A Long Hard Thing-k!

Image from bbc.com (Photo by Getty)

Mmm, what can we do…

Mmm, what’s going to actually help…

Mmm, I’m old enough to remember the sixties. By that, I mean that I’m young enough to have been alive in the sixties and not so old that I can’t remember the sixties because I was part of the sixties… If you know what I mean…

Anyway, I remember the sixties and how the forces that would control us, regrouped, and took control again…

As The Skyhooks sang in the seventies: “Whatever happened to the Revolution? We all got stoned and it drifted away…” Ok, some things endured, but flower power and non-materialism did not become the norm. John Lennon told us to give peace a chance and was shot.

I’m old enough now to have a vested interest in the way things are… Up to a point.

I think, while wewere never wealthy – although wealth is relative in a world where so many earn less than $2 a day – I came from a family that was always ok with the way things are… Up to a point!

I always wanted to change things. I always wanted to make them fairer… Up to a point!

Ok, ok, I can walk past beggars in the street and think that this is just wrong, but decide that my twenty bucks would be better spent on lunch for myself.

But I don’t think that we should have beggars in our streets… Not just because – from time to time – they make me feel guilty and rich and totally unable to complain about the people who really should feel rich and guilty because they wouldn’t miss $1.75 million in much the same way that I would miss the odd meal and the odd twenty dollars.

And I’ve been wondering if social media and the Internet is like every innovation. A Prague Spring.

Will we all descend into some distraction where we argue over who has the biggest? Crowd, that is… What’s wrong with you people?

Or will it enable us to connect, to define, to say this enables us to counteract the misinformation.

Television was also a great opportunity. But we filled it with shit to attract the lowest common denominator. Which is sort of ok, because the lowest common denominator has a right to watch things too. Just not a reality show about who will be next to be thrown off the show, when the person throwing them off is the POTUS in his latest role in “The Apprentice – Now I’m President, Where’s Monica?”!

Anyway, we may need to find a way to overcome the attack on the Internet. Yeah, I suspect that it’ll be next. They’ll need to control it… Not in a Communist sort of way, in a “We support Freedom” sort of way! We’ll need to censor it and control it to stop those who are using it “dark purposes”, and as the definition of “dark purposes” spreads and grows, we’ll find that even photos of your latest meal may need to avoid such things as lentils for fear it may be helping spread a vegan message!

Mm, what can we do?

What’s going to actually help?

Well, like I said, I remember the sixties and it’s not going to be the artists and writers and singers that actually make the changes. Russell’s Revolution notwithstanding.

It’s up to you.

No, really! I’m trying to tell you. It’s really up to you.

John Lennon’s dead, and I have a cold sore.

Nobody else is going to change the world.

Maybe Cody who’s twelve and wrote to the PM…

But I don’t think the rest of you can wait until Cody is old enough to take over.

Get off your fat spotty backside and do something.

Even if it’s only writing to your MP!

Ah, cheers everyone. I needed that.

🙂

Now that I’ve absolved myself from responsibility and blamed someone else, I can become a Liberal politician!

Well, Malcolm, are you resigning now? Or next week?

 

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About Rossleigh 1447 Articles
Rossleigh is a writer, director and teacher. As a writer, his plays include “The Charles Manson Variety Hour”, “Pastiche”, “Snap!”, “That’s Me In The Distance”, “48 Hours (without Eddie Murphy)”, and “A King of Infinite Space”. His acting credits include “Pinor Noir Noir” for “Short and Sweet” and carrying the coffin in “The Slap”. His ten minutes play, “Y” won the 2013 Crash Test Drama Final.

12 Comments

  1. Thanks, Young Rossleigh. I don’t think it was necessary, though, for you to tell everybody what type of bottom I have. And anyway, do you mean that only fat, spotty bottoms need to be got up off? (Which would be unfair and quite discriminatory of you – fattist and spottist!) Or do you mean that all types of bottoms need to be got off of? If so, please say what you mean.

  2. Ah dear, Mark Latham was right when he said that people telling him to shut up were intimidating and making him feel like he couldn’t just say whatever he liked and all this political correctness should be banned so that we have freedom to talk about fat spotty bottoms…
    Or something like that…

    Anyway, I just looked up my Mark Latham blog from last year* where I said that I was going to refer to it, not as “Lathamland” but “La-La-Land”…

    God, I think I should get an academy award, because “La-La Land” will surely get enough!

    Yes, I’m shallow enough to be Prime Minister. 😀

    * https://theaimn.com/mark-latham-too-intimidated-by-potential-criticism-to-actually-speak-his-mind/

  3. Rossleigh, sadly, Cody’s letter as valiant as it was ,has not warranted a single reply ….Perhaps next week but I won’t hold my breath.
    I think we need thousand of Cody’s …maybe then..
    I live in hope.
    Peter, sadly we need more than Tea Tree oil to get rid of the stench of the LNP.

  4. Ella, thousands of people here read Cody’s letter. It still makes me smile. We just have to keep the fight up until he and others like him can help take over the struggle.

  5. Ella, the fact that Cody has not received a reply doesn’t mean that the letter hasn’t done a power of good. As Kaye says, thousands of people have seen it, and who knows how uncomfortable it might have made the PM and/or the people in his office feel.

  6. Perhaps the demonstrations , like what we are seeing from the poverty stricken Romanian people…may help.
    But we are not suffering enough for that yet….we are still too comfortable in our ignorance.

  7. @PeterF. A really big tin of it, with our dearly beloved pm in it, and the lid screwed back on might though. It’s worth a try, and it will stop talcum making dumbarse phone calls to mr trumpet and embarrassing us all.

  8. Kate AhearneFebruary 3, 2017 at 9:31 pm
    Tea-tree oil for cold sores.

    kerosine for head lice…….
    warm milk every school morning..
    lining up for inoculations….
    WALKING miles to school..

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