Today’s Sermon From Saint Scotty Of Marketing

Image from dailymail.co.uk

Good working day, here is the reading from the Book Of Ginasez:

In the beginning, the people had nothing, but they were not happy because they lacked something to own and so the high priests created Money and they saw that it was good and they divided the world into those who had it and those who didn’t and they told their flocks that these who had Money were meant to have Money and those that didn’t lacked Money because they hadn’t worshipped it enough. In the past few weeks, we have had a great plague which has caused some people to turn away from money and to fill their minds with thoughts of health and family and friendships. These people have forgotten the First Commandment: “I am Money, and thou shalt have no other Gods before me”.

Yesterday I started to explain why a number of the comments from various politicians and commentators make no sense but I was halfway through a long explanation about how the economy doesn’t actually stop it merely changes when I realised that I was about as interesting as listening to Tony Abbott recall the highlights of his conversations with John Howard about cricket. Anyway, I had a moment of inspiration which may enable me to express my ideas in a much simpler form, and in keeping with the biblical theme I give you the Parable of the Toilet Paper.

The Parable of The Toilet Paper

Once there was a pandemic which led to some people grabbing as much toilet paper as they could lay their hands upon which led to a shortage in the shops and supermarkets, and this caused those who’d missed out to cry out and ask their leaders for help.

“Oh,” the people cried, “we may have to use the Murdoch newspaper and it already comes with plenty of excrement. Help us please/”

“This is a great shame,” said the leaders, “but it is really nothing to do with us.”

“Couldn’t you, perhaps, deliver a few rolls of toilet paper to each house so that those without could get by and not have to daily risk their lives going from place to place seeking rolls that are not there?”

“We are your government,” they replied. “We do not believe in intervening in your lives unless it suits our greater purpose.!”

“Can’t you intervene and take the toilet paper from those who have more than enough to last ten lifetimes and give it to those without any?”

“Socialism!” cried those with the most toilet paper. “We must let market forces control the distribution of toilet paper because to do anything else would offend the great god of Mammon and his prophets. Or should that be profits? Anyway, it’s not something the government should do anything about.”

“Quite right,” said the Man From Marketing. “those with the most toilet paper are those who had a go and if you have to go, then you should have had a go before you needed to go because those who get a go are those who aren’t using the sacred papers of Murdoch for unholy purposes.”

And so it was that some people had all the toilet paper and others had none, so we needed to get the economy moving, even if it meant sending people out in the pandemic where some would surely die.

Ok, it’s not a perfect parable but I’m only human, after all.

Anyway, the point remains. The whole urgency about starting up the economy makes some sort of sense if you’re one of the few people without any support from somewhere else, or if your business is going under, or you’re unable to live without shopping at least three times a week, I’m just wondering why so many people can say that we need to get things back up to speed as quickly as possible even if it means a few deaths. (Ok, few politicians are actually being that blunt, but check out the columns by some of the psychopaths who write for Murdoch!) For those who were previously unemployed who are suddenly no longer trying to live below the poverty line, the idea of things going back to normal for the economy is hardly a prospect to look forward to. And while there are many reasons for wanting to get the economy up and moving again, it’s not because we’re actually running out of food. The problems we’re having are exactly like the toilet paper in the parable: We have enough, it’s just not well-distributed.

And I just can’t work out how nobody in the media seems to notice the constant series of constant flip-flops from Morrison. For example, he’s gone from “The health advice has been consistent that for children, schools are a safe space for children” a month ago to asserting that he’d never said that reopening schools wouldn’t lead to more infections.

On schools, I read an interesting figure yesterday. Apparently Treasury estimated that keeping schools closed would cost over 302,000 jobs. This is quite an amazing figure and I can’t help but wonder if the information was downloaded by someone in Angus Taylor’s office. What assumptions went into the calculations? Over what time period? Does it assume that parents have to stay home to look after children and, if so, does it discount the likelihood that the job they lose would be picked up by someone without kids? Whatever, it does seem a high figure if you’re only talking a few more weeks before schools have a complete return.

I’m not advocating a socialist overthrow of our whole system here. I’m not even advocating that we stay like this permanently. I’m simply saying that now that so many of us have taken a step off the hamster wheel, it’s worth realising that the faster we ran, the faster the wheel went and maybe we could move a little bit more slowly when we do get back on.

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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.

7 Comments

  1. Those who rely on we hamsters to power their wealth accumulation are willing to make the sacrifice of a few of us in order to keep the wheels turning.

    Alternatively, we hamsters could take a walk along the beach until the wheel owners understand that they need us and are prepared to share a little of the power we generate.

  2. If only the people of Lincoln’s legendary speech did actually and effectively govern, for themselves and by consideration of requirements, the nation. Social democracy would always be preferable to money or military or criminal or false aristocratic rule. Our recent actions and death tolls, because of such as Hitler, Stalin. Mao, Mussolini, Tojo, Saddam, Pol Pot, and hordes of other eternal unwiped anuses shows this as true, absolutely, without serious challenge. Yet some got away with murder, rape, assault, theft, occupation, degradation, humiliation and extension of inequality through descent, e. g., William the Conqueror, Louis XIV, so many, and their descendants ruled, robbed, spent, posed, all while the real people suffered, often dying. So, here today in Australia, fight against the Fat Frau of the West, Porky Palmer the drenched liar and thief, maggotty Murdoch the foreigner, all the other right wing leaches who say that it has always been a robber’s, predator’s, killer’s world. This land was partly redeemed from its dodgy rubbishy and refuse beginnings to be a promise of all levels, the fair go as suits and develops naturally. In my youth one could see a doctor or lawyer play golf or bowls with the delivery driver or carpenter, and driving the usual family car, and calling each other Bill or Jack. It was good, it worked, it was friendly and non threatening. But supremacists, full of perverted pride, aiming at control, drenched in superstition, want to exert pressure and take it all. So UP ‘EM. A fair Australia does not mean some are mega bloated while others struggle and starve. We deserve better and fairer, so must now fight harder for that ideal.

  3. And saint scott, the liar from the shire, decrees, with the assistance of josh the fraud, that not only will our incredible largesse be terminated, it will be reduced further to a $20 a day pittance. The reasoning has it that as starvation and homelessness increase, those pesky emissions will greatly reduce — less people using less resources means we will absolutely nail, in a canter, them CO2 thingies. How good are we, says the jerk, have a go get a go get a job say yes sir no sir we believes you can’t trust that fake media team straya be in it or go back to where ya came from let’s knight the murdoch and me mate, houston we have a problem, elevated to religious adviser to the nation, no jab no play we stopped the goats axed max re elect the phoney tony Eden monaro deserves the services of this gigantic effwit. Me mate, donny dumpster, having trouble finding good help they complain constantly when changing his shitty nappy, whine and moan when they attempt toilet training fake news says don the con toilets thems a democrat hoax conspiracy

    Will this nightmare ever end?

  4. And on the second day, he who spreadeth the money did realise that some of us were of the opinion that life at home with the kiddies was not so bad on twice as much as sweetbuggerall, and he did sayeth unto the people that “Snapback is coming and nothing that is this good can last forever” (or some other line of useless crap, coz joshy hasn’t got a clue and if he had to toss a mental coin he would lose it down a crack in the footpath)
    Meanwhile the cost of petrol has fallen to less than a shekel per litre, meaning that those of us who don’t go anywhere can top up at ridiculously low prices, while hand sanitiser (if available) is now chargeable at around 10 shekels per 50ml. Aparrently that is not price gouging, that is the law of supply and demand, as in the chemist will supply it, and demand ten bucks for the privilege.
    Elsewhere in the bullshitsphere, the RC into mr pell and his cloaked comings and goings will be released today, in redacted format. Haven’t the courts realised we are trying to lower the release of carbon into the environment. Pages and pages of black are bad for the planet, to say nothing of un-informative. Come on guys, play fair.
    Someone from the land of the lying dragon has bought a huge slice of MD water rights. I’m not exactly sure what that means yet, it’s not like they can take containers full of Murray River water back across the equator, but I haven’t had a chance to get the full story from the taylor family about how to turn water into wine yet.
    And on a sad not, Julian Assange is still in jug, Bastards.

    Stay safe everyone.

    Rage on. It’s going to be a long one.

  5. Back to first comment, I find Sen Rex Patrick’s points about the Covid app’s vulnerability curiously parallel his comments upon Muslim Porter’s censorship of documents concerning yet another Defence billion dollar procurement gone “wrong”.

    More lies as to the stealthy covid apps secure nature from this fascist government?

  6. what’s the problem with a socialist overthrow Rossleigh…..Cuba did it….why not express an alternative?

  7. Love your comments Rossleigh! This feckwit, lying, failed marketing, happy clapping idiot who is supposed to be the “leader” of our country is determined to “snap back” (?) Australia–WTF??–to the situation we were all in pre-viru–is living in a fool’s paradise if he thinks that this will occur. We HAVE to be able to ensure that those unfortunates on the Dole are given a reasonable wage rate, as they are getting at present, & NOT the pittance they were given before! Sadly his lying fecking bunch of incompetent COALition idiots will be all for only giving these out of work people the miserable amount they used to get–because they are not having a go! It is beyond time when Australia woke up to itself & started remanufacturing products here as we used to BC (before China!). We have the working force, the available land, the resources, the know how, the initiative (?) etc to do so, so why don’t we? It would really help our country to stand on its own two feet, & stop us having to import (very often) shoddy etc goods from bloody China!

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