-44.
I think I still have scars on my buttocks from the molten hot bolts in the timber seats in the top of the old northern stand.
“Must be due to cheap, filthy, commie Chinese steal???”
you know you’ve been reading bolt too long when an innocent description of metal unwittingly becomes a stolen generations statement ;o) lol.
“Years of neglect under incompetent Labor State Governments!”
ahhh yes. how silly of me to forget that one.
LOL confessions, I didn’t even notice I made a spelling error. Must’ve been subliminal.
Fair enough comments on the trains and the power, but water? Bolt has a point. Can anybody seriously say that adding a million people to a city and not building a new dam in 25 years is sensible?
You have a good point daics.
Although i reckon the government needs to be looking at water recycling and efficiency rather than building new dams.
High rainfall farmland is rare enough in Oz, without people building dams on it!
Also Daics, i really do believe that we need to look at immigration from the perspective of water and land availabilty.
This is not a racially motivated immigration stance (as much of that on the Right is) but purely from a supply/demand point of view.
Our rivers, dams and cities are as dry as a nuns c*nt, we cannot afford more people, whether they are homegrown or immigrants.
Who’s for breeding permits!?
(why, oh why are the Left so vile and totalitarian?)
“Can anybody seriously say that adding a million people to a city and not building a new dam in 25 years is sensible?”
who knows, bolt is hardly a water expert. but what i can say is well done for actually posting a comment on this blog that has nothing to do with me. and fucking fantastic that you’ve chosen to ditch the psycho-sexual stalking shit you’ve used with just about everything i’ve written on this blog for the best part of 4 months.
YEEEESSSS! there is a god.
“who knows, bolt is hardly a water expert. but what i can say is well done for actually posting a comment on this blog that has nothing to do with me. and fucking fantastic that you’ve chosen to ditch the psycho-sexual stalking shit you’ve used with just about everything i’ve written on this blog for the best part of 4 months.
YEEEESSSS! there is a god.”
Please. Yes, it’s all about you confessions.
Psycho-sexual? You said a certain poster in another thread was like the boys you used to date… all too willing to try it on. Perhaps flippantly, i suggested that they were perhaps trying that purely to stop your ramblings. I stand by that. I am also gay so I’m tipping, with your histrionics and female bits and all, I think we might struggle to make it all work. You know?
The reason I focus on you is because in your mad rush to comment on this site, you display so many of the characteristics of those you condemn (eg Bolt.) The automatically blinkered stances on any number of issues, the inabilty or unwillingness to debate (see Israel/Palestine debate,) the resorting to childish, unhelpful name calling (rightard, racist, redneck, bigot etc.) There is also your absolutely ludicrous frequency of posting, which I once wasted an hour or so documenting, to find out you had posted some twenty odd posts in one day. As I’ve said before, for someone who hates Bolt, you sure spend a lot of time writing about him, fulminating at the injustice of it all when you could be doing other, more useful things with your life.
See Jeremy and certain others for examples of what you are not – clever, witty, fair and nuanced.
And, if nothing else, your steadfast refusal to place a capital letter at the beginning of each of your vapid, tedious sentences does imply a stubborness and lack of substance which, come to think of it, seems to sum you up quite well. (At least your posting personality, underneath you might be a lovely person.)
I will continue to point out these and many other flaws which you have. Indeed, there is a God.
And remember: I often criticise Bolt. I find it funny that on this site I’m listed as a “right-winger” by you. Ask yourself this: Have you ever once had the slightest nice thing to say about the man.” Agreed with anything he has ever said?
Didn’t think so. You’re just like him. Without the salary.
First, I take issue with your dismissive words ‘once-in-a-century heatwave’; it might have been a century since the last heatwave of such proportions, but it is unlikely to be a century until the next one. The argument that such events are an exception that doesn’t have to be considered when designing, maintaining and upgrading (water, transport, power systems) is a specious one if you ask me. A system should be constructed that allows for the extremes, especially extremes that, we have been warned for many years, are likely to become more normal as the globe warms.
The other thing, apparently unacknowledged by Bolt or by anyone on this page, is that the ramshackle state of Victoria’s infrastructure is the result of many decades of apathetic under-investment. The railway system, for example, should have been massively developed in the immediate post-war period and the fifties; level crossings should have been done away with, new lines built and old ones extended, and a start made on the type of underground metro system that many European cities large and small have. Sixty years later, after a series of inept and road-devoted governments of both persuasions, what do we have? And which party is to blame for the proliferation of poorly designed and built houses, townhouses and apartments, those with no eaves, thin walls, pathetic insulation, lots of glass facing the north, and taken-for-granted 24 hour reverse cycle airconditioning?
I do blame the Labor government for its procrastination, secret in-confidence decision making and general ineptitude on climate and transport related matters, but they have inherited the attitudes and crass political values of generations of governments which have presided over a gradual but inexorable shift towards private consumption (with spending on roads showing that they have been prepared to subsidise that private consumption) at the expense of public investment. And Bolt would heartily approve of this of course (why should a government think it is entitled to tell people how it is going to spend their money? – that type of thing), except when there’s a good perceived opportunity to blame the heinous lefties.
Any mention by Andy about the London transport system shutting down due to the weather? Why hasn’t Boris done something?
Being bolted with loose baseplates to ancient rotting sleepers, and connected together with equally loose fishplates, all of it on degraded ballast – goes a long way towards the tracks failing in extreme heat.
This is a problem that goes back at least to the 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan, it was primarily a roads plan: every freeway we’ve had built over the past 40 years derives from it, it had comparatively modest plans for rail that in hindsight appear monumental – except that aside from the Loop none of it was ever built. Line to East Doncaster, line between Huntingdale & Ferntree Gully (covers the Rowville gap); extending electrification to Werribee (occured 1983), Sunbury (still waiting), Craigieburn (occured 2007), Rockbank, Coldstream, Hastings and Mornington (lines all closed); as well as large purchases of additional rolling stock and new stations. The Loop is intended for something like 180 trains an hour, it currently does something like 97.
Instead through the 1970s there was seemingly a policy of uninvestment and cut backs which resulted in dropping patronage which culminated in the Lonie Report in 1979. When your public transport is ailing, who thinks to put the former CEO of General Motors on the job of fixing it? Victorias Liberal Party. It moved all major freight from rail to truck; slashed half the regional rail services (it wanted to shut them all down except Geelongs); closed the Port Melbourne and St. Kilda train lines (it also wanted to close Sandringhams and Alameins, and cut Hurstbridge back to Eltham); shutting down tram routes 12, 57, 69, 72, 78/79, and 82 (all spared); it was also responsible for cutting back late night services and introducing the three zones.
And then there was Kennett.
All the major attacks on Public Transport in this state have come from successive Liberal governments while the Labor governments have wallowed in it.