far lower than some utter shithole

 

Comrades,

Of course a two week lock-down means nothing to an old bastard with a busted leg who can't even get down the back steps, but really?

If ScoMo had not been so fucking vocally intransigent ("nah, don't need 'em"), NSW VIC and QLD would be well on their way to building/completing thousand bed quarantine stations. Christ! It's not as if there's not a gargantuan amount of lazy cash sloshing around in the economy. The problem of importing the virus? Solved.

And why isn't every second TV advertisement telling us to rush down to our local chemist shop to "get the jab"? Just as you can with 'flu shots. Why? Because it's unavailable - at least in the Emerald City it is - a minimum nine week wait for any kind of vaccine that may or may not be applicable to you. Nine weeks!!?? That is simply outrageous. And buried in recent Govt. pronouncements is the fact that the Astra-Zeneca vaccine will be phased out entirely by October, leaving Australia out of pocket for 50 million doses we don't want because of the risk of a side-effect that is so infinitesimally small that it's less than statistically insignificant. And never mind us old folks - we can die in a ditch - the top priority target group now should be anyone aged between 20 and 40 as they are the most highly mobile segment of the population by the length of the street. But no, they are ineligible to get any kind of shot at all. Just what kind of completely insane fuckery is this? And guess who's responsible?

As it stands, 4% of the Australian population is fully vaccinated (entire world average? 10%+), and in the half-useful "at least one jab" category it's 24% -- but even that's far lower than some utter shithole, like say, Mississippi. Speaking of which, in the States, Uncle Joe has got his people going door-to-door in poor districts armed with syringes, getting folks to roll up the sleeve giving them the jab and a Govt. certificate saying "we'll be back later with the second shot". And this, in a country of 333 million? We have been failed. Miserably.

Nobody here is publishing data likes this, are they? Shame on you Scott Morrison. Shame on you Ruby Princess:

 

the triumphant return of the fully roasted tomato

Comrades.

Is it really three years since Barnaby Joyce's wife of 25 years threw all his suits onto the front lawn of the family property in Tamworth and drove over them not once, but several times, with a ride-on mower/slasher? That's class. If memory serves, he does have an allegedly alcoholic daughter who will take any inappropriate moment to bad mouth the cad and bounder, and bag the shit out of the no-good low-down brown dog of a philandering father. They are good conservative people up there New England way, you know.

You can read all the salacious deets about him rooting the office secretary in the gossip mags, if you must, and having more babies with her is right there in the New Idea history books, if you care to dust them off. But despite (or perhaps because of) that look and that unique bulbous face of his and the way it connects to his neck, there is no getting away from the fact that Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce skulks around in the velvet curtains and does unspeakable things in the shadows and cannot ever be trusted on/with anything, whatsoever. Never. Full Stop. He'd be up to his own arse in horse shit and swear black and blue that everything was above board. J.Depp - despite his faults - pretty much read the room and got him one on that bloated conker with the "inbred with a tomato" wisecrack. And, oh, how we all laughed. Except it's not funny. Joyce is a rat, he knows it, and he enjoys many similarities with the despised rodent without so much as even a hint of shame.

Poor ol' McCormack was never more than a hard-right Country Party apparatchik, happy enough to live in ScoMo's shadow, but he ended up speaking gibberish in the Parliament which had Hansard puzzled when the galley proofs got back to the office. Fair enough, it was a bit much to ask of Mangler Mike to keep the seat warm for Scotty from the Tourism Board while the main man was enjoying a touch of northern hemisphere spring weather, not to mention a jolly good dinner and piss-up at No.10 where our Great & Glorious Leader and the Lord High Chief Bozo came up with the truly bizarre Penguins for Tim Tams project. Sending coals to Newcastle has got nothing on the free trade deal to end all free trade deals. Marmite anyone? Anyone? Three years of loyal service to a lost cause is cast aside just like that  - in a game McCormack described as "brutal arithmetic". No loss of face for him. Just give the baton back to the bumbling buffoon, and move on.

If that's what the political outhouse that's been forever propping up the Tories does for leaders, then God help them all. It took the late great Tim Fischer to tell them that the days of the squattocracy were over, he was the last of the last, but the Country Party has never really been the same since Doug "Hayseed" Anthony, who could get very bolshie about rural landholder's rights despite being further to the right than Genghis Khan. He was all for agrarian socialism - but only if it went as far as farm bail outs and Govt. drought assistance for marginal lands. The Tomato's peculiar approach to everything, including women, is best seen on the Campaign Trail, where you'd expect him to get a good work out in the coming 12 months or so. He's a big believer in retail politics, and couldn't care less that the first image of him kissing a recoiling baby is likely to provoke responses like "eeeewwww". All publicity is good publicity. Tomato Tommy is a bit like Tony Windsor in that regard - promise everything to everyone on the hustings until you get their vote - then do what every pollie does: back the horse called Self Interest. Just sooth the backward electorate with the fabulous news that animal dung and 'farming activities' will not be included in the non-existent net-zero carbonoosquies by 2050 'target', so there is absolutely nothing to worry about there; no more to pay. And as well all know, everything else is small beer...

Labor's best chance in the bush is to follow the Country Party lead - few policies and plenty of well targeted scare campaigns. The ALP will never win west of the Divide, it's QLD they have to fret over - it's the key to winning as any psephologist will tell you, as Queenslanders always want to poke their noses in the Miracle of Democracy and make a nuisance of themselves. Never mind that Albo is unelectable (that face, that voice), they'll take him to the next poll, where he could surprise everyone by doing an Uncle Bill Shorten in exact reverse. But first, they have to put the Rural Rump back in the sugar bag.

 

Our Man in Cornwall

 

Mount Recyclemore greets G7 leaders in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, UK.

Missing Australian flag not hanging from the Cornish Arms hotel, Carbis Bay, Cornwall, UK.

 Comrades,

I note that our Great and Glorious Leader, Scott Morrison, is winging his way to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a guest at the annual G7 meeting in the gorgeous seaside resort of Carbis Bay in beautiful Cornwall, in order to keep the world safe for democracy.

It begs the obvious what is the G7, and what does it have to do with the "Five Eyes" or "The Quad" and all that spook stuff, anyway? And how did ScoMo score an invite to what that repository of all wisdom, Wikipedia, describes as "an informal club of wealthy democracies" aka Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States? No idea. In any case, it's always a fabulous idea to skip the country in a crisis, abrogating all responsibility and leaving that bothersome clusterfuck of a botched vaccine roll-out to somebody else. Anyone? Any volunteers? And it goes without saying Scotty from the Tourism Board has form in this area - Hawai'i anyone? They say it's nice at this time of year.

ScoMo will tell anyone who'll listen that he's on an acronym crusade, and wants the WTO and the WHO beefed up ASAP, but all he really wants is an elbow bump with the Leader of the Free World. He might get that opportunity with Uncle Joe, but there's fat chance of having an actual meeting with Mr President, formal or informal. ScoMo will be snubbed and brushed by that Pinko Biden as an out-and-out Trumpist. After all, DJ Trump! did host Mr Morrison to a rare State Dinner at the White House (what was he thinking?), and in the dying days of the Trump Presidency, Loyal Scott was awarded the Legion of Merit - a low ranking military administrative award - good Lord, the now retired to obscurity and ill health Mr Shinzo of Japan and that ghastly Hindu ultra-nationalist Mr Modi of India were also gonged with the LoM at the same time, courtesy of the Great Orange Being. So he's in top company there, and the current POTUS has the memory of an elephant. He'll know. Be that as it may, I'm sure Scotty will have no hesitation whatsoever in signing up for the "New Cold War" now being promulgated by the Pentagon. Nothing like a bit of "red baiting" and invoking the clear and present danger of the "yellow peril" to shore up the Tory vote. Our Man in Cornwall will be much more comfortable in the company of that madcap clown Big Bad Bonking Bozo Boris than anyone else, as What Would Justin Do? and The Kid President of France would give ScoMo's French a test. The others are outliers who are best not to fall in with. You always run the risk of being spoken to in Plain German Sentences and having to hide in the velvet curtains.

Of course the PM will mouth a few platitudes about the wobbly environment fresh off the press release cheat sheet. He's tipped to make some grandiose announcement that Straya will be eminently sensible and strive for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 like the rest of the developed world, just never mind that he has two chances - none and Buckley's - given his policy of a "gas-led recovery" and spurious technologies such as 'clean coal', 'carbon capture' and other such ecological nonsense. Nothing to do with the over-reliance on fossil fuels in the Wide Brown Land just for a start off, oh, no siree, don't you worry about that. Did someone in the Country Party echo chamber say "Farm Diesel Rebate Scheme"? Carbon tax be buggered will be his message to the rapidly heating globe.

Apart from sipping cocktails from martini glasses with tiny umbrellas in them while wearing a lei around his neck, I keep having this vision of ScoMo during the 'leaders retreat', with a Cornish pasty in one hand and a stubbie of the fine mid-strength Cornish ale Doom Bar in the other, wandering down to the beach as he casually stuffs his cake-hole, then strips down to his smugglers and Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks footy cap to take a quick dip - unaware of the unusual rip tides and devilish currents of the Cornish coast - whereupon he is promptly sucked beneath the waves à la another scion of the Liberal Party, Harold Holt, never to be seen again (or picked up and whisked away by a Chinese submarine). 

While the last thing one is left with is hope, re-naming the joint Cheviot Beach would be going too far.