Came to the op-ed section and happened upon this delightful little number from Miranda
HAVING spent the last week in dynamic Vietnam[*], news of the ongoing dysfunction of our government and endless obsession with leadership battles seems childish and self defeating.
Yep, the government is completely dysfunctional! I mean, it's ONLY passed 226 bills that have received Royal Assent!
Oh, and the "endless obsession with leadership battles", Miranda? That'd be the obsession currently held by the Press Gallery/media. Honestly, noone else a) cares or b) thinks it should take up every last bit of newspace going around.
Year 12 students in Ho Chi Minh City attend school from 6.45 am to 8 pm six days a week. They sit in neat rows in classes as big as 42, with a teacher actually imparting information with a blackboard and chalk.
Yay, rote learning! "Chalk and talk"! The teaching method which is being abandoned by most schools, due to the fact it simply does not engage students (it's called "passive learning" and it's a one-way flow. "Active learning" engages students in the task by exciting their interests or by being interactive in some form).
Of course, if you're educating children to work in clothes factories and manufacturing for the West, rather than be innovators, then I suppose they don't need to teach them critical thinking skills.
Meanwhile, we quibble over upgrading our busiest national highway, the Pacific Highway, to dual carriageway.
Strange, no mention about that *other* big infrastructure project Tony Abbott keeps talking about**.
It’s a democracy, after all - the people of Melbourne saddled us with the Green Adam Bandt and the witless citizens of New England and Lyne gave us the pleasures of Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, respectively.
Yes Miranda, in Australia we have a democracy. Which is better than the Marxist-Leninist-single-party state you were visiting and proudly extolling the virtues of : no democracy over there!
But, "witless" citizens of New England and Lyne?
Though, I suppose, if I was to go with the same line, I could say that the "witless citizens" of Indi and Sturt gave us the pleasures of Sophie Mirabella and Christopher Pyne....but I won't.
By the by, is it just me, or is that a fairly ad hominiem style attack on those voters by Miranda?
I only ask because, juxtaposed right next to that (main part of the page) column was this one
I won't deconstruct it, but it was basically a defence of Premier O'Farrell's first wife against being pulled into the public arena after a comment by Kristina Keneally.
But a salient line was:
[O'Farrell's first wife, Antoinette Colbran] decided she needed to speak out, to remind people of the toll the increasingly rancorous, ad hominem nature of Australian politics today.
(Emphasis added).
Mmmm, cognitive dissonance.
* Or, for its full name: The Socialist Republic of Vietnam
** I use the term "talking" loosely there. Saying "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!", "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAASTE!" and "WIRELESS IS THE FUTURE!" counts as him talking about it, right?
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