Kevin Rudd has been busily undoing the worst excesses of the Howard government in its Senate majority or “megalomania” phase, but has generally shied away from simply replacing what was there before Howard. Even with the abolition of WorkChoices, unions haven’t been given carte blanche to wreak revenge on employers. Rudd is more of a centrist than that, and we’re seeing this with the proposals that were reported yesterday to repair the damage voluntary student unionism did to our universities.

I’m fascinated by the report that said that part of the footage of the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony was faked, and since it was top story on this website yesterday, I’m evidently not the only one. The organisers went to great lengths to show us what the giant footstep-shaped fireworks would have looked like, had it been possible to film them. The 55 seconds of footage apparently took the head of the visual effects team, Gao Xiaolong, almost a year of his life to create, and sadly for him, the ultimate result is that everyone’s now shocked that some of the footage of a supposedly live event was in fact completely artificial.

I’m sorry that 685 employees – sorry, “partners”, to adopt the fiction in the official term which implies that they have a generous financial interest in the company – of Starbucks Coffee are going to lose their jobs. But I’m not at all sorry to hear that 61 of our nation’s 84 Starbucks branches are going to close. My only regret, in fact, is that the company hasn’t decided to close all 84. If the nation’s espresso aficionados are lucky, the branches will be replaced with cafes that sell something a little different from what’s on offer at Starbucks – a beverage we like to call “coffee”.

What on earth has happened in this state? Not much that’s good since Bob Carr flicked Morris Iemma that hospital pass (literally, since our hospitals imploded shortly afterwards) and shuffled off to retirement. But though their incompetence is increasingly clear, I didn’t think our State Government was hideously authoritarian. Things got a little hairy during APEC, sure, but after the wheels of justice finally did their thing, even my colleagues at The Chaser eventually got away with it. But suddenly, simply because the head of a religion that most of us don’t recognise happens to be in town, the Government has quietly, without so much as a decent debate in Parliament, pushed though laws so draconian that Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen might have blushed, if his cheeks hadn’t already been coloured that permanent shade of pink.

I can’t quite believe what I read today, so let me take a deep breath and try this on for size. Australian track and field athletes are apparently planning to skip the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. Now, boycotts of Beijing 2008 have been suggested by many activists, and some politicians have decided not to attend to make a statement. But our boycott is because of … wait for it … smog. That’s right. Smog.