A Fair Day’s Pay

Vanstone Tombstone(Disclaimer: Any resemblance to any person live or dead is probably deliberate.)

Let’s face it, we moved north because, despite the excruciating lack of Culture with a capital C, it was cheaper to live in the sunshine without those crippling heating bills and astronomical inner city rents. Jim was offered a better job and the kids loved going to the beach more often than once a year when we stayed with grandma at Bondi.

Pretty soon we put a deposit on an attractive house and land package at Bribie Island and settled into coastal suburban mortaged bliss. Then one day our average aussie lifestyle lost the plot. As we careened into the unknown, we had no idea that things would get so out of hand.

I’d always been a dreamer, and my friends, who I could count on one hand, thought I was weird … she’s the odd one who reads books and mutters to herself, I heard them saying.

So I didn’t tell them about my dreams, which unlike theirs, about which they chattered drearily, weren’t about new washing machines, trendy clothes and toffee nose private schools for the kids.

When Jim brusquely informed me he would be working weekends from now on, I asked him how the hell he’d bargained away his time with the children.

‘It was go for an individual AWA or retrenchment. They didn’t so much as say it but everyone knew what they meant. If I don’t cop it sweet, I’ll lose my job for sure. But the pay is better’. He winced and glanced at me hopefully.

The company needed that production line running full tilt all weekend or its economic viability would be threatened by overseas competitors – like China, India, Taiwan, Indonesia, Korea and all the other sweatshop nations. I couldn’t understand it, those mind-bogglingly expensive TV ads the government ran for months on good old Aunty ABC said it was against the law for employers to sack their workers for objecting to AWAs so I belaboured Jim till my jaw hurt.

What the hell was he thinking? To help pay the mortgage, I worked three days a week part-time while Billy and Megan were at the local state school. So why did we want any more money? I nearly hit the roof when I worked out after tax we’d end up with only $10 more a week under the new weekend work arrangements.

And I’d be lumbered with parental duties seven days a week.

Jim wouldn’t change his mind. I reckon he’d lost that ability years ago after he was offered and accepted a supervisory role on the factory floor. Yet this was the guy who’d gone out on strike a couple of years before to protect all the shift workers’ holiday pay.

After a few months, our marriage teetered, wobbled and then fell off the brink. Jim took to going to the pub after work. Some drink to remember, some drink to obliterate.

Jim was the latter. I had to do something. I took to the internet and found other mums, wrote long nasty diatribes on blogs, newsgroups, chatrooms and guestbooks to vent my fury. The kids would come home from school and find me tapping away, tapping away. I wrote letters to the editor, the federal member, the state member, senators, the ombudsman, anyone I thought might annoy the unfeeling ghouls I felt were responsible for my family’s predicament.

One evening when he finally reeled in, Jim told me about his affair with the slim blonde in the next workshop. I remembered what my mum had said. Don’t have kids unless you can support them yourself, without a man.’ I’d made my bed and would have to lie in it, with all four tons of bullshit.

So after the kids were in bed, there I’d be, writing stories about my life, imaginary lives, escapist tales of passion and adventure, with slim brunettes, redheads AND blondes, swept off their tiny feet by handsome mysterious rich men. A chance meeting with a woman who had a publisher mate turned up trumps. When my first book was accepted, I celebrated alone. After my fifth book won a major prize, people started to take notice of me, the pissed off single suburban mum from Bribie Island.

Billy and Megan were installed in a ‘good’ private school while I revelled in sumptous book tours arranged and paid for by my publishers.

With my do-it-yourself personal success guide I hit the mother lode and was presented with a top Queensland Rotary award for my contribution to Australian small business by none other than the Prime Minister’s wife.

I’m not surprised she ignored me afterwards. In my caustic speech I thanked her little Johnny and his frantic feudalisations for my success.

As I chuckled with snide, self-congratulatory glee at my hard won awards and comforts, I felt a rough hand shake my shoulder.

Amanda‘Wake up Amanda, wake up!’

‘Jim, Jim …. I’m making enough for all of us now,’ I mumbled, then froze.

Heavens to betsy, it was Costello.

‘Get on the floor and present your speech supporting the IR bill before the Speaker notices your daydreaming! The opposition are already sniggering,’ he hissed. He looked like death warmed up after a week in a septic trench, all slime and pudge.

‘Huh …guh… ughh’, I spluttered. Cunningly I feigned correction of a few stray stiff tendrils bristling out of the steel net that was my perm, or rather, I should say, my wig. My habits of late catching up with me, I was too over-enthusiastic in my cover-up … and horrors, it fell off! Was this the real dream?

‘The members will resume their seats!’ the speaker snarled at the left bench who it now seemed, were guffawing helplessly at none other than me. This was better than Fraser dropping his dacks.

Why had things gone so wrong?

‘The Pacific solution has been an outstanding success …. ‘

‘Wrong speech, you silly fat cow’, a backbencher cackled. I girded up my considerable, intimidating loins and lambasted onwards.

‘Urr, while Labor pretends to be the party of the workers, the unemployed and the poor, it’s time for a reality check.’ Yes, that was the speech. The poor, desperate sods on the left were already settling back into their crosswords.

‘But you can look at the real things that affect real people. Can they afford their mortgage? Can their kids get a job? Now we don’t believe in sound economic management just to please some ideologies or to please academics or commentators, we believe in it because of the real difference it makes to real people.’

Little Johnny’s List O’ Lies

This list is courtesy of beloved net identity, pusssycat, who in turn purrrloined it from a site now oddly defunct.

JOHN HOWARD LIE:

“I can promise you that we will follow policies which will, over a period of time, bring down the foreign debt . . . our first priority in Government economically will be to tackle the current account deficit.”
John Howard, Doorstop interview, Debt Truck Launch, 20 September 1995

The Truth:
Foreign debt was $361 billion at the end of September 2003, an increase of 90 per cent on the September 1995 level. The current account deficit was $11.9 billion at the end of September 2003, an increase of 112.5 per cent on the September 1995 level.
Australian Bureau of Statistics, ABS@, Time Series Spreadsheets (Balance of Payments and Investment Position, Australia 5302.0, Reserve Bank of Australia (H) Bulletin, Current Account)

And now:

Current account deficit soars to over $15b. Australia’s current account deficit has widened by 20 per cent in the December quarter. The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show the current account deficit has climbed to just over $15 billion. Imports of plant, transport equipment and machinery contributed heavily to the rise.

There was also a big surge in imports of consumer goods.

The ABS says the deficit on goods and services will detract 1.3 percentage points from GDP in the fourth-quarter.

Australia’s net foreign debt now stands at $521 billion.

JOHN HOWARD LIE:

Labor MP question to the Prime Minister: “Prime Minister, was the government contacted by the major Australian producer of ethanol or by any representative
of his company or the Industry Association before its decision to impose fuel excise on ethanol?”

John Howard: “Speaking for myself, I did not personally have any discussions, from recollection, with any of them.”
John Howard, Question Time, 17 September 2002

The Truth:
John Howard had met on 1 August the head of Manildra Group [Dick Honan], which makes 87 per cent of our ethanol, and they discussed how to help the Australian ethanol industry.
Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Official Record of Meeting, 1 August 2002

Continue reading “Little Johnny’s List O’ Lies”

Thinking of Leaving Asstralia?

Howard Bush First Family

Be afraid, be very afraid. You can’t rely on the current Howard government to help you out if you’re in strife abroad. The value of being Australian diminishes daily under little Johnny’s uncaring, unscrupulous, double-dealing regime.

Outside court, opposition legal affairs spokesman Kelvin Thomson slammed Mr Bennett’s argument that the government had no legal obligation to help citizens abroad, saying it would “send a shiver down the spine” of Australians overseas.

He said the comments were in stark contrast to Mr Downer’s “boast back in 1997 that `the duty to protect our citizens overseas is a fundamental responsibility’.

Today’s Age editorial highlights Howard’s treason against us Aussies:

What a state of affairs. If there is no legal requirement, then for all intents and purposes a government can wash its hands of its duty to a citizen caught up in trouble abroad, irrespective of whether a person is perpetrator or victim. It makes carrying the Australian passport seem just a little less comforting.

The Judge hearing the Federal Court case against the Howard mob, Justice Brian Tamblin, has reserved his judgement due to the complexity of the case. One would think it would be cut and dried that the role of our government is to represent and protect the interests of its citizens wherever they may be. Apparently not.

Little Johnny’s mob could have past retrospective legislation to enable Hicks to be tried in Whorestralia had they wished and didn’t. Former Lib appointed judge, Stephen Charles, QC, comments on such a Whorestralian trial and reveals possible reasons why little Johnny failed to pursue a fair trial for Hicks in Whorestralia:

“The coercive methods used by investigators would be examined in detail, further damaging the reputations of the US military and both the US and Australian governments. The conclusion seems inescapable that the Australian Government was concerned that the evidence upon which the prosecution relied for a conviction of Mr Hicks would be rejected in a trial in Australia … and that it did not wish him to be tried before an Australian court, precisely because such a trial would have to be a fair one.”

Mr Charles is one of a band of former judges, including former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson and former High Court judge Mary Gaudron, to have spoken out against the Federal Government’s treatment of Hicks.

Torquemada in Oz

Cheney warmongerWhorestralia is cursed until Sunday this week by the presence of arch-neocon Cheney. We are wondering what shennanigans the torturer has up his sleeve prior to the next US election.

It is understood he said Democrats in the US were riding public opposition to the war that could end up prejudicing their leadership credentials. He said the mood could easily shift if there was another terrorist attack.

Bin Laden would benefit immensely from the gungho Repubes winning the next US elections, as unlike the more sophisticated diplomatic Dems, the militaristic Repubes fall into his traps so easily. Thus, whether there’s to be a false flag op (and at this point because of Doodoo’s inveterate deceit, there would be a lot of people suspecting another attack would be just that) or the genuine article, the United Stupid of Vice well knows the lovely game of fear which he has played with his swooning public so successfully in the past.

Torquemada also alludes to his dark desires for future Iranian misadventures, endorsing

… U.S. Republican Senator John McCain’s view that the only thing worse than a military confrontation with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran.

“They appear to be pursuing the development of nuclear weapons.”

In his interview with the Australian, the ghoul hinted at possible timing for aggression by the United Stupids.

“You get various estimates of where the point of no return is,” Mr Cheney said, identifying nuclear terrorism as the greatest threat to the world. “Is it when they possess weapons or does it come sooner, when they have mastered the technology but perhaps not yet produced fissile material for weapons?”

Using Whorestralia as a sounding board, Cheney ‘appears’ to be geeing the world up to expect a military response to Iran’s supposed but in fact non-evident plans, ostensibly to further long held evil ambitions for US world hegemony.

Howard conflates Iraq with Iran, jumping on the torturer’s coat tails to paint by numbers the picture of the next imperial ‘enemy’.

“I don’t think there would be a country whose influence and potential clout would be more enhanced in that part of the world than Iran’s would be if the coalition was defeated in Iraq,” Mr Howard said.

“I don’t think you can separate the two.”

“Iran would be emboldened if the coalition was defeated in Iraq.”

“And that would be seen to have occurred if there was a significant coalition withdrawal.”

Yet Doodoo has burned his political capital and credibility in Iraq – its highly unlikely at this juncture that the Dems will permit him to whack Iran without some very convincing (non-manufactured) evidence of real intent by Iran to produce nukes, especially when they are currently attempting to remove Doodoo’s authorisation for the war against Iraq. Neither Russia nor China are keen on military ‘solutions’ so the US would need to ignore the UN Security Council unilaterally.

However, if the torturer and his fellow deluded neoziocons do get their way for more perks and profits for good mates Helliburton etc., the already stretched US would be fighting on three fronts which conceivably would swiftly become several more. US prestige, its economy and hegemony would decline more rapidly, and other economies, including ours, would follow. Al Qaeda would rejoice again as another trap yielded fruit – it would be bolstered with a flood of newly inspired fresh recruits. If Whorestralia supported the US militarily in its brand new adventures, naturally our own security would be further endangered. As our dollar dropped, foreign companies would have a field day buying up our mineral and other resources. Our wages and purchasing power would plummet as inflation and interest rates took off whilst our economy and wealth distribution statistics would lurch toward parity with our third world neighbours.

Gold, silver, oil and other fuels, essential goods and services would do comparatively well.

Little Johnny channels his gruesome hero by taking his usual vicious hard line against 85 Sri Lankan refugee boat people, who are accused of sabotaging their boat motor to avoid being turned back home on the high seas to probable death. Sri Lanka is the country where suicide bombing was invented, with a tripartite conflict going back years between the government, which disappears dissidents, thus provoking hatred and retaliation amongst the locals, insurgents in the south and guerillas in the north.

Read Michael Ondaatje’s “Anil’s Ghost” for sensational insight into the plight of the impoverished locals of Sri Lanka.

Coalition of the Gobbling vs Iraq 1

Cheney visit protests

With the planned withdrawal of all Danish troops by August 07, the Coalition of the Gobbling will lose another member entirely. Lithuania is considering removing its forces too. Bliar’s concurrent announcement of a reduction in troop numbers by one quarter is greeted with approval from Basrawis. The wily rodent and Bliar spin the troop reduction as success. More likely Bliar can read the writing on the wall and may be looking to avoid further confrontation with an angry local populace which would shred any tattered vestige of a chance he has remaining of claiming justification for the ill-considered Iraqi misadventure. Why were the Brit troops withdrawn and not redeployed to support Doodoo’s surge?

“We welcome any withdrawal of British forces from inside the centre of the city,” said Hakim al-Mayahi, head of the Basra provincial security council, which has had a fractious relationship with the British.

An AFP reporter who visited British forces in Basra and at the airbase last month found both under almost daily mortar attack from militias in the city.

“Iraqi forces in Basra are ready and able to ensure security. Every Basrawi wishes to see all British forces leaving at one time not gradually,” he said.

And Razzaq Nasir, a 58-year-old oil worker, was categoric: “There is no need for them. The British forces in Basra are a big problem for the Iraqi forces and for ordinary Basrawis.”

The Whorestralian prime monster, with the repugnant Lon Cheney visit upon us, sticks with his plans to retain the present level of troops and send more military trainers to Iraq and indicates he is considering more troops for Afghanistan, the central battleground of the Great Game and historical graveyard of empires.

But as British columnist Gwynne Dyer noted, Australian leaders long ago realized that the United States is the only country that might be willing to come to their aid in an emergency. Keeping the White House happy is an Australian priority.“If the United States invaded Mars,” Dyer wrote, “Australia would send a battalion along to guard the supply depot.”

Ugh.

Kevvie presses the political advantage:

KEVIN RUDD: If it’s ok in Mr Howard’s view for the Danes to pull out some 460 troops from Iraq, why is it not ok for 520 Australian troops to be brought home to Australia, some time next year?

Well, mate, maybe little Johnny is thinking of all those lovely barbies at Crawford he’d miss out on in his retirement.

Meanwhile, Prodi resigns when the Italian Senate refuses to back his pro-US foreign policy initiatives.

Rome was plunged into political turmoil after Mr Prodi failed to muster enough Senate votes to approve the continuing commitment to Italian troop deployments in Afghanistan and the expansion of a US military base at Vicenza.

Unfortunately Prodi’s resignation and consequent electoral turmoil may prove a gift to the way out there and round the bend Berlusconi camp if Prodi can’t rally support among the multitudinous factions that adorn Italian Parliament.

Devoid of the belated political nous exhibited by Bliar, Doodoo refuses to get the message that Iraqis really don’t want the United Stupids in their country and haven’t for years. Yet according to Cheney, the Dems won’t be able to prevent Doodoo’s surge.

Iraqi woman, Riverbend, horrified by an alleged coverup of rape by the pseudo-democratic Iraqi government and proposed execution of three Iraqi women, points out the COG was defeated long ago:

And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse. Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.”