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You are here: Home / Archives for friday

No BS: Expect more Trumps

November 13, 2020 by Jon Giaan

No B.S Friday: What I think of the end of the Trump era.

So it looks like Trump is cooked.

I know it looks like he’s going to fight it, but I think he’s got nothing.

If he had something, we would have heard about it by now. There’s been an usually long period of silence from the former president.

And the longer it goes on, the worse it gets for him.

He’s an optics president. And the more people call him ‘former’ president. The more people who call Joe Biden “President elect”, the more world leaders who call to congratulate Joe on his win – the more Trump looks like yesterday’s news.

So I think we can expect a bit of messing around in the transition, but unless Trump is planning on a military coup, he’s on his way to his unique and unusual place in history.

What a ride.

I remember when I first caught whiff on Trump. I like to say I was on to it before it was cool. I saw his full potential in the early rounds of the Republican primaries. I put money on him when Sportsbet were paying 7 to 1.

I knew we were witnessing the birth of an entirely new political animal.

And I think it’s pretty fair to say that Trump has changed politics forever.

People like to call him a ‘populist’ president, but I think that misses the point. He was a partisan president. He knew how the political calculus worked. He knew he didn’t have to win any middle ground if he could rout enough energy into his base.

And so that was the game he played. And he played it like a maestro. He worked his base into a frenzy.

Remember in the middle of the Black Lives Matter protests how he went and stood in front of a church and waved a bible about?

There was never any doubt about what side Trump was on.

And remember, even though he lost the popular vote, he still delivered an incredible turn-out for Republicans.

But while Trump had game, he was also a man of the moment.

Over the past decade social media has created identity silos – isolated echo-chambers. He saw that his new brand of politics was perfectly tailored to this reality.

It didn’t matter what the facts were or what you did. Your fans were going to love you and your haters were going to hate you, no matter what you said or did.

And so Trump just said and did what he liked.

The shock the collective world felt at this was partly about Trump, but it was also in recognising how divided and isolated we had become – that we had entered a ‘post-truth’ universe where the facts just didn’t matter anymore.

And I don’t know that there’s any way back from this. This is just how the world works now.

And Biden might talk all he wants about ‘uniting America’, but you can bet that message isn’t making its way through to Republican thought-silos.

So, Trump will go down in history as an emblem for the social-media age.

And until that changes, expect more Trumps.

JG.

Filed Under: Blog, Friday, Uncategorized Tagged With: friday, nobsfriday

No BS: Don’t manifest until you do this first

November 9, 2020 by Jon Giaan

No B.S Friday: The first step in manifesting anything is to drop into your power.

It’s one of the paradoxes built into manifestation.

The way people tell the story – I’m talking about law-of-attraction type theories, which themselves have been around in various forms for centuries – everything has a gravity. Even emotional experiences have a gravity, and they pull towards each other.

Like attracts like.

So if like attracts like, that means that if you want to attract peace, joy, beauty, material possessions, whatever, then you need to put yourself in that emotional state, where you are actually already enjoying, peace, joy, beauty, material possessions, whatever.

It’s these feelings – these body-based experiences – that then become the fuel that powers your dreams.

And to tap these feelings – this fuel source – you need to think past the sale. You need to put yourself in that place where you already have everything you want.

But, Question: if you already have everything you want, where are you then?

Answer: You are in your power.

That’s what I reckon this state is. This manifestation state.

You are in your power. Every desire is realised. Every need is sorted. Every loved-one is taken care of, and you cut cleanly and quickly through the messy world towards your goals. Always.

You are in your fully-realised power.

You need to step into this place to manifest cleanly.

If this is true, that means that when you are consciously dreaming – when you are deciding on what it is you want to be calling into your life – you need to make sure that these dreams are the dreams of your full-power self.

You need to dream the dreams that your full-power self would dream.

They can’t be coming from a place of lack. “I need a flash car so people will like me.” Rubbish. Is that something the most powerful version of you would say? Of course not.

“I need a flash car because I like riding an iron dragon and writing my name in the open road.”

That’s something your full-power self would say.

So before you dream into what you want, dream into the fullness of your power. Open the door to everything you are capable of.

That might require a bit of imagination. But isn’t that the magic that’s hidden in imagination – to call into being something that has never existed before?

So dream into it. Dream into what it’s like as your full-power self. Imagine what your full-power self would desire.

This is where it begins.

I’d say don’t even waste your time trying to manifest anything if you haven’t grounded here first.

The first thought should be on your power.

There will be time for flash and bling later.

JG.

Filed Under: Blog, Friday, Uncategorized Tagged With: friday, nobsfriday

No BS: Victorians. Total legends.

October 30, 2020 by Jon Giaan

No B.S Friday: We did it. I was never sure we were going to make it…

Ok, today, I’m taking my hats off to Victoria.

Well done everyone. Well done.

Seriously, I know it’s been a big effort. I want to recognise that. It hasn’t been easy. Lockdown has been tough on everyone.

And for people who lost work or saw their businesses close, it was painful salt in the wound.

And it tested our resolve. Lockdown was only going to work if we all did it together. You only needed a few people to be doing the wrong thing, and we’d have to start over.

But it happened. Victorians sucked it up, did the lockdown, and got infections down to zero.

Massive.

I think we should be proud.

And I think we should take time to reflect on that success. We should really go into it.

Because I know that we’re not totally out of the woods just yet. The world isn’t. Resurging infection rates in the US and Europe show us that.

I pray it won’t happen, but there’s every chance that we could be asked to go into lockdown again. To go through the brutal grind again.

My fear is that when we hit that point, we’ve depleted our reserves of social responsibility.

In recent months, we’ve showed good community character. We’ve shown great social spirit by accepting what’s hard for the love of others.

These things feel like they’re in shorter and shorter supply these days. Watching the US election campaign, and you realise that the world is a just a more polarised and divided place these days.

Thanks Facebook.

And I know those divisions live here too.

And yet, despite that, we did it. We pulled together and go through it.

And really, it’s nothing short of a miracle.

So let’s celebrate that. Let’s celebrate the stuffing out of it. It’s a huge achievement.

When future generations look back at us and wonder what on Earth we were thinking with all the plastic and stuff, at least they’ll be able to know that we did this.

In the face of incredible odds, at a time of incendiary division, we pulled together and protected our most vulnerable.

Today, I’m proud to be Australian. I’m proud to be Victorian.

Good on you all.

Go get on the beers.

JG.

Filed Under: Blog, Uncategorized Tagged With: friday

No BS: Is this goodbye Trump?

October 23, 2020 by Jon Giaan

The polls are eye-popping. Is Trump toast?

So looks like Trump is on the way out.

You know, this is 2020, so anything is possible, but Biden has opened up a huge lead in the polls.

And of course, the answer to that is that the polls were wrong last time and they could be wrong again.

And that’s true. They could be wrong. But they would have to be epicly wrong for Trump to win this time.

You can actually look at the data on this:

So Trump is currently 10 points behind in the polls. That says that for Trump to win, the polls would have to underestimating the actual results by at least that much.

But the only time that the polls got it that degree of wrong was all the way back in 1948, and even then, they weren’t that wrong. In the modern era it’s a few points at most. In 2016, versus Hilary Clinton, it was just 1.1 points.

So for Trump to win, the polls would have to be the wrongest they’ve ever been, in a huge way.

You’d have to think that’s a low-probability outcome.

But you know, Trump is Trump, and this is 2020, so I’ll believe it when I see it.

But whichever way it goes, I think Trump’s first term will mark a turning point in politics, not just in America, but across the world.

But let’s not give Trump the credit for that. I think Trump just saw where the wave was heading and got in front of it.

And the wave’s name is polarisation.

Take a look at this chart. This tracks how many Americans think that it really matters who is President.

So back in 2000 it was pretty evenly split. 50% of Americans thought it mattered who was President, the other half thought that it didn’t matter. That’s either because they just didn’t care and thought it was irrelevant, or they thought both parties were pretty much the same anyway.

That is, they were either disengaged or cynical.

Fast-forward to 2020, and the numbers are totally different. Now, 83% think that it really matters, while only 16% don’t.

That’s another way of saying that the number of disengaged and cynical voters has collapsed 70%!

On the face of it, you’d think that’s a good thing. The more engaged in politics the citizenry is, the better outcomes you get.

But it is likely that this is largely driven by social-media driven thought-bubble polarisation.

People think it matters who is President because their news feed tells them that the other side wants to eat babies and sell war-veterans to the Russians.

This dynamic was in play before Trump (you can see that in the chart), but I think Trump was the first person to use it consciously.

He knew that there was just no way to talk to the other side – there’s no penetrating the though bubble – so he gave up pretending to be a “President for all Americans”, and focused instead on energising his base.

And it worked… for a while.

But has he lost the political centre?

This will be a very interesting election to watch. Campaign managers from every continent will be watching how it plays out.

And the key question is this, in the age of social media thought bubbles, just how far can you pull from the political centre?

We’ll see.

JG.

Filed Under: Blog, Friday, Uncategorized Tagged With: friday, nobsfriday

No BS: Caught in a regret loop?

October 16, 2020 by Jon Giaan

A depressed woman sitting alone is a dark tunnel with light at the other end.

Caught in a regret loop, I saw that they were a total fantasy…

I found myself wallowing in a bit of regret recently.

It might be something in the ether. I’ve got a few mates who have gone back to certain turning points in their lives, and taken a wistful look down a road that might have been.

Maybe it’s the nature of Covid – a great big stop sign in the road of life. Maybe it’s just what happens when you’re cooped up inside all day.

Anyway, at first I’m like, “Oh, this is a productive use of my time. I’m taking stock of how some big life decisions panned out, so I can learn from them and make better decisions.”

I think this is a good approach to have to life (in theory). I think with every investment decision you should make a note of your thinking so you can go back and check it against reality.

(What was I thinking when I invested in Pets.com?)

Otherwise you never learn.

But I don’t think this is what I was actually doing. I think lockdown was just getting to me, and it was nothing but a bit of wistful escapism.

But I started watching my regrets and I noticed something.

What I found was that I was comparing my current life to a hypothetical life based on another life choice – making different financial decisions, different romantic choices, different creative pursuits.

But I noticed something.

The picture I had of my current life was pretty accurate (I think!). I had a sense for all the awesome stuff, and I was very aware of everything that wasn’t awesome – the annoying and aggravating stuff.

However, the picture of I had of my ‘alternate life’ didn’t have any of this nuance. When I imagined it, all I saw was how awesome it was. To the extent I saw any downside at all, I tended to minimise it or dismiss it as not that much of a problem.

I think that’s something about human nature – we’re good at imagining how awesome something might be. We’re not good at imagining the challenges and work involved.

But what that all gave me was an apples and oranges comparison. I was comparing my current life warts and all, to an alternate life which had no warts at all.

So of course I’m going to wistfully long for that alternate life. That alternate life doesn’t have any problems. Everything’s awesome there. All the time.

But obviously it’s a total fantasy.

And so regret is nothing but a longing for a life that is completely unrealistic.

The reality, I try to remind myself, is that any life path has problems. All it has are different problems.

And so it’s really unknowable whether it would be ‘better’ or not.

And in the end, I also know that it doesn’t really matter. Happiness is mine to create. It’s an inside job.

And so yeah, regrets. Total waste of time. You’re comparing your current life to a life that has no basis in reality.

Don’t bother.

Do some push ups instead.

JG.

Filed Under: Blog, Uncategorized Tagged With: friday

No BS: My hot take on the budget

October 9, 2020 by Jon Giaan

The shape of the country of Australia in the colours of its national australian dollar currency recessed into an isolated white surface

The Budget was massive, but I think we have more in store.

What do I make of this week’s budget?

It’s massive. But there’s more coming.

That’s what I reckon.

First up, the headline numbers are huge. We’re looking at a budget deficit of almost half a trillion dollars. We are still well and truly in unchartered territory here. No one could have ever imagined that the Australian government would be handing down that kind of deficit a year ago, let alone a “debt and deficits disaster” Coalition government.

But this is where we’re at.

It’s a huge amount of money.

But I still think there’s more coming.

And I say that because the two key centre-pieces of the budget – the wage subsidy for young workers, and the instant asset write-offs for business investment – are activity generated.

That is, they rely on the private sector doing stuff for them to come into effect.

So if you’re going to give companies a subsidy if they employed a 19-35 year old from the ranks of the unemployed, that requires firms to actual go out and hire people.

While this measure is estimated to be worth billions of dollars, it is theoretically possible that if no firms employed no new workers, that the total cost to the budget would be a doughnut $0.

Same story with the asset write down. If firms invest, there might be a certain tax advantage for that. But if no firms invest in no new things, then the measure is worthless.

That means that this free-spending budget actually needs a catalyst before it become active.

And what’s the catalyst?

Economic activity itself. It needs firms to hire and invest. If they don’t, then there’s nothing.

So this epic budget positions itself as a rocket pack strapped to the top of an economy that’s already moving.

But what if the economy isn’t moving?

It’s possible.

The government’s projections for growth and jobs were characteristically over-optimistic, but not wildly so.

But still, there’s a lot of money exiting the economy right now, as the governments front-line support measures – particularly JobKeeper and the JobSeeker supplement – are already being wound back.

This chart from the AFR shows you what the ‘fiscal cliff’ we’ve been hearing about for so long is now looking like:

And that’s at a time where private demand has already fallen through the floor, and public spending is the only thing propping up the economy.

And so what you’ve got is about $30 billion worth of direct government spending being replaced by a wage subsidy worth $4bn, and an asset write-down worth $27bn.

So it kinda balances out, right?

Well, no, not exactly.

It’s a bit apples and oranges because you’re replacing a direct cash injection, with indirect support that’s conditional on firms taking the risks involved in hiring and investing.

What it means is that if the economy is already recovering and continues to recover, and firms are happy to hire and invest, then we should get a reasonably smooth transition.

But if they don’t – if firms and households are still spooked – especially as JobKeeper winds up – they we might end up with a very bumpy transition.

In the short term, that will lead to two things. The first is that the government will decide it needs to support the economy more directly, and it will go back to mainlining money straight into the economy.

The second is that it will call in the RBA artillery, and we’ll get further rate cuts and reduced mortgage rates.

My guess is we’ll get both.

My hunch, based on what I know about animal spirits, is that everyone will want to take a wait-and-see approach, and the government we’ll be forced to intervene more aggressively.

In the long run, that means even more money finding it’s way into the system, and we’ll have an even bigger rebound boom baked into the outlook.

So that’s my take on the budget.

It’s huge. It’s massive.

And it’s only round one.

JG.

Filed Under: Blog, Business, Finance, Friday, Uncategorized Tagged With: friday, nobsfriday

No BS: Have you tried blaming capitalism?

October 2, 2020 by Jon Giaan

If you’re blame yourself, you only make it worse

Do things suck right now?

Are you stressed to the point of dysfunction? Are your relationships coming off the rails? Are you feeling like life is just a gruelling and meaningless sh!t-show? A misery matinée?

Are you feeling like you just can’t get ahead, and just can’t see anyway that you’re going to get ahead, or even just squeeze out a weekend for yourself?

I get it. Life is hard.

And the real tragedy is that people then go and blame themselves for feeling like this. They take it on. If they’re not able to keep up with the work load, they blame themselves for not having enough stamina and energy.

If they don’t have the time and space to make a relationship work, they think that they themselves are broken.

And if they can’t get clear of the stress for long enough to actually feel happy, they think they must have a chemical imbalance or something, and that they’re the only ones on the planet who haven’t got this whole game figured out.

Our misery is compounded by the idea that we’ve only got ourselves to blame.

But, maybe that’s not true.

Maybe you’re not to blame.

Maybe capitalism’s to blame..?

Maybe you should try blaming capitalism. I think it will make you feel a lot better.

Now, I’m not trying to get into a first year Uni d1ck-measuring contest here about whether capitalism is better than socialism.

I’m actually a huge fan of capitalism. I think it’s an amazing tool that’s done epic things for humanity in the last couple of hundred years.

And in the broad sweep of history, I think Milton Friedman is probably right when he says, “Capitalism is the worst possible system… with the exception of all the other systems we’ve ever tried.”

And I personally think that capitalism does a great job of incentivising economic activity, but governance… not so much.

But whatever. I don’t have a horse in this race.

But I do think it’s useful to acknowledge that the systems we have, haven’t been fully optimised for helping us live happy, healthy and meaningful lives.

Ha! That’s probably the understatement of the year.

The way things are – in the world as it is – these things are actually incredibly challenging.

It’s hard to find space to go deep with your kids and your partner when you’re working two jobs to pay rent.

You know, maybe your kids don’t have learning difficulties. Maybe you and the wife aren’t fundamentally incompatible. Maybe you’re just living in a time and in an age and in a system where you just don’t have space to give these things the time they actually need.

My only point is, go easy on yourself. Don’t make it all about you.

If you’re struggling to keep up and keep your head above water – to make everything work. That’s not about you.

Part of the blame (at least!) lies with this weird misery-matinee we’ve somehow created for ourselves.

I’m not saying settle here either. It’s a crazy-arse system, but there are always things you can do.

My only point is, don’t internalise it. Don’t ignore the context. Don’t make it all about you.

Try blaming others for a while. It might make you feel a lot better.

JG.

Filed Under: Blog, Uncategorized Tagged With: friday

No BS: Whoa! I got a pandemic of hate-mail

August 14, 2020 by Jon Giaan

I’ve been getting a bit of hate-mail lately. Here’s what I think about it.

So I’ve been copping a bit of hate-mail lately.

This isn’t entirely new. I’m a hate-able guy. But it does seem to have picked up a bit lately.

And it’s coming at me from all directions. When I stuck my neck out for Black Lives Matter, I got attacked by conservatives. When I stuck the boot into Dan Andrews and Victoria’s Covid response, I got attacked by progressives. When I said you need to live for the moment because every moment could be your last, I got attacked by… actually I don’t know what they were on about.

Whatever. Come at me internet!

And I’m not here for sympathy. Sure, it might be nice if every now and then someone wrote in to say, “Up you go, Jon. Thanks for the laffs.” But it’s ok.

There are a few things that occur to me though.

The first is the number of messages that go something like, “I’ve been enjoying your blogs for four years now, but after that last email I set fire to my computer and I never want to hear from you again.”

Really? You’ve been vibing with what I’ve been saying for a few years, and then on the back of one email, bam, I’m blacklisted?

I’m ‘cancelled’?

I think I can get this. It feels like our very way of life is under attack right now. We feel we need to defend it in whatever way we can. As soon as there’s the first sign of rot in any aspect of our life, that aspect has to be cut out and destroyed as soon as possible.

There’s no room for second chances here.

It doesn’t matter if that rot is a charismatic entrepreneur with a provocative blog we’ve been enjoying for years. As soon as there’s any hint that this cancer is taking hold there too, boof, he’s gone.

I guess my response would be to say slow down and take a moment here. Your defensive drive doesn’t need to be so urgent. Yes, it feels like the world is falling apart, but it will be ok. We’ll find a way.

And the health of any cell is in its connections. I think its regrettable that we’ve become much more tribal in recent years. We’ve burrowed into social media thought bubbles, and the only voices we want to hear are the voices we like.

And I get how that happens too, but I do think it’s a good practice to keep yourself exposed to a variety of voices.

The more exposed your are to the political biome, the less likely you are to get hypo-allergenic reactions.

And my voice isn’t one you’re going to get anywhere else. I’m not pushing a political barrow. I’m just a guy who nerds out on property and wealth, with a personal mission to shake people out of their comfort zones.

I’m just ‘that guy’.

I’m not asking to be the voice of your inner-conscious. I’m not asking to speak for your most preciously held dreams and aspirations.

And you don’t want that from me either.

Just let me be ‘that guy’. Let me be a guy with a unique outlook on life and money and personal growth.

You’re not going to agree with everything I say. It’d be boring if you did. And that’s not what these blogs are for. I’m not here to feed you opinions you already have.

I’m here to give you an insight into the thinking of ‘that guy’. So you can reflect on it and go, isn’t it interesting that ‘that guy’ has ‘that opinion’? Isn’t the world a curious place?

And in that sense, ‘that guy’ is only here so you can learn more about yourself. You shouldn’t be reading me to know what I think. You should be reading me to get a clearer idea of what you think.

So look, hate on me all you want. Go nuts. But don’t bunker yourself just because you don’t like the voice you hear every couple of years or so.

Also, you all know these blogs go up on the website and the Facebook page right? If you’re going to have a spray, don’t waste it on my inbox.

Put it up on the web for everyone to see. There’s a bunch of people who will probably agree with you. And I might not respond to every comment, but I’ll definitely have a read.

I’ve been doing these blogs for 8 years now. It’s been great and I’m not planning to stop any time soon. And for everyone who’s stuck with me through that time, thanks for everything. I deeply appreciate it.

Yours, forever and ever

That Guy

Filed Under: Blog, Friday, Leadership and Growth, Uncategorized Tagged With: friday, nobsfriday

No BS: Why you need this ‘spiritual discipline’

July 24, 2020 by Jon Giaan

If you’re too snatchy, you’re settling for second best.

Patience is a virtue. I mean that. It’s practically a spiritual discipline.

And it’s a discipline that’s worth developing.

I say that because when I look out at the world, I reckon most people are too ‘snatchy’.

That is, the universe offers them something a bit shiny, and they rush out and grab it.

They’ve got greedy hands.

This is a shame because once your hands are full, they’re full. You’re no longer in a position to receive.

And the first thing the universe offers you isn’t always the best thing it’s got.

It might be a job for example. You might be thinking its time for a career change, and you’ve sketched out in your mind exactly what you’re looking for.

But then something comes a long that’s definitely an improvement on what you’re doing now – it’s a big step up – although it’s still not exactly what you’re looking for.

What do you do then?

Most people go for the snatch. They grab it and nail down that opportunity before it gets away.

There’s a fearful voice that comes in at this point. “Grab it now while the opportunities there. It might not be there tomorrow. You might never find anything this good again.”

The snatch comes from fear.

However, maybe what you really need to do here is be patient.

Maybe you just need to put your greedy hands in your pockets and see what the universe offers up next.

Patience is built on trust and abundance. It’s built on the belief that there are endless opportunities in the world, and it’s built on the trust that those opportunities are going to find their way to you at some point or another.

And in that sense, patience is built on a spiritual world view. Call it abundance or whatever you want, but it’s based on an idea about just what kind of rock it is we’re living on.

And that’s why I say patience is a spiritual discipline.

And it’s a discipline because it’s not something that comes naturally.

You’ve got billions of years of biological evolution telling you to grab what you can while you can.

You need to train yourself in the way of patience.

But it’s worth doing.

If you can disengage your greedy hands – if you can learn to stop snatching at the world – then you enter a much more receptive space.

For things to enter that space – to deeply enter – then they really need to be fully aligned with who you are and what you want.

The further and deeper they have to come, the more in alignment they have to be.

And so the more patient you can be, the more the universe really has to perfect what it offers you.

And perfect things are nice.

In fact, once you go there, once you see what the universe really has the ability to deliver, you’ll never settle for second best again.

So don’t settle, petal. And keep your greedy hands in your pockets.

JG.

Filed Under: Blog, Friday, Uncategorized Tagged With: friday, nobsfriday

No BS: Sack Andrews, save the state

July 10, 2020 by Jon Giaan

Dan Andrews has compromised our most important line of defence.

Victorians are pissed right now.

Of course we are. We’re going into another six weeks of lock down.

Six weeks!

I’m not going to be able to get coffee at my favourite dive for six weeks. I’m very grumpy about that.

And I’ve got it easier than anyone. What about the café owner? She was gearing up for a steady reopening. Now she’s throwing everything into reverse, and she’s really wondering if she’s got the guts to last it out… or the pockets.

And it’s a massive blow to the Victorian economy. Gareth Aird at Comm Bank reckons the lockdown is going to cost $1-2 billion…

… every week!

There’s a lot of businesses that were really banking on things getting back to normal. But that’s not going to happen, and I can tell you, a lot of them are wondering whether or not they’re just better off cutting their losses and walking away.

So it’s a huge blow. And after making so many sacrifices for so long (remember what I was saying about my coffee?) it’s a bitter blow.

But then what do we get?

A premier whose point fingers at the people – people who ‘didn’t do the right thing’. Victorians who had become ‘complacent’.

But then you look into it, and it seems that our latest outbreak – and here’s the chart in all its hideous glory:

It seems that when you look into it, it all comes down to our failed quarantine program.

Specifically, travellers returning to Australia had to do two weeks quarantine in a hotel. In other states, that quarantine was enforced by the police or the Australian defence force.

Not in Victoria though. We out-sourced it to an under-trained and under-resourced private security company.

But that strategy created a bunch of problems. Namely:

  • Security companies were being paid for workers who didn’t actually exist, or for shifts they didn’t actually do.
  • Under-staffed quarantine enforcement because we were effectively paying for ghosts.
  • The guards that did show up didn’t follow proper procedures – they shook hands, shared lighters, didn’t wear masks etc.
  • Some guards were sleeping on the job.
  • Some guards were sleeping with guests (rumour has it).
  • Guards switched shifts between hotels.
  • Some guards were moonlighting as Uber-drivers.

What a joke.

As an island nation with almost no community transmission, the hotel quarantine was our most important line of defence.

And it was compromised.

And now we’re paying the price.

But what’s worse, rather than just fess up and say that they messed up and that they shouldn’t have trusted the nations bio-security to a bunch of Uber drivers, Dan Andrews is trying to duck the issue altogether, palming it off to an Inquiry that’s due to report at the end of bloody September!

C’mon. Grow some balls would ya?

It’s an epic cock up, but just own it. If you said, “Look, we knew Corona was going to cost us a heap of money, so I just thought I could save a few bucks by getting some traffic controllers in to do the job,” I’d maybe be like, well, yeah, fair enough.

That’s a bit stupid, but I can see what you were trying to do there. You probably had a lot on your plate at the time.

But when you just try to sweep it all under the carpet with an Inquiry that’s going to take two months to tell us what we already know – that you f$%ked up – it’s pretty poor form.

And when you start pointing the finger at Victorians who have been doing a pretty bloody good job of towing the line if you ask me, then it just gets a bit disgusting.

Because the consequences here are massive.

The only thing between us and a full-blown health crisis is the public’s willingness to make sacrifices and do the right thing.

That requires a lot of good will. It requires a sense of fairness.

But when people are going into lockdown – and when businesses are shuttering – because the government muffed it and won’t own it, then that good will starts evaporating.

And that puts the state, and the nation, at incredible risk.

I think you’ve blown it Dan.

The community needs to be honoured for the sacrifices it’s made. It needs to feel that things are fair.

I think you gotta step down.

Dan Andrews has to resign.

JG.

Filed Under: Blog, Events, Friday, Uncategorized Tagged With: friday, nobsfriday

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