A sporting chance...

Decided to take some initative and start a sporting team for work. Found a fustal competition at KGV for Tuesday lunchtimes which leads to the obvious questions...what should we be called? At the moment, all I've got with is "Can add, can't kick..." which one person doesn't particularly like, will toss this up at work.

As everyone knows Arsenal managed to get a trophy in the bag with a dreadful display in Cardiff. Even with both feet firmly in the Arsenal camp, Man Utd were hard down by and Arsenal has to thank Lehmann... and who said he doesn't perform in big games???

And now for my first Oztag update for this season. Rather unsurprisingly, we're zit and three on the win-loss record - a far cry from GFist's last season. Frankly, this season we're simply in a league of our own, I'd rate it as Division S, whereas we're in Division A and of course, S is for Shit.

Quote-Unquote

"That is only a whiff of a hint of a beginning of NSW's failure to invest in backbone systems. With critical failures in education, health, law and order, transport and water, the Carr Government ranks as one of modern Australia's great do-nothing regimes. After a decade in power, it has no excuse."

Star Wars

was good.

and apparently I'm most like Gandhi of famous leaders.

re: Public Transport

A certain "Suti" posted in response to my public transport views - I wholeheartedly agree with this. Its no surprise that any piece of infrastructure has been tendered off by the State Govt, ie, the M7 Western Orbital, M5, Cross-City Tunnel, Airport Rail Link and the list goes on... simply the government is terribly short-sighted... and yes, subject to political wrangling with their 4 year election terms.

But look at like this.... the ALP has dominated the state government landscape for the last decade with at least the current term controlling both houses. What better way for Carr to leave a legacy to the future generations of New South Welshmen by having a public transport system that would compete with truly global metropolises such as London, New York and Tokyo. Instead with have a legacy of privately owned motorways encouraging the LA-style car culture and a rotting public transport system. My fear is that beautiful Sydney will become the urban scrawl and super-highways of LA and dammit I hated that city. If only there was a better party in opposition...

Public Transport

Reading this article re-ignited some thoughts on public transport and the lack of public transport infrastucture in Sydney. You see, in principle, I'm a fan of public transport but in practice, for many of my desired destinations its not feasible.

There's no need to spell out the reasons for that lack of practical feasibility about it but I will explicitly mention that lack of services in the western Sydney, particularly the growing north-west. The article mentions adding a second train line over the harbour bridget reducing bottlenecks on the red and yellow lines. This absolutely makes sense as its this very bottleneck that causes endless delays at Central - which create a domino effect on trains heading west (as the bridge is their source) and trains heading north or around the city circle (hence affecting my line) as they delay will be at Central going north.

Some bloke called Christie did some report a while ago... and proposed a train system with the following map. It looks pretty good, huh? pity is a 40 year plan or something like that. I'd also add a couple of ideas to my public transport system:

• London-style daily charge to enter the 'restricted' CBD zone by car thereby reducing the number of cars on CBD roads and providing revenue for public transport
• Light rail going up and down George St from Broadway to Circular Quay
• High speed train services such as the one proposed by Leighton linking the CBD with major centres of 'outer' Sydney, eg Parramatta, Liverpool, Sutherland and Hornsby
• Single deck trains which are timetabled more frequently than the present double-decker trains but carry the same passenger numbers in aggregate
  

Of course in a utopia we'll have all this, but I guess in a world of economic reality, taxes, etc we'll just have to be content with what we have.