(Above: Oh look, Mr Sparkles sparkles).
It turns out that Lisa Carty, the NSW political editor of The Sun-Herald, that wretched Sunday tabloid outpost of Fairfax media, which can't even manage to give away wretched Australian movies but wants to charge three bucks, presumably to cover the packaging costs, but not make up for the content and the brain damage inflicted on the casual innocent viewer ... first up The Bank for the mugs who don't understand a bargain is cheap for a reason ... a half assed piece that purports to be a thriller, without thrills, and a social critique worthy of a state Labor MP anxious to go to lunch with a host of developers ...
NSW taxpayers will almost certainly face a bumper byelection bill of up to $3million in the six months after the next election.
If the Coalition wins, as expected, up to 10 sitting Labor MPs will decide it's not worth their while to hang around on the Opposition benches for eight years.
After what they feel is a respectable period of time – three or four months – they will secure a better offer and turn their backs on the people who put them back into Macquarie Street.
No other country requires working-class families to pay one-third more for books as a way of subsidising its literature.
An Australian parent forced to cut back on book purchases for their kids may well ask for evidence of a few more Australian Booker prizewinners and a few more masterpieces.
Golly I lost my train of thought there. No wonder this site is titled loon pond, and the residents loonatic ranters, and me showing the way ...
Back to the featurette. It turns out that Lisa Carty has worked for metropolitan regional and rural newspapers and has worked for four state government ministers, Labor and Liberal, as a media adviser.
Well that sounds like a pretty flighty, footloose and fancy free employment lifestyle. Should it be banned?
What you say? Finding and taking employment as you like is one of the virtues of the free market system, as opposed to the gulag mentality of centralized governments of a dictatorial bent.
Not so, according to Carty, as she counts the costs of a Labor party loss at the upcoming state election:
NSW taxpayers will almost certainly face a bumper byelection bill of up to $3million in the six months after the next election.
If the Coalition wins, as expected, up to 10 sitting Labor MPs will decide it's not worth their while to hang around on the Opposition benches for eight years.
After what they feel is a respectable period of time – three or four months – they will secure a better offer and turn their backs on the people who put them back into Macquarie Street.
Carty spends the rest of her column trawling through the derelicts likely to leave the state government nee opposition in waiting, rather than hang around for eight years in opposition in the hope of getting back on to the gravy train and lunches with developers.
And likely enough there will be plenty of lemmings who want to go jump off the cliff. Great.
Carty draws herself up in righteous indignation about the cost of a state by election, at $300,000 the pop, and the taxpayers left holding the bill.
By golly, paying $300k to get rid of the current crop of low rent do nothing low lifers seems like a bargain basement deal to me, better than 3 bucks for an Australian movie you couldn't rent for a dollar on the $1 rental day at your local video store.
No, Cary wants to ban this natural extinction of the lungfish that still inhabit Macquarie street (Rees should ban MPs early retirement plans):
There is no need for taxpayers to drown in Labor's bloodbath.
Premier Nathan Rees should consider banning MPs' premature resignations in all but the most extreme cases of poor health or family crisis. The ban could apply for at least the first half of the next parliamentary term.
If he fails to embrace such a move – and it's hard to think of a cogent argument against it – it should become a priority for Barry O'Farrell. If elected premier he could bring in such a bill in the first session of Parliament after March 2011.
If he fails to embrace such a move – and it's hard to think of a cogent argument against it – it should become a priority for Barry O'Farrell. If elected premier he could bring in such a bill in the first session of Parliament after March 2011.
Oh please. A bill? Go right to the head of loon pond and start drafting the bill, and as for a ban ... lordy, lordy. Bring on the commentariat award for useless column stuffing still a month away from Christmas season ...
If these MPs feel there is nothing to keep them in parliament apart from the votes of their constituents, they should be compelled to stay and keep their side of the bargain.
If representing their electorates is not exciting enough, they shouldn't seek re-election.
If these MPs feel there is nothing to keep them in parliament apart from the votes of their constituents, they should be compelled to stay and keep their side of the bargain.
If representing their electorates is not exciting enough, they shouldn't seek re-election.
Dearie me, is this how Sun-Herald readers fill in their day? With the bannings and the useless billings and idle meaningless speculation about something that won't happen?
Well if Carty had half a brain she might have suggested a golden handshake, private sector style, which would prevent the kind of rorting that's gone on in the federal sphere, which would prevent members of parliament from taking a government post or government board position for twelve months from the date of resignation. That would have kept Costello out of the Future Fund for a start, and stopped gooses like Alexander Downer wandering the world, at least for a moment or two ...
But ban reluctant MPs from retiring? Let them go, with the curses ringing in their ears, off to the private sector with them, so they can start making a less dishonest dollar. With only one minor ban. They can't write or pronounce on anything in the mainstream media for twelve months.
Of course that wouldn't stop the likes of Carl "Sparkles" Scully writing the drivel he managed in Cyclists do not have the same rights as motorists on roads.
Such was the stupendous nature of the drivel that Scully managed to attract over four hundred comments, in a blitz that outshone Miranda the Devine. We're not going to regurgitate his musings - looking at the offal in an abattoir has more appeal - but the casual reader should be forcefully reminded that this clown was once NSW minister for roads. (If you want a quick overview of the Scully years, head off here).
Sparkles concluded his rant with the standard line that cyclists need to be a little more sensitive to the needs of the motoring public, which presumably means that someone driving a Toorak tractor should feel free to run over any insensitive cyclist that gets in their way. Hard to imagine someone writing more drivel than Miranda the Devine, but Scully manages it like he's trying out for an Olympic event in blather.
The man is such a goose that it's offensive to geese to call him a goose.
Me? I dance with joy at the thought of Scully out in the private sector, forced to make a living.
As for the other controversy during the week involving a former state Labor notable, you can turn to Bob Carr's piece in The Australian, Consumers will force books rethink.
About the only good thing you can say about the Federal government's decision to maintain book protectionism is that it shoved a giant grapefruit in the face of the shamelessly Dymocks spruiking Carr.
As Carr notes, it's a failure to address reality - carrying on the tea cosy nook and hobbit haven for writers, who want to emulate the disastrous performance of Australian films in the domestic market - and in a few years, the pressure from other forms of delivery will force changes.
But Carr's gormless offensive, in everyone's face, lobbying for Dymocks and the other big players probably did more to maintain the status quo than any other single force. Even in defeat his shameless crowing and silly arguments makes me half way grateful that protectionism won, and we can live in a kind of Brigadoon for a few more years, as I happily abandon the local market and local suppliers to make all my purchases on Amazon.
No other country requires working-class families to pay one-third more for books as a way of subsidising its literature.
An Australian parent forced to cut back on book purchases for their kids may well ask for evidence of a few more Australian Booker prizewinners and a few more masterpieces.
Working class families! Oh go jerk my chain, or the other leg, you wretched supporter of cartels and oligopolies of the Woollies kind.
More masterpieces and Booker prizewinners? But Penguin published My Reading Life (here for a quick overview of that irritating condescending work). Shouldn't Carr just retire and live off the royalties? Show Aussie writers how it's done?
Why that'd be like asking for a state government that spent all its money on infrastructure rather than pissing it up against the wall on bread and circuses like the Olympics and motoring events for petrol heads.
Enough already. Let them go to the private sector as soon as possible, and let them pause at "go" and collect all the entitlements it costs before they head off to stick their snouts elsewhere. Let taxpayers fork out $300k the by election. Cheap at double the price.
Legislate to ban their movements away from the wheels of power?
Well if you fall for that one, I've got this great Australian feature film to sell you ... only three bucks ... and you get a load of tabloid drivel along with it to fill in your day. Cheap at half the price ...
(Below: hard to work out which image best evokes Bob Carr, but I think American Gothic has the numbers).
Unfortunately I clicked on Carty's article at the NT and it turned me off even bothering to check the others.
ReplyDeleteWhat a waste of electrons.