Apparently, pockets have no bottoms in Oz

[JRD]

Copacabana beach, December 31st, 2012!

2,3 million people, of which about 1 million are foreigners, watching the fireworks. It lasts for over 20 minutes. It is the biggest event in Rio in this time of the year. Hotels are 95% booked and you have to wait 1:30+ hours for a table on a decent restaurant.

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Rocinha favela, 70,000 inhabitants... just a short walk from Copacabana. Note the fancy buildings at the bottom of the picture.

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[fragger]

 :o

That's about as graphic a contrast between the haves and the have-nots as you could possibly get. Well put, JRD.

[Art Blade]

absolutely  ??? :(

[PZ]

Yet another example of at best bungling incompetence, and at worst, self-serving bullshit. 

[fragger]

My Dad won $10 in the State Lottery. The government took $1 of it.

How lousy can you get? >:((

[PZ]

No offense against Oz intended fragger, but evidently the criminals that founded much of the beginnings of Oz long ago must have ascended (or perhaps more accurately, descended)_ into governmental positions

[mandru]

fragger, I was wondering if he can prove that he paid more than ten dollars to win that prize can he get the dollar back when he files his year end taxes?

I know that here in the U.S. when you go to Las Vegas or if you're at one of the race tracks by keep solid records of your losses in the form of receipts and losing ticket stubs you can beat that tax bite.  ;)

[Binnatics]

Isn't that amazing ::)

[PZ]

fragger, I was wondering if he can prove that he paid more than ten dollars to win that prize can he get the dollar back when he files his year end taxes?

I know that here in the U.S. when you go to Las Vegas or if you're at one of the race tracks by keep solid records of your losses in the form of receipts and losing ticket stubs you can beat that tax bite.  ;)

So true when in the US legal system, mandru.

Reminds me of the serial killer that was paroled because of a Miranda rights violation.  Not only did he get out of jail, but it set the stage for his suing the government for violating his rights.

This was a man that killed so many people he did not remember the number.  When a detective said "I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of people you have killed", he responded, there are not enough fingers and toes in this room to account for the number of people I have killed.  There were four people in the room.  Yet, the government in it's infinite wisdom set this man free allowing him to continue his killing career

How's that for justice.

[Art Blade]

the government in it's infinite wisdom

Maybe it's time to elect "complete idiots." The outcome might be more desirable than what you get with "infinite wisdom" :-D

[PZ]

 :-D  I think you may be correct

[nexor]

2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup in South Africa, some Stadiums were upgraded and some were new constructions 

Johannesburg FNB  Stadium upgrade ZAR 2, 2 Billion ......  USD 440
Johannesburg Ellis Park Stadium upgrade ZAR 552 000......USD 7200
New Cape Town  Stadium ZAR 4.4 Billion....USD 600Million  ZAR 40Million thereof was for consulting fees
New Durban  Stadium ZAR 3.4 Billion....USD 450 Million
New Port Elizabeth  Stadium ZAR 2.05 Billion....USD 270 Million
Nelspruit New Stadium ZAR 1.05 Billion...USD 140 Million
New Pietersburg Stadium  ZAR 1.24 Billion....USD 150 Million

Some of these Stadiums have not been used since the World Cup

All this when the unemployment rate for 2000-2014 averaged 24%

[fragger]

Regarding your comment mandru, I don't think Dad could be bothered :-() But thanks for the thought.

Nex, that's unbelievable ??? Or maybe it is. Politicians love spending money on frivolous events that benefit nobody but themselves and those who take part, just so they can posture and bask in a world spotlight. Sydney blew close to three billion dollars on the 2000 Olympics and there is now nothing to show for it except for a massive stadium that mostly sits empty.

No offense against Oz intended fragger, but evidently the criminals that founded much of the beginnings of Oz long ago must have ascended (or perhaps more accurately, descended)_ into governmental positions

No offense taken, buddy :-D There is that one word in your post that I feel compelled to address though, and I stress that I'm not taking umbrage here. It's just a common misconception.

The ironic thing about convict transportation was that the vast majority of convicts weren't criminal people by nature. The ultimate cause of it all began in the 16th-17th centuries in Britain when the powers-that-were began to pass a series of bills collectively known as the "Enclosure Acts". The intent was to force the largely bucolic rural citizens into a system of taxation, and it failed utterly. These were people who for centuries had lived for the most part in a barter system, sharing enormous common pastures within their communities (which is why there are so many places in Britain today called "Such-and-Such Common" or "The Commons". The intent of the new laws was to divide up and fence off these common pastures - "enclose" them - for purposes of taxation, so that farmers would basically have to rent an allotment, then pay tax in the form of a percentage of whatever they produced. The burgeoning landed aristocracy was empowered to make sure that this new system was enforced, with "Lords" appointed to see to it that the "commoners" in their area paid up (and these nobles were simply keen to get their hands on as much land as possible, so they didn't care what happened to those who couldn't pay). When the rural population was forced into a monetary system that was both unaffordable and alien to them, many couldn't cope with it or couldn't meet their new financial obligations and were turfed off their land. Mistakenly believing they could find w@&k in the cities, that was where they began to gravitate, mostly to the biggest city of them all, London.

Thus began one of the greatest mass-migrations of humans in history. But there was no w@&k for them in the cities, and back then there was no public welfare system of any sort in place. Residents of London didn't want these undesirable people around and so they ended up being shunted off to the outskirts, most to what would become the East End of London. With thousands, then tens of thousands, then millions, of dispossessed people inhabiting this area, it eventually became a stinking, sprawling slum, the greatest ghetto the world has ever seen.

Now, it doesn't matter how law-abiding a person you may try to be, nor how moral and righteous - if it eventually comes to a choice between stealing food and starving to death, I can pretty much guarantee that you will steal. If you have no money, no means of getting any, and you family is starving, you will steal. And when millions of people are in this situation, the theft is going to become astoundingly rampant. It did become so rampant that the authorities came up with a collective term for the slum inhabitants: they dubbed them the "Criminal Classes". They believed that these people deliberately conspired to make a living from theft, and that the only way to stem this perceived tide of criminality was to make the punishments as Draconian as possible: steal an apple, spend seven years in jail. Steal two apples, spend fourteen years in jail. Steal an apple and a loaf of bread or a bolt of cloth, spend life in jail or be hanged.

Of course that did nothing to stop the thieving. Starving, penniless people will steal to survive - after all, starving to death and hanging on the end of a rope are both pretty unpleasant ways to die.

And so the prisons quickly filled up. When they were full, any old ship that could be found was stripped of its masts, sails and rigging, permanently anchored out in the middle of the Thames, and loaded up with excess prisoners. There came to be literally miles of these prison hulks, lined up along the middle of the river, loading up on prisoners, until they were all full. The government was loath to build more prisons, and for a while a partial solution was found by shipping prisoners off the colonies in America and the West Indies to w@&k as "indentured servants", or in reality slaves, until their sentences were carried out. But then those pesky Americans rose up, declared Independence and fought a war over it, so that put a stop to transportation for a while, until eighteen years after Cook returned from his first voyage to the southern hemisphere and they remembered the reports he'd made about the country he'd found there (contrary to popular belief, Cook didn't "discover" Australia - other Europeans, largely Dutch with the odd Portuguese explorer, had been bumping into the west coast of it for a couple of hundred years before Cook came along. Cook was the first European to map the east coast, and it wasn't even realized that the east and west coasts were part of the same country. The Dutch called it "New Holland", the Brits called it "The Great South Land").

It's not true that the only reason for transporting convicts to Australia was to relieve prison overcrowding. War was looming between England and France, and the French had colonies in Indonesia and Southeast Asia which the British were keen to keep an eye on (the Brits were also keen to muscle in on the Spice Trade out of Indonesia). A naval base in the southern hemisphere located relatively close to the French colonies would have great strategic importance, and since Cook's reports had included the discovery of a small island off the east coast of the Great South Land which was covered in towering pine trees which might make ideal ship masts, and had a wealth of flax which might make good sail cloth, it seemed that there was an island brimming with ship materials already located in the right place. So the convicts were not just sent here to relieve overcrowding - the eventual objective was to establish a ship-building naval base. As it later turned out, both the pines and the flax of Norfolk Island proved to be totally unsuitable to ship-building. Cook had only observed them from afar since he hadn't been able to land on the island due to the reefs that almost completely surround it.

But even without the naval base, transportation was having the desired effect - sort of. The prisons were still filling as fast as they could be emptied - filled with people who would mostly be law-abiding folks otherwise if it hadn't been for their uncaring, short-sighted government, aided by venal aristocrats, taking their land away from them to start with.

Sorry to introduce a historical thesis into what's supposed to be a rant topic :-() But there is a rant involved, not just on my part but of all Australians. I believe that due to the circumstances that landed us all here, to this day there is still an undercurrent of mistrust, both of authority and of aristocracy, that flows through Aussie society. I think this innate mistrust is what compels us to try to be as egalitarian a society as we can, even if only subconsciously - our forebears saw firsthand what a supposed democratic government with an attendant aristocracy can be capable of. Most Australians rant against any hint of absolute power or class consciousness, since it was these things that dumped us here in the first place, and even after all this time, the wound is still a bit sore.

So to slightly amend your statement PZ, it's more a case of the politicians having been politicians all along, while the "criminals" got on with the job of building the country once their unfair sentences had been carried out :-D

[Binnatics]

Good read Fragger! :-X +1 for clarifying that ugly piece of history. I never knew that the Dutch discovered the West coast of Australia.

And funny how the word "common" pops up once again. Sounds like proper 'common sense' these commons :-D

[nexor]

I can't remember if I posted this before fragger, my wife's maternal grandfather emigrated from Kenya to Australia during 1963 when Kenya got their independence from British rule.
The wife's grandfather found a huge piece of uninhabited land but for one man in South Western Australia, this piece of land was given to a man who apparently was a state witness many years ago, the Australian government gave him the land at this remote part of Australian coast for his own safety.
Some years later a homeless guy arrived there and the "owner" was so glad to find another human being that he took the homeless guy in and they spent many years there together until the "owner" passed away leaving the land to the homeless guy.
Soon after the wife's grandfather arrived in Australia he and this homeless guy somehow bumped into each other and the grandfather bought the land from him

[PZ]

You hit the nail on the head, fragger - whenever there appears to be something that is simply wrong, it is almost always the case that a politician is behind it.

[Art Blade]

good read, fragger :) +1 :-X

[fragger]

Thank you chaps :) I did a substantial amount of nutshelling in that post, but I wasn't about to write a book here (although I made a pretty good start :-())

@Nexor, that's a very interesting tale :-X I don't think you have posted that before.

[JRD]

2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup in South Africa, some Stadiums were upgraded and some were new constructions 

Johannesburg FNB  Stadium upgrade ZAR 2, 2 Billion ......  USD 440
Johannesburg Ellis Park Stadium upgrade ZAR 552 000......USD 7200
New Cape Town  Stadium ZAR 4.4 Billion....USD 600Million  ZAR 40Million thereof was for consulting fees
New Durban  Stadium ZAR 3.4 Billion....USD 450 Million
New Port Elizabeth  Stadium ZAR 2.05 Billion....USD 270 Million
Nelspruit New Stadium ZAR 1.05 Billion...USD 140 Million
New Pietersburg Stadium  ZAR 1.24 Billion....USD 150 Million

Some of these Stadiums have not been used since the World Cup

All this when the unemployment rate for 2000-2014 averaged 24%

Nex, as you know, Brazil just hosted a world cup last year between June and July. I read your figures and it amazes me how much similar we did, plus a few billion dollars.  :D

I happen to live on a short distance from the Maracanã stadium where the final match took place. This is where I run 3x a week so I know that place like you know your own backyard. In the years before the world cup people were discussing about the legacy such event would leave to generations to come to justify the astonishing costs of hosting it in Rio.

Almost a year has passed since we took a beating from Germany (7 x 1, ouch  :'( ) and the said legacy is zero. No, I'm not kidding... is ZERO. No improvements were made whatsoever, except the area around the stadium, and I mean the immediate area itself because if you cross the street you will be stepping on the same old, cracked and dirty sidewalk as before. I can only mention one litle piece of w@&k done by the town hall between my place and the stadium: There is an avenue that leads from one metro (subway) station towards west that was also used by many people heading to the games. At one point the sidewalk on that avenue runs alongside an apartment building at the corner of that avenue and a small street. This particular sidewalk, for whatever bad engineering or lame urban planning was so narrow that only one person could pass at a time, and this just on a 20m (60ft) stretch, causing some people to walk near the curb, over the asphalt.

They made that 20m stretch wider.......   :-(

Several works called "urban mobility" were promissed all over town. I see no improvement on my daily commute to and from w@&k, at all.

About 30% of the "improvements" promissed were either dropped mid way or not yet delivered. All of them blew the initial budget by a few hundred millions.

Special bus routes on dedicated urban corridors were built (a quick fix to one of the worst issues a city as big as Rio has that does very little to make traffic a bit better) and are now empty (never been used) or requiring basic maintenance because the w@&k was poorly executed.

With the money they used to remodel the Maracanã stadium you could have completely levelled the ground where it is, down to a flat empty area, and built a brand new stadium from scratch.

They build a state-of-the-art stadium from scratch in the rain forrest (the Amazon Arena), in the state of Amazonas. They don't even have a state league of football (soccer). No matches are scheduled to that venue for the forseeable future.

To top it off, we are hosting the Olimpics next year (and keep in mind that we hosted the Pan American games in 2007) and believe me or not... no facility from the Pan American games will be used during the Olimpics and the Maracanã Stadium will have to be remodelled to host the soccer matches during the games, again.

:(

[Art Blade]

 ??? :D

[PZ]

Dang, JRD, are they just printing money with no backing?  ???

[nexor]

What gets my blood to boiling point JRD, the government have no problem spending these Billions on sport stadiums but will not spend anything on healthcare.
Most emergency equipment at ALL State Hospitals urgently need replacement, they are desperately short on funds, staff, beds, everyday health care equipment....etc...etc, the list is a mile long.
These fat a$$ government officials, from the top all the way down don't give a s#!t because they can go to any Private Hospital and get the best treatment money can buy, which they don't even have to pay for.
There are thousands of people in rural areas who have no housing, no electricity, no running water and no flushing toilets, some areas have portable toilets, about ten shacks per toilet, these shacks can house from one person to about ten. Most of these people don't even pay for water or electricity, so we the tax payers have to pay those bills, while the government is bragging on how good they are by giving FREE water and electricity to their people, 90% of these people don't even pay income tax either.

[nexor]

Speaking of money PZ, the "people of the country" thinks that the country have an endless supply of money, mind you, the way the government officials is blowing money they also think the country has an endless supply of money   >:(( 

[PZ]

Sounds like social services are the same everywhere.  People that are too lazy or mentally deficient to w@&k are being supported by the rest of the population.  However, the politician will have us believe that they are the geniuses of society finding ways to provide services for nothing to people that deserve nothing.

Personally, I'm tired of supporting people whose largest ambition in life is to discover how to abuse social services.

[nexor]

When reading all this makes me wonder if we are the ones missing the plot somehow  ???  :D    >:D