Tuesday, December 6, 2011

When There Are No Tomorrows

SOME YEARS ago, a boon companion from the Professor’s youth was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, one of the nastiest varieties you can get. His doctors detailed how they would go about treating it – if treat is the right word for an ailment that carries off 95% of its victims in less than two years. He went home, stared at the wall for a spell and was reviewing the options when his son cranked up the stereo in another room. The song was Lou Reed’s White Light, White Heat, from Rock and Roll Animal, and by the time the track was done his mind was made up.

Just twelve months to go? Bugger it! He called the oncologist and told him to inflict the rads and chemo on someone else. As he was almost certainly off to meet the Great Bunyip, he decided to jam as much fun as possible into however much time was left.

And he did, too. Cigarettes, the nicer drugs, alcohol, wild women while still able to handle the exertion – those became the staples of a life running down. His ex-wife took him to the cleaners when they divorced, so he stuffed his wallet with credit cards, whose debts would never be re-paid, and went to town. And to Europe. And Asia. And South America.

Fourteen months he survived, all but the last few jammed-packed with pleasure. When the coffin birds hovered by his casket at the funeral home he was wearing a very sharp Armani suit and, by arrangement with the undertaker, a smile. Oh, yeah, and they played White Light, White Heat very loud indeed, which is the only way to hear it.

You don’t often see such logic in the face of death, and until recently, the assumption had been that the Professor’s mate was one of a kind. Now, though, looking at what our PM and her rabble are getting up to, it seems he has inspired a brood of imitators.

The Gillard mob, they know they’re doomed, that sooner or later the brothel creeper Thomson will be forced to quit, and after that who knows what else might shave their numbers to the point where a no confidence motion sweeps them all away? In the meantime, they are making merry and there is no stopping them.

Give Bob Brown a staggering $11 billion to underwrite his party's green fantasies? Why not! There will be nice jobs for mates and board seats aplenty amongst all the burgeoning alternate energy outfits and think tanks that money is going to underwrite.

And propriety, that is another casualty of this wretched government’s impending demise.

Put a drunk and habitual rorter in the Speaker’s chair? You bet. Peter Slipper has been bought and paid for with his much improved salary, not to mention whatever sinecure or diplomatic post might be conjured into being as a token of appreciation for, ahem, fairness and discretion while presiding over the House.

And Rupert Murdoch? As Labor and its Greens guardians go down for the count you can stake your last dollar that the common goal will be to take him and News Ltd with them.

Subsidies for Fairfax? Probably. And if you think that is far fetched, just look at today’s decision to snatch away from Sky the contract for running the Australia Network and award it in perpetuity to the ABC. There is no basis for it, no rationale except a diseased and dying government’s spite.

The wake for the Professor’s friend was a hell of a party. So, too, will be the celebration to mark the demise of  the filth that now encrusts the government benches.

There will be a difference, though. The hangover will be worse, much worse, and it will last for years.

11 comments:

  1. The disgusting shambles of today's political system needs to be changed. Abolish the states therefore no need for a senate.have a national Assembly elected for 3years ,those elected serve one term then are not allowed to stand again for 15 years. No donations to political parties.6 monthly Referenda to vote on government policies and spending,elections in two rounds to coincide with Referenda,all candidates in round 1 the two with the most votes in round two.Electors have the power to dismissAssembly members for incompetence,How's that for a start ? .

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  2. I appreciate of course that you are simply reporting a government announcement when you say that "the contract for running the Australia Network [has been awarded] in perpetuity to the ABC", but this is a nonsense. This contract can be torn up at any time by a federal government, as indeed might be the fate of this one. Blue will then turn to grey for all the ABC staff who have spent much of this morning on 666 (Canberra) crowing about the "in perpetuity" contract.

    I suspect too that the Gillard government reason for aborting the tender process might be more complex, unless by 'spite' you mean to describe this action as a pay-back on Rudd. It appears that he was favouring the Murdochs, and he may have leaked information to entrap the government into dumping the ABC. Why would Rudd do this? Is it possible that to curry favour with the Murdochs he aimed to deliver to them the contract, and in turn expect backing for his push to reclaim the PM position? This theory would gain more plausibility if Rudd had sponsored the Cabinet decision to put the contract out to tender. Does anyone know about this? (I agree with those who say that it is curious that such a critical government function was put out to tender, so I do not think there is much that is normal about the tender.)

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  3. Somerset Maugham wrote a short story about a man similarly placed as your friend from youth. The man recovered however, after having lived it up in the the English colony in Rio or some such place in South America. The story ended with the man penniless and begging for the odd dinner etc.

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  4. Hear, hear. They are disgusting.

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  5. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.December 6, 2011 at 4:34 PM

    I feel your pain, good Professor, at Labor's extravagent exuberance in the face of their imminent demise. The only election slogan and policy platform that I dream of seeing is the Coalition announcing that when in government it will take no prisoners.

    They should be scared, really scared. Serve 'em right.

    Wasn't it Peter Garrett who said "When we get in we'll just change everything"? Checkmate soon for your lot Pete.

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  6. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.December 6, 2011 at 5:25 PM

    Oops. If there is one word I really can spell it is 'extravagant'. Second nature really.

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  7. It just goes to show how corrupt are these mobs of former trade unionists, hangers on and lick-spittle's.
    There are two ways for the coalition to handle this - either tear up the contracts ( see above) or starve the ABC of funds so that they will relinquish the job.
    Actually, I prefer the latter.

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  8. "So, too, will be the celebration to mark the demise of the filth that now encrusts the government benches."

    Absolutely. We are already making plans for a serious shindig come 2013 elections when the current scourge of society gets unceremoniously dumped.

    The hangover will last for weeks, I'm assured.

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  9. PhillipGeorge(c)2011December 6, 2011 at 10:36 PM

    Prof, the pain of Victoria's desalination plant just can't be undone overnight.
    With water prices doubling for Pantheism's Green Delusions, Victorians are condemned to having their discretionary spending dollars sucked dry as a salt pan. What water doesn't cost them will go into higher electricity prices to feed the needs for the 'bottled electricty' as Premier Bob Carr once called it.
    People don't seem to get it. The disaster is real.
    Thru all this Tim Holding, John Brumby/ Steve Bracks et al, have gotten away with it. Unless a few ex politicians are publically disembowelled [see Jeremy Clarksonesque public lynchings] this will just go on.
    Orwells pigs. We need to air feight the Ceaușescu graves to Australia and put them on display in the foyer of Parliament house. Perhaps Rudd could slip the Romanians a spare foreign aid billion to take possession of these icons.

    Peter Slipper, Craig Thompson, Craig Emerson - all the President's men. All people she has
    "full confidence" in. And where are Martin Ferguson or Simon Crean. Just counting their Super and parliamentary priveleges?

    allah hu akbar ---- Austalians ate well, slept and the country was lost.

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  10. Phillip,
    The De-Sal plant is all about the commodifying of water. Long before the De-Sal plant, the Bracks government, going back ten years ago, were putting propaganda ads on the Brainwash Box and in the fish-wrappers talking about 'Our Water. Our Future.' And 'Securing our Future' and what not, that didn't seem to make sense or have relevance at the time. This was all a softening up tactic, subliminal etc, to have the populace start viewing water as some kind of finite resource or a commodity etc. Water used to be virtually free, as it should be. Now it is a commodity and revenue raiser, and profit maker.
    It's as big a scam as the Breath Tax. Remove the destructive Caeucescu fantasies and other useless thoughts, stirred up by temporal attachments, from your mind Phillip and rest assured a big reckoning is coming for all those who have bent over, as if they were in oestrus, to do the bidding of the Horned Ones.

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  11. Re your boon companion.

    If you get a chance I can recommend the movie 'The Guitar'.

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