(Above: Coming soon! The war on Christmas, meanwhile below, can someone pass a law about divided roads? More Tom Tomorrow here).
v.intr.
1. To issue a thunderous verbal attack or denunciation: fulminated against political chicanery.
2. To explode or detonate.
v.tr.
1. To issue (a denunciation, for example) thunderously.
2. To cause to explode.
n.
An explosive salt of fulminic acid, especially fulminate of mercury.
This is the idea underpinning the inexplicable failure of successive governments, state and federal, to provide proper First World infrastructure such as dams and divided highways in our increasingly bureaucratised welfare state.
At every level of our society and culture, the argument of duty of care has been used to excuse individuals from the consequences of their own foolish actions.
Instead of individuals being responsible, the blame is shifted elsewhere. Evidence of this is to be found everywhere.
Just take a look at the signs posted near every scenic site across the nation.
On any wharf you will find prohibitions against swimming, diving or jumping, you name it, because the local council has deemed you are not responsible enough to look after yourself and it doesn’t want to be blamed for not reminding you to, well, look before you leap ...
Yet, as the NRMA pointed out in a report published this month, 50 per cent of the highway remains undivided despite the spending of nearly $3.5 billion. Since 1989 more than 800 people have died on the highway and 12,000 have been injured.
"We continue to see people die in these awful head-on collisions," a still angry Waller, 78, said from his Sydney home yesterday. "Someone's gone to sleep and the car is coming straight at them. With a dual carriageway it wouldn't happen. I don't understand why the politicians don't see the benefits.''
The section from the Oxley Highway to Kempsey has been waiting for approval since July 2007. The RTA has to laboriously study "vegetation communities and habitats". It has to produce "a detailed terrestrial and aquatic floral and fauna impact statement", have "continued consultation with the local Aboriginal community, detailed field assessment in conjunction with Aboriginal stakeholder groups to detect the presence of or likelihood of previously unidentified heritage sites [and] continued consultation with local interest groups''. It has to do a "socio-economic assessment with emphasis on the villages of Telegraph Point and Kundabung".
There is a lot more, including "modelling and predictions into the use of fuels and the production of greenhouse gases as a result of the operation of the upgraded highway''.
All this for a highway that is already there and just needs to be a little wider.
It's busy work for somebody.
Well here's the homily for the day from Akker Dakker:
The concept of individual responsibility is anathema to the civil rights crowd and to those calling for a national charter of rights as it would make them irrelevant.
They prey on the cult of victimhood, the notion everything is someone else’s fault.
If you go into a pub and order a drink, whose fault is that? If you order a couple more, whose fault is that?
In the Nanny State it is not the fault of the drinker but the bloke behind the bar. That is a big shift of responsibility.
In the Nanny State, the bloke who dives into shallow water is not responsible for his broken neck, it is the fault of the local council which failed to warn him it is not safe to spear into unknown water.
The duty of care should begin with you, yourself, taking every reasonable precaution to safeguard your person. Whether it is getting stonkered, going to notoriously bad bars or taking stupid and unnecessary risks with your life.
Shane Scott learnt the hardest way possible that it is not a good idea to drive a motorbike when you’re smashed.
That’s a tragedy, as loss of life is, and sympathies to his wife and loved one, but he is the only person who can be blamed.
Those who don’t like being confronted with the harsh truth may cling to the Nanny State but those who believe in common sense should thank Shane for reminding everyone that, in the main, we should not seek to blame others for the accidents that befall us.
(Below: please don't watch this. It's an example of totalitarian democracy in action, a hectoring reminder of everything that's wrong with the world. Remember, it's your personal right to fall asleep at the wheel on a divided road, and don't let any nanny state welfarist totalitarian government dictatorial democratic bureaucrat government minister tell you otherwise. Oh and at the inquest after the crash - the god given right to crash those fiends want to strip away from you - tell them you learned your driving skills from Miranda the Devine).
Favorite word on loon pond this week:
ful·mi·nate (flm-nt, fl-)
v. ful·mi·nat·ed, ful·mi·nat·ing, ful·mi·natesv.intr.
1. To issue a thunderous verbal attack or denunciation: fulminated against political chicanery.
2. To explode or detonate.
v.tr.
1. To issue (a denunciation, for example) thunderously.
2. To cause to explode.
n.
An explosive salt of fulminic acid, especially fulminate of mercury.
As in, it's the fulminating incoherence of the commentariat columnist that's designed to beguile you, anger and irritate you, and provoke a response, preferably a comment, as a way of showing you're alive to the charms of the advertising littering the pages of the thunderous fulminated verbal fury. Okay, here we go:
The central idea of totalitarian democracies is the perfectibility of human nature on earth. Eventually, with the right "system" - and enough rules and penalties to steer puny citizens in the right direction - we will achieve a nirvana of social justice, equality, peace and harmony.
The central idea of totalitarian democracies? How about the central idea of pointlessly stupid linguistic juxtapositions designed to provide an oxymoronic coup? Besides, the very idea of achieving a nirvana in which the citizens of loon pond will give up their squawking rights is indeed utopian.
Peace and harmony in the pond with Miranda the Devine about? Dream on, fellow puny citizens.
That's right, she's in fulminating Saturday rant mode, designed to make people splutter into their lattes and regret the chardonnay sipping they indulged in on Friday the 13th, as we read Divide and conquer highway hell:
This is the idea underpinning the inexplicable failure of successive governments, state and federal, to provide proper First World infrastructure such as dams and divided highways in our increasingly bureaucratised welfare state.
Yes, we're a third world country, a banana republic (with a monarchist figurehead who's not really the head of state), full of bureacratised welfare dudes, and above all, and in every way shape and form, it's the fault of government. Oh the gods, will they show us no mercy.
Wait lo, on the horizon, a champion on a steed come to save us. Why it's Piers Akerman, and he's very stern in Verdict rips nappies off our Nanny State. Talking about the High Court ruling regarding a motorbike rider who knocked back Jack Daniels, demanded his keys from the publican, then ran off the road and killed himself, Akker Dakker intones:
Though some people will say that the decision undermines the whole concept of the responsible service of alcohol, others will welcome it as an early sign that the Nanny State embraced by the politically correct crowd, and beloved of the Labor Party, is starting to crumble.
At every level of our society and culture, the argument of duty of care has been used to excuse individuals from the consequences of their own foolish actions.
Instead of individuals being responsible, the blame is shifted elsewhere. Evidence of this is to be found everywhere.
Just take a look at the signs posted near every scenic site across the nation.
On any wharf you will find prohibitions against swimming, diving or jumping, you name it, because the local council has deemed you are not responsible enough to look after yourself and it doesn’t want to be blamed for not reminding you to, well, look before you leap ...
Those who don’t like being confronted with the harsh truth may cling to the Nanny State but those who believe in common sense should thank Shane for reminding everyone that, in the main, we should not seek to blame others for the accidents that befall us.
Okay, I can grokk that. You find yourself on an undivided highway, you drive carefully. You take personal responsibility. You drive according to the circumstances in which you find yourself - like avoiding being a rally car driver if you don't know how to handle dirt roads - and whatever happens, if you crash, you don't go off and whinge like a whining liberal nanny stater welfare lover, and blame the government (unless of course the state of repair of the roads led it to collapse under you and dump you in a raging torrent, which has been known to happen from time to time - here).
Which is why I'm still trying to grokk the meaning of the Devine's rage, because she sounds like a classic nanny type as she bemoans the lack of progress on the conversion of the Pacific highway to dual carriageway:
That's 20 years since the NSW coroner at the time, Kevin Waller, ruled the highway should be dual carriageway from Hexham (near Newcastle) to the Queensland border because separating oncoming traffic is the only way to prevent head-on collisions, which account for most of the highway's fatalities. It is the nation's most dangerous road.
Yet, as the NRMA pointed out in a report published this month, 50 per cent of the highway remains undivided despite the spending of nearly $3.5 billion. Since 1989 more than 800 people have died on the highway and 12,000 have been injured.
"We continue to see people die in these awful head-on collisions," a still angry Waller, 78, said from his Sydney home yesterday. "Someone's gone to sleep and the car is coming straight at them. With a dual carriageway it wouldn't happen. I don't understand why the politicians don't see the benefits.''
Huh? Someone's gone to sleep and caused a head on and we blame the government? Like dude, according to the book of Akker Dakker, even I should know that while driving a car, you shouldn't go to sleep. Driving a car with your eyes closed is a tad tricky. If you feel tired, stop driving, pull over.
Oh dear, there you go, indoctrinated by those fiendish Dr. Karl microsleep ads. Enough with the nanny state welfarism Dr. Karl. If people can't work out not to sleep while driving a car, there's no point telling them. Personal responsibility? It's a myth, a delusion, an Akker Dakker fulmination!
What we need is government action, and not mealy mouthed government advertising, but real decent nanny state welfarism of the kind Adolf Hitler practised when he put autobahns all over Germany so people could speed at 200 km an hour while asleep at the wheel. That's totalitarian democracy at work for you:
...the RTA and its political masters have never fully accepted that humans are fallible and will remain so, no matter how many carrots and sticks, with heavy emphasis on the sticks, are applied. No amount of "stop, revive, survive" rhetoric will stop drivers from falling asleep at the wheel. No amount of threatening, cajoling, fining, legislating, shocking and penalising drivers will stop them making fatal mistakes, becoming distracted, having a brain snap, or whatever it is that makes a car move onto the wrong side of the road and cause a head-on collision. Separating oncoming traffic is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite.
You see. It's your democratic right to fall asleep at the wheel, it's only a foible, and we need a massive nanny state bout of welfarism to ensure that when you exercise your right, others don't suffer. Oh how I regret reading that jeremiad from that Jeremiah Piers Akerman about personal responsibility. We have to master the world in such a way that it's intrinsically safe and absolve us of our errors:
As the Engineers Australia professional body sensibly states in one of its policy documents, "human fallibility and frailty [are] an indivisible part of the driving task … The road system must be intrinsically safe and tolerant of human errors.".
Huh? But doesn't make a nonsense of the Devine's opening par? Sigh, it's the Devine and you want consistency and coherence? Have you learned nothing about the need to devise a system of logic which is intrinsically safe and tolerant of human error?
Huh? But doesn't make a nonsense of the Devine's opening par? Sigh, it's the Devine and you want consistency and coherence? Have you learned nothing about the need to devise a system of logic which is intrinsically safe and tolerant of human error?
Okay, let's dig a little deeper, and soon we'll discover the real reason for the Devine's festering fulminations, and naturally it's the greenies, though the uppity blacks also have a lot to answer for.
First of all there's the matter of the Queensland dam decision:
This week the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, put the kybosh on Queensland's planned Traveston Dam, near Gympie. Despite the expensive and elaborate environmental measures proposed, including, I kid you not, a "fish ladder", Garrett put the needs of 2.5 million humans behind the putative welfare of Mary River cod, lungfish and turtles that would have been better off in a well-maintained dam anyway.
Yep, a well-maintained dam. Why in my new survival plan for all endangered species I'm thinking of herding them into a zoo. Bugger those dinosaur lungfish, if the dinosaurs could bugger off, then they can bugger off to a well maintained dam, in a zoo somewhere so we can gawk at them until they cark it.
Yep, a well-maintained dam. Why in my new survival plan for all endangered species I'm thinking of herding them into a zoo. Bugger those dinosaur lungfish, if the dinosaurs could bugger off, then they can bugger off to a well maintained dam, in a zoo somewhere so we can gawk at them until they cark it.
Of course the ineffable stupidity of that remark might not sit too well with the citizens of Mary valley, but what would that bunch of turkey greenies know about anything as they promote their greenie welfarism all over the intertubes and here.
And the greenies have been busy elsewhere:
There is a lot more, including "modelling and predictions into the use of fuels and the production of greenhouse gases as a result of the operation of the upgraded highway''.
All this for a highway that is already there and just needs to be a little wider.
It's busy work for somebody.
Oh those bloody greenies and those pesky blacks - you see, I told you it was the uppity difficult blacks at work - undoing a valiant RTA and a state Labor government desperate to produce the most perfect example of highway nanny statist welfarist divided highway in the world. Or perhaps the universe. By Christmas.
Well of course if you believe that, you'll most likely believe that the NSW Labor government could organise a cut lunch, a chook for a raffle, and devise a Metro to service the needs of the citizens of Rozelle for a humble $7 billion and loose change, never mind the light rail service or the bus services they already have in abundance.
You might even avert your eyes from the state of Victoria which has somehow managed to introduce divided road all the way from Melbourne to the NSW border, and has also even managed to produce quite a nice highway for those perverts seeking shelter from the storm in South Australia (well if you can think of days of century sapping heat as a storm).
Well here's the homily for the day from Akker Dakker:
The concept of individual responsibility is anathema to the civil rights crowd and to those calling for a national charter of rights as it would make them irrelevant.
They prey on the cult of victimhood, the notion everything is someone else’s fault.
If you go into a pub and order a drink, whose fault is that? If you order a couple more, whose fault is that?
In the Nanny State it is not the fault of the drinker but the bloke behind the bar. That is a big shift of responsibility.
In the Nanny State, the bloke who dives into shallow water is not responsible for his broken neck, it is the fault of the local council which failed to warn him it is not safe to spear into unknown water.
The duty of care should begin with you, yourself, taking every reasonable precaution to safeguard your person. Whether it is getting stonkered, going to notoriously bad bars or taking stupid and unnecessary risks with your life.
Shane Scott learnt the hardest way possible that it is not a good idea to drive a motorbike when you’re smashed.
That’s a tragedy, as loss of life is, and sympathies to his wife and loved one, but he is the only person who can be blamed.
Those who don’t like being confronted with the harsh truth may cling to the Nanny State but those who believe in common sense should thank Shane for reminding everyone that, in the main, we should not seek to blame others for the accidents that befall us.
And you know who he's talking about?
Yep, Miranda the Devine, nanny state whinger and celebrator of victimhood, with more than a few bucks invested in the notion of welfarism, civil rights and chattering latte sipping indignation!
But what would I know? I tend to think that if the state government had wanted to finish the debacle that is the northern coast highway, they could have put their minds to it and got on with the job. But they have the victimhood mentality of a Miranda the Devine, and excuses in abundance, while the state prays for an election, and the right to endure the likes of David Clarke just so long as we can get rid of the current bunch of clowns.
But then what would I know? I tend to believe that government plays an important role in society, and that as well as individuals accepting responsibility for their actions, so governments should be held accountable for theirs.
So little I know. Thank the lord we have the fulminating Devine to enlighten us, and explain totalitarian democracy, and confirm that Akker Dakker is talking through his hat. But if he uses his hat to talk through, what part of the Devine's anatomy does she use?
Don't ask ...
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