If You Lived In Sydney, You'd Wish You Were Back Home Right Now

What a very disconcerting city this is sometimes - you only have to turn to the news to see how.

Whether it's parties attended by guests of "Corey Worthington appearance" (to quote directly from the Daily Telegraph's article on a balcony fall at said party), mobile confession booths to be set up around town during World Youth Day, the leading Conservative radio host, telling his listeners its their job to maintain his accuracy, or the counter-terrorism squad dropping into a suburban library to say "Hi!"... things can be a bit screwy here somertimes.

But my main point today is, what are we to make of the disaster waiting to happen that is Town Hall station, as in this opinion piece from the SMH?

I'm not just talking abou the hideous green and yellow tiles, the rats, the wooden escalators, the rusting safety barriers and the smell (what on Earth must foreign visitors think of a prime transport link in Australia's biggest, most important city?). According to Railcorp itself, "the station [is] a serious danger to the public" due to its lack of exits and overcrowding (and, presumably, those wooden escalators). I travel though the station twice a day, use the platforms a few times a week, and the thought of what would happen if there was a major disaster down there has darkly crossed my mind on more than a few occasions. Town Hall station could actually be one of the greatest dangers to the Australian public at the moment. And what is the response from our illustrious state goverment?

Anyway, I've taken my mind off that lately by re-reading the S.C.U.M. Manifesta. It doesn't actually have anything to do with Sydney, apart from describing the men who live here, but it does make me feel much better.

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