When I called my new ISP this morning to check on the progress of my intertubes connection the man said, “Ergh, ummm, ergh, probably the seventh.”

And here’s what the ISP’s connection status page said about my intertubes connection at 1:45pm this afternoon.

They’re making this up as they go along.

UPDATE (3:50pm): The website was telling the truth. I’m online!!1!

Last night it was a bit dark in the house so I decided to turn on a light. The switch looked like this.

So I reached out and did this…

…and the switch looked like this.

The whole process (decision to turn light on > stand up > walk across room > flick switch) took less than ten seconds. It wasn’t very hard at all and it didn’t cost me any money.

Last week I decided to have a different company pipe the intertubes into my house so I got on the phone and ordered it. Deep inside the bowels of a Brunswick red brick building that houses a telephone exchange is a switch that currently looks like this.

Apparently it takes five to seven working day for a technician to get off his or her arse and do this…

…so that the switch looks like this.

Plus it costs $75. First world telecommunications, my arse.

(Mind you, it’s kind of cool blogging from a cafe with free wi-fi, loud, funky music and lattes on call.)

In July the new Senate will sit and the Labor government is facing trouble in the Upper House where their 32 Senators are significantly outweighed by the 37 coalition Senators. The five Greens are sure to side with the ALP on most issues, bringing the numbers of the loose “left” coalition up to 37 Senators — an even match with the Libs and the Nats. That leaves two men sharing the balance of power in Australia’s Upper House: South Australian independent Nick Xenophon and Family First’s Steve Fielding. That means that the Pentecostal Church, through Steve Fielding, holds the balance of power in Australian politics on the back of 53,302 Victorian votes. Ain’t democracy grand?

So there’s no doubt that Kevin Rudd and Labor strategists are willing to try almost anything to secure Fielding’s vote in the Senate to ensure the smooth passage of their legislation. But isn’t it a bit rich to simply implement one of Family First’s policies (PDF)?

Family First: FAMILY FIRST believes that, as a first step, we should filter the worst sites at the ISP level

ALP: [ALP] Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.

Family First: FAMILY FIRST proposes a system that allows adults who want pornography to ‘opt in’

ALP: Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.

There is so much wrong with this absurd policy that I don’t know where to start. Most of these things have been covered adequately in other places around the (currently un-censored) intertubes so I might just focus on two things:

1) How dare the government try tell me what I can and can’t look at on the internet? And even if I get on the phone to my ISP and demand to be removed from this ludicrous scheme, how dare they slow down my internet feed even more than it already is because everything needs to get checked against a massive blacklist of “inappropriate” sites?

2) The filter will block arbitrarily chosen websites on a static government blacklist. (Who decides what’s “inappropriate” anyway? Oh, that’s right — the Pentecostal Church.) Despite the fact that no blacklist in the world can ever contain every website that contains a single pornographic image, will the filter block Google to stop kids from clicking on this? Will it block Flickr to stop kids from signing up for a free account and searching for this? Will it block websites that aren’t pornographic but are dangerous to the minds of all sane and free-thinking humans?

Basically the filter will cost massive amounts of money, will slow down everyone’s internet feed, and won’t stop kids from seeing pornography. But it will make Steve Fielding feel all good and righteous and encourage him to return the ALP’s favour sometime later this year.

I hope Steve Fielding enjoys his three years as de facto Prime Minister because in 2010 he and his disgrace of a political party are going to disappear from the Australian political scene forever. They’ll make One Nation look mainstream.