Julia Gillard is an idiot

Sorry, but I just have to say it - Gillard is an idiot.

Why?

I was listening to Marxist FM, er, JJJ the other day and there was a story on Hack (I think) about how the government is going to push for more kids from low incomes to go to Uni.

What an insanely stupid idea.

I went to Uni. So did my parents and my siblings and most of my friends, so I have an idea of what goes on at Uni.

It's not all it's cracked up to be. I am not going to be pushing my kids to go to Uni.

But that's not why this is a stupid idea.

It's a stupid idea because it contradicts another government policy, which is to reduce binge drinking.

My five years at uni were spent on one long binge. Uni was essentially an excuse to get hammered 6 nights a week. Talk about binge drinking. We once found ourselves the proud owners of a 10 gallon keg, but due to certain circumstances that I will not bore you with, we only had one hour to drink it.

10 of us managed to put away a 10 gallon keg in one hour. That involved an awful lot of sculling and a certain amount of vomiting, but it was not something totally out of the ordinary. Most of the university societies that I was a member of were devoted to drinking until you dropped, generally via a toga party.

And what supported those toga parties?

Why, nothing else than Compulsory Student Unionism. Part time, mature aged students had to pay a few hundred dollars to join a union that they never had anything to do with, so there were pots of money to spend on us 18 year old full time students, and a great deal of that money was converted into beer and flushed through the Uni Tavern.

This stupid Labor government of course wants to return us to the bad old days of compulsory student unionism, which will add great gobs of money into the binge drinking pool.

By the time I left Uni, drinking was no longer the main game. Thanks to HECS, the next generation spent most of their time swotting, and very little time boozing. HECS put a stake through the heart of the Uni Tavern, along with fun activities like drinking jugs of tequila sunrise at lunchtime, and getting too drunk to attend maths lectures. Or getting so drunk that one fell asleep in maths lectures and started to snore loundly.

And what does Gillard want to do? Reduce the fees that Uni students have to pay, which of course will only put more money in their pockets, which will be spent on grog.

I'm not sure what Gillard did when she was at uni. Swotted and attended Young Communist meetings I guess. I spent most of mine avoiding any form of study, with the majority spent chasing skirt, getting plastered and pulling stunts stupid enough to have me thrown out of college after one year.

I think I was in the majority. Certainly the fullness of the pubs in Claremont on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights suggested that most students were more taken with the idea of getting a skinful of booze than a headful of knowledge.

So what will we get if we send more low income students to Uni?

Well, what do we usually associate with poor people?

Drugs, booze and crime. And indolence, which is why a lot of them are poor in the first place. So we're going to take kids, who have grown up in households where the parents down a bottle of vodka and a pack of Winnie Blues each a night, and put them into Uni with a pocket full of cash and unlimited inducements to get legless as often as possible.

Great idea, Julia.

You really are a pillock. Full of edumacation, empty of real world experience and common sense.