just as well it’s a slow moving bandwagon

because I’m a bit late to the party.
And James just told me my uni friends all write on greylead. (who cares? student hippies…)

Better late than never tho, right?

I like writing. I think a lot, writing helps me expand on thoughts and clarify things. My main problem is what to write about.

Politics is too frustrating. I’d never sleep. The whole thing is just so corrupt… and frustrations don’t improve when you think that the voting public doesn’t actually know what’s good for them.

Consider this. 20 million people with their own lives, ideas, world view, motives, fears, and insecurities are asked to pick one person in the faith that he or she will know what’s best for not only the economy, but also for the people in all their mostly selfish ways, backed by a team of advisers that no-one actually knows, without any form of public accountability(excepting, of course, the ballot box).

Consider also that a politician’s No.1 priority is actually employment, and not the good of the country.
After all, you gotta eat.

I like what Agent K said on the people thing. “A person is smart; people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”
Now let’s think of the likelihood of one person in 20 million figuring that out, and working it to their advantage.

See? You can be a christian and still be a skeptic!

I’m sure some politicians have good intentions, but they’re in somewhat of an unworkable system.
And there’s just so much that defies logic. For example: Nearly everyone runs their cars on petrol. To do this without permanent and irreversible damage to the ozone layer, and to prevent the release of wonderful things like carbon monoxide and benzine and all those other goodies that make your skin turn grey and your lungs grow cancer, the exhaust fumes are forced through a catalyst, which looks a bit like honeycomb. It probably doesn’t taste like it, however, though it might just taste like burning because it’s full of nasty heavy metals that turn poison into water. Great stuff, not good for efficient fuel use, as it’s a bit like breathing through a sock whilst you’re running. Yet- it’s pretty neat, really.
With the technologies we employ, we can now produce cars that emit less fumes when idling than a seventies or even eighties car puts out when switched off.

This is great, but:

Problem one: we’re apparently running out of oil.
I mean, even if we’re not all the oil companies just LOVE us thinking that we are, because it means we don’t mind that much when they push up prices. I doubt we’ll ever run out of oil, it’s just that one day no-one will be able to justify filling their tank for eight hundred dollars. Don’t worry, it’ll come.
Face it: we’re at the mercy of fat company executives who can pretty much do what they want. Just cos last time I checked, I didn’t have an oil well in my backyard. Pity.

Problem two: The cleaner (and nicer, for that matter) we make our cars, the more fuel they’ll inevitably use.
Our catalyst friend only works in one temperature range, so how do we heat it in a hurry? Easy! Inject fuel into it! What if our low-grade petrol makes the motor too hot, risking an internal meltdown? Inject more fuel in it! Want the aircon to work? More fuel! Nice Territory! But weighs heaps more than a Falcon, so it uses more fuel. The more we plug up our cars, be it to lower the emissions or make it quieter, the more petrol it will use. It’s that simple.

Blow them up I say! I hate cars anyway, but there is a point to be found here.

Without the use of catalytic converters, an LPG powered car releases around ten percent of the carbon emissions of an otherwise identical petrol powered vehicle. Sure, a good (and by good I mean as good as petrol) LPG injection system costs somewhere under $5000, but if they were built at the same rate Holden builds Commodores then the price would drop enormously.

So anyway. You might not be a greenie. You might like the thought of scorching the earth every time you plant that foot… Why bother?

Because LPG is 100% home grown, no nasty internationals involved, thankyou very much. So the government can control the prices.
The massive saving to the average householder in their stupid 4WD then goes back into the economy, creating growth, more jobs, less debt, less emissions, more birdies and the like. All good stuff. And all moral requirements, really, when you consider how much we drive our stupid cars across the sparsely populated brown land.

Plus it’s basically a waste product, that costs comparatively nothing to refine.

And the low carbon production causes less engine wear in a properly tuned engine.

And did I mention we can run big set-route diesels (that’d be mostly buses) viably on compressed natural gas? That gets pulled out of Bass Straight? Without the choke-smoke fest? Removing some more of the reliance on imported diesel?

Great stuff!

So why isn’t all of this commonplace?
And why is there legislation in place (thanks John!) to tax LPG at a rising percentage over the next 10 years to bring it to the same price as petrol, thus making it (due to a lower kilojoule rating than petrol ie. less efficient) economically inviable for anything but BBQ fuel?

And why isn’t Kevin 07 taking up this opportunity to separate us economically from the somewhat unstable world market?

And why on earth do our governing friends sell one million tonnes of LPG a year (a quarter of our current production) to Japan for 5 cents a litre?

So it’s good thing I’m not blogging about politics. I’d be in a bad mood all the time…