Now I could start this evening’s meal by telling my wife that I’m leaving her for Kate Middleton but I’m not going to do that for a number of reasons:
- My wife would find it annoying.
- Kate Middleton is far too young for me.
- I don’t know if I’d like her.
- Even if I did meet up with her, I couldn’t be sure it was really her and not some body double.
- No matter how much time my wife and I spent discussing it, it’s not remotely likely to happen and we’d be better off discussing plans for things that might actually happen rather than wasting our time having a pointless discussion about something that’s not going to happen.
I know that most of you will have read that last point and gone, “Well, of course, you stupid old fool, I don’t know how your wife puts up with you. Why would you even bring up something as ridiculous as this?”
To which I would simply say that I’m considering going into politics and one thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that the most important thing in politics is to ensure that people are talking about something completely irrelevant so they don’t start talking about the things that matter or the things that we can actually do something about.
Take the recent “nuclear debate”. At the 2019 election the suggestion that the Coalition was interested in nuclear power was denied by Scott Morrison who dismissed it as a “scare campaign” but now it’s apparently not scary at all and a great solution to rising energy prices and “the only way to achieve net zero”. Leaving aside everything else, the debate now centres on how long they’d take to build and the Party that found it too difficult to build all their promised car parks in three years and who promised to have Snowy Hydro 2.0 up and running by 2024, assure us that they could do it in ten. Again, leaving aside the fact that we don’t have any way of processing our raw uranium yet and leaving aside we don’t have a workforce trained to build such a power station, I can only suggest that the new LNP policy must be for immigrants to come here to do the job, which is at odds with the whole we have too many immigrants stance.
So let’s be quite clear here: Whatever the merits or otherwise of nuclear power, the simple fact remains that it’s not going to reduce anyone’s power bills in the near future and, if anything, the cost of building such plants is more likely to increase them, even though David Littleproud seemed to think that they didn’t need power lines because he asserted that the trouble with renewables was that the power lines sometimes blew over with strong winds.
So we spend time talking about something that is only slightly more plausible than my relationship with Princess Catherine, instead of things that are actually happening such as the Liberals removing a woman, Ann Ruston, from the top of their Senate ticket only to replace her with Alex Antic. While Ruston retains the number two spot and is still likely to be elected, the symbolism of replacing a woman with an anti-abortion, anti-vaccination, anti-woke Anti-Antic does tend to suggest that the South Australian Liberals see their woman problem as not knowing their place, which is apparently behind a man.
There are so many things that we could be discussing instead of nuclear power. If I were to compile a list of such things that we have managed to avoid talking about I would include:
- Is it time to for a Universal Basic Income and to remove all the time-wasting that goes with mutual obligation and unemployment benefits?
- Would a HECs style scheme where the government paid the up-front costs of roof top solar and batteries, only to have the cost repaid through the power fed back into the system or when the house was sold?
- Should The Greens be condemned for threatening to hold up the reduced vehicle emissions legislation or applauded for making their support conditional on Labor ditching their fast-tracking of gas approvals?
- Why is nobody pointing out that, apart from opposing just about everything, Dutton’s duds have declared they oppose any action on misinformation, as well as opposing an Indigenous truth telling? Do they just have an aversion to the truth?
- Power prices have just come down slightly. While the Coalition will make a big point of the fact that they haven’t come down by the $275 promised by Labor – or even the $500 promised by Tony Abbott – in the current inflationary times, the fact that they haven’t risen is significant.
- While Labor’s changes to the Stage 3 tax cuts have been generally well-received, there seems to be a focus on the fact that those on $150k will get a smaller tax cut than originally proposed. Why is nobody pointing out that they’re still getting a cut of over $100 a fortnight which is much more than someone on $60k so they’re still getting the best of the deal?
There are a great many other things that could be on the list but no, let’s discuss whether it’s really the Princess of Wales in the video or Coalition thought bubbles, rather than anything that’s actually happening.
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Antic is a disgrace to us all, to civilisation and decency, with developed stupidities as a front. He is the unfortunate heir to low level rubbish history, from lands and peoples of endless brainless feuding, superstitious gripped behaviour, fixations. Not for Antic the benefits of enlightenment, reason, analysis, logic, never, not while pustular inner drives impel his uttered inanities.
Point 4. The LNP would be completed gutted because lies and bullshit is all they have their tiny arsenal. when the word “policy” is used Der Reichspud hears “policing” and that means being mean, nasty and oppresive to anything that is not LNP and their masters.
The current crop of federal LNP pollies are totally blighted, corrupt, puerile, pig-ignorant, greedy, bigoted and thoroughly enslaved to serve the big end of town (and The Murdoch). They ever get in again the country, like the US would be under The Donald, fucked almost beyond repair.
Watching question time, and “discussion” on the prospect of a nuclear future, was simply entertainment because without doubt no-one present on the floor knew what they were talking about.
And we pay these guys?
I could name a few comedians who do the job better, and live on a pittance.
It really narked me that so much media was reporting on what some earners would “lose” from the changed tax cuts!
They lost nothing!
They still gained a tax cut!
Why is the media allowed to present this false reporting?
Where are those who should hold them to account
Bread & circuses wins every time with the average punter. Footy, reality TV per dating, cooking and survival shows, [an admission: I have refused to watch television for more than 25 years, thus I’m unqualified to comment on what’s on the idiot box – some of it may be useful along with intellectually entertaining], tabloid news that focuses on the lives of people both richer or famous than we can ever aspire to be, feel-good productions like raising sheepdog puppies and similar offerings.
The ‘serious’ stuff like politics – who’s worthy and who are the shonks and charlatans and how to employ discriminatory attention, global eco-stresses per GW that are accruing at alarming rates, costs of living and why governments of all stripes are failing their electorates in matters such as commodities pricing, housing, education, infrastructure, employment, food and fuel etc., all of these ought to be front and centre of any form of responsible journalism given they directly impact the majority of the citizenry.
But bread & circuses it is, and I suspect will continue to be. C’est la vie.
Canguro,
Do you mean the glass teat (thank you Harlan Ellison), the one-eyed god that demands your complete and utter fealty and worship, the mind and intellect killer?
Kerri
I share your frustration with media reporting but the biggest consistent offender is SKY and they are careful to drop in the words ‘opinion’ in many of their broadcasts and this allows them to spout nonsense and offensive conspiracies as it is not ‘news’ but opinion.
One of their regular guests the egregious Bronwyn Bishop has had to make on air apologies twice in recent times, once for calling a politician an anti-semite and later accusing the ABC of ‘aligning’ itself with Nazi policies’. The problem is that the broadcaster only insisted on her withdrawing her comments and apologising when threatened with legal action.
We shouldn’t have to put up with this rubbish, it comes straight out of FOX in the US who, as you probably know, had to pay close to $800 million in defamation recently : maybe that is the only way we can bring them to heel.
Apart from the accidental omission of Gaza on the final list, a good concise set of comments.
On the other issue, my question would be if big willy can’t do the office and trades her in for two twenty yo’s, what would the rest of us do?
Seek out a brainless wench or rent-boy to deal with the recalcitrance at home.