Politics

The Subcontinental Shift SL #10

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While walking from the car park to Lion Rock, an ambulance drove slowly past. That’s ominous we both thought as the child bride’s and my psyches blended together resigned to a path of mutual destruction on the mountain casting its overwhelming shadow over us. Not to get too melodramatic, ambulance or no ambulance, we are going all the way even if it kills us. Okay, not to dramatise things too much, we’ll keep going until the discretion that supposedly comes with maturity gets the better part of valour.

It’s 187 metres high and sticks straight up out of the ground and it’s apparently a 1200-1300 steps climb, depending on where you start counting. I prefer to rationalise it along the lines of 3 metres per floor which means it’s the equivalent of a 62 story building. Would I contemplate climbing the fire stairs of a 62 story building? Only if I was retarded. Apparently you can say “retarded” and “gay” now that Trump’s  been re-elected. I was offered considerable encouragement by the rather diminutive lady at my side. It was a magnificent physical effort on her part considering she has such a soft arse relative to my buns of steel.

There are historical and religious places all over this rock including some incredibly detailed and saucy wall paintings in a cave half way up a smooth vertical escarpment. How the painters (and punters) got up there in the first place in many years BC, I’ll never know. But they gave the rest of us plenty of incentive to get there to see what perky used to look like pre-implants. In Australia we have an increasing number of rocks and mountains that are off-limits because of some religious significance or whatever even though they pre-date people by millions of years and as Australia’s early indigenous people didn’t have any written languages there’s only word of mouth stories to indicate a relationship between these places and some mythical thing. The Buddhists and Hindus are much more sharing of their religious heritage.

Here, people get to experience the history and mysticism by being in amongst it although on finally getting to the top of Lion Rock, those things were furthest from my mind. I didn’t have the energy to suck a barley sugar and thank God for blood thinners. If I was going to have another stroke (or TIA or transient ischemic attack as happened the first time), this would have been the time. We both felt pretty proud of ourselves to have made it until we saw some of the others who also made it, some wearing thongs. That feeling of deflation rapidly passed when we remembered how old we are. And it extended to that feeling of smugness as you go down past the sweating, weazing climbers going the other way. Going down is much easier than going up, right? Speaking of sweat, when considering the rather sparse hand railings, mine is now mixeed with the DNA of about a million other people. So even if I was permitted to climb a very old rock monument in the centre of Australia, I’d give it a swerve because that itch has been well and truly scratched.

A Political Rant

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A while ago I was thinking about the state of play her in Queensland and in western democracies generally and came to what I thought was a very profound conclusion. Actually, and I digress, “very profound” isn’t correct grammar is it, whether I thought it or not. Like “very brilliant” or “very devastating”. The word “profound” is non-gradable so doesn’t need an adverb of degree. This lesson is the first of today’s contributions to the preservation of Western Civilisation. The second one follows so I’ll start again.

A while ago I was thinking about the state of play her in Queensland and in western democracies generally and came to what I thought was a profound conclusion. There are many problems in the world ranging from the specific, like the war in Ukraine and the covid virus which Joe Biden has just declared has lost its pandemic status much to the chagrin of his medical bureaucracy and many authoritarian politicians, to the more nebulous like stupidity and “racism”. The inverted commas round “racism” are there because generally, it isn’t. It’s mostly just a cover-all insult these days.

But the biggest problem facing mankind (I know, I know, and I don’t care) in my humble opinion is people who don’t pay attention. The inexorable creeping sludge of the many tides of leftism (remember the long march through the institutions?) is allowed to proceed because most don’t notice it until it slaps them in the face – looking at you Venezuela. Remember, you voted for Chavez and now the only way to get rid of him is if he died. Oh that’s right, he did and look what replaced him. Your most recent election was the last one before the next blood-bath. It was probably pretty crappy before Chavez but you weren’t paying enough attention when he offered something that was too good to be true, were you? Now a large proportion of you are on your way to the US. On foot.

Let me clarify. There are well-meaning people who vote Green because they think the Greens are for a cleaner environment. I guess in amongst the wealth-redistributing Marxists there may still be one or two who are, but it’s doubtful. So Greens voters (who aren’t Marxists) are just useful idiots. The vast majority of blacks still vote Democrat in the US. This is despite the fact that the inner city areas of most Democrat jurisdictions (like Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia….the list goes on) where a lot of black people live are, as described by POTUS 45, crime-ridden “shitholes”. And they’re getting worse not better but the residents continue to vote for Democrats for some reason lost in the mists of time. If you don’t realise you are being taken for granted, you are a useful idiot (and you’re not paying attention!).

I just re-read the rest of this diatribe and decided it’s too big a topic for a couple of pages on a blog. More like a book or series of books. So if you don’t want to read on, remember, if someone is seeking and wanting to hold absolute power, as far as they are concerned, the ends justify the means. That’s all you need to know.

Let’s go back the riots in the US in 2020. There are city’s (including those mentioned above) across that country that haven’t had conservative local government for decades. You know the ones. They’re defined by defunding the police, cashless bail, not prosecuting shoplifting if the swag is less than $1000 (has anyone seen a looter waiting at a cash-register?), emptying the jails, providing sanctuary from the feds for criminal illegals, skyrocketing homelessness, crime and drug problems etc etc. Now consider the poor bastards whose businesses and livelihoods were and are still being destroyed by the absolutely predictable mayhem caused by these policies. Many of them would have voted for the scum-bags who allowed these things to happen and are doing nothing to stop them happening now. If these victims of the BLM and Antifa riots and the ongoing lawlessness vote these same people back into power at the next election then (1) they are not paying attention and (2) all sympathy evaporates.

The key words in this rant so far are “inexorable creeping”. I mentioned the long march through the institutions which is eating education, the arts, legal systems and bureaucracies from the inside and is even worming its way into sport like bamboo up your fingernails. There are examples across the world illustrating the various stages in the authoritarian progression (or inexorable creep, if you like) from benign (ha!) smiling (smirking, more like) old socialists like the newly minted Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese all the way through to deranged tyrants like Kim Jong Un. Bear with me here.

If you leave these people alone (because you’re not paying attention) eventually the metastasizing is complete. So we have the currently relatively benign governments like the aforementioned Australian Government (although they are already making very disturbing noises). When we take a further step to the left we find leftist governments in Australia like that in Victoria which has implemented elements of the police state and Queensland where stupidity still trumps evil but give them time (and we will because too many people aren’t paying attention). Further along this highway to hell are New Zealand and Canada. If you don’t know what Ardern and Trudeau are getting up to (not with each other, that I’m aware of), then yes, you are not …. you know the rest.

The next stop is various state governments in the US like California, New York, Illinois, Washington, Minnesota and Oregon where BLM and Antifa do as they please with apparent impunity as outlined above. The US Government is proving to be particularly evil as it harasses its political opponents and cows its population with its covid mandates and declarations around domestic terrorism, white supremacy and MAGA voters as well as its joint venture with the media and big-tech. And whilst the US and Iran are ostensibly poles apart, I bet the people who run the Biden administration (not Biden himself, obviously) look lovingly towards Tehran and their complete control over all institutions including deciding who gets to run in their “elections”.

Talking of theocracies like Iran (and Saudi Arabia) some would consider them rightists rather than leftists because they are supposedly religious conservatives or whatever. These are arguments for political scholars. It’s a debatable point but remember the left is about one thing alone – getting power and holding it by whatever means available because the ends justify the means. So the Ayatollahs, the Saudi Royal Family, the US Democrat Party and its subsidiary the Biden administration and socialist political parties everywhere have that in common.

Then we have countries like the old Soviet republics including Ukraine. Yes, Zelenskyy has replaced Paddington Bear (now that he’s left the building with Queen Elizabeth) as everyone’s favourite cuddly toy but he ran a regime (before the war) with all of the trappings of a leftist dictatorship – restricted press freedoms, corruption, jailing of political opponents and banning of opposition political parties. And there are others like Uzbekistan and Belarus.

And Africa’s another book entirely. The word “Zimbabwe” should cover it for now.

Moving on we have the big five – Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, China and North Korea. Whether or not the people in these countries are paying attention is irrelevant because without massive upheaval, they are already lost. The rest of us, however need to observe these places and take notes.

I used to believe the left and the right were heading towards the same destination, it was just the road being taken which was up for debate. How naive. I don’t believe that anymore.

So there are examples everywhere of what can happen if you vote for socialists but more significantly, leave them in power too long. Inevitably it will all go to shit and uncontrollable debt will be the least of your problems.

And if you don’t believe that the “civilized” left believes the ends justify the means, check out this Sam Harris interview.

https://twitter.com/alexandrosM/status/1560061984699064320

RIP PJ – We’ll Miss You Mate

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I didn’t know Patrick Jake O’Rourke but I have been known to steal his middle name for various anonymous activities and correspondence (taps side of nose with index finger) like sending “secret admirer” valentines to the child bride. I haven’t done that yet but planned to a couple of days ago. Procrastination got the better of me. And this is the second time I’ve mentioned him recently as he figured in my most recent Christmas message

Like I said, I didn’t know him personally but after reading and still owning 18 of his books (I think he wrote 19), if we’d had an opportunity to have a drink which is something we have in common, we’d have had plenty to talk about….between drinks. Those books are now dog-eared and torn and the type has been read so many times it’s starting to fade. Unlike novels where once you know the ending there’s no point backtracking, his books overflow with one-liners and tragi-comedic but somehow appropriate expositions on politics and economics and life in general that you just wish you could remember so you could steal them and appear witty and politically erudite all at the same time. Of course there are very few “comedians” or like PJ, literary humourists, capable of this as most of them these days are from the Robert DeNiro “fuck Trump” school of applied hilarity.

He was born in Toledo, Ohio whose other famous resident was Max Klinger. The mashing together of their relative portrayals of the absurd somehow makes sense. PJ died today of lung cancer complications. I suspect cigars and whisky were all that remained of a youth that majored in practical chemistry while studying English Literature. He said this about suicide : “Guns are always the best method for a suicide. They are more stylish looking than single-edged razor blades and natural gas has gotten so expensive. Drugs are too chancy. You might mis-calculate the dosage and just have a good time.”

PJ has many claims to fame. He was editor-in-chief of National Lampoon magazine before the movies began to appear. Later and around the time when Hunter S Thompson was creating mayhem at the same publication, PJ was foreign correspondent for Rolling Stone magazine which mainly involved him reporting back from war zones. That makes about as much sense as being the tobacco correspondent for Men’s Health. He has contributed mirth and scorn to the lexicon ever since those heady days.

I first encountered PJ in 1977. The CB and I were on our way to Tasmania and I needed something to read on the ferry from Melbourne to Devonport. I spied a magazine I had never heard of called National Lampoon and that edition’s theme was Sex. A no-brainer really in an innocent age of no internet and therefore no internet porn. But thanks to the internet you can pull National Lampoon out of archive and see the humungously famous magazine cover – Buy This Magazine or We’ll Kill This Dog. I’ve even provided the link for you.

https://ia800706.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/8/items/NationalLampoon_201812/National-Lampoon.iso

 Most recently he wrote A Cry From the Far Middle which contained the usual quota of quotables, one of which was the rules he taught his kids to live by – keep your hands to your self and mind your own business – or as he calls them, the Clinton rules. Bill, keep your hands to yourself and Hillary, mind your own business.

Even though you’re no longer with us PJ, you’ll be making me laugh for as long as I am still capable of doing it.

Road Trip! In Iran

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I’ve been to Iran seven times between 1989 and 1998. The first time was just after the Iran/Iraq war had finished so the Esfahan Steel Plant which I visited was still surrounded by anti-aircraft guns. My hosts also helpfully pointed out, from the panoramic viewing window in their board-room, the hill over which the Iraqi planes came when they bombed the place throughout the war. They had managed to keep the plant operating, to their credit, which is why I was there – to try to sell them some coal. But that trip’s not the reason for this post. There are plenty of incidents and experiences gathered over seven trips to write about but I’m going to tell you another story.

Getting to Tehran was problematic because there were so few flights so I’d waitlist on flights from Rome, Frankfurt, Vienna, London or Dubai and whichever one came up first I would take. These flights invariably got in early in the morning which allowed a few hours sleep in a cash only, once five-star hotel which had been Iranianized into a two-star. Then it was back out to the domestic airport to catch a flight down to Esfahan. Then would follow a lazy eight or so hours of shouting, fist banging “negotiation” then a flight back to Tehran to collapse into bed in the same hotel I had been in that morning.

After doing this a few times I decided to ask my hosts if we could negotiate our next deal in Tehran rather than Esfahan. They declined but to compensate, said I would be picked up at the airport and driven down to Esfahan thereby being able to sleep in the car. How kind.

Firstly, let’s consider the “picking-up” bit. On a previous trip they had “forgotten” to pick me up at Esfahan airport. The airport is on the north-east side of town and the steel plant is 45 kilometres south-west of town, in fact, that’s its address – 45Km on The Esfahan-Shahrekord Road. In the domestic airports back then there were no English signs and no English announcements. Also, there were no mobile phones and no public phones, just a phone call shop where I could have booked a call if only I could speak Farsi or one of the attendants could speak English. This prompted me, in desperation, to step away from the counter and shout into the terminal crowd “does anyone here speak English”. But that’s another story for another day.

As luck would have it, on the day in question, a driver was on hand to pick me up as I emerged from customs. Whether or not anyone is there at all is just part of the lottery and anyone could act as a taxi driver and most people who owned cars did. So you could be picked up by the local axe murderer if your luck was out. Being 4.00am after a flight from Europe where you had one or two gin and tonics because they’d be the last ones for a while and then wended your tortuous way through the airport formalities, you were fair game. But this bloke had a clipboard so was obviously legit. And he had another passenger – a German engineer who was also going to the plant.

So we set off in an ancient Chevrolet with four bald tyres on the four or five hour drive through the desert down to Esfahan. Now give the shah his due. He may have been a typical monarchical despot but he was our despot and he knew how to build roads. The freeway system round Tehran was pretty impressive although starting to resemble Ozzy Osbourne – visibly deteriorating. And the road to Esfahan was a wide-open highway. But that didn’t stop us getting a flat tyre.

So there we were – an Iranian who couldn’t speak English or German, a German who couldn’t speak English or Farsi and an Australian who couldn’t speak Farsi or German – alternately looking at each other and then the flat tyre. There was no spare – obviously – but there was a jack. Eventually our driver decided he would take the wheel off himself because the German and the Aussie obviously weren’t interested.

Way off in the distance we could see what looked like buildings so after removing the tyre and leaning it against the vehicle the driver jogged off into the heat haze, towards said buildings. The German and I looked at each other, shrugged our respective shoulders, found a bit of shade each and recommenced reading our books,

Eventually the driver materialized and without acknowledging us, stood the wheel up and commenced to roll it down the road in the direction from whence he had just come, occasionally batting it with his hand to ensure that it kept up with his steady jogging pace. Fritz and I went back to our books.

After another hour or so, the driver presented triumphally with a freshly fixed bald, fraying tyre and I swore to myself that I would be flying back to Tehran.

We eventually made it to Esfahan after passing through the city of Qom which is where all the religious heavies live. There were check-point-charlies on all roads in and out and security was somewhat ubiquitous. That is one place you don’t want to go for your holidays – smiles were as rare as golf courses and frivolity is a capital offence. And if applying for a job there, a sense of humour is definitely surplus to requirements on your CV.

The first hour of discussions with my hosts was taken up by trying to arrange how I was going to get back to Tehran. They eventually got me on a flight back that evening. Elimination of that source of stress allowed me to relax into the rough and tumble of hours of intense negotiation over a couple of dollars per tonne of coal for a 12 month contract. That was then, when the price was around $50/tonne. Today it’s $185/tonne and varies by up to $8/tonne daily.

Iran is a different world and today, so’s the coal market.

Do You Remember When…

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Back on 9/11 (this year) I intended writing one of those “do you remember where you were when….” essays but I forgot so I’m writing it now. I finished the (paying) work I do each week yesterday and the (non-paying) garden work half an hour ago and it’s raining so I thought I’d impose a bit of cancel-culture on procrastination to fill in a few minutes until beer time. Incidentally, that’s the only time you’ll see the words “cancel-culture” here other than as a target of disdain and ridicule.

There are very few events in human history that warrant remembering what you were doing when they occur because most of those memorable moments are the reasons you remember as in, I remember what I was doing the day I got married – I was getting married.

No we’re talking about disconnected events fusing together into an unforgettable nuclear marriage of inconvenience. For me, only three immediately spring to mind.

The first was when Kennedy was assassinated on November 22nd 1963. I was a small boy getting on a ship in Southampton in the UK with my family to travel to Australia. A note was left on each table when we fronted for our first meal onboard advising us of what had happened. As master of ceremonies at one of my brothers’ wedding, also on November 22nd I was able to remind him that an event of earth-shattering infamy happened on that day, some 30 odd years before. Also, Kennedy got shot.

The second was the actual day of 9/11. I was in Seoul, Korea and had been out with a work colleague, our agent and some customers for dinner and drinks and on returning to our hotel our Korean agent received a phone call from his wife, advising him that a plane had flown into a building in New York – no other details. After a suitably shocked exchange of comments we retired to the bar. On returning to my room and turning on the TV, the full horror of the events that day were revealed.

Seoul is a garrison town for the US army and the hotel I was staying in is next door to the imposing Seoul World Trade Centre. It’s not uncommon to see military activity in Seoul both in the air and on the ground at the best of times. At the worst of times it was chaos. Organized chaos I’m sure but you can imagine the traffic when all but one entrance to the very large army base are shut. And there were more than the usual number of choppers in the air, many buzzing around the building next door, not to mention the troops on the ground. Seoul is after all, only about 50km from North Korea.

Incidentally, I’ve been to Korea over 60 times (I used to keep count) and have never been to the DMZ. The Child Bride has been to Korea once and when she went to the DMZ she brought me back a hat.

After doing what we had to do that day we made our way to the airport to catch our flight to Osaka to connect with our Ansett International flight to Brisbane. Ansett was doing it really tough right then and rumours were swirling that they were about to go under. As we flew into Kansai airport, I saw the big bird with the “A” on the tail – relief. After boarding (and getting upgraded to first class – some good things did happen on that trip) I was privy to a conversation between two flight attendants which filled me with, not so much dread considering what had happened the day before, but considerable disquiet. They weren’t sure whether the plane would actually leave Osaka. Fortunately, it did – relief.

Our flight was scheduled to fly from Kansai Airport to Brisbane and then on to Sydney. Bearing in mind that the airline was on its last legs (wings? wheels?), the announcements as we approached Brisbane went like this:

We’ll be landing in Brisbane soon. Please ensure your belongings are stowed….etc

A few minutes later…..

We’ll be landing in Brisbane soon. Would all connecting passengers please deplane and re-board when the announcement is made. We’ll be in Brisbane for approximately one hour.

A few minutes later…..

We’ll be landing in Brisbane soon. Would all connecting passengers deplane and wait for an announcement regarding your onward journey.

A few minutes later…..

This flight will now terminate in Brisbane. The ground staff will advise arrangements for your onward connection to Sydney.

A few minutes later…..

Please be advised that all of the passengers heading to Sydney will have to make your own onward arrangements. We don’t know how we’re getting there either.

The airline had expired while we were travelling between Japan and Australia.

And the third time was only recently so only time will tell whether it sticks with me but I’m betting it will. It was one of those occasions that will only happen once in your life – my father died.

My mother and one of my brothers and I had been to see Dad in the morning and it was not a pretty sight. He was in stage 7 of Alzheimer’s which means an inability to swallow, amongst other things. Mum struggled to even look at the handsome athletic man of her youth now a shriveled shell of a man struggling to breathe. We left after a few minutes and returned to her home about 10 minutes drive away from the nursing home Dad had resided in for the past few years.

We had been there for about twenty minutes when Mum’s phone rang. Now those of you who have frequented nursing homes will know that a lot of the staff are Asian, in this case many were from the Philippines. My Mum still speaks with a distinct Manchester accent but, ironically struggles with other accents. She hates ringing the phone company or the electricity company because she will generally find herself talking to someone in Manila or Bangalore. Anyway she could not understand what the lady who rang was saying. If I hadn’t been there to take the call maybe she still wouldn’t be aware that Dad died just after we left.

I cheated a bit with the third example. It wasn’t a disconnected (from my life) event that imposed  itself on me to the extent that it never leaves but, what can I say other than I won’t forget that day.

I just thought of another. The day Gough Whitlam was sacked as Australia’s Prime Minister on November 11th 1975, I was at university. There was a great rending of garments, wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the communist student union types. My lot, we did what we normally did – went to the pub.

Not Happy!!

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted because it’s a bit of a struggle at the moment. As you dear reader know, I try to lace my missives with the quirky and ridiculous and funny. While the second of these currently applies to world events in spades (am I still allowed to say that?) it’s the allowance of a piece of Seattle to be hived off into a new country type of ridiculous and not the frocks worn to the Oscars type of ridiculous that I’m talking about here. As a consequence I’m mad as hell as my previous post probably indicates although it has to be said the intransigence of the “authorities” has moved on from a mere virus to a threat to Western Civilization. And aren’t the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians and the North Koreans loving it.

I’m mad as hell because I cannot imagine a parallel universe where what is happening now around the world and especially in the USA would be tolerated by sane people. A very very small minority of morons is being allowed to dictate terms to the silent majority because left wing politicians (where they have jurisdiction) and a complicit traitorous media are supporting them and promoting them and level-headed law-makers are doing nothing about it. And you want me to kneel because of my white privilege? How about you just fuck off.

Yesterday Victor Davis Hanson said that the wind went out of the #MeToo sails when Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault. When it’s one of your team and that person can’t be jettisoned as collateral damage like Harvey Weinstein was, the hypocrites on the left are as toothless as a sock-puppet. Watching various A through F grade celebrities splutter and bluster when confronted with this inconvenient Biden truth (remind me again of the Kavanaugh fiasco) makes me laugh….with disgust. As a corollary it’s likely that the coalition of thrill-seeking middle-class teenagers, Antifa scum, perpetual student rent-a-crowds, gang members and lazy, good for nothing drug-addled chancers will only be forced to disperse the day after they are given Nancy Pelosi’s address. Then Democrat governors and mayors in cities that have been controlled by the Democrats for many decades will be ordered to re-take control. If Trump hasn’t already done so.

The irony of what is going on across the USA is that the people most affected by the riots in places like Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, St Louis and Washington DC – residents and small business owners, black, brown and white – are the people who regularly and monotonously vote for the clowns who are allowing this to happen. Nobody deserves to be innocently caught up in a self indulgent block-destruction party and see their life’s work go up in flames especially when Hollywood shit-bags are providing funding for the occasionally arrested arsonists, thieves and thugs who have taken your life’s work off you. But if you keep voting for them, my sympathy only stretches so far.

And where do you think all of that money that Hollywood and beneath contempt, virtue signalling corporates are donating is going? Into legal-aid funds? To feed the inhabitants of CHAZ or CHOP or CHUMP or whatever the hell name the “warlord” who runs the joint has dreamt up today? To pay for the removal of garbage? To house the homeless? To buy weapons (and drugs and attendant luxuries) for Antifa? If you chose the last option go to the top of the class (when the school reopens). If you think that’s too harsh tell me who has control of the bank accounts and who their auditor is.

I just hope for their sake, that all of the skipping and jumping, selfie taking, isn’t it all such a spiffing wheeze with all the like, chanting and like, marching and like, swearing (not too loudly), fresh faced (but masked), outer suburban teeny-boppers who just love, like, sticking it to the man as long as they can borrow daddy’s car, aren’t still hanging around after bed-time when patience runs out and the vigilantes arrive or the legally sanctioned shit really hits the fan because their new chums from CHUMP most definitely won’t have their backs – more likely their back-packs.

I Don’t Remember Voting For This?

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Let’s get one thing straight about this virus panic. The people making the decisions and the people enforcing the new “rules” have no skin in the game. Politicians, run-of-the-mill bureaucrats, health bureaucrats and police are not taking pay cuts (okay, there is an occasional example of tokenism) and are not in danger of losing their jobs. In fact their pay and the subsidisation of their jobs comes from the very people who they are destroying with their decisions and enforcement of “rules” which are not real laws because they have not been legislated. More on that later.

It makes my blood boil seeing state premiers parroting the old better safe than sorry clichés like a bunch of boof-head footballers after a game running through the phrases they have been told they are allowed to say (and the only ones they can remember) by the club PR machine while not actually saying anything of value.

People are getting mightily pissed off with the imposition of poorly explained and in some cases, useless restrictions like not being allowed to play golf. Don’t these clowns know how big a golf course is. Maybe they should restrict it to people with a handicap higher than 15 so they’ll know for certain that policing of social distancing rules will be totally unnecessary except at the tees after which balls will be sprayed all over the fairways and beyond.

The people who pay for everything – EVERYTHING – are being smashed through unemployment, business closures, both temporary and permanent and yes, domestic violence and suicide. Some of us in the payer category are willing to take the risk of getting life as we know it back underway, so back off those of you in the payee category. One more week, just to be doubly sure, is another business that is lost forever, another bout of depression and another smack in the mouth.

I repeat, we the ones who are taking all of the economic risks are willing to take the one in a million or three hundred thousand or whatever it is risk of catching a virus that may have no material impact on our health. So what if there’s a spike. We’re paying for the hospital and protective equipment. We’re paying the doctor’s and nurses’ salaries. You, governments all over the world, can print more money and completely fuck our economy and collectively the global economy for generations and put your hand on your heart and say “it was the virus what done it” because you are protected from the consequences.

The vast majority of these closet totalitarians have never run a business and on the left side of politics, most have never even worked in one. So we get these directives such as in stage 1 of the enlightenment, restaurants can allow 10 customers inside. The cost of opening and operating a business like a restaurant can only be covered if a majority (at least) of the seats and tables are occupied. It is cheaper to stay closed, as in the proprietor loses less than if the place opened for a small fraction of its capacity. But that is beyond the ken of our betters.

I’m reminded of the US constitution which begins with the words “We the people”. In more normal times, governments are elected by we the people based on their policies which we the people have approved through the ballot box. They then enact those policies and we the people have no excuses if we don’t like the unintended consequences which invariably occur when the actual policies begin with the words “Wouldn’t it be great if….”. Think of any green policy and that’s exactly what you get – unintended consequences. I should say that’s exactly what you would get if the electorate was collectively stupid enough to vote for those clowns. But never forget, half of the population has above average intelligence and half of the population has below average intelligence so also never forget the quote sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson – “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance”. Unfortunately we sometimes do forget and the current governments in Queensland and Victoria get elected. And the unintended consequences flow like a river.

I’m a bit of a student of American politics (the reference to their constitution may have given that away) and I never cease to be amazed at the standard of politician they elect, in many cases repeatedly. Fortunately the place is big enough to elect a majority of sensible people and the founding fathers inserted enough checks and balances in the constitution to ensure the more mutinous actions of a few (like what is happening now) are stepped on. But that doesn’t stop short term stupidity like electing Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or the governor of New York forcing nursing homes for the elderly to accept Covid-19 positive patients or giving booze and dope to the homeless as is now happening in California, all of which are being cheered on by the deranged main stream media and its cable and Hollywood lickspittles. People on the east coast and the left coast despise the people in flyover country and you can see why the feelings are mutual. And why there are now uprisings by the people against the ludicrous lockdowns in areas where the only virus is what you get on your computer from porn sites.

Speaking of Victoria, their government is the closest we have to a pack of rabid socialist totalitarians so as you can imagine, they are loving this virus. Governments of all stripes (especially the Victorian government) are ordering we the people around and fining us (and worse) if we don’t obey. I don’t remember voting for this shit. The ease with which the population has agreed to be confined to their homes by the imposition of threats must be a thing of wonder to those with dictatorial ambitions. A coup would be a piece of cake.

And I understand the three strikes rule will be implemented in Victoria in a couple of months if there is a second wave of infections. Three social distancing infractions and you will be executed. And all the infected will be banished like lepers to Philip Island, to live out their miserable lives in isolation where they can’t steal the oxygen from and pollute the bloodlines of the chosen ones. Godwin’s Law says that in an argument, whoever compares the other with Hitler first, loses. I wonder if the same applies to eugenics.

Merry Christmas from Us

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We receive a plethora of newsletters from family and friends every year and in spite of fierce resistance over many years I have finally relented and due to this veritable avalanche of pressure have decided to do my own.

Generally these things take the form of retrospectives and we get to hear about things which happened during the year just gone. Having participated actively in said year, we already know a lot of the stuff we get to hear again in newsletters. But this is useful because we drink a lot and the memory certainly needs refreshing now and then.

I’m going to be a bit different and buck the trend by starting out with a piece of news which is yet to happen. The “one we avoid mentioning” gets out of the big-house in January, all being well, good behaviour wise and notwithstanding the accusations and abuse his mother someone has been hurling at various politicians recently about the lack of internet connections (let alone wifi), ipads, wet mess and subsidised (alright, free) housing on release. How is someone with no obvious talent and zero prospects supposed to get on in the world? A question we should all ponder deeply at this giving time of the year.

Norman had as good a year as can be expected in the circumstances. He does get a bit lonely but when his imaginary fiends, sorry friends (bit of a Freudian slip there) come to visit he bucks up measurably. We do occasionally worry about him running that hostelry all on his own; God knows he was never able to make his own bed let alone someone else’s and how he survives eating bark we will never know. One of Jimmy’s little playmates went up to see him in June. He hasn’t come back yet so we expect they are having a rollicking good time. And he does telephone us occasionally. He never says anything, that’s how we know it’s him. Either him or an Indian telemarketer on a bad line but we hope for the best and assume it’s him.

Speaking of Indian telemarketers, Deirdre broke her own record this year. She switched phone plans 47 times and managed 836 free long distance calls to Sub Saharan Africa. She doesn’t know anyone in Chad but figures you have to get your money’s worth and if those clowns keep offering, she’ll keep taking – pretty much our family’s motto really. She has quite a reputation in the telemarketing sphere although the timeshare people have stopped inviting her to their events, After the 8th free holiday without buying into one of those things they decided she might be taking them for a ride. Never known anyone who can consistently say “no” under so much pressure. Still we know she’s a pushover in other things if you know what I mean. Deirdre’s little kiddies Abdul, Takahito and Adriana say hello.

Jeffery emerged from the cellar last week. We hadn’t seen him for a few months and it was nice to see his pasty face again. Can’t understand why he spends so much time down there. He seems like such a popular boy. People are always knocking on our door and asking for him, especially his friends in the police force. He seems to prefer night time to day time. We know he goes out at night because we hear him sometimes dragging things across the floor to the cellar door – nearly worn out the carpet he has. Whatever he’s making down there must be big because he’s dragged a lot of stuff. We are a bit concerned about his personal hygiene though because the smell emanating from down there can be quite overpowering sometimes. I’m sure he’s not using that bath we installed for him.

Duane, bless him, is in a bit of a lather. He turns 28 just after Christmas. Now this would not normally present a problem and hasn’t for 27 years. To put this into context, Duane and his chums have put their 3 songs on Youtube and they have had over 5000 hits (there’s a pun in there somewhere). Ordinarily this would be good except all of those hits were from the band and a few hangers on – their wives for example. Duane wanted to be a rock god by the age of 27 so now the only way he thinks he can achieve this is by doing a Brian/Jimi/Janis/Jim/Amy and join the 27 Club. So his wish for the season of goodwill and joy to all men is to drown in his own vomit. We suggested a Brian Jones exit via the swimming pool might be a bit more dignified but he insists so we insisted he buys his own booze and drugs.

We can’t leave Drako and Darth out of this narrative – wouldn’t be fair since the pets have contributed significantly to the absence of birds (“how’s the serenity”) and unwelcome visitors (any visitors actually). With a name like Drako you’d expect the attack poodle to spend a good proportion of his time on a broom stick. He does in a manner of speaking and when he stops crapping on the kitchen bench we’ll permanently remove the broom handle. Darth spends his time waiting for birds to fly into his mouth, lazy sod. Surprisingly, occasionally they do. Who said sheep were the dumbest animals on the planet. With the attention span of an amoeba and the wherewithal of gravel, dumpy Darth has the life of a hooker – hours of inactivity interspersed with short periods of intense activity when he has to chew. Poor old Road-Kill the hamster left us this year. He is now a skid mark on the underpants of Main Street.

Nearly forgot. Uncle Hannibal is coming round on Christmas Day. Said he might bring someone for lunch. He’s a bit of an intellectual is Uncle Hannibal and this really attracts members of the opposite sex (not sure which one in Uncle H’s case) so he usually brings someone quite tasty.

Just to finish off, we have the annual Christmas present wish-list. A bit of a pointless exercise really because we don’t get all of the things we want all of the time only some all of the time or all some of the time.

Elmer wants a chain saw and a large block of ice……no…hang-on….he just said a large freezer will do. Oh, and a bucket.

Harmony wants a tent so she can join the Occupy movement in the town square. She also wants tent pegs that are really, really sharp because the square’s all concrete.

Duane – see above.

Dion, Duane’s twin brother wants Duane’s wish to come true so he can replace him in the band.

Uncle George wants you to sit on his lap and talk about the first thing that pops up. He does this every year and cousin Penelope has fallen for it 16 times in a row.

Me, I want                               (that’s it – philosophy really is crap isn’t it?)

 

Thought I’d finish off with something a bit esoteric (that bit just up a bit) – we’re not all bogans, criminals and hillbillies you know.

Merry Christmas (none of that Happy Holidays crap here, mate)

Trials and Tribulations

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Apologies to the reader once again for the paucity of posts recently. As I may have mentioned previously, every now and then I have to play the journalist. Journalist in the sense that this (once) noble profession is lumped with fire-fighting and prostitution because they all involve long periods of slothfulness interspersed with furious bouts of intense activity. I have just finished a bout of intense activity culminating in, well, read on…..

I’ve just spent a somewhat stressful time in the witness box, playing my small part in what has been a long and complex trial that doesn’t appear to have an end in sight. Suffice to say it concerns a coal mine that never happened and one of the owners is somewhat miffed that it didn’t. My role was as an expert witness as I am perceived by some to have a degree of expertise in a particular aspect of the subject at hand. I’ve been working in the industry for decades so expertise is an inevitable consequence of longevity.

Anyway, the day and a bit I spent in Court 21 of the Supreme Court of Queensland was the most stressful of my life I think. Maybe flying into Bandar Abbas in southern Iran for the first time just after the Iran/Iraq war and seeing “Death to America” plastered across the front of the terminal was marginally more stressful. Or perhaps the three times I’ve been convinced the aircraft I was in was going to crash causing the heart to pound like John Bonham was using it as his bass drum. But this was up there and lasted far longer.

I’ve negotiated with some of the most intractable, stupid and downright nasty people in the commercial world in my time. Some would qualify as smiling assassins and others would not have been out of place in the Kray gang. Animosity (both real and bogus) notwithstanding, we did both require and (most of the time) eventually achieve a mutually satisfactory outcome followed by handshakes all round and hundreds of beers later that night, except in Iran when I had to wait until I got to our embassy or caught the next international flight out.

But sparring with a sneering barrister who wants to not only destroy your opinions but also destroy your reputation and that of the sources you cite tends to focus the mind to the total exclusion of everything else. It’s not a pleasant experience because no matter how confident you are in what you are proposing nothing escapes a skilled and belligerent advocate’s forensic search for minor inconsistencies and use of semantic nonsense. At least in a negotiation you can come back hard (in the nicest possible way, you understand) at your protagonist whereas in cross-examination overt displays of frustration and anger are very much a losing hand.

Afterwards, over a glass of red, when my mind was acclimatizing with the real world again, I was reminded of the famous interview of Jordan Peterson by Cathy Newman on Britain’s Channel 4. If you haven’t seen it I thoroughly recommend you have a squizz (it’s on YouTube). She spends a lot of the interview prefacing her questions with  “So what you’re saying is….” and he invariably responds with “No that’s not what I’m saying” or words to that effect. Every statement (I naively thought I was going to be asked questions) that was put to me in court finished with “you’d have to agree with that wouldn’t you” of “that’s correct isn’t it” and many times my answer was simply “no”. If I was mortally threatening his line of interrogation when given a chance to expand and expound on my “no” he would occasionally seek intimidating reinforcements and disdainfully state  “are you telling his honour that blah blah blah?”.

Most of the time I struggled to tell anyone anything because of the wad of cotton wool in my mouth. It’s funny because I do actually know what I’m talking about but there are so many points of attack, real and imagined, that can be gleaned from two lengthy reports which are in response to two other reports, all of which cite numerous learned sources. and especially when I’m disagreeing with the opposition’s experts. In these circumstances the metabolism does funny things, one of which is make you talk like a frog.

Yesterday morning one of my golf mates rang from the course and enquired as to my whereabouts as it was a few minutes past our normal tee-off time. Apart from not realizing we were supposed to be playing, I had to say “Sorry, I have to be in court”, a phrase I had always hoped I would never have to utter. At least in this case I was being paid to be in court rather than facing the reverse situation for which I would have to pay my debt to society. Despite the privations I was able to repeat back to him a phrase he once said to me regarding a less than salubrious task but one which was nonetheless a nice little earner – it’s another cruise.

 

Peter Ridd

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Hearty congratulations to Professor Peter Ridd for his bravery, conviction and ultimate triumph over the forces of scientific (and by extension societal ) darkness. If you believe in the idiotic concept of scientific “consensus” can I remind you, you have a fundamental orifice where you can store it in perpetuity.

Forget you peak oil tipping points and your climate tipping points because this is a very real tipping point that will sew the seed of the reversal of the peak stupidity currently blanketing the world on so many levels.