Rudd's Wet Nose Secret Revealed

How does Prime Minister Kevin Rudd remain bright eyed and bushy tailed with his massive daily workload ? This important question was raised by the PM himself during the initial Q and A show on the ABC. The PM said that very day he had been to Adelaide , Melbourne and now he was in a studio at the ABC in Sydney and was still expected to be bright eyed and bushy tailed . Well, we can reveal his secret : each morning , his butler , Jeeves, feeds him a hearty meal of Chinese dogfood . The additives cause Kevin 07 to behave like an energetic Pitt Bull Terrier ; he licks his lips and other parts of his anatomy in anticipation of another long day of political dogfights. As everybody knows, Chinese dogfood sold in America caused pooches there to rush around like cars in the Indy 500 . Questions have been asked about the contents of Chinese pig food in Western Australia after porkers were seen flying over Rottnest Island . Pickled Chinese dim sims, containing the same secret herbs and spices , sold in Japan caused some gourmets to prematurely meet their honourable ancestors , and nearly caused another Manchurian incident. It seems the dogfood ingredients are similar to the esteemed ancient stimulant Nine Dog , sold in large quantities to anxious men on the Australian waterfront in bygone days. Any leftovers from Mr Rudd’s breakfast are given to his sons so that they will not suffer from classroom fuzzies . On this diet of choice mandarin munchies ,the boys, like father, have become hyper-active . One son pole vaults over The Lodge perimeter security fence each night and takes part in noisy street rap dancing contests where youths guzzle large quantities of spring water . His brother regularly climbs the flag atop parliament house and hangs upside down like a Queensland fruit bat, a stunt which will undoubtedly lead to a brilliant career in Circus OZ. The butler is currently trading the Rudd family dogs in on a pair of Huskies so that the PM’s gas guzzling limo can be swapped for Douglas Mawson’s sled.

Cyclops

Downer On Stairway To Heaven

Former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has been given a challenging job in the Philippines : cataloguing Imelda Marcos’s vast collection of stockings . While it is common knowledge that Imelda had a mountain of shoes , few people know that she had more fancy stockings than Priscilla , Queen of the Desert . Unfortunately, the stockings have been in a steaming , tangled heap since she and her husband were booted out of the country . Fortunately , Alexander knows a lot about stockings as he won the best prefect’s prize at his boarding school for making sure all female students wore their pantyhose like chastity belts , well and truly knotted under their chins. Alexander’s admirer, Senator Minchin , often seen wearing a stocking over his face so that he will not be identified at Coalition discipline enforcement sessions , where rattan canes are wielded with great gusto , obtained the Manila job for our former beloved Foreign Minister . Incidently , there are wild stories coming out of Canberra that the good senator will himself be leaving parliament soon to take up an exciting , adrenalin pumping post wearing a stocking over his face outside leading banks.

Cyclops

Zapata Rides Again

Strange as it may seem , the early 20th century revolutionary Emiliano Zapata , at times portrayed as a laughable Mexican bandit , is playing a part in the current struggle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama . Both contestants have declared they will overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which involves the US, Canada and Mexico. Both Democrats supported NAFTA in the past . President Bill Clinton trumpeted the benefits of NAFTA when he signed up . NAFTA enabled the setting up of giant factories in Mexico where goods were made by the poorly paid workforce, many of them women who were attacked at night as they stumbled home in the gloom after a long shift. Kind companies allowed people to make homes from discarded cardboard boxes near the factories . Profits from Mexico enabled multi-national companies to close down factories in the USA and move operations south of the border , tearing the guts out of some communities and causing growing unrest and anger . General Motors told auto workers that if they asked for a wage increase operations would be moved to Mexico . The growing concern about the impact of NAFTA on parts of America and Mexico has been voiced in the primaries battle and will be an issue in the presidential election . If NAFTA is such an economic boon for Mexico , why do so many Mexicans risk death sneaking across the border into America ? In addition many Mexicans, alarmed at the way land is being expropriated by ruthless organisations and individuals , have invoked the name of Zapata to fight back. They call themselves Zapatistas and there are many hundreds of thousands of them . Some New Zealanders have been helping out these groups . Currently, funds are being raised in Australia by a Wellington, NZ, Zapatista support group, proceeds going to the La Garrucha Health Project. Surprisingly, tickets are being sold in a raffle , the first prize being a first edition copy of an erotic illustrated novel , written and autographed by El Subcomandante Marcos. The illustrations are by leading Mexico artist Antonio Ramirez. A booklet illustrated by children in an autonomous community which runs a school, health clinic , library and pharmacy is also being distributed in Australia. The school is named after Zapata and the text tells how he fought for the right of indigenous people to their life, land and liberty.

Cyclops

For your convenience ...

The commonest announcement following the “for your convenience” tag is something like – “in order to serve you better/provide better and more personal service to you” we are going to increase fees to allow us to remain competitive in the cut-throat world of banking (or telecom or public transport). I always laugh when my bank assures me it is thinking only of me when it decides to charge me $2 per transaction for allowing me to do all my own banking via the internet. It used to cost them a lot more to allow me into their parlours to deal with them.

Then I go to the supermarket and find all the frozen fish has been thawed for my convenience. This means I have to eat the fish today, because it won’t keep after being defrosted and I can’t freeze it again. That’s very convenient, Mr Coles. Thanks very much. I grin sardonically.

Then they introduced call-waiting, so that when I’m talking to my elderly friend who doesn’t hear well, someone else can interrupt me by ringing irritatingly in my ear – and in hers. How rude! I will never ever have call waiting. Take it away, for my convenience! I have a fixed smirk on my face now.

Telephones themselves are hell on a string. Alexander Graham Bell has a lot to answer for (if indeed he did invent the telephone. The US has recognized a claim by an Italian, Antonio Meucci and someone called Elisha Gay reckons he did.) They are designed as a disruption to your time, a break in concentration, with distracting sounds to increase stress by several decibels.

Then we have the innovative telephone answering systems designed for our convenience. I know this is so, they all tell me that for my convenience I need only hit a few phone buttons to be directed to the appropriate advisor for my query. Well, firstly, it’s rarely a query, it’s usually a complaint, and secondly, after 85 phone buttons I usually return to the number I first thought of, because none of the suggestions matches what I wanted to talk about. Now I’m grimacing. There are no laughs left.

Perhaps I’ll buy some furniture, a table to rest my telephone on, or for cutting up my rapidly-deteriorating fish. Do you deliver? Of course, madam. We deliver for your convenience. When can you deliver this for me? Well, you’ve just missed our order to the warehouse, so it will be a week from today, between 8.30 and 5.30. And by the way, it will cost $65. (That’s for their convenience.) By now I’m gnashing my teeth.

I did find a smile when I filled up with petrol last week, although it was not gleeful and amused. It was a despairing and beaten mouth movement, designed to hold back the tears. A sign on the bowser read: “For your convenience, this pump will run silently.” Oh yes. I can no longer judge when the tank is full, instead I’ll find out when hideously expensive fuel pours out and all over my duco and wheels. I can’t think of a single reason for this innovation. Can you?

If only one organization would admit that they make changes for their convenience, not mine! Actually, I can think of an activity that would be carried out entirely for my convenience. Improved public toilets would be a good thing, and certainly designed for your convenience.

Ana Thema

Friends, Aussies, Countrymen, lend me your coat.

Victorian MPs have awarded themselves increases in their electoral allowances of up to $35,000. This is about 3 times the sum allocated to Aged Pensioners each year, and doubtless will be used to produce glossy pamphlets to be mailed to pensioners assuring them that their needs are being heard. This announcement, hidden in an unpublicized section of the State budget, followed the release of a damning report on public hospital waiting lists.

Aged Pensioners yesterday staged a demonstration in Melbourne, stripping down to their underwear (some wearing their underwear on the outside), to highlight the failure to assist them in any way in the recent Federal budget.

Tony Mokbel was returned to Australia today after 2 years on the run. He flew home in comfort in a private jet, then traveled by helicopter to a Geelong gaol to await trail. Last night on the laughingly-named current affairs programs, the ex-wife of a notorious Melbourne gangster was driven around Melbourne in a stretch limousine, to some of the haunts where her former husband and his cronies terrified Victorians in their gangland behaviour.

What do these apparently unrelated events have in common? Well, nothing really. But as pensioners stripped off their clothes in emulation of the taxi-drivers’ demonstration a week or so ago, a lone voice in the crowd was heard.

“Stop treating criminals like celebrities, and pensioners like criminals!”

I’ll drink to that.

Ana Thema

A Sign of the Times

We live in an age of political correctness (don’t start me) and occupational health and safety, and in a social milieu of increasing litigiousness.

When I was a lad, it was the custom for boys to wear short trousers until they were thirteen years of age (give or take six months.) The big day then came when they donned their very first pair of long trousers (“long ens.”) A lad would then strut out , very self consciously, but as proud as a peacock. All who knew him and saw him would ceremoniously ask the rhetorical question, “Who pulled ya through?” This light ragging was taken in good spirit by the lad, because he knew that henceforth he would be accepted as a young adult. It was a rite of passage into probationary adulthood.

Nowadays, of course, boys (and even girls) seem to start wearing long trousers by no later than about 15 minutes of age. The old rite of passage has, itself, disappeared up some dark, forbidding passage, never to be seen again.

Now, irrespective of age, from cradle to coffin, so to speak, we are bombarded with public address system announcements and with signboards of all descriptions and materials.

If you go to catch a train, you may well find it very difficult to find a ticket-seller or to master the art of operating a ticket-selling machine, but you cannot escape the torrent of recorded announcements played at 100 decibels over the level that is guaranteed to induce industrial deafness. “Passengers are reminded to not stand in front of the yellow line.” “Passengers with prams or strollers must hold on to the pram or stroller at all times.” (How many times have these bureaucrats been on a station when hundreds of mothers or fathers gathered, replete with prammified and strollerfied babies that they had made personal sacrifice to have, waiting for the next train to arrive, only to launch a massive co-ordinated shove of all of their prams, strollers and loved babies onto the lines in front of the train?) Some intending passengers are required to climb and descend staircases to cross the lines or to get to a particular railway platform, only to be confronted on the way up and down by a repetitive sign on each step, warning them that “Steps may be slippery when wet.” In days of yore, any child who, by three years of age, did not fully realise that any surface was liable to be slippery when wet, was destined for either serious mishap or remedial class or both.

The railways are not the only organisations that bombard us in such a manner. It happens everywhere we go: on the ferries; on the busses; at the universities; at the banks; in the clubs; in the pubs; and even in modern, computerised cars. Bus drivers have to wear reflective, fluorescent vests to authenticate that the person sitting in the driver’s seat and manipulating the steering wheel, is actually a driver. Bicycle riders must wear a crash helmet because in 1973 or some other obscure year, two cyclists suffered head injuries and were no longer able to “intelligently” interpret “instructional” signs and decode blaring loud speaker announcements. If they don’t get at your ears, they get at your eyes. “Do not run on the escalators.” Give us a break; let us decide something for ourselves.

The old days may have had their faults, but at least young people were graduated into probationary and full adulthood and given credit for being alert, intelligent decision makers who learnt from parents, other adults, and from their own mistakes. In stark contrast, people are now bombarded with stimuli that serve to obviate their need and their capacity to think for themselves.

Sadly, it must be concluded that in days of yore, infants were encouraged to develop into autonomous adults, while in present times, “adults,” like everyone else, are sentenced to be infantalised for the rest of their lives.

Crankyfella

Sea Shanty Rivals Pirates of Penzance

The epic voyage of the Argonauts came to mind when Lord Nelson rose on the poop deck of the SS Alco-Pop to deliver his budget reply speech. The faces of his motley crew clearly showed signs of scurvy, bitterness , regular flogging by Madam Lash and the new bread and water diet imposed on them in opposition . All this , and they have only been adrift for about half a year . Clustered about Nelson , down to his last wonky eye and unsteady on his borer infested wooden leg, were amazing hydra-headed creatures who nodded and shook their heads like automatons. Nelson did the compulsory mock angry Andrew Peacock performance during his oration . Out in the bleachers , resting on his oar , Alexander Downer looked to be either going prematurely grey, thus giving the appearance of an elder statesman when he pops in on Centrelink seeking gainful employment , or out of Grecian 500 . At least Peacock never ran out of dye when he was in the public eye . He also had a goodly supply of bedsheets, if I remember correctly . Unfortunately, the TV camera did not focus very often on the former wonder chancellor of the exchequer whose skilful helmsmanship steered Howard’s ship of state safely up the Limpopo until it hit a mandarin crate and turned turtle. However , when he did come into focus , some people observed he had an inflated face like the Magic Pudding , Norman Lindsay’s great invention which enabled gluttonous Australian children to gorge themselves nonstop, the root cause of the present obesity epidemic in kids. Could this have been his secret ? Was he the magic parliamentary pud , the secret to those heady days of never ending free lunches? Hanging on to the rudder of the Coalition’s lifeboat was a pollie who used to be highly animated on TV when he sat behind submariner John Howard in the old days . Tuther night he was almost missing at sea , bleary eyed from salt spray and soon to become another Chelsea Pensioner .

Cyclops

Horses to Water

I regret to advise that our language is deteriating rapidly. At 6am in the morning I heard news about a change to industrialations, which is no longer of much interest to me except intellexually.

Why do I say this? You might well arks. Our bright young Treasurer Wayne Duckling used his day-after National Press Club address to repeatedly bemoan the issues in our economy which were deteriating as he spoke (including his mastery of the language). Television reporters, commentators, radio announcers, politicians of every colour talk endlessly about industrialations, and our makeshift Premier Con Brumby described Melbourne at 6am in the morning (although it was by then 6pm at night). I wonder when 6am in the afternoon actually is?

A clever comment in this morning’s Melbourne Sun-Herald indicates that admiration for the premier is deteriorating at a greater rate of knots than the industrial relations situation in our hospitals. I've heard that 6am (or even 5 in the morning) is about the best time to go to Emergency because the night horrors have been cleared away and the day's nightmares have not begun. The para suggested that you can lead a brumby to water, but you cannot make it think.

I rest my case.

An Athema

Welcome From Zimbabwe

Welcome to Zimbabwe ! That’s not the kind of message you expect to receive nowadays from that pitifully oppressed country . However , back in l987 , a booklet entitled A Guide to Zimbabwe included a card from the British travel firm of Abercrombie and Kent extending not just a welcome , but a very warm one .

Naturally, Robert Mugabe , first Prime Minister (l980 – l987 ) and in the initial year as executive president , received substantial coverage in connection with the struggle for independence. One l965 photo showed him in the Sikombela detention camp where he and other nationalist leaders were imprisoned by the white regime headed by Ian Smith in what was then known as Rhodesia.

Dealing with education , it stated that due to the segregated system which had prevailed white children between the ages of five and l5 had to attend school, but it was not compulsory for Africans. White education had been free , while black parents had to pay the equivalent of 13 weeks’ wages to keep one child in school. More than 50 percent of African children did not go to school at all . In l969 , only about 40 per cent of all Africans above the age of l6 could read their own language. The booklet listed the nation’s natural resources , extensive agricultural and animal industries and large scale irrigation from numerous dams . Mugabe and his gang of sycophants proceeded to loot the country. He even called in a brutal squad from that other obscenity , North Korean, to train killer gangs who slaughtered and hounded various groups in the community . Court orders were repeatedly disregarded . A newspaper press blown up . It is to be hoped that the Lord High Executioner soon enacts his duties and puts a tick against this deranged fiend who has reduced his country and people to such a tragic state . The proposed re-run of the presidential election in Zimbabwe is as obscene as the Burmese generals going ahead with the rigged election to continue their gangster hold on the nation which is reeling under the impact of the cyclone.

Cyclops

Inflated Talk

Last night, the dinkum Aussie treasurer, Wayne Swallow, released his first budget for the nation.

The budget had numerous prongs, one of which was to help Aussie working families and another of which was to fight inflation.

Inflation has been blown up into this enormous, vicious, flesh-consuming enemy. We all know, from sometimes bitter experience in the home, that budgeting can be fraught with competing demands, wishes and completely nutty fantasies. The same things apply at the national level. Budgetary tactics can take many tracks, all of which are arguable, depending upon your world view and your ambitions. However, we in the Land Down Under have had a long succession of federal treasurers who have followed the “inflation is a bogeyman” dogma. Isn’t it about time that we had a treasurer, and perhaps a budget that openly and candidly addressed the pros and cons of inflation?

To balance up the scales a bit, let us look at what inflation can do for the working family.We will do this by first acknowledging that inflation does have important ramifications for Aussie exporters and globally oriented industries.

If we have $100 and we invest this at a fixed simple interest rate of 10% per annum, then in about seven years, provided we do not draw on the capital or the interest, our little nest egg will have roughly doubled. Let us now bear that in mind to guide the following argument. As genuine, fair dinkum little Aussie battlers, we aspire to own our own homes. To do this, we take out a housing loan. Let us make sure that we do this on a fixed interest rate. If we have a wages system that ties wages to an honest annual calculation of inflation, then if we have a “high” inflation rate, let us say, for example, 10% per annum, after a period of five years, our home loan repayments will be the same as when we started, but our wages will be approximately twice that of when we started. Consequently, our home loan repayments will be only half as onerous and burdensome. In another five years (which is only a mere decade from the starting time) our home loan burden will be only a quarter of that which we endured at the beginning.

What gives me the pip, is that our governments, irrespective of which wing they play on, on their level playing fields, lack the guts to come out and admit that they hate inflation because it re-distributes wealth from the excessively wealthy (for example banks) to the working class families.

Governments cannot be servants to low inflation and servants to working families at the same time.

Battler

Stuff Unspeakable Adams ?

The nation should be prepared for the sad demise of the esteemed writer and national treasure , Phillip Adams .

Adams admits to not having been of robust health for many months. Recently he has been going on about death , especially his . Ominiously , he let slip that he gets hot flushes on espying orchids , an alarming sign which indicates he is suffering from advanced corsage wilt or the dreaded instant compost syndrome. I am an avid fan of his , read his every word and listen to him on the ABC late at night in a near comatose state. On the annoying occasions that the Weekend Australian arrives without the magazine containing Phil’s column imbedded in the derriere , I become morose and grumpy . Having had a triple bypass and slightly older than Phil, his talk of imminent departure makes me reach for the beta blockers and check that the phone has not been cut off for non-payment of the account. It is no use saying God forbid Adams’s death because he does not believe in Divinity , intelligent design , aliens from outer space and tooth fairies .

Seriously , what should be done when our Phil exits left ? He is no ordinary mortal and deserves a fitting grand finale . Naturally , there will be a state funeral. But after that ? Several immediate ideas spring to mind . Because of his fascination with the Egyptian underworld , perhaps a monument carved from the first block of Hunter Valley clean coal ,in the style of a proboscis restored Sphinx , with the body of a waltzing wombat . This ornate sarcophagus could be placed in the middle of Lake Burley Griffin to give Canberra a touch of Camelot. Admittedly , there is one major flaw in a coal capsule: he may have to be kept on ice longer than Walt Disney waiting for black coal to become environmentally green . A sporting alternative , which would no doubt receive the nation’s approval seeing our cricketers are on the nose , is that he be stuffed by an equine expert and placed in a glass case near the great Kiwi / Australian racehorse , Phar Lap. His longtime buddy , Gerard Henderson , moulded from a huge blob of ABC playdough near its use by date , could be shown following Adams , disciple like , a long-handled shovel at the ready. Just imagine the awesome spectacle that would be created if the late Padraic McGuinness , recast in recycled Quadrant papier mache , kitted out like a jockey, could be accommodated somehow in the same glass case . This corpulent cluster could be identified as the Three Amigos , but in this litigious age might result in a writ from Telstra or an accusation of plagiarism . A plaque made from compressed Tasmanian Huon Pine woodchips , describing the trio as The Three Wise Men , would surely receive universal acclaim .

Cyclops

Who Am I?

How often do you get asked to provide proof of identity?

Australian life now seems to be a lurching from one bureaucratic obstacle to another to yet another. This disorientating, debilitating and demoralizing procession is painful enough, without being punctuated by numerous requests to provide proof of who you are.

“But, but, but, I know who I am,” I generally splutter with a feeling of anxiety tinged with alienation and impending madness.

“Yes, but how do we know who you are?” comes the cold, sane rebuke by authority. “We need some proof of who you are.” At this stage, I feel compelled to put a hand deep into a side pocket of my trousers to sharply squeeze one or two of my remaining small football-shaped badges of diminishing masculine gender authentication. The resultant jaw opening twang of pain reminds me that I am a feeling, living member of the animal kingdom.

However, in a growing awareness that I am then a pre-school David facing a mature, self-validating Goliath, I then reach my other hand into my other side pocket of my trousers to extract a driver’s licence, a passport and a letter to me from the gas supply company, each bearing bits and pieces of my name, address and physiognomy as captured by departmental, ceiling-mounted digital camera.

“Ah, that’s better,” booms the voice of officialdom, “That’s you there!” With this, a long finger of omniscience points to my photograph that closely resembles my great uncle immediately before his last cerebral haemorrhage at the age of ninety-seven and a half. “Ah, yes, and that is your address there, as acknowledged by the Acme Gas Corporation. Good, now let’s see about this matter that brought you here.” At this stage, of course, the official has just the slightest trace of the slightest form of a smile.

My plastic and paper identity has once again outsmarted my organic identity.

Crankyfella

Ticking Bomb Alert in Darwin

The Royal Darwin Hospital cardiac department has been placed on a war footing for the remainder of 2008 due to a predicted outbreak of ticker collapse among junketing former Howard government members. Medical tests have revealed a staggering number of Howard's former attack warriors have developed weak tickers and are not expected to last the distance . Sadly, these sickly pollies , on farewell visits to Darwin , indulging themselves on mango and barramundi muffins , could suddenly topple over like Sadam Hussein's Baghdad statue , in the process inserting a manicured digit up the fundamental orifice of a mean , snoozing Crocodylus Park inmate . This highly dangerous act will result in numerous politicians , their right wings torn off , being rushed to hospital in a fleet of Mr Whippy vans. Naturally , the RSPCA, Buddhists, over- worked hospital staff and molested crocodiles will be outraged by the shocking behaviour of the afflicted politicians. One brave politician diagnosed by medical school dropout , Doctor Horatio Howard , as not having the ticker , the former ALP leader Kim " Bomber " Beazley , made a remarkable cardiac recovery . Each day he lifts an Abrams tank by its turret with his teeth . At the same time , he stands on one leg and juggles 10 live hand – grenades while sharing a jug of carrot juice in a swank restaurant with a well - known , anonymous , masked WA lobbyist who has leprosy, halitosis , footrot and the world's largest collection of penny blacks . Beazley attributes his improved cardiac health to a weeping Russian icon he bought at a KGB closing down sale.

Cyclops

Blogging the Rage

I love computers. I spend hours daily on and in and with mine, I can do lots of things with them, and almost reformatted mine a few days ago. Is it possible to reformat teachers and curriculum/curriculi so that students can learn? I went to the movies last week, and asked at the counter for "two chocolate flavoured icecreams please". The assistant smiled a welcome and said "what flavour would you like?" Maybe that's not school's fault. Maybe it's the trainer's error. Training is heavy on smiling and you're welcomes and would you like fries with that, but kids don't listen any more, or at least, they don't hear. Well they all have speakers in their ears so they must be able to, like, listen.

I've been waiting 3 weeks for a phone call to arrange an appointment before I have surgery next week, so in despair I phoned and asked why they hadn't contacted me yet. "I've been ringing this number but they say your father doesn't live there," the female person said brightly with a smile in her voice. But it was a number in a different State of the country, and my father, and my father-in-law, both died more than 20 years ago. Why would she ring a city and state neither of them ever lived? It was too hard. We were five minutes into the conversation before she finally accepted that my spouse is my husband, not my father.

My granddaughter is 15, academically clever and roaring through high school a year ahead of her peers. She has no idea where to put apostrophes, so sends her assignments to me to punctuate before she submits them. Why are apostrophes hard? Because they slow you down when you're texting, which has just become a verb.

I've just been seconded to a committee to prepare for a new, highly specialised, dictionary. The most recent version was produced last year. It contains words like EVO, EXO, EMO and ZA. There are even definitions for these words. They are teenage abbreviations for words like Excellent and Pizza. I am all for a living language, new words being introduced (but not old words disappearing. I want the language to grow). But slang that lasts for half a generation doesn't belong in a serious dictionary. No, it is not a dictionary of slang.

And how do you protest? We used to have a verse about children born on different days of the week. The last line was "But the child who is born on the Sabbath day, is bright and bonny and good and gay." Gay? Anyone born on Sunday is homosexual?

I can't go on. Please let me know if you wish to join my protest. And if you'd like fries with that.

Iratekow

Powers That Be

"Don't get yerself in a state," my mother used to harp at me.

Well. I have got myself in a state, and that state, which will remain un-named, and which geographically lies roughly between Queensland and Victoria, is, itself, really in a state.

One of our leaders, Miss Tar Dilemma, puts the case that the disposal of the government owned energy resources is in our best interest. When I say government owned, I actually mean people owned, and that business that we own is a profitable one. It brings dividends into the governmental purse. Those dividends can be used for propping up the remnants of our hospital and educational systems and other things. They could also be used towards the cost of their own replacement with renewable energy sources that we, the people, would also own.

Dilemma's whiz-kid offsider with a wonderful grip on figures and finances, Costa Countent, screams in a falsetto that screams for a good throat gargle, that we have to get rid of our energy assets before it is too late, before they are worthless. He thinks it would be a great attraction to private enterprise to jump in and buy the whole lot so that they could then rip profits out of us because they would then own what we presently own. He implies that private enterprise would not wake up to the fact that we would be selling our asset "before it is too late." So, on the crooked face of it, he wants to secure our energy future with a mob that is too daft to recognise this ruse. Does he think that we are all dafter than the private enterprise wing of the energy industry? Well, he does treat us as being that daft, but he knows full well that the champing-at-the-bit energy industry people are not daft at all.

Will the same fate await our other public sectors? Will our schools be run by Skools-R-Us Pty Ltd, and our hospitals by Pay When Maimed Incorporated?

"How can I get myself out of a state," I would ask my mother if she were still around to ask.

Battler