Further to my last post, there are two clear events which may be contributing to the latest Newpoll: the huge inconvenience to Sydney-siders of APEC, and the horse flu epidemic being seemingly blamed on government run quarantine deficiencies.
I've seen it said many times (especially at LP) that, rather than inconvenience all of Sydney, they should have held the meeting on some resort, with Hamilton Island most frequently suggested. However, a quick Google around the net seems to indicate that it can accommodate 5,000 (and how many of them would be in apartments which are normally families of 3 to 5 sharing?)
A news story from July says that originally there were 7,000 visitors expected, but it had dropped back to 5,000.
As Hamilton Island is about the biggest single, isolated resort I can think of in Australia, the point seems to be that it was simply not a realistic prospect to ever plan to hold it there.
As for horses: those with flu shown on TV never look particularly sick to me. Sure, some die, but horses seem to be fragile flowers who can die of the weirdest things. (The world is divided into two camps: those who believe horses are noble and magnificent creatures, and those who think they are stupid and inscrutable. Guess which camp I belong to?)
I have a theory that there is a horse conspiracy to feign sickness either because:
* they would just like to have a good rest from all that running around, or
* they are all secret Labor supporters, and they know how to create bad PR for John Howard.
As I don't trust horses at the best of times, I think they have all been organising in secret at the racetrack, deciding on a "Cough for Kevin" policy or some such.
Just a theory...
No comments:
Post a Comment