Stick Insects and Liveable Cities

Heard on the radio yesterday that melbourne is now ranked 17th in the world's most liveable cities. I think this is from the Economist's survey of multinational companies. Melbourne was the leading city for 3 or 4 years running 5 years ago. So what happened? That's the question on the lips of many who are prepared to discuss the state of Melbourne today. My guess: cost of living, high petrol prices, surging housing costs, near zero rental properties, bad public transport and increasing crime [although it is still pretty safe to leave your house unlocked for a couple of hours or so - depending on suburb] and poor public education. Has the government sold out to businesses and forgotten about the people? Think education for a moment... madanimator is due to go to high school next year: his choice school is now out of range because of over population. Yet, said highschool sets aside places for full-fee paying students, (ie foreign students) . This is a public school for goodness' sakes. And what is this about the government giving subsidies to private schools. This is really a "what the!" situation. Did we become 17 because our standards of life drop or did we fail to keep up with "best practices" and meet the international benchmarks...?

I kept thinking about the factors that pulled down melbourne to 17th - - i found a stick insect on the edge of the recycle bin. Nice. For some strange reason, i felt this need to bring in indoors. I let it rest on the money plant, then husband decided it would be better to put it into a used goldfish tank. We found it this morning up the ceiling. Still nice.

18 June 2008, Wednesday
The stick has migrated from the money plant - it started shifting around when I misted it - it spent 29 hours up on the ceiling and 12 hours on the record player and 10 hours in the lampshade. I can't find it anywhere today. It's still around, I just got to find it - the leaves are intact and I wonder what it's feeding on. A bit concerned. "Mum and her stick" seems to be the current joke.

20 June 2008, Friday
Stick has officially disappeared - but tomorrow's weekend cleaning might bring some fresh new hope