My wife hates my blog!

Greetings once again, blog readers. For those who've read the last couple of posts and gone "crap, this is depressing", then I apologies. I'm at a point in my life where things are transitional and difficult, and one of these days I'm going to beat it and move on. However, I'm going to try and blog about some other stuff that's more general and perhaps not so negative where possible. Why? Because my wife thinks that all blogs are evil, thanks to mine. She's rather Tony Robbins (yes, I've used a guy's name as an adjective), so as far as she is concerned, negativity is the devil.

So hey, let me do a short political spiel then. You see, we went to the hospital the other morning at 5:30am. Our little boy was unwell and had a temperature of 38.4*C. Now, I've only been a parent for a short while, but he's only ever had a high temperature once, and that only got up to 37.4. It was just after he was born, and there was an obvious sense of alarm at the situation. So maybe 10 month old children can handle the higher temperatures - the thing is we just weren't sure and our one past experience had just added a rather strong sense of worry about high temperatures.

Now there's a big story to this, but I'll try and shorten it. We got to the hospital, and there was only one doctor on duty, and it had been a very full-on night for them, so the nurse at the counter was very stressed. She told us his symptoms were nothing, then took an incorrect reading of his temperature (she read it as 35.6*C - we double checked it with 2 different thermometers when we got home. It was 38.2.), and sent us home. Now in the morning we took him to our GP, and it turns out he has a high temperature (surprise!) and pus on his tonsils - possibly tonsillitis, or at least, a viral infection.

OK, so here's the thing. We never were panicking that our boy was dying or anything. We just thought it was important he see a doctor with a small degree of urgency so that we could know what the problem was and how we might best address it. However, we COULDN'T because there were too few doctors at the hospital for us to be able to see one. Now, I don't know what everyone else thinks, but I think that if I pay my taxes, I should be entitled to the medical care they supposedly supply, at whatever time I feel I need it. And if there aren't enough doctors to deal with people, they should employ more. Where are everyone's medical tax dollars going? I wonder if I had driven to Mosman if I would have got better service? Is that the way it works? Or does it get funneled into other things like Federal Government Christmas presents or something? I only get 60% of what I earn in my pocket, so I'll tell you what, I better be getting value for money out of the other 40%. Maybe the government should start offering people "tax options". Set up a second Medicare-type organization, and make them compete for people's tax dollar. See, why does it cost 40 million dollars to put an extra lane on 30kms of road? That's more then a million per kilometer. Because the companies doing the work are trying to get as much out of the government as they possibly can, and the government just takes it.
OK, here's the most political I'm going to get. I think we need some serious tax reform. I don't see why me, who the banks say can't afford to borrow enough money to buy the cheapest of houses in the Hawkesbury, is losing almost half my income in tax. It's nuts.

Anyways, that's it. I couldn't be a political writer if all the people reading were blind, but have my 2 cents anyway. If nothing else, maybe my wife will like it. :P