Australian Bloody Mindedness!

I find it interesting, and passing strange that a species with such a short memory span and even shorter tempers has spread so far across the earth’s surface and even considers itself the pinnacle of evolution.

Let us consider just a few events of this century and how we, as a species, have reacted.

Firstly, here in Australia, in the distant past, we had a communications network, run by the Government. It ended up being called Telstra and in private hands and in competition with a foreign entity known as Optus!

Telstra was far to close, in people’s minds, to the Government and so came in for a lot of criticism from the ordinary communicator or consumer. So much so that a lot of people left Telstra and decided to trust the Optus group. Because it was, and still is, either/or!

The Telstra service was poor, the Telstra personel were unhappy and Telstra was – well – it just wasn’t up to standard! And this was a decades-long attitude and people hated Telstra.

Optus was new and bright and shiny.

Then it had a hack from outsiders and inconvenienced a lot of its customers. And a year later it had a 12 hour breakdown which took it out of action accross Australia. Leading to screams of outrage.

So much so that many people immediately began leaving the inefficient and apparently troubled Optus, returning to Telstra whose past faults have suddenly been forgotten.

Sooooo – let us now look at the political world within Australia.

For the first eight years of this century, we had a Government which failed in humanity AND in economics Then for five years we had a Government which did reasonbly well with its humanity and some brilliant economic work. Being human, there were a couple of alleged mistakes made and so for nearly a decade we had yet another Government which became increasingly incompetent at both! Finally, for the past couple of years we have had a Government which is trying to repair all the damage.

Yet our attention-span is so short that we are already beginning to long for a change away from such competence.

Through it all, we, as Australian Homo Sapiens Sapiens, have ignored the final effects of Climate Change in pursuit of this week’s bottom line.

The past is forgotten in favour of the ever-changing NOW!

The Future is ignored because of the apparent safety of the NOW.

Could it be that we ARE the pinnacle of evolution? Because Evolution will need to begin all over again by the time we have stopped causing Climate Change.

I am beginning to see a pattern here – – –

Can you?

Explosive, but Profitable Energy

Newly minted Opposition Leader, the kind, gentle and honest Peter Potat –  errr – Dutton, has solved the East Coast Energy Crisis which was evilly created by that caring socialist person Albo in his first week as Prime Minister.

Such a simple solution and it is so obvious.

Forget the Coal and Gas Lobbies which have greased (non-renewably) the Coalition pockets for a decade and switch to Nukular Energy. Such a sensible way forward. Overcome the energy cost crisis by implementing the most expensive form of energy on the planet.

We have been told for more than a decade that renewables are totally unreliable and coal is the answer to everything (one wonders how 42 comes in to the equation) because the sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t always blow. Now it turns out this present emergency has been caused by coal fired power stations needing repair due to unreliability.

So there seems to be a major shift in lobby loyalty. I was told, early in my amateur investigative days, to always follow the money. I have attempted to do so yet always find it flying out of my pockets faster that I can refill them.

So I am now wondering if the Coalition ranks have stopped accepting payments in blackened bundles of brown paper coal bags and have begun accepting Iridescent Income, glowing with healthy radiation and just a few alpha rays.

Some Revolutionary Poetry

THINKING ABOUT CHINA

I looked at the attached, poorly photoshopped, image tweeted out by the Chinese Government today.

My mind goes back to the horrendous cartoons published in the German press demonising the Jewish people in the 1930’s. They prepared the ground for what eventually became WW2.

Now it is Australians who are being demonised by the Chinese. It could be seen as an opportunistic addition to the Trade War which is currently being waged on Australia in retaliation for our Trump-supporting Prime Minister’s demands for investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

We have been told in no uncertain terms not to interfere in China’s internal affairs. Yet here we are. At the first opportunity, China not only interferes in Australia’s internal affairs but also sets about portraying ALL Australians as child murdering monsters. Yet any mention of the Uyghur or Tibetan genocides must not be mentioned because it hasn’t happened and anyway it is an internal Chinese matter.

It is hard to avoid the feeling that China would find Australia, a vital source of both raw materials and high quality agricultural products, much easier to deal with if it was just another province of the Chinese hegemony.

Cruel cartoons and inhuman images were used during WW1, the Boer War and the Napoleonic Wars. They have probably been used in most wars throughout human history. The composite image of the ‘enemy’ in the mind of a nation is what allows a Ruler to convince those people to slaughter ‘the enemy’.

Australians are currently being demonised by China.

I wonder just what will the conquest of Australia be called in the history books of 2120?

The Beginning of the End, or the – – – ?

Way back in the past, on the 28th of March this year, there were 460 new cases of COVID-19 recorded in Australia. Since then that daily figure has steadily reduced until now it is in the tens to twenties each day.

We have beaten the virus and we need to go back to work, lift all the restrictions and get back to normal.

Not quite, not yet, not now!

Way back when this all started, you know, six or seven weeks ago, there was a lot of talk about how we were going to flatten the curve.

This was presented as a way of making sure we had hospital beds and facilities for when the pandemic really struck hard.

Now we are seeing what appears to be the tailing off of that flattened curve. Sadly that is not so. What was never pushed onto the public attention was what would happen after the curve was flattened. The virus is still out there, still looking to infect a still largely vulnerable population. Because if we haven’t been infected, we are virgin soil for COVID-19. Due to the fact that most of us have been isolated the vast majority of us are still going to catch the disease. And what happens when we are allowed out again? This is what happens. The timing is all wrong because the bottom of the first outbreak was so well achieved while the principle remains accurate.

Allowing us all out into public again, fun though that may be, will set things off again!

The flattening of the curve is and was a method of allowing our public health systems to become organised. To stock up on PPE and ventilators for the holocaust still to come.

I’m exaggerating? Here are a a couple of headlines which need to be unpicked and understood. If the emergency was truly over and the danger passed, why are so many ventilators still being sourced? These two headlines are from the week ended 24/4 and so are current!

It is not a conspiracy theory to see that our Government is expecting much worse to come.

The hope is that  our Health  Departments will be able to cope with the numbers of infections to come. More importantly that those who are infected and need the extreme medical assistance of ventilators will get it.

The death tolls we have been so horrified at in some other countries has been due, in large part to the fact that those who need help with their breathing for several days, have not been able to access that help. No country has thought to stockpile the tens of thousands of ventilators needed in this situation.

Australia, with its smaller population has been able to use the time bought by our isolation policy to build up the estimated required number of ventilators.

There have been nearly 7,000 cases so far in Australia. Just the two articles referred to above mention some 7,000 new ventilators with still more to come.

To me that indicates that a huge number of cases are still expected as restrictions on personal freedom are relaxed. Having this supply of ventilators available will keep most of the severely affected patients alive which is a good thing!

What is never mentioned is that people in my age group and above, with the co-morbitities we have accumulated over our lives will still be subject to an excessively high death rate from COVID-19.

So please understand, when we are again allowed out, are again able to exercise and mingle with our fellow human beings, I will still be wearing my mask in public, I will still be limiting my contact with people in the supermarket and I will not be going to the footy.

Only when there is a vaccine for this plague will I feel free to resume my old life for this is only the end of the beginning.

 

Australia MUST Lose

There is a potential conflict ahead.

Between Australia’s long-term ally and its new-found giant trading partner.

Hundreds of ships ply the seas between Chinese ports and Australian mining ports passing newly created islands in the South China Sea. Darwin is hosting a newly enlarged US Marine base, along with other US bases within this island nation. The potential for spill-over of any conflict, verbal or actual, between the fading old and the growing new Superpowers must involve Australia.

We are too small to ignore the demands of the US. Yet we are too important a supplier of raw materials to China for them to allow us to become simply a US base in a potentially “hot” conflict.

Put into this context announcements by President Obama in 2011 have an ominous import for Australia. The urgency in pushing for the American Multinational-favouring Trans Pacific Partnership is a last ditch effort for the owners of the “Free World” to keep their position.

China, on the other hand, is looking outwards for the first time since the mid 15th Century. It has finally shrugged off the shackles imposed by the Confucian bureaucrats and discovered, as it did back in 200BC, that there is a whole world out there waiting to be plundered for the benefit of the Chinese Ruling Class.

Where does Australia fit into this game of Chinese Checkers?

In the game of chess there is a situation known as Zugzwang. A player whose turn it is to move who has no move that does not worsen his position is said to be in zugzwang.

Australia’s foreign Affairs Department has successfully negotiated us into Zugzwang. We must make a move and whatever move we make, we must lose!

Sign the TPP and tie ourselves to the USA or continue trade with China.

The USA is here, sitting comfortably on our Nation’s land. With all the machinery of war which they so revere and so love using.

China wants our natural resources to build their own nation. Yes, they can go to Brazil and pick up huge amounts of iron ore but guess which other country is also close to Brazil. So building new islands to extend their borders has two benefits. An extension of their seabed and access to more hydrocarbons.But we all know that.

It also allows them to develop off-shore sea-lane protection. Protection from a dying super-power with continuing delusions of grandeur. There will be moments of heat in this conflict and I would NOT want to be living in or near Darwin when that happens.

Australia is China’s most convenient hardware store with the added advantage of being a growing food-basket. China will keep Australia as its own private supplier.

All we can do is sit and wait.

And worry about our children.

The Tasmanian Farmer

A Tasmanian farmer is working in his fruit and vegetable farm when suddenly a brand-new BMW squeals to a stop beside him.
The driver, a middle-aged man with big ears in a designer suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and blue tie, leans out the window and asks the farmer, ‘If I tell you exactly how many apple trees and how many apricot trees you have in your orchard, will you give me a box of apricots?’

The farmer looks at the man, obviously a city type, then looks over at his orchard and calmly answers, ‘Sure, why not?’

The city guy whips out his Apple I-Phone, connects it to his Apple Notebook and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The welld-dressed bloke then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Notebook that the image has been processed and the data stored.
He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel Spreadsheet with email on his I-Phone and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 15-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and turns to the cowboy and says, ‘You have exactly 1,586 apple trees and 987 apricot trees.’

‘That’s right. Well, I guess you can take a box of my apricots,’ says the farmer.

He watches the blow-in select one of the boxes and looks on amused as he stuffs it into the trunk of his BMW.  Then he says to the big-eared city type, ‘Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my box of produce?’

The visitor thinks about it for a second and then says, ‘Okay, why not?’

‘You with the Australian Government’, says the farmer.

‘Wow! That’s correct,’ says the suited bloke, taking one of brownish fruit out of the box and biting into it. ‘I’m the Prime Minister. How did you guess that?’

‘No guessing required.’ answered the farmer. ‘You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used all kinds of expensive equipment that clearly somebody else paid for, you tried to show me how much smarter than me you are, and you don’t know a thing about orchards and market gardens .. the orchard is over there. This is a field of vegetables.  Now give me back my box of onions.”

 

 

What Has Changed In America?

And why are Australians now trying to emulate it?

Reading through a 1941 issue of the Australian Worker, published some 74 years ago, I found the following article.

Now I am scratching my head.

This is exactly what we still see in America.

This is exactly what the Liberal Party, Rupert Murdoch, the IPA and the HR Nicholls Society are attempting to create here in 21st Century Australia.

The Australian Worker, Wednesday 15 January 1941, page 10

Smart Kid

A Kindergarten teacher in Toorak, in Melbourne, is explaining to her class that she is a Liberal and how nice it is that a new Liberal Prime Minister has taken office.

She asks her students to raise their hands if they, too, are Liberals and support tony abbott.

Everyone in class raises their hands except one little girl.

“Mary,” asks the teacher with surprise, “why didn’t you raise your hand?”

“Because I’m not a Liberal,” says Mary.

“Well, what are you?” asks the teacher.

“I’m a Green and proud of it,” replies the little girl.

The teacher cannot believe her ears. “My goodness, Mary, why are you a Green?” she asks.

“Well, my mother and father are Greens, so I’m a Green, too.”

“Well,” says the teacher in an annoyed tone, “that’s no reason for you to be a Green. You don’t always have to be like your parents. What if your mother was a criminal and your father was a criminal, too, what would you be then?”

Mary smiled. “Then we’d be Liberals.”
 

The Newman Stamp

During December Campbell Newman was deciding to call a snap election in Queensland. At the same time his Party, in their Bowen St offices were analysing the latest polling.

The results were very, very discouraging. A brainstorming session was called. Any ideas to improve the popularity of the Premier were to be welcomed.

One of the staffers diffidently suggested that, with Christmas coming up and lots of cards being posted, perhaps the trick would be to put Newman’s face on a special Christmas stamp.

This seemed a great idea and so Australia Post were contacted and a great photo of Campbell Newman was found, some sample stamps printed off and quick round of market research carried out.

Severe and unexpected problems were found with the adhesive.

No one was licking the sticky side of the stamp. Instead they were spitting on the image.

The McAbbott Burger

McDonalds are being good corporate citizens here in Australia and are creating a new burger.

It will celebrate the Prime Ministership of tony abbott.

The McAbbott Burger.

It comes with double cheese, fries and extra meat.

It says so, right there on the advertising.

Of course, when you get it, the price has an added $7  co-payment, the cheese has been removed as an efficiency dividend, you will never get the fries you were originally promised because of Labor’s debt and deficit disaster, and it’s only got half the meat.

 

 

 

The Scale of Things

The Australian Cabinet is holding its weekly meeting in Canberra.

Kevin Andrews is currently giving a report on the Military situation around the world.

He starts in Syria and Iraq where the Islamic State is becoming even more bloodthirsty.

“Sadly,” he says, “Three Brazilian soldiers have been killed.”

A shocked sob is heard and everyone looks at Joe Hockey.

tony abbott sympathetically asks, “What is wrong, Joe? I haven’t seen you react like this since that Asylum Seeker debate about the Malaysian solution.”

Joe sobbed, “The scale of death and destruction there is terrible. Just terrible. How many is a brazillion?”

 

 

 

 

Tragedies and Accidents

Prime Minister Abbott and Education Minister Christopher Pyne were visiting a primary school. They were taken into a classroom where the students were discussing words and their meanings.

The teacher asked the Prime Minister whether he would care to lead a discussion on the word “Tragedy”. Not sure where this was going, the Prime Minister asked the class to give him an example.

A little boy stood up, and said, “If my best friend, who lives on a farm, was playing in the field, and a tractor ran over him, and killed him, that would be a tragedy”.

“No,” said tony abbott, ‘that wouldn’t be a tragedy: that would be an accident”.
A little girl raised her hand: “If the school bus had fifty boys and girls in it, and it drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy”.

“I’m afraid not,” explained Christopher Pyne; “That is what we would call a great loss.”

The room went silent. The children were convinced that most of what they though of as tragedies were not really tragedies. There were no other offers. tony abbot’s eyes searched the room. “Can no one here give me an example of a tragedy?”

At the back of the room, a little, be-spectacled girl put her hand up, and said in a quiet voice, “If a plane carrying you and Mr Pyne was flying over a Naval firing range and your plane was struck by friendly fire and blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy”.

“Magnificent!” exclaimed tony abbott, “That’s right! And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?”

“Well,” said the girl with the quiet voice, “It has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss, and it probably wouldn’t be an accident.”

 

 

 

Prime Ministerial Problem

Our Prime Minister, tony abbott, has broken so many promises that he’s actually run out of promises to break!

This created such a problem that a special Prime Minister’s Office meeting was called.

After several hours discussion a solution was found.

Peta Credlin agreed to bring him a list of all of John Howard’s and David Cameron’s promises so he can start working on breaking them as well!

 

Dear Grim Reaper

Dear Grim Reaper,

This past year you have taken away my favorite comedian, Robin Williams; my favorite person, Gough Whitlam; my favourite racing driver, Sir Jack Brabham and my favorite screen siren, Lauren Bacall.

Just so you know, for this coming year, my favorite politician is Tony Abbott.