Well, well, well.  I just found this in my Drafts folder – been there since 2016.  Looks like it didn’t get published.  Dunno why.  If I say so myself it was a cracking post.  So here it is.  Volume 1 of the Lost Posts.  (Well, the only one really, but it sounded good…)

Dateline – Australia.  We are currently sitting on the edge of our seats to see if a fundamentally decent person who is our Prime Minister will roll over at the baying of his far right party members as they bluster about complaining about a programme in schools.  “Oh my God, there is a highly successful anti-bullying school programme that is targeted towards tolerance of gay and lesbian and transgender type people and for the sake of almighty Jesus we do not want our children to embrace, let alone be tolerant of, these people.  They may convert into them.  Hellfire and damnation be upon thee!”

My response?  Shut the fuck up.

I do remember a kid at my school in the 1970’s that was thought to be gay.  Man did he cop some shit.  Teased.  Mocked.  Hassled.  I didn’t get involved in it, but then again I didn’t actively step in and completely stop it either, so there is a degree of complicitness (if that word exists) there.  I did tell a couple of my friends to leave him alone.  I wasn’t this kid’s friend as such but I kinda knew a bit of what he was copping.  I was a sickly child and was very fragile emotionally.  A sook, a cry baby, a whiner, a baby.  They were some of the tags I copped for a while.  But when I flogged the living shit out of one guy who pushed me too far one day I got a lot of less of that.  I could defend myself when pushed and did get a bit of a rep as being occasionally volcanic.  Best left alone in that case.  I’m sure the shitheads who gave me grief found another unwilling target.  Well, wouldn’t it be good if all kids had the intellectual toolkit to know how to react when you run across someone who is a bit different to you?  To not be afraid of them.  To not mock them.  That those people can make a valuable contribution.  Can be your friend.  Can be your teammate.  Can help you with your homework, assignments or just learn another way to look at life.  I’ve had gay friends.  They are just people.  A little different maybe.  But they don’t try and hurt me.  They don’t try and change me.  I accept them as they are and they accept me, with all my weirdness and personal oddities, as I am.

Well, if kids are armed with the knowledge from this programme that has been delivered at some schools for quite some time now, then maybe they will grow into more tolerant adults.  With greater proclivity for developing friendships and alliances with people they haven’t known since pre-school.  Will perhaps even be comfortable around people of other cultures, faiths, skin colours.  Maybe even accept other members of their own species as their brothers and sisters.  Like they really are.

Intermission: one day I was waiting for my wife in the local credit union and my daughter was with me.  She was about 2 or 3.  There was a small kids play area with some blocks there.  An Aboriginal man walked in with his partner and young son.  His partner queued up to do her banking and his son went into the same play area with my daughter.  Now I doubt my daughter had ever clapped eyes on a child of such dark skin colour before.  Didn’t bother her at all.  She turned around when she heard the little gate open behind her to see the little boy there.  He hesitated so she handed him some blocks.  They cooperated and built a tower and took it in turns to belt it down with their arms before building it again.  And when it was time to go the little boy gave her a hug and we left.  His father smiled at me when my daughter handed his son the blocks and I said to him when we were leaving “I reckon we could all learn a bit from these two”.  He agreed.  We shook hands and I left.  Moral of story: Kids know this stuff already.  They have no discrimination.  No fears.  We teach them that crap.  We are responsible.  We should fix it.

Now, the title of this post is the right are wrong.  And they are.

It is October now.

Daylight savings have just kicked in, and we’ve just enjoyed a few nice sunny days where the temperature hasn’t gone any higher than 28 degrees Centigrade. All very pleasant.

I even went back to the Office for a day to help a colleague return after a substantial time off. Hardly anyone around which was nice. But since COVID’s tentacles are lessening in NSW next week my team all resume working, partially at work and partially at home. We’ve been working out of home for the last 6 months. And for the most part is has worked out well.

For me it’s been a case of waking up, putting on enough clothes not to freeze to death in my outside office, visit the heads, take medication, walk less than 15 meters and then just get stuck in. A 45km each way commute kind of slows that whole process down a bit. Ah well. It was fun while it lasted. It kinda was. The only impact COVID had on my family and I was we bought masks, I worked from home (and got far more done than ever before) and two events we were booked to attend didn’t run. A massive metalheads concert in Sydney my son was really looking forward to and a writing workshop my wife was going to attend in Mildura. Oh yeah, bog paper was harder to buy than usual and I had to go to three different supermarkets to buy the milk I usually buy for us for a week. I am not driving 90km a day to do daily shopping and since I could only buy two bottles of milk I had to get two at Woolies, two at Aldi and one at Coles to get our usual supply. And delayed haircuts too. That’s it. Basically bugger all impact on us at all. Absolutely nothing to complain about at all.

Lockdowns? No difference, we don’t get out much anyway. Working for a Government department doing a job I could do from anywhere that had a power point and internet made it pretty easy to keep working. My little town, village really, doesn’t have restaurants and cafes. We have a cafe now though. Does a roaring trade too somehow. But our Pub burned down years ago and won’t be getting replaced. How unAustralian is that!

But the question on many minds is will COVID be back? And the answer is “of course it will you damned idiot and what did they teach you at school anyway?” Australia like many countries relies on tourism. And a lot of our tourism comes from outside Australia. And when the tourists return in large numbers so will our little buddy COVID. “By then we’ll have a vaccine” exclaim many people. Don’t you just love their faith in science that will blindly hope for a vaccine but when a scientist talks to them about real stuff like climate change they turn their back and ignore them. People really are shits. Prepare for the New Normal. No hang on, people were shits before, let me make that clear. Also the New Normal is a great album, gotta plug it somehow, love your work lads. Things like COVID are here to stay – get used to it people. Adapt. Or not.

So today is the day after the Federal Government have released the new Budget. If you have read any of my previous musings you’ll see I love taking the piss out of a Budget. Not this time. I don’t need to. It is self sufficient in that regard. With our gas led recovery and our cutting back of relief for the unemployed this Budget needs no assistance to be tragic. It’s not funny. It is rather pathetic. It’s to be expected of conservative government though and for some reason my fellow Australians keep voting those governments in against their own interests. I don’t get it. I’m sure I never will. At a time when millions of people globally have COVID, when hundreds of thousands have died from COVID and when an absolute shitload of people have been unluckier than I and have lost their jobs due to the impacts of COVID wouldn’t this be an ideal time to change the dynamic? To make people the centre of the political argument? To invest in people instead of big business? To wean us off coal fired electricity and have more local power generation using renewable technologies? To use what we have learned about remote working and remote services. To fund their improvement, to make them part of the New Normal. To give people a bit of dignity through a minimum living wage? To invest in the lower paid if you want to boost the economy since those people traditionally save less? I’m not an economist. And can I add thank fuck for that – no offence meant to Greg Jericho – probably the only economist I’ve ever seen I didn’t want to yell at. But even I can see how these things would change our paradigm. And to those thinking how do I fund this – jesus, just give me the books, I’ll find it inside a day out of the waste, the subsidies to those who don’t need it, the handouts to Murdoch press, etc. No problem there buddy.

2020 will be remembered as the Year of the Pandemic. Nothing I can do about that. It would have been nice if it could also have been remembered as the Year Things Started to Change. The Year We Acted From Our Consciences. The Year That Black Lives Matter Actually Mattered. I don’t see it. I don’t see that change coming. I don’t even see the mood for change around. So many want it to ‘go back to normal’. Do they even see what normal was? Do they see how they can improve on the old normal? They (the royal ‘they’ meaning the general population) don’t. And that saddens me greatly. This is a generational opportunity. And I believe we are wasting it. Instead we get Brexit, Trump, Bolsanaro, Putin, China vs USA tantrum throwing contests, ongoing climate change, serious delineation of the population based on how they vote (Dem vs Rep, Labor vs Tories, Liberal/National vs Labor, etc) and a fracturing of any type of civil conversation on frankly any and every topic. The economy is now more important than the population that create it. Well, fuck normal. Normal sucks. It’s time for a new idea. For politicians to represent their constituents. And it’s time for those constituents to be informed enough to know when they are being fed bullshit. Instead of being happy to get patted on the head and a $5 tax cut. I’m old and I’m tired and I see the deadshits in my age bracket hanging onto every scrap of power they can, milking every last benefit they can for them and their mates. And making sure whatever is left is an absolute shitstorm so whoever gets the power from them eventually gets the blame for everything after they are gone. It sickens me. When do we wake up and see it? I don’t think we do. I think it’s hear to stay.

And it all became utterly blindingly obvious in 2020, the Year of well, um, Shit.

I watch the news occasionally.  I couldn’t watch it every night.

I read a couple of news web sites occasionally being the ABC and The Guardian.  And I get three sets of news briefs emailed to me each day being SBS, The Guardian and the New York Times.  But now I’ve just unsubscribed from the NYT and I regularly delete the other two without looking at them.  Because everything I see leads me further and further to the belief that we are in a near endless death spiral where we all eventually disappear up our own arseholes.

What do I see that leads me to that?

Let me start here.  Topic 1 – BLM.

I see the senseless death of yet another black citizen in the USA lead to yet another round of Black Lives Matter protests.  This time is a little different.  Lots of worldwide protests happened last time and that’s happened again.  This time some changes to legislation regarding the police may be made.  That may help in some cases.  I see out here once again the spotlight is on indigenous deaths in custody, and rightly so.  And pardon my language here but I believe it is necessary, but abso-fucking-lutely nothing will change.  Just like last time where abso-fucking-lutely nothing changed.

Are black lives being respected more now than they were before the last set of protests?  Not that I can see.  Are the rates of Indigenous incarceration any different now to last time we had all of this happen?  Again, not that I can see.  And why is that you may ask?

Well, firstly, rioting doesn’t fucking help.  Destroying public property, police stations, police vehicles, etc does not help.  Who do you think pays for all of that shit to be repaired.  Let me answer that – you do.  The fucking taxpayer.  Oh, so not just you.  But me too.  All of that rioting take the attention away from the subject of the protests, and your average citizen says “oh look at all of that rioting, it’s no wonder the police and military need to control those idiots”, etc.  Yeah, those idiots derailing the issue away from peaceful and dignified protest allow people like Trump to call them anarchists.  And it fits.  It really does.  Send in the military he says.  At that point I’d tell the peaceful protestors to stay home for a day and then sure, send in the bloody military and get rid of the idiots who just love a good riot.  Chuck them in Guantanamo Bay.  Throw the keys away.  And then yesterday a BLM rally in the centre of Sydney tried to go ahead in the middle of a pandemic, on a Tuesday (??), AFTER losing a challenge in the Supreme Court on their right to hold a rally.  And somehow, against all the odds, the organisers seem to expect some sympathy for being arrested for doing what they were expressly forbidden from doing.  There are a lot of people who believe in the BLM movement.  Hell, I do too.  But holding yet another midweek rally mid-pandemic is really not going to help at all.

I just believe we should all be treated equally.  I don’t care about colour, race, religion, gender identification, orientation and the other factors that probably escape my mind as I type this while squinting at my monitor with sore eyes.  People are people.  And yes there are many complex issues around past transgressions, crimes, invasion, and all sorts of shit I am not going into now to be worked on.  But I at least have a starting point.  I know and have worked with people of many, many different backgrounds.  Mutual respect is all that is required.  Treat someone how you want to be treated yourself.  Is it that hard?  I clearly do not understand my own (alleged) species.  I understand dogs.  Maybe I am a dog.  Or should be a dog.  Whatever.

So do you want to change things so lives of all races are respected?  That is really, really easy.  VOTE IN SOMEONE THAT WILL DO THAT AND IF THERE IS NO ONE YOU CAN SEE WHO WILL DO THAT STAND FOR ELECTION YOURSELF.  We need the younger generation to be the ones who are going to say “right enough of this shit, you old farts cannot handle it, it’s time we took over”.  (I am one of those old farts that cannot handle it so bring on the younger generation I say.)  If you keep voting in conservative governments whose stated ambitions are smaller government, lower taxes and being big business friendly then you are going to get exactly that.  You are not going to achieve humanitarian gains because they cost money.  And conservative governments really, really like money.  So they can give it away endlessly to their mates as grants, tenders that you apply for after being awarded them and subsidies to businesses who are so toxic on environmental and/or humanitarian grounds that they would go out of business instantly without them.  Jobs, jobs, jobs for the boys at our expense while the super wealthy get even more super wealthy through additional tax concessions, grants and general bullshittery.  It winds me up so far I’m amazed I haven’t punched a hole through the keyboard typing this.  I have broken one of the legs on it though.  Currently a flattened and rolled up cereal box is holding it at the right angle for me to use.  I don’t quite qualify as super wealthy.

Topic 2 – COVID 19

Oh god I could write a book on this.  Here is a neat mathematical equation I came up with.

Obs(T + B + S + I) = aneurysm.

Where Observation of T (Trump) plus B (Bolsanaro) plus S (Stupidity) plus I (Infringement of my rights) equals a near certain chance of me having an aneurysm.

The first two factors do not need to be discussed, they are well known, history will have it’s say, and I will set out my platform now that T will win the November 2020 election somehow.  I don’t know how, and even less can I understand why, but it’ll happen.  I’m sure I saw it in a teacup somewhere.  Factor S though is appalling.  I understand that people are not taught to think in our current education system, and my crazy opinion is that is intentional.  That trait is thrashed out of you very, very quickly.  “You don’t need to know how to calculate your times tables, just remember them.  Remember 12 x 12 equals 144.  What?  13 x 12?  Don’t be so stupid – you’ll never need it.  Go and do detention for that you little smart arse.”  (Ok I made that up – but ask any kid what 13 x 12 is.  Seriously, ask them.  See what they tell you.  Not many know it is 12 x 12 + 12.  How screwed up is our school system.  Don’t get me started on writing essays on Shakespeare, doing calculus and forcing me to take lay ups for basketball in PE when I’m perfectly capable of sinking 3 pointers all day long.  School does not teach you to think, it is to prepare you for University.  Where it is handy if you can fucking think.  And breathe…)

I have done a Uni degree.  I paid my HECS debt, I did my 4.5 years of doing the work and busting my arse to get good grades.  Which were meaningless – no one cares that I have nothing lower than a Credit.  How old are you they want to know?  How much salary do you expect?  Nope, can’t afford you, it’ll cut into my profit margin.  Next!  But anyway at Uni it was kind of expected that I knew how to think.  And by that I mean think critically.  Fair enough I thought.  Everyone can do that can’t they?  Er no.  They can’t.  I saw that among many fellow students.  Some of them could, and a select few did a better job of it than me, but not many are in that cohort, which saddens me deeply.  I am going to provide a statistic here that is meaningless as I have no quantitative data to base it on, but given the post-truth world we currently live in it’ll be fine.  52% of the general population (no reference available but who cares right?) cannot analyse this statement properly.  “Wearing a filtration mask will lower the amount of oxygen you breathe in, the carbon dioxide you breathe out will stay in the mask and you will eventually get sick from wearing it.”

Now I’ve been to hospital a few times.  Had a few operations.  Had one that lasted a good couple of hours, that wasn’t fun to recover from.  But luckily the above statement regarding masks is utter bullshit because everyone in the operating theatre other than me was wearing one of those masks and the resulting surgery could have been really messy if they all fainted mid-stream.  How can anyone be that stupid to believe that crap?  How do they have the IQ to learn human speech? Honestly, I am baffled.  Even if they have never been to a hospital, haven’t they ever seen someone doing woodwork with lots of sawdust about? And this whole business of “infringing my human rights by making me wear a mask” bullshit?  That kind of relates to those people infringing my basic human rights to live amongst people that have a positive IQ.  “I woke up in a free country this morning” is the best line I’ve heard in the past month.  I nearly cried laughing at that one.  My response to that?  “Yes sir, we both did.  And you are free to walk around outside my store without a mask and not come in.  It’s private property and if you don’t wear a mask you do not set foot in my store.  It’s my property and I set the rules.  If you do not follow my rules you are trespassing and in the free country we both live in that is a crime,  Good morning to you sir.”  No way I could say that with a straight face though.

Ok, let’s leave masks aside for a minute.  Even though I could go on here all day.

On this very day Queensland is being reported to have 2 people who flew from Melbourne to Sydney to Brisbane that were required to isolate for 14 days since Melbourne is currently a COVID shitstorm.  They didn’t.  They went shopping, they went to work, one of them at a fucking school, and SURPRISE! they are now sick.  Got tested.  Positive test.  Lucky they were isolating.  Umm, well about that.  Remember that saying “you had just one thing to do”?  All they had to was stay home.  Did they not see that awesome Samuel L Jackson book reading?  Apparently they are both 19.  Age, not IQ.  Or maybe it’s both.  I’m not sure.  But it’s the act of the “I don’t give a shit” or the “I am as dumb as shit” people that helps the virus spread so well.  A little bit of thought goes a long way.  And if you can add some common decency to it too then all the better.  And against my better judgement I watched the news while I had dinner and a close contact of those 2 has already tested positive.  Congratulations, you are now the proud parent of your very own COVID cluster.  Well done.  Bellends.

Topic 3 – Bushfire enquiry

Ok, if you have ever read any of my other dribble on this site you will by now be aware that I have a slight issue with my country of birth and it’s inability post-Kevin Rudd to fire a single neuron in the Parliament for doing anything useful about Climate Change.  Last summer, well spring and summer actually, was pretty much the worst fire season we have seen.  Today the numbers of natives animals lost or displaced is estimated to be 3 billion.  Yeah, billions.  Everyone can fathom a few koalas, some roos and wombats but few consider lizards, frogs, bats, birds and the other parts of our fauna that contribute to an actual operating ecosystem.  (You do realise that Sydney’s CBD contains no native fauna and is not an ecosystem right?  More like a sewerage system.)  We also sadly lost people, houses, lots of livestock including horses, cattle, sheep and who knows what else.  Thousands of miles of fencing, roads, power lines and all sorts of infrastructure.  And before all of this happened our retired Fire Chiefs were raising the alarm.  The Bureau of Meteorology had 300 separate briefings for all levels of government (local, state and federal).  They all said this is going to be really, really bad.  They all said Climate Change is an important component of this cocktail for disaster and we need to do something about it.  30 years ago would have been a better time to start but hey, let’s do something now.

Effectively the government response was “Yeah, nah.  We’ll piss our Paris commitments in by accounting wizardry.  We’ve got some Kyoto credits that fell down behind the fridge so she’ll be right mate.  Now where’s the pen so I can sign off on Adani mate?”

Why we are not THE world leader in renewables utterly bamboozles me.  Why an Australian of Chinese heritage had to go to China to get the backing to build one of the largest manufacturing plants for solar panels and attributed technology amazes me?  Why one of the sunniest countries on Earth has governments that do not fully back solar astounds me.  Why they fight wind power because they think they look bad?  Ever seen a cola fired power plant up close.  It’s just beautiful.  Er, not.  Most of our politicians don’t look so great either but we have to see those people strutting about on TV and embarrassing themselves during Question Time whenever they bother to show up.  But it’s all right, the non-existent Clean Coal Carbon Capture Technology will save us.  Probably at the same time the 5G conspiracists say we’ll be suffering under the mind control powers of the evil Huawei 5G waves or some such nonsense.  Stuff that works, provides little pollution during manufacture and none at all during use is bad.  Stuff that lives only in fantasy is good.  Plus coal of course.  Coal is always good.  Here hold it, it won’t hurt you.  Dumb arses.  So do I vote for a Unicorn at the next election then?  That’s a fantasy creature.  And that would be a miracle too wouldn’t it?  Right up Scotty’s street then eh?

And that’s only 3 topics but I had to stop somewhere.

So what are we becoming?  (And by that we I mean Western civilisation)  And do we really want to know?  I read 1984 last year for the first time, and while I am not saying that is what we are becoming I see some eerie parallels at times.  Fake news, alternative truths (I just died a little inside typing that), governments doing whatever the hell they want without recourse to their own population (think Russia, China, Syria, North Korea, Poland, Hungary as a few examples of late), surveillance, the great fear-power word of Terrorism – it’s not looking great.  I think what we are becoming, on average, is dumber, far more gullible, and far less able to analyse what we see around us.  We are easily led, we scare easily, we are becoming more xenophobic and there is a growing inability amongst people to work together.  The poison of Nationalism is growing exponentially and as someone who doesn’t believe in nationalism and patriotism at all that quite literally scares the shit out of me.  Why the hell should I support X sporting team because I live there?  I copped crap for years at my first job for supporting Sri Lanka in the cricket.  Was no surprise I was the only one in the office who could pronounce every Sri Lankan name.  I was called unpatriotic by a work colleague.  I laughed in his face and told him he needed to try a lot harder on the insults.  I followed the Lankans because of how they played the game – they had fun and loved it.  They were cavalier about their batting, ruthlessly and crazily aggressive with their bowling, and sure they got flogged a lot in the early days because of it.  But they were worth watching because they loved what they did and it showed.  Why the hell would I follow Australia who the press put on a pedestal after every win.  Even then you couldn’t trust the press!  Grooming us to follow along blindly behind our National heroes.  And you thought I’d lost the plot on another off topic whinge didn’t you?  HA!

Anyway, where are we headed?  I don’t know.  But the direction needs to change.  And I am just one grumpy old bastard who cannot change everything on my own.  I’ve been saying this stuff for years, in conversations to mates, work colleagues and anyone dumb enough to listen to my rants.  It is slowly getting more desperate, and we need an about face.  And we can’t leave it to just a few campaigners to plug away.  We need a lot of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s and Great Thunberg’s to be launching themselves with passion and courage into the limelight and dragging us along the path away from perdition.  We need to support young people prepared to go into the political arena for the right reasons.  I was fortunate to attend a Climate Change rally in Bathurst and see some passionate young people who wanted to make that difference, to have a go.  And if you have a go you get a go right?

As we head towards what looks like yet another record breaking Summer we already find ourselves in the midst of a savage fire season.  Bushfires have already devastated parts of Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia.  Fire season isn’t supposed to start until October 1 but we’ve had serious fire activity occurring since early September.  We’re in the midst of a severe drought in New South Wales where water restrictions are occurring pretty much everywhere outside of Sydney.  And still our elected officials drag their feet, and I personally would add they drag their knuckles too, doing nothing at all to address Climate Change.

And really it’s no surprise at all.

The Coalition are too busy pandering to their mates in the Mining industry to bother doing anything.  And they still have what are politely called sceptics, but I prefer to use the term ignorants, in their party they have to placate.  So even talking about Climate Change is fraught with risk inside their own party.  So in the meantime the agriculture industry, which blindly votes for the National Party at every election, are seriously thinking to themselves something like “what have we done?”  After all, they are the first to suffer at the hands of this drought.  Empty promises of aid echoed down the halls of Parliament for weeks before a watered down and quite frankly inept and bumbling policy to assist farmers was announced.  I highly doubt they are feeling much better after seeing it.

Not that the total joke of an opposition are doing any better.  Bushfires raging all over the place and they decide to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Government and agree it ‘isn’t time to talk about climate change while all of this is happening” – my paraphrasing, not an actual quote – but that is exactly what they have done.

Funnily enough the opportunity to talk terrorism was taken up in the wake of both Christchurch’s tragedy and the Lindt Café shootings in Sydney.  We talk about netting beaches immediately after a shark attack.  We talk gun control after every American school shooting.  We talk drug testing after every music festival overdose.  So why exactly can’t we talk Climate Change during a natural disaster that is obviously exacerbated by that very phenomenon.

I will tell you why.

For the Coalition – they have nothing to say.  They don’t want to acknowledge it exists.  It’s not good for their favourite businesses so it’s not allowed air time.  It’s all bullshit, smoke and mirrors, corrupt scientists, “raving inner-city lunatics” (and that is a quote from our Deputy PM – I’m ashamed to admit he is anything more than a street sweeper with a viewpoint like that but there you have it – welcome to Democracy – ain’t it great?) and mad left wing greenies (something I have been called in the past).

For Labor – they are shit scared that it will cost them votes.  Yep.  Votes.  Years before the next election is due.  They have just completed a post-mortem of how they lost the unlosable election.  One of the points was their Climate Change policy.  Seriously you lot, it didn’t matter what your policy was with Bill in charge.  People didn’t like him and in the cult of the personality that we live in today that was all it took.  He backstabbed Rudd, then did the same to Gillard.  That was why you dumb arses.  That’s why his approval numbers were always rubbish.  No matter what he did, no matter what he said.  He was as popular as a fart in an elevator.  If almost anyone else was leader you would have won.  Albo, Burkey, Tanya, Dreyfuss – any of them.  You would have won.  You still wouldn’t have got my vote out here though – your candidate in my area is a notorious tool.  So now they are paralysed with fear that if they say the wrong thing then the madly popular “thoughts and prayers” PM ScoMo would strike you down in the public arena and your votes will bleed away never to return.  It makes me sick.  Can someone please put Penny Wong in charge.  Someone with some fight.  Some courage.  And a load of credibility.   But no, the factions run the party and deals would need to be made.  Idiots.

So the “major” parties basically are doing nothing.

But while the bushfires continue to rage it’s the Greens who get the blame.  Yes, the Greens.  The ones with a single seat in the House of Reps.  The ones that do not have control of the Senate.  The ones that HAVE NO EFFECTIVE SAY IN PARLIAMENT.  The ones that have brainwashed everyone somehow, even though that same brainwashing has utterly failed to get them into a position of power.  So the Greens, the very party who were formed due to environmental issues, get the blame for an environmental catastrophe they have been warning about for the last 25 years.

You know it makes sense.  To an idiot perhaps.  Not to me.

Now a group of retired fire chiefs have come out and spoken out as a group to call bullshit on what the Government are doing.  To heap scorn and fiery brimstone on our elected officials who sit on the throne of Rome fiddling away madly while the country burns.  Why retired guys?  Because those in the jobs are not allowed to discuss Climate Change.  Ridiculous.

And in the previous week 11,000 scientists also spoke out in a joint statement saying we are on a road to perdition itself.  Also one of the world’s largest banks issued a major policy saying Climate Change was the single biggest risk to the world’s economy.  And they said it in great depth.

Now I don’t know if having an Environmental Science degree makes me a scientist or not but I’m with the 11,000 who say nowhere near enough is being done.  I’ve only being saying it to anyone mad enough to listen to me for the last 20+ years.  And all of my studies from 2005-2010 just reinforced it even more.  Plus another 9 years of reading IPCC reports, climate change journals and other studies have done nothing to change my viewpoint.  Except for one thing.  It’s worse than we think.

Here is something that only the scientific community ever seem to talk about.

Climate has momentum.

It’s like a very big truck running down a very steep slope.  It will not stop quickly.  Even if by some miracle we stopped emitting all the bad stuff tomorrow morning it will be years before anything improves.  Years.  Quite a few years actually.

So lock in some really interesting times.  Where we do not have control.  Where all we can do is react.  I don’t think it will be pretty.  I also don’t think it will be short.  I know for a fact that the IPCC reports are always heavily swayed to the most conservative numbers.  And everything we have seen is at the other end of the bell curve, the uncomfortable end if you like.

What do I really think?  I think we, as a country, are not mature enough in our thinking to meet this challenge.  I think we are too complacent to pull the trigger on real action.  I think we are too comfortable with our unsustainable Western lifestyles to make the changes required.  And finally, I think we are not the Clever Country we have always been told we are.  More like the Gullible, Stupid, Ignorant, We-Are-Too-Small-To-Make-A-Difference country.  And since we are “too-small” we will just rely on the rest to save us.  Won’t happen.  Everyone says they are too small.  China still say they are a developing country and want all the benefits of that status.  Yeah right, thanks China.  The USA are too introspective and important to give a shit about anyone else.  And the EU is imploding with right wing xenophobia that will derail efforts to continue the good work commenced in many EU states.   Not to mention Brazil.  I actually don’t want to mention Brazil.  Just wow.

TL:DR – Pardon the language but we’re fucked.

I guess I am like many others who receive news summaries on a daily basis into their chosen email inbox.  Since I am a filthy left wing green liberal (with a small L thanks very much) my chosen feeds come from SBS and The Guardian and are what I usually refer to as a “decent” level of journalism.  Mostly they are factual, though of course there are opinion pieces that push that individuals chosen agenda, but being scientifically trained I believe I can pick those out and treat them accordingly.

But The Guardian I am reading this morning just starts digging a very large hole and keeps on expanding with the kind of dogged determination that I would wish to possess myself of late.  And it’s not a bad hole at all.  It’s the kind of hole that could fit an entire parliament into.  And to be fair, I’d like to be drive the dozer that covers it over once they are placed in it.  It’s a hole being dug by climate and environmental misadventure.  News piece after news piece about bushfires, land clearing, climate change, drought with the occasional segue-way into the looney bin of our elected parliamentarians.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Firstly, three communities being utterly smashed by one of the most unforgiving droughts in history.  One of those towns, being Dubbo, is only a couple of hours drive from me.  And I can safely say that same drought is giving my area a good thumping too.  There are canola crops beginning to flower, but the plants are smaller than I have ever seen them.  There are feed crops growing and they are so green in comparison to the utter dustbowls around them it is almost jarring to the eyes.  Pastures are basically just dirt and today I saw a mob of sheep eyeing a feed crop through a fence that reminded me of a movie scene of crooks casing a future bank heist.  “Storm the fence boys, we’re going in!”  Maybe not, but I bet they were thinking it.  So I can’t blame the Government for a drought now can I?  Perhaps not.  But distancing the drought from climate change is liking distancing vehicles from the roadkill that I see almost every bloody morning.  The roo/fox/rabbit/sheep got hit by a car/truck/van/bus/SUV and it’s fairly obvious.  Droughts are made worse by bad planning and not doing anything at all to lessen greenhouse gas emissions.  It also doesn’t help when you deny people their say by saying that striking school students should leave politics to the grown ups, and having those same politicians threatening to use cattle prods on protesters.  Questioning the science also doesn’t help but I could go on all weekend on this so it is time to move on.

Secondly there is the NSW Government’s investigation of land clearing that isn’t being released to the general public anytime soon.  Up, up and up go our land clearing rates to grow crops.  But if I go up one paragraph can I ask with what water?  Why clear native vegetation which is at least offering some ground cover, keeping some moisture in the soli, plus the carbon of the root systems, the soil structure itself and the soil biota.  Ah, what would I know.  I only hold a degree in Sustainable Terrestrial Ecosystems.  And when I asked a local grower about his canola planting regime and told him I was at Uni doing an Environmental Science degree his reply was that I was “just another $%#^ing tree-hugging greenie”.  Righto then.  He stormed off when I asked him how his yields were going.  Back on topic though land clearing increases greenhouse gas emissions.  That is undeniable.  If you care about facts anyway.

Moving on and coming in at number 3 on my hitlist for the day, yes, just today, is the bushfire update and how the weather is affecting current firefighting efforts.  70 still burning in Queensland and 45 in NSW.  And yes, it’s the second week of Spring.  The old “Bushfire Season” used to start on October 1.  Courtesy of story 1 and the lack of rain, whatever vegetation is left is very dry, fire fuel stocks are high from dead vegetation and nightmare scenarios abound for the very fine folk of the RFS and professional Fire Brigades across many regions.  And we’ve been warned for years, well decades actually, that climate change will intensify bushfire events.

And just because I am obviously a left wing tree hugger allow me to introduce article number 4 where one of our federal ministers has stated he “accepts the science on manmade climate change, and [I] always have”.  Except perhaps in his WRITTEN statement to The Guardian earlier in the same week where he posited that “I don’t know if climate change is manmade“.  Not a bad flip there, took 3 days apparently.  But of course he was taken out of context blaming his statement being cut short during a TV interview.  Which is kind of why I typed written in upper case earlier – it was an email response to a question from The Guardian.  So well played sir, I like the fact that you are training for a place on Boris Johnson’s front bench.  You have the qualifications already, just need to get that citizenship request in.  Is it too soon to mention citizenship again in a sentence relating to parliamentarians?  Oh well.

Now all of that probably looks like I’m picking on our fairly and freely elected Government.  That a fair statement.  I am.  Our freely and fairly elected opposition are currently trundling from one pothole to the next as they try to divorce themselves from the fact that they were utterly pulped by an uncaring and probably uninformed electorate.  They are madly looking for policy, any policy, that doesn’t sound like something the former Opposition Leader had anything to do with.  Totally unaware that the former Opposition Leader had a serious handicap in his recent history of basically being disliked by the majority of the population.  Most of the policy was good, but now politics is a reality show.  And if the public don’t like the cast they switch off.  They didn’t like Bill so they switched off.  Now we have Albo.  But will the factions let a generally likable bloke be himself or will they be paralysed in fear of him actually connecting to people and saying something against the factions.  Actually doing something we want instead of the party?  Honestly, who cares?  Expecting Labor to do something useful at this point with no majority is liking me pining for the Powerball win.  I do.  I really, really do.  But it ain’t happening.  And neither are they.  Which is why there is not one single story about a Labor policy in The Guardian.  The one newspaper prepared to give them any sort of platform at all and they have nothing to provide.

So it really was a stupid day to look at the news.

Sigh.

Well then, 2016 came and went without a single post from me.  That’s pretty ordinary I must say.  Must do better, if only to keep a record of what annoyed me the most at any given time.  Right now?  Could be any of a large number of things.  Let’s see.  Oh, here’s one.

Climate Change.

SURPRISE!!!  Yeah, that is definitely annoying me.  Back in 1996 I moved to Orange in Central West NSW for work and really liked it.  Easy going place, laid back, people would stop you walking down the street for a chat – people you didn’t know that is.  Friendly place, and pretty bloody cold in winter and quite tolerable in summer.  I was only there a couple of years and headed home to the Blue Mountains.  Eventually our eyes were drawn westward due to the whole Sydney attitude expanding up to our area and we looked again at Orange.  Weather was mostly the same (twas only 7 years later) but the town had changed.  So we went to a smaller town a half hour further out.  Quiet, mostly friendly, looked a good place to bring up kids.  But wow, was the weather different.  Stinking hot in summer, amazingly cold nights and mornings in winter.  Jesus wept, what were we thinking?

Well, that was 14 years ago.  And now?  Not quite so cold in winter, absolutely fricking boiling bloody hot in summer and once in a while it even rains.  This year it rained our average plus 3 mega-shitloads more after a few dry years of below average rainfall.  That led to floods all over the shop inland of us, and all of that rain and flooding basically ended 3-4 months ago.  Everything was green.  Everywhere.  Even the rocks in part of my back yard were green with gorgeous lichens.  Now they, like everything else, is brown.  There are cracks opening up in the ground that would have had the late Tony Greig excited and losing keys in.  Man it is dry.

Now that is known as anecdotal evidence.  Basically, it’s meaningless.  And if that was all the evidence on hand to get people to stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere then it would be a fair call to tell me to bugger off.  But it really isn’t.  There is a lot of evidence for climate change.  Now I’m only a humble Bachelor of Environmental Science in Sustainable Terrestrial Ecosystems as opposed to an actual Climatologist.  I may not have a masters in Statistics to do all the analysis myself, but that is why we have a review system in science, known as Peer Review.  Climate Change Deniers will tell you it’s all made up of flimsy assumptions as those science people are trying to preserve their grants and research projects to protect their livelihoods.  Excuse me a second here.

BULLSHIT!!!

Ah, that’s better.  Peer Review is not handing an opinion to a mate to spellcheck it.  It’s not take it to the IPA for a greenwashing.  It is a rigorous examination of the experimental method.  It is rigorous checking of the data.  It is a sceptical look at the conclusions and whatever statistical model was used.  It is an in-depth examination of the entire process that has lead to said paper being written, and happens before being published by any decent scientist.  Which is pretty damned close to all of them who actually want to continue in the field.  If you get caught fudging crap then your future lies in writing doctrine for conservative politicians and that is just one step from eternal damnation or having to watch 10 years of reruns of the Young and the Restless.  That is a risk no-one with any self worth wants to take.

The current Australian Government seems to think Climate Change is something they can gloss over.  Pay polluters to fix it.  Don’t bother taxing carbon in any way shape or form.  Encourage the coal industry to make some mega-mines.  We’ll even help you get up and running by watering down or straight out avoiding any safeguards you need to take.  I’m sorry but what part of this do these fools not understand?  I get that some of them do not have the intelligence to get it – the ones I am thinking of certainly haven’t displayed any to date (you can imagine who I mean here) – but seriously, Malcolm Turnbull, the guy who lost the leadership for trying to work with Kevin Rudd on building an emissions scheme.  We know he gets it.  He is the bloody Prime Minister for Pete’s sake.  He knows.  And is in charge.  And does nothing but pander to the nutters in his party.  You sir, have lost all the respect that I ever had for you, and have previously granted you in this very blog.  You must just be another grub like the rest of your party.  In it for your mates.  In it for the donors.  In it for industry.  Well here is a line that every one of you politicians should be forced to say into a camera before you are allowed into Parliament.

GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE.

Some of you may recognise this as part of the Gettysburg Address of November 19, 1863, given by Abraham Lincoln.  I am no American political historian, but to me it sums up the idea of a democracy and the task of a politician.  They are elected by the people.  They are supposed to do their job for the people and that job is government of the people so it all makes perfect sense.  It does NOT read government of the people by a bunch of self interested corrupt individuals for the interest of themselves and those large corporate interests that supported them.  Which is what is happening now.

I could, but won’t, comment on the recent USA election and inauguration.  Suffice to say this.  The previous President made efforts to curb Climate Change and bring the USA to become a member of a responsible international community to limit Climate Change.  The new President fully intends to abolish any commitments made towards reducing carbon emissions, has given his blessing to increasing coal, shale oil and natural gas mining, and has gone so far to put this piece (quoted verbatim below) on the White House website as the official America First Energy Plan.

Copied from https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-energy at 1057 AEDST January 23, 2017.

Ah, the queue of Q’s in that title.  Almost worth stopping there eh?  But that’d make little sense.  Quite unlike last night’s episode of Q and A.

Last night I had the pleasure of watching Adam Spencer, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Ranjana Srivastava and Beth Fulton lock horns on the panel.  Well, perhaps lock horns isn’t really a good descriptor.  How about get along like a group of mates over a beer?  Basically 4 people of scientific and mathematical backgrounds (a mathematician, an astrophysicist, an oncologist and a marine ecologist) answering questions fired at them by audience members.  And what a joy is was to listen to 4 POSITIVE guests on a panel.  No political avoidance of an issue, no bollocks, claptrap, dodging of questions, reverse psychology, yelling over the top of each other, etc.  Civilised discussion of interesting topics.

I enjoyed it immensely.  And I get the feeling Tony Jones enjoyed it too.

And how amazing it was to hear Neil Tyson speak on what the hell is going on with our Government’s policy towards Renewable Energy.  Yes ladies and gents, think back a few years to when we ratified Kyoto leaving only the Americans and Canada as the hold outs.  And now the Americans are looking at us in bewilderment.  What the hell happened?  Well, I guess you know what happened.  Kind of a rhetorical question really.  We got Abbott.  They got Obama.  Or to put in another way, they won and we lost.

So to the title, especially the Quando? bit.  Quando I believe means When in Italian.  So I say to the Australian people, WHEN?  When are you lot going to support renewables over coal with your vote.  Hmm?  Barnaby Joyce is out there trying to kick heads around to stop an enormous coal mine in his electorate.  And bloody good on him – the Liverpool Plains are some of the most fertile land this country has.  If they found a big coal deposit in Mosman would they dig it up?  Pig’s bloody arse they would.  The Liverpool Plains deserve to be defended as prime agricultural land.  And from what I see Barnaby Joyce is nobody’s Yes man.  There are plenty of things we don’t agree on I bet, but I respect the fact that he is going against the party line to not just make a stand for his electorate, but to defend local food production over a mega coal mine.  At least he is showing that the junior partner of the Coalition are not total pushovers.  There are some balls being displayed amongst them.  Hoorah.

However, they are still junior partners.  And they will NEVER have the numbers to be the Senior partner.  And consequently they will NEVER be in a position to dictate any sort of policy.  They basically get a chance to have a whine in the Caucus before being outvoted on anything and everything, no matter how sacred it would be to their electorates.  So they get thrown a bone or two occasionally before an election to make sure they can say they have a “seat at the table” on their election brochures.  Big deal.  They will NEVER get the big issues their way.

Joe Hockey doesn’t like Wind Turbines – they aren’t aesthetically pleasing to him.  The Mad Monk wants to lessen the Renewable Energy Target – it’s too much already.  Obviously not enough money flowing to him from coal.  What needs to happen to these pair of idiots is they should be put up in a swag together for 10 days and forced to live near the power station alongside Mt Arthur Coal Mine near Muswellbrook.  Then spend 10 days in a swag on a property near Goulburn living near to some wind turbines.  Obviously outside the legislated distance that they need to be from residential properties.  Then they come back and write an essay describing the experience and which was better.  And if they say coal, drop a Mine Truck on the pair of them because they would obviously be lying.

This country has greater renewable energy generation potential than most others across the globe.  But we don’t use it the way we should.  When are we going to wake up?  When do we meet our potential?  When do we remember that we used to think we were the clever country?  Quando?  Scusa, non parlo inglese.

One of my greatest questions of late, to myself so I don’t bore others to death, has been what is the fascination with higher education?  I went to Year 12 at school, because I felt at the time that I wanted to go to University or join the Air Force as a Navigator.  For both of these I needed specific grades in specific subjects, so I took those subjects.  But towards the end of Year 11 I was completely over the whole studying bit.  I enjoyed Geography due to a great teacher.  I was cruising in Maths since I had dropped a level.  I was bored out of my mind by Chemistry as the poor bastard teaching us knew sod all about it – he was a Biology specialist.  Physics was totally meh and the less said about General Studies and English the better.  Though I had a fantastic teacher for English.  Even she couldn’t get me interested in Shakespeare, Coleridge and DH Lawrence.

So I had a few months of bludging around playing backyard cricket, going to the pool and the movies, hanging out with my girlfriend, and eventually figured I’d better find out about what this working stuff was about.  I had sort of worked a bit before but this full-time business looked a bit different.  It was.  But after a little while I got a job and started earning some money.  That was cool.  I did get accepted to do Environmental Science at the University of Wollongong but it was too hard to get to and I couldn’t afford to live there so I deferred, got used to working and never bothered with study until much later.  How different it all could have been – I missed my first choice (Science at Sydney Uni) by 1 mark out of 500.  C’est la vie.

But now I hear all about targets of X percentage of the population will have at least a Cert X in something-or-other.  Why?  I have a stable work history spanning over 25 years and when I graduated in 2010 with my degree and 9 High Distinctions, 11 Distinctions and 5 Credits from 25 subjects completed I still can’t even get a look in for a junior shit-kicker role in anything to do with my chosen field.  Hell, I’ve recently recruited young people with degrees and postgrad studies into Green Army participant roles because they jumped at the chance not to be only working at Dominos and Aldi.  People with great work ethics.  People who just want a chance to get a start.

So why the big push?  Seriously, I don’t even have a theory for once.

Is it statistics that look good on OECD numbers?  Is it somehow supposed to improve our economy to have all of these highly trained people and no jobs for them to go into?  Or is that how you defer those numbers from adding to unemployment – make them study for a few years and they don’t count on the jobless numbers?  I honestly have no idea at all.

Yet I see so many people now who are successful and happy who left school at Year 10 and did what they wanted to.  Or did an apprenticeship and started their own business at the end of it.  Ok, an apprenticeship is further education, but apprenticeship funding is being chopped all over the place and Government want us all in Uni.  Otherwise they wouldn’t have ripped the guts out of TAFE in NSW and Victoria at least.  High school is mostly about Uni Preparation anyway.  Writing essays and doing calculus have a very limited use in the Real World.  Like I said – Uni Prep.

My son is finished with school now and is heading for TAFE next year to become one of those numbers amongst the Cert III’s and Cert IV’s.  Assuming of course I can afford it.  But he wants to work in a very niche industry, where competition is intense.  He has talent in that area, but it’s just so damn hard to get that dream role now.  I hope he has more luck than I did.  I’ve given up on that dream now.  I don’t even look anymore.  I’m jaded, burnt out and just can’t be arsed to waste my time applying for stuff when I know that I will be culled anyway.  I’ll just look for a job where I can earn a decent wage and rot away until I am allowed to retire or a comet knocks me off or I win Powerball.  The last 2 have similar odds I believe.

It’s funny.  I was told that when I got my first job I got it due to an extra course I did while in Year 12.  I was told when I got a great Business Analyst & Payroll Implementation role that I got it because of my Cert IV in Programming Technology.  And recently I was told that the reason I got the job I have now was because I had this degree I have.  Yet I am an administrator.  A paper shoveller.  A desk jockey.  An organiser.  I do get to drive around a lot now which is ok I guess but the enviro part of the job I do is somewhere between nil and negligible.  Maybe that will change at some point.  I won’t hold my breath.  I have been to a one day conference with landholders and experts – that was kinda fun, but it was more about networking than talking the talk.  And that doesn’t excite me much.

What is the point of having all of these qualified people and not having jobs for those people to work in?  The Government whine that not enough people are studying Science.  Like they haven’t just ripped a load of jobs out of the CSIRO recently – our pre-eminent science organisation. They say they are about building jobs – so why the recent decision to disband 160+ agencies?  And the other cuts to both State and Federal Public Service staff, that just get nastier and nastier every year.  For jobs?  Bollocks.  There are less jobs now, unless you want to work in aged care or hospitality.  then there are plenty.

I’ll never get to do what I want, what I trained for.  I just accept it now.  But it makes me wonder how many others are in that boat with me.  I reckon it’s a big boat.  And it ain’t sailing anywhere worth going.  Our fancy edumakashion isn’t helping us much there.  And I reckon it leaves some of us asking if you want fries with that?  Ugh.  Pass.

This week will be long remembered due to a siege that happened in a downtown coffee shop in the central business district of Sydney.  I used to work just a few blocks from where that took place and the most dangerous thing that ever happened around there before this week was either trying to cross the road or not get molested by charity collectors.  Or bankers.  Yeah, that’d be the worst.

But now, due to one person of questionable sanity and totally abhorrent morals, the character of that area will be forever changed.  And while it is tragic that 2 people lost their lives due to no fault of their own there is another tragedy that will play out here over the course of the next few months.  It will be beyond the ability of many to detect as it will display a little subtlety.  Though I notice that another person of self-professed mental illness being the one and only Russell Brand has already latched on in an oblique way and is publicising it in his own unique fashion on YouTube.  And that is that the T card has been played.  It is the ultimate political get-out-of-jail free card.  Yep, you knew it.  Terror.

Let me be perfectly frank.  Mr Brand is right when he says a terrorist has an agenda.  It is usually chaos and panic, as displayed by the horrific incursion to a Pakistan school in the last couple of days, taking the lives of well over 100 school children.  Or when the Taliban attacked a school almost killing our latest Nobel Peace Prize winner, Malala Yousafzai.  Or the Bali bombings.  Or the constant car-bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan.  You get the idea.  Usually get in quick, do massive damage, and unless they are a suicide bomber, get away quick too.  But this person I will not gratify by naming locked himself in a cafe with more than a dozen hostages, threatened them with a shotgun and made them hold a flag against a window.  No doubt terrifying for the hostages.  And their families and friends.  And the emergency services people who risk their lives every day so we can have a mostly safe society to live, grow and raise our families in.

(Segueway: if you want to call someone a hero – it is those emergency services people.  Not a footballer or an actor.  Someone who does things for others, risking their lives to do it.  They are heroes.  Thank the next one you see – they will appreciate it.)

Back on track now but we know now this person’s history.  We know of their past criminal activities.  Sexual assaults, accomplice to murder.  Attempting to pass himself off as a man of faith.  What bollocks.  Ask a Muslim what they think of what he did.  Did he do anything holy?  Unless you are asking a member of IS or the Taliban I think you will get a resounding NO.

And consequently I compare this person to the fellow who conducted the Port Arthur massacre.  Questionable mindset, armed, dangerous and capable of doing anything.  Was that a terrorist attack?  No.  Though it did create John Howard’s finest moment in the change to gun laws.  That was well done.  (Yes, I give credit where it is due, even to people I cannot stand.  Costello was ace though.)

So, why has the T card been played?  Well, Senator Brandis and my mate, buddy, pal Malcolm Turnbull (seriously, I respect the guy a lot) wants to push through some fairly draconian laws about data retention and the like.  Which Mr Brand picked up on as well in his wee video I mentioned early.  And if we, being the great unwashed and only-respected-around-election-time-general-public, think times are more dangerous because of a single fruit cake then we will accept restrictions on freedom more readily.  So quick lads, run the terror rating up a notch and don’t spare the horses!

I call bullshit.

Remember the horrific school shootings in Columbine, near Denver, USA?  Columbine wasn’t terrorism.  Just 2 kids who lost it completely and did the unthinkable.  What is the relevance?  Well I remember something from the Bowling for Columbine film by Michael Moore.  Yeah, yeah, bear with me here, I know a lot of people don’t like him.  It was a quote from Marilyn Manson.  And it made real sense.  I was going to describe it but sod that, here is the transcript:

MIchael Moore: Do you know the day that Columbine happened, the United States dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other time during that war?

Marilyn Manson: I do know that and I think that’s really ironic, that nobody said, “Well, maybe the president had an influence on this violent behaviour.  Because that’s not the way the media wants to take it and spin it and turn it into fear.  ‘Cause then you’re watching television, you’re watching the news; you’re being pumped full of fear.  And there’s floods, there’s AIDS, there’s murder.  You cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate.  If you have bad breath, they’re not gonna talk to you. If you got pimples, the girl’s not gonna f*ck you. It’s a campaign of fear and consumption. And that’s what I think that’s it’s all based on, is the whole idea that: keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume. And that’s really as simple as it can be boiled down to.

Michael Moore: Right.  If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine and the people in that community, what would you say to them, if they were here right now?

Marilyn Manson: I wouldn’t say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say.  And that’s what no one did.

Ok, that last bit wasn’t strictly relevant to the conversation here but I included it to word you up on Mr Manson.  I don’t like his music at all.  I think he looks pretty awful too.  But that little unscripted one liner gains him many points of respect from me at least.  But the point is that fear is something that can be used by Governments.  Yes it sounds now like I am a paranoid conspiracy nutter but have a think about it.

So when the Government is looking a bit dead in the water and things are not going their way we can have a massive distraction by using a tragedy like the Sydney siege to fuel fear of terrorism.  It keeps people from thinking about domestic issues that they previously cared about.  Like corruption.  Like the climate.  Like jobs.  Like the Budget.  I mean this government made it look like we were being overrun with asylum seekers arriving by boat.  “The sky is falling” type overrun – to create fear.  They’ll take our money through social security, they’ll take all our jobs, they’ll bring their problems, etc, etc.  Go and read about the illegal migration of people into Europe via Italy and learn about a real problem.  Read about Mexicans fleeing drug cartels into the USA for a “better life”.  Read about Syrian and Iraqi refugees now escaping from IS or the civil war in Syria or in some cases both.  Or climate refugees within Bangladesh as the lands in the Bay of Bengal delta become highly saline or just plain inundated due to rising sea levels and more powerful storms where most of the most fertile land in the region is no longer usable.  Then come back, look me in the eye, and tell me we have a refugee problem here.  But that was our FEAR moment for 2013.  Well, now it’s 2014.  Soon to be 2015.  And now we will get the big T being mentioned because of one person, who I cannot categorise as a terrorist. It’s rubbish.  It’s bollocks.  It is utterly incomprehensible to me.  And it is plain wrong.

Though there is one person who is now scaring me: David Leyonhjelm who thinks we should all have guns to protect ourselves.  Now that is putting the fear right into me.  Quick let’s water down gun restriction laws.  Let me just answer that quickly: Let’s not.  How many sieges could we have when people with undiagnosed mental illness, and I’ll bet there are a lot of them, can easily get hold of guns?  How many of our kids do we want dead from accidental shootings?  It’s a lot harder to die from a gunshot if there are NOT MANY GUNS AROUND YOU DAMNED IDIOT.  Honestly, channelling Jeremy Clarkson now but how hard can it be?

So from a siege in Sydney with tragic consequences to a siege mentality around fear, terrorism and avoidance of the issues that are really important to a lot of people.  Really, it means the first siege never ended.  And I fear that there may be more casualties along the way.  The first of them being credibility.  Though my previous rants show how little I gave this government to start with.  Sigh.  I really don’t belong here do I?