I See the Light

That Old Year, 2008, was a bit of a fizzer, as we used to say of crackers that failed to go off with a bang, but rather, went “Pphhhsssstt.”

This New Year, 2009, is going to be a bobby dazzler. 

Whom are we kidding? 

Once again, the government of this colony that pretends to be a state, New South Wales, has set an inappropriate, ridiculous example to its citizens and to its youth. Last night, at 9 pm, and again at midnight, to usher in the New Year, our brilliant State Government funded fireworks displays to the tune of five million Aussie dollars in Sydney, alone. 

We saw five million Aussie dollars go up in smoke from the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and other sites around the harbour. It was all the more insulting to have involved the dear old bridge, as it represents magnificent infrastructure built by the sweat and ingenuity of Aussie working men. It represents the era when seemingly impossible works were designed and doggedly brought to existence. It was a feat that we can never repeat, because we have lost too much will, and far too much expertise. 

Currently, the brightest of our brightest, those enlightened upholders of all things ethical, moral and good, our State parliamentarians, have proclaimed hard times, and have consequently put on indefinite hold, infrastructural works such as a passenger train line to service the people of the north-western region of the Greater Sydney Metropolitan Area. Other important infrastructural works that are in progress, have been slowed because of a shortage of money in the till from which progress payments are required to be paid. 

Our social institutions, such as hospitals, schools and universities are rapidly transmogrifying into shadows of their former operations. We are desperately short of doctors, nurses, and especially dentists, in our health system. We are emaciating former professions such as school teaching and university lecturing, and our police force is becoming a skeletal system comprising the few older, experienced people trying against the odds to lead a vast pack of newcomers who, despite their training, rapidly become disenchanted and abandon the job that they once thought would be socially valued, intellectually and ethically challenging and a reasonably well-paid career. 

Any one of these ailing, failing essential services of the State would have welcomed and put to good use, a cash injection of the five million Aussie dollars blatantly wasted in providing fleeting visual gratification for the very few who were able to attend the harbour fireworks sessions. Surely, the traditional joining of hands and singing Robbie Burns’ “Auld Lang Syne” was a cost-free and far more meaningful way to farewell the old year and usher in the new.

 

Crankyfella