After my last post on Michael Costa, my wife accused me of having ‘a little man crush’ on Mr Costa.  To be honest I hadn’t yet decided what I thought of him due to lack of information.  This in turn being due to my generally underdeveloped interest in politics.  But I admitted to my wife that he had sparked my interest.  I wouldn’t say ‘man crush’, as such – it’s an intellectual, platonic thing.  Really it is.

In fact, up until last week – except for some vague notion that he had done something with the railway, and of course, that he was the NSW treasurer – all I really knew was that other politicians don’t like him.  I decided I needed to do a little research so that I could form my own opinion about him.  Because one thing I do know is that I’m not going to form my opinion of a politician based on what other politicians think about him!

I should note that I think trying to choose your favorite politician – or even one that you like – might well be like trying to choose your favorite episode of Friends.  In both cases they are essentially all the same.  In both cases, even if you do choose a favorite and decide to by the DVD, they come with a bunch of other episodes that you don’t like.

(I’m paraphrasing and otherwise bastardising a quote from a friend of mine in the above paragraph –  he said trying to remember your dreams was like trying to remember last weeks Friends episode)

I also know, or at least believe, the following:

  • being right doesn’t always make you popular
  • government might well be ineffective by design
  • it’s the person who is actually trying to fix the problem who gets the blame
  • sometimes everything is exactly the same as it always was but suddenly it’s your fault
  • some jobs are hard or damn near impossible and it takes balls just to try them
  • some of the way people behave can be explained by their context

Now, what I’ve learned about Michael Costa in my recent research is:

To be continued…