This pretty well sums up life and business in the Launceston CBD. I haven't seen anything like Launceston's car parking anywhere in the world. It's draconian, ridiculous and is clearly the cause of all the empty shops in the city centre. The new meters look like a continuation of the problem, rather than a solution. Most civilised cities have free parking for a half hour or hour so shoppers can come and go.

In Launceston you'll end up with a ticket within five minutes if you have to go to find some coins or you intend to stop briefly to collect something. I hear tales of the parking meter men marching out of the city council building in the morning like soldiers heading off to wreak their damage.

The council is as much to blame for the precinct debacle as the private car park owner. The council's obsession with extorting as much parking revenue as possible is killing the city and will ultimately start taking a toll on its much-cherished rate revenue

THERE is a state of confusion and anger among true Labor advocates. A tortuous quandary has emerged as to where Labor has diminished or rather admonished its responsibility to represent the hard working everyday Australian.

A fundamental tenet or rather a driving principle of Labor was to see every adult Australian in a position to own their own home. Low-cost housing as a stepping-stone to afford a deposit on the family home is a mirage, or rather an exasperation, in the minds of young Australians because there is no low cost affordable housing in the entire Commonwealth.

The upcoming Census will enlighten the electorate as to the true nature of home ownership decline from the 2016 census which showed 2.5 million Australians were renting at about half the financial cost of today's rent.

Politicians on both sides of the political sphere vaunt about personal shareholdings and rental portfolios owned by themselves or other members of their respective families as though it were a contest as to who has the most abundance of capital.

Working-class Australians can only stargaze at such pleasures because real wages in the past 20 years have stagnated, while company profits have soared to unbelievable heights. Labor has lost its way and will never gain the wide ranging support that it once enjoyed because it is far too cowardly to take on the might and imbalanced power of the dogmatic religious and extreme right of Australian polity.

Corporations, media and polluters alike use propaganda to destroy or distort democracy.

Democracy is the enemy of corporations and because it considers democracy as an enemy any means possible is justified in destroying any rudimentary defense that is put forward by the defenders of democratic precepts.

Labor no longer defends democracy. Its keepers are too busy enriching themselves while gorging at the political trough.

Millionaires one and all Hawke, Keating, Rudd and the list goes on and on while the real believers in Labor are hoodwinked into believing that all is well in Camelot.

SO we have Tasmanians stuck in lockdown in Victoria for the last two weeks unable to come home after travelling over and getting caught in the sudden lockdown there, but it's OK to come here if you're an AFL footballer and associate? Seriously, what a joke.

What is the current benefit from playing games in Tasmania when crowds are restricted to 10,000? So many can't even attend, the teams fly straight in play and fly out so no accommodation, no meals, no community engagement, no boost to tourism from interstate supporters flying over spending time in the state. So why, why are we allowing this and risking Tassie ending up like Sydney and Melbourne in lockdowns?