Onward and Upward

Well the mod is coming along in leaps and bounds, though I am tied down by a few things. Still haven't got the hang of the strategy.tab, though I have made advances on it. Now the random road encounter works better (though not perfectly), but I still haven't got the final combat to work exactly right (the sorceress still won't use her spells, though now at least she attacks). Got a lot of the fiddly dlg stuff done though, big leap forward. Still on target for a release on Tuesday.

A quick political rant while I am here. Apparently the OECD has declared that Australian mother's don't work enough and are too welfare dependant.

This is insanely stupid on so many levels it beggars belief. Specifically, the government (little Johnny Howard and his right-wingers, no less) has boosted 'welfare' for parents for a number of simple reasons, including rising costs of childcare, and falling fertility rates. To put roadblocks in the way of parents raising their kids because of perceived short-term economic benefits would be an appalingly irresonsible act guaranteeing long-term social problems that would have far greater negative economic impact than any positive result from more mums entering the workforce.

It just reminds us how utterly irrelevant some of these economic organisations are in the real world, and how contemptuous they are of the human beings behind every set of figures. It also makes me wonder what they see as the point of economic growth. Here in Oz, against all expectations Howard has actually got the economy ticking along (unlike Thatcher or Reagan or Bush or his other heroes). Some of the big figures, such as employment, inflation, growth and interest rates etc are very good - of course, many are very bad, with high taxes, massive mortgages, low savings, falling exports, decreasing rates of full-time work and many other things that remind us that as soon as the economy turns down, we will be in serious trouble.

But rather than addressing these things, we instead have industrial relations reforms. Squeeze a few more rights away from the workers. Same idea the OECD has for mothers.

Again I ask, what is the point? If Australians only go off to work in the morning, slave away and get the economy humming so that they can be told to spend less and less time with their family and give up more of their rights, why do it? What IS the point?

Once again, it is the numbers, not the people, who apparently matter.