Monday, December 08, 2008

It never ceases to amaze me how much bullshit politicians and their henchmen can spout. I mean it really is staggering, isn't it?

On Friday I heard an interview about why they haven't installed mobile phone jamming devices in prisons (after it was discovered a young criminal had been running a huge drug distribution gang from his prison cell via a smuggled mobile phone). Basically the NSW Minister was passing the buck onto the Australian Telecommunications whatever who are in charge of both allowing such things and also letting the equipment be imported into the country.

Apparently they had been trying to get these "allowed" for years but keep going from meeting to meeting to testing to a report to another meeting. Bottom line, nothing has been achieved.

Then the guy from the federal group (as above) rang into the say the ball is in the state's court. Blah blah blah.

The sticking point seems to be that this equipment can "leak" outside of the parameters required (i.e. from the prison onto the streets surrounding it) and cause phone problems for other users. However, in the same conversation we found out that in the US and Europe this equipment is being used in theatres, cinemas (hallelujah, praise the lord) and even hotels (to make clients use the expensive phones provided). A man even rang in and said that Gosford Hospital (right here in NSW) has this equpment working.

Which makes one think that all this political babble is just such a huge steaming pile of SHIT. I mean if one government department can provide this system in a hospital, a large, busy hospital set smack in the middle of a residential area where obviously it isn't jamming local phone services for normal people why can't another government department push the same system into prisons (given the additional fact that most prisons are in fact set further away from residential areas than the previously mentioned hospital).

This is what happens when I actually take a moment to listen to a political interview. My brain starts to hurt and I loose the will to live. I guess that's why I usually avoid listening to such crap. Nothing good can come of it. I just can't believe we're paying these morons with our hard earned tax dollars to behave like this. It's stupid, it's pathetic and it's a downright immoral waste of money which can be better spent in a gazillion other ways.

Don't forget my political "jury style" model. It can't be any worse than this.

2 comments:

Kath Lockett said...

I was just saying the other day to Love Chunks that they should get rid of State Governments (after all, aren't we all Aussies?) and just have Federal so that there's an end to the infernal, "No, that's a state government problem," and "This is the federal government's responsibility."

I think it's also why journalism didn't win my job vote in the end - the thought of writing, interviewing or even pretending to be interested in politics had about as much appeal as sucking a bird turd.

ashleigh said...

Ah, passing the buck.

Actually, using those things is damn close to illegal. The way that ACMA frame the regulations for transmitters, that hospital is probably just using a dodgy illegal one bought on ebay and never checked if they can.