The other day an interesting thought struck me. And when I say an interesting thought, I mean one that might be interesting to other people. Thoughts that are interesting to one individual are often quite dull to others but talkback radio still exists for some reason…
Anyway, the Coalition was comparing the energy price thing to a Soviet type solution and suggesting that it would be ineffective in the long-term because we all know that only by allowing the market to charge whatever will they look for more gas and once there’s more gas then they’ll sell it more cheaply because that’s how the law of supply and demand works and if you get In the way of that we’ll have gas prices as high as they are now.
In the midst of this, I read an article about how the youth of today were less likely to vote for the major parties and of the major parties there were even less likely to vote for the Liberals than when we were all communists who refused to go and protect the Australian border in Vietnam.
Having the sort of memory that enables me to remember more than one thing at a time, I put the two things together… Yes, I do realise that this is not actually unusual for a normal human being, but it is rather remarkable for anyone commenting on politics.
So here’s my interesting thought:
NOBODY UNDER 30 WAS ALIVE WHEN THE SOVIET UNION COLLAPSED!
Ok, there may be some who were politically aware nine year olds around in the early nineties, but I suspecting that nobody under 40 actually remembers Soviet Russia. And while they may have picked up the odd thing about it from popular culture, it’s not yet ancient enough to form part of history lessons at school.
Saying to the average person under thirty that price controls are like Soviet Russia is like saying we need to talk about the elephant in the room and ask Hannibal to remove it. No, not Hannibal Lecter… The one with the elephants… What do you mean you’ve never heard of Hannibal?
Yes, I’m thinking that the old “reds under the bed” strategy may just be a little 1950s to succeed with today’s youth… Or even today’s “I’m 40 and I wonder where my youth went” crowd.
In the USA we’ve gone from a time when just the hint of a connection to Russia would have had people calling for your head to a situation where, not only was President Trump able to say that he met with Russians but they didn’t help with the election, but you also have people asking why there’s a problem with Russia invading Ukraine…
Whatever your views on the various things, you’d have to say that America has certainly changed when it comes to concerns about Russian infiltration.
Peter Dutton and his mates may well be right about the price control not solving the problem of rising energy costs but I don’t see their rhetoric as being quite as effective as the “great big tax on everything” that they employed against the carbon pricing that wasn’t a tax. In the latter case they were trying to make us scared that everything would be unaffordable with stories of Whyalla being wiped off the map because of all the $100 lamb roasts. Making people scared of something that might happen is a lot easier than telling them that what IS happening needs to be fixed but what the other party is proposing won’t work and instead they should not do it. It sort of begs the question that if this won’t work, what’s your plan?
And, of course, as Angus Taylor explained, they’d have one if they were in government and it would be a better one but it’s up to Labor to have a plan and they don’t, apart from the one which we said won’t work and instead we should be in government because then we’d know what to do because we’d have a plan. Or as Sussan Ley said, “We’re in opposition we don’t have policies, but if we did then we’d add an extra ‘c’ in the word ‘policy’ because numerically speaking that would mean that our policcies had more substance than Labor’s!”
(That last quote is from memory so I may not have it 100% verbatim but I think I got the gist.)
Speaking of Sussan, I hear that she’s been counting the numbers and many of her colleagues are very impressed because Peter Dutton had to take his shoes and socks off to do that and even then he got it wrong and we ended up with Scotty “I’m ambitious for this guy standing next to Malcolm” Morrison.
I was going to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, but apparently you can’t do that any more. At work, I wrote on to someone’s going away card: “Merry Christmas and good riddance, you lazy, fat turd!” and he said that he had a good mind to report me. Honestly, political correctness has gone mad.
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