Poor decisions come pretty naturally to me.
I probably would be an all-time champion if it was an Olympic sport.
I have always thought there were no worthy challengers for my dumb decisions, but now I am not so sure. It seems quite a few have popped up over the last couple of years.
I will give you a couple of examples of the quality they are up against.
My first big mistake was probably back in the 70s, when I had a perfectly good rotary Mazda.
Someone told me that the motors in them could blow up so I decided to trade it in on a new-model Ford Cortina, which was the biggest lemon I ever owned.
It fell apart instantly as it came out of warranty.
I used to see my old car cruising around the Coast looking mint, and he paid about half of what I had.
To fix this poor decision I traded the Cortina in on a Nissan ute, which rusted out immediately after it came out of warranty.
I found out years later that particular shipment of Nissans had nearly been submerged on a container ship on the way over to Australia.
To make it worse, I owed a fortune on that bucket of crap after I had added on the HP losses from the other two cars.
Now, that is just a small sample.
Oh, another popped into my brain when I was typing. I once wore lemon-coloured trousers to the races when I had a touch of gastro, so I guess you can figure out how that worked out for me. Yuck.
So, the contenders are the boffin who designed that off-ramp at Caloundra’s Bruce Highway turn-off. He may be related to the one who put that turning lane in at Moffat.
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But the field gets stronger when I wonder who at the BOM could miss that deluge aftermath of the cyclone that walloped Wide Bay with no warning, but then made a decision to close all beaches on the eastern seaboard because of a possible tsunami from Tonga?
With all due respect to our friends in the Pacific and not to make light of their loss, it certainly seemed to be a possible massive overreaction over here.
Yes, I know, better safe than sorry, but my list of contenders could go on if I start on some of the Covid decisions.
But I am comforted by the fact that I don’t feel lonely at the top any more; there are a few “geniuses” with me.
Ashley Robinson is a columnist with Sunshine Coast News and My Weekly Preview. His views are his own.
