Category Archives: Commentary

TSD Fighting for Relevance in a New Age

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Between Twitter, Facebook, TumbleDrew (andrewcanion.com), Flickr and the various other sites that effectively communicate and aggregate my online life, this old website has slowly gathered dust.

Anyway, I’ve given twosittingducks.com a fresh lick of paint, updated WordPress to the latest version (a program which, incidentally, has travelled leaps and bounds since it was first released and was a poor man’s Moveable Type), and have gone so far as writing this blog post.

I can’t guarantee that much more will happen here, but rest assured, I’m still on the interwebs somewhere.

It is interesting, though, how the original view of web publishing was to get away from “the man”. It offered the chance for everyone to be their own media mogul, with their own voice. But it would seem that the man is having the last laugh. The growth of the large community based sites, notably Facebook, has given the ability to blog and share information to everyone – at least within their walled garden. Not that I am really in a position to complain, since I have fallen for it as much as everybody else.

But at the very least I know that if it all goes pear shaped, I can always come back to my blog at twosittingducks.com. I don’t pay hosting fees for nothing!

Redesigning Perth’s Urban Form

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a lecture presentation by Enrique Penalosa, former Mayor of Bogota, Colombia about how we as communities need to be more willing to design cities as places for people, rather than for cars. Mr Penalosa was a captivating and entertaining speaker, his 90 minute presentation seemed to last only 30.

His own experience in Bogota is just a Google search away, so I won’t rehash it other than to say he challenged public opinion and brought democracy through equality in terms of not providing high quality services for cars in favour of pedestrians and cyclists.

He presented some great thoughts and challenges for Perth, which is a city that was developed in the 1950′s and 1960′s as a city designed primarily for cars. Perth has fantastic wide roads, no tolls and long freeways. Yet all this infrastructure has still led to congestion. Yet building more roads will simply exacerbate the problem. We as a society need to find better ways of building our cities, ways that favour public and pedestrian transport over the car. As fuel supplies become more expensive, this need will become even more apparent.

We need to destroy the stigma that public transport is for the poor and lower class, and instead promote the fact that it is cheap, fast and convenient. Of course, Perth struggles with its car-based development which has led to urban sprawl in this regard. It is expensive and difficult to offer complete public transport in the hinterland. Accordingly, we need to be more willing to grow the density of our city.

Perth as a city for cars is unsustainable – we need to think of more clever ways to achieve quality of life. We need to work to becoming unwedded to our space-hogging vehicles. For example, why do cars get to enjoy the foreshore views along the Perth Esplanade and Cottesloe Beach? Shouldn’t they be places first and foremost for people?

A Rant About Interest Rates, Banks & Australia’s Economy

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Our bank today followed the lead of others and raised its mortgage interest rates. Such are the joys of existing within an oligopolist banking system. Sure, it can be said that if we’re not happy we can shop around for lower rates but considering that all the banks conveniently act in lockstep with one another, combined with the charges and penalties, time and effort associated with switching, there’s really no point.

All that is left for the poor customer is to take it up the arse.

Of course, the banks argue that this is simply a reflection of rises in the cost of borrowing following the US sub-prime situation. I contend that perhaps the banks shouldn’t be so desperate to preserve their extremely nice profit margins and try putting customers, not shareholders, number one for a change. Such a strategy would lead to happy customers, more customers, more profits and happy shareholders. But I guess long-term strategies are of no interest to rich board members simply looking to secure their next performance bonus from the shareholders.

The problem with the Australian economy now is that it is geared towards two income families. Anybody who is not in a position to benefit from two household income earners will struggle to make ends meet. I worry what this might mean for our society on a broader level? How will kids be brought up if their parents are both out all day, every day working to pay for the mortgage? How do pensioners continue to make ends meet? How do entrepreneurs who have taken a risk by sacrificing an income to build a business make ends meet?

I’m sick of hearing about the Australia’s economic prosperity, I’m sick of hearing about the boom. It is misleading, as this boom is actually the generation of a dual-stream economy, featuring the haves and the have-nots. All well and good for the haves, and I guess the have-nots just have to suffer and accept their fate.