“To a hammer, everything is a nail.”
MY wife hit her head yesterday and she decided that she wanted to go to an emergency department to check it out. Without going through all the ins and outs of the experience, she’s fine and, after triage, we sat in some less than comfortable chairs for the next hour, until my wife complained about her head and she was given pain-killers and sent to sit outside the “fast track” for the next couple of hours.
This was the point at which I started to wonder what “fast track” actually meant and I decided that it was just a way of making those complaining feel better. Naturally, this made me think of Scott Morrison. Sitting there, I wondered if we’d be there till the next day and, at such a point, were I to complain would the conversation go something like this:
“Excuse me, but these chairs are impossible to sleep in.”
“Well, the chairs are only temporary and people aren’t meant to sleep in them.”
“But it’s been all night and I haven’t managed to get any proper sleep.”
“Look, the best form of care is a hospital bed.”
“But we haven’t been given a hospital bed. If my wife was in a hospital bed, I could go home and…”
“We have put more people in hospital beds than the hospital down the road, so you should just think about all the people who are in bed and remember that the chairs aren’t meant to be a long term thing!”
Ok, that’s a ridiculous conversation, so why can the government get away with talking that way about raising Newstart! I mean it’s not like unemployment is going down. Generally speaking, when a government starts talking about the number of jobs that they’ve created, it’s because they have no idea how to reduce the number of unemployed. There are always jobs being created; the issue is whether more are being lost.
But that the thing about this government. It’s all about the marketing rather than the substance. Granted, some marketing is necessary or nobody knows what great things you’ve done, but when you try it without actually doing anything, the message eventually wears a little thin. Take the drought. While it sounds like the government is doing something when they talk about the billions they’re spending drought-proofing Australia sometime in the life of the next Parliament, this is only going to impress those not directly affected. It’s like turning up at an accident scene and instead of calling an ambulance or administering first aid, the politician makes an announcement about increasing the spending to remove dangerous intersections. Worth doing, but the bleeding guy with the broken leg would probably rather be in the hospital emergency room, even if the fast track is only an illusion…
Anyway, while I was waiting I came across the following tweet from Mr Morrison.
I love getting letters from kids. They say the greatest things and this letter from Jude, aged 5, is a cracker. He wants me to cancel all school holidays because he loves school so much. Good on ya Jude. pic.twitter.com/ekWFJG4qeh
— Scott Morrison (@ScoMo30) October 23, 2019
Now, if you watch it, you’ll notice that not only does Jude have a wonderful grasp of sentence structure for a prep student, but he also has some of the best fine motor skills that I’ve seen in a five-year-old.
But leaving aside the veracity of the letter and the appropriateness of a middle-aged man telling us that he wants to encourage kids to write to him, it does seem that the message we’re meant to take away isn’t very clear.
Forget the fact that it’s a kid and we’re left with the following: A constituent writes to the PM, he reads out the letter, laughs about the request and says that he’s not going to do anything about it.
Is that really the message that the PM wants to send? Or was he virtue signalling that it’s great that this kid has a similar work ethic to the one he has. Scott is a very hard worker, after all. If he’s not playing tennis, praying for rain or running water for the rugby team, then he’s telling us that we need more love and shouting at the Labor Party because they don’t show enough for his policies… Although since the election…
Anyway, I was wondering if we were likely to hear more letters from children, you know things like:
Dear Mr PM,
My name is Charlotte and I am six, I am really pleased with your request to let kids be kids. My classmates don’t like that Greta Thunberg and not just because she’s different. It’s her views on anthropomorphic climate change, which she asserts without the benefit of peer review.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Dear Mr Morrison,
Thank you from protecting us from all the boogy men. I used to be scared but now that Peter Dutton is keeping us safe, I don’t need Mummy to leave the night-light on.
Love,
Andy, 6 and a half.
P.S. Good on you for telling those silly UN people where to put their negative globalism
.
Dear ScoMo,
I am starting school next week and thanks to your hard work with the budget, there will be more money for my education and healthcare. Good on you for ignoring those troglodyte Keynesians who don’t understand that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and refusing to jeopardise the surplus with a stimulus package.
Regards, Timmy aged 4 and 3 quarters.
Dear Mr Morrison,
Can I please go for a ride in the submarines when they are built?
Best Wishes, Christopher Pyne.
Yep, I can see children’s letters to ScoMo getting a regular spot on TV. Maybe it could replace MediaWatch…
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How good is it when satire cannot even keep up with reality? This whole #kidgate thing is dada-esque
You are joking about a jokeless jerk with total absence of decency, so after the chuckle comes the upchuck of honest assessment, in that our P M is a deficient, superstitious self inflating egopenissoulled idiot who extends his tiny mind to all things ill considered. We deserve better, even something adequate, but when this manifestation of a fantasy fart aroma-ed fool is and was surrounded by excremental operators like the Dutton, Joyce, mC Waggadogshit and the old drying turds Abetz, Andrews, Abbott, we have no hope. Conservative Australianism is a stinking pile of selfishness, xenophobia, greed, fixation, fascist filth and vaccuums. Meanwhile the planet suffers, and we groan for foresight, planning, progressive policy, some democratic fairness and decency and get none.
Dear Mr Morrison,
I used to be afraid to eat what was in my lunchbox but now you have made me feel safe again.
Thank you for making it safe to eat strawberries again. 😊
It’s kind of tragic when 5 year olds refer to the PM as ScoMo. It’s even more tragic when he refers to himself that way. Does anyone else get the impression that Scott had no friends when he was a kid and that no-one would have bothered giving him a nickname?
Speaking of tragic….
https://scontent-syd2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/75262092_10157175987022935_7467384811187863552_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&_nc_oc=AQlntVKaCW2WiGbTGfd9B1IrqFQ-5IecLEHSSa0uCR4edRdbeIarOYzMoXFumBGifcOS7dpZuKdRMKc6G0jk_ouf&_nc_ht=scontent-syd2-1.xx&oh=94ee173281612568776a500b75502c3f&oe=5E655E9C
Dear Scomo,
Thankyou for continuing to let people clear that horrible native vegetation.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-25/fears-for-native-habitat-as-mallee-cliffs-land-cleared/11623286
Oh, dear…
I may have started a movement!
#childrensletterstoScomo
Dear Scomo,
Your advice about if I have a go I will get a go really works. Yesterday I had a go and today I actually got a go. Although my my sister lost a go.
Rossleigh,
It’s the scummy tribe in Parliament who are creating most of my ‘movements’, giving me the shits on an all-too-frequent basis.
(It saves on laxatives, though ;-))
Dear Scumo,
You are just like my dad. Well a bit anyway. He drinks beer and yells a lot just like you. He doesn’t play with us like I see you doing all the time though. I wish my dad was prim mincer so we could play more and he could take us to all the sport and on holidays and stuff. But dad has to work. It must be great owning the Treasure so you can buy whatever you want and have servants do all the work.
There’s a good reason why newstarve won’t be lifted and that is because if part of your policy architecture on employment is to put downward pressure on wages to the point where employees are on about four dollars an hour, which this fascist “government” is hell bent on then we can’t have unemployment benefits nearing the minimum wage can we. It’s that simple. This “ government” wants everybody who’s not, “ in the club to work for slave wages and if they lift newstarve by $75 a week then under this fascist regime some people would be working for less than that “ benefit”.
We rich never wait either a private hospital or an ambulance.
ps
Timmy has settled in well at at kevin’s and has shown a good sense of christian spirit by twice confessing to bashing that soft looking public school boy.on the school bus.
How come all the whinging from farmers when they know that if you have a go then you get a go? Also, how come over 90% of new businesses fail in the first few years when they put all their effort and savings into their entrepreneurial endeavor, all for no ultimate gain, if the “have a go, get a go” paradigm is valid?
Oh yes – also, how come if you are an ex politician being given a cushy lobbying job, you can “get a go without having a go”?
How good is it that spending $50 billion ( or + 100% or so!) on submarines is better than spending a few million dollars on decent fire fighting Skycrane type water carrying helicopters? How good is it that all our defense forces are just waiting for the next directive from Donald Trump for deployment in the Middle East rather than looking out for our own bushfire fire fighting capability?
Dear Mr Scomo, – is it all right if I bring my friend Greta home after school today? I know you and several of your friends in the Murdock camp and Sky news have explained that she is a wierdo with idiotic views, but I like her!. Just because she has pointed out that the earth is about to pass the 1.5 degrees C Paais agreement commitment reduction warming before 2028 , and that the coral reefs will most likely be totally gone by 2100, ( plus mangrove forests, + kelp forests, + sea grasses and multiple hundreds of iconic plant and animal species ) does not mean that she is not a nice girl? Also, you could talk to her about all the scientific data pointing towards a 1 metre rise in sea level by the next turn of the century and a most likely 3 degree C rise in temperature by then?
I know that this is not a problem for us baby boomers, but for some inexplicable reason she is concerned that her generation will be adversely impacted, even though Mr Bolt and others , including you, have confirmed that global warming will be to her advantage. with faster plant growth and better enhanced sun tans.
Please let me bring home a nice friend so that you and your political guy buddies can put her concerns to rest for all time?
xx
Hmmmm … in this time of strange ideas a political skeptic could easily get the incorrect idea.
Kaye Lee
‘Speaking of tragic’…….
Regrettably I clicked on the link you highlighted. I am not sure I will ever be able to ‘unsee’ that revolting image!
Your headline had me thinking about ScuMo’s relationship with the founders of the Hillsong Church. After reading your article I am glad you didn’t look under that rock.
However, I share your view that ScuMo is like Nigel No-Mates and enjoys providing “tough love” on those less fortunate than himself!
After Greta’s little stunt at the UN, I am waiting for the encore!
As we approach the “end of empire” we should not be too surprised by the chaos and strangeness being reported in the AIMN and other sources.
https://pro.portphillippublishing.com.au/p/u6bmbbook/EBMBVA40/?a=20&o=39497&s=113
and
https://medium.com/four-horsemen-the-survival-manual/empires-the-rise-fall-f045ba357509
and
2020 could be a very interesting year for Australia and all Australians? Jubilee Year?
Yes, it was very tempting to write about the media’s strange defence of Angus Taylor with a number of commentators assuring us that Taylor wasn’t deliberately lying, he had just stuffed up and had the wrong information. This is, indeed, an interesting defence, even assuming it to be accurate. I am not sure that there are many jobs where you are considered to have no case to answer when you use the wrong information without checking everyone says that’s ok then, you didn’t mean to order $14 million worth of stock when the request was for $4,000 worth. At the very least, you’d want to know who was responsible for such a stuff-up!
Didnt somebody find out that the letter writer was a Singapore primary school student………
Letter from Ella Ezergailis,12, to Scott Morrison after she visited Question Time as part of the Girls Takeover Parliament program.
“I was so excited to attend Question Time for the first time [but] I was very disappointed and embarrassed by how a majority of the parliamentarians behaved. I saw almost six members kicked out of the chamber.
I think they should be setting a better example by behaving more respectfully, listening to each other, letting others talk and express their ideas and not shouting at each other, because it achieves nothing.
Instead of schoolchildren visiting Parliament House, I think that some of the members should instead visit Gowrie Primary School.
We respect others, listen when they are speaking, give supportive suggestions to their ideas and make sure to uphold our school value — everybody counts.
As Prime Minister, you have the power to effect change and I ask you to be a change leader. Everyone should be allowed to have a fair go. You should be setting a strong example by encouraging respectful behaviour for a better, stronger and more inclusive Australia,
[signed] Ella, the future of Australia”
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/school-life/canberra-school-students-heartfelt-letter-to-prime-minister/news-story/f051eacb54baf7ed84097932615ea419
Now now, Ella, leave the important stuff to the grownups. Off you go now and play, there’s a pet.
Now, why didn’t Scott read that one out on Twitter? Thank you for the link Kaye. I’m sharing that one.