Well it's the silly season, so I thought I might offer up a few silly thoughts about James Morrow and his epic
All these rules to curb our freedom:
It'S 6:00am. The day has barely begun and already I am a one-man crime wave. Taking the dog to the park to let her have a bit of a run, I blithely ignore a sign near the entrance not only banning off-leash dogs, but alcohol (fair enough, I guess), camping, golfing, archery, motor vehicles and horses.
Welcome to Nanny State, NSW.
WTF? So it was your bloody dog that at 6 am assaulted me with its muddy bloody paws, and its slobbering tongue, and its sharp-toothed fangs, while its goose of a smarmy smirking owner assured me that it was terribly friendly and just loved people, and the nip it gave me was a kind of love bite?
Then the bloody goose pulled out a wedge and sent a golf ball through the window of my car, barely leaving me enough time to pull the arrow out of my leg, supplied by a dumb fuck archer at the other end of the park - just before I got knocked over by a rampaging runaway horse, and a wayward dirt motorbike.
Um, what was that point about parks and signs again?
6:07am I am wondering just how I will continue to be a responsible dog owner once they ban plastic shopping bags.
Why don't you just shovel up the shit and stuff it down your pants? I'm sick of trudging through the shit left in parks and on footpaths by dogs and their righteous fucking owners. This isn't bloody France. Merde.
Oops sorry that sounded terribly mean for the holiday season. Perhaps you could mulch the shit - mixing it with copies of the Daily Terror is great for the garden, so I'm told.
6:30am The rest of the family begins to stir. The boys trot into the kitchen, having spent the night in bunk beds.
Miraculously they survived the night, given that Standards Australia is considering banning such furniture because less than one child a year has died due to occasional, and presumably extreme, mis-use of the things.
Oh for the good old days when we didn't have to worry about seat belts, structural reinforcement, safety bags and other air-headed safety innovations, interfering in our god given right to kill ourselves, so the Darwin Awards might have ongoing wide ranging field of candidates.
Yes, bring on as much cheap, shoddy unregulated shit from China as we can manage, preferably coated in lead, and preferably with wretched wiring so that poor people using fans and heaters can burn down their homes with greater ease.
6:38am I commence the frying of bacon and construction of cheese omelettes for three hungry children whose body types run from the skinny to the solid but who do not carry a skerrick of fat.
And who might in later years turn up with hardening of the arteries at a local hospital, established through bad eating habits formed in childhood, and expect subsidised medical treatment courtesy of tax dollars. Just like the smoking gherkins who stroll around boasting about how it's their right to get lung cancer, emphysema, a stroke, or perhaps a dash of peripheral heart disease. Are you one of those gherkins puffing away on the side walk while moaning about the nanny state? Or in one of those socialised hospitals complaining about rampant socialism?
Somehow I still find myself worrying about a knock on the door from Nicola Roxon and her Taskforce to Prevent Everything, or whatever it is called.
Yep much better and wiser than worrying about dumb eating habits the payback for which will kick in twenty or thirty years down the track. Go on being a dumb fuck, and prevent nothing and allow everything - why not run out in front of a bus as a wheeze - but please, can you arrange for any medical treatment to be on your own dollar?
7:30am And we're off! Over several kilometres driving from Sydney's inner-south to the inner-west, I must pay very close attention to the speed limit as it bounces between 50km/h and 60km/h along a stretch of road where actual driving conditions never change.
Actual driving conditions never change? On a Sydney road? No changes in the traffic, no changes in other road users and their behaviours? That's a pretty mythical road, cling to it. Oh you think other road users aren't part of actual driving conditions. Yep, you're a Sydney driver right enough.
Never mind that keeping such a close eye on the speedo and out for speed cameras might actually make me a less, rather than more, safe driver.
You mean you need glasses or can't read signs? Is it safe to be on the road with you? Or do you just speed like every other Sydney driver, and then moan about the nanny state, shortly before rear ending someone?
7:37am Listening to the radio, I chuckle as the rapid-fire fine-print advertisers are forced to plug on to the end of their spots ("this message is for Epping RSL members and their guests".)
Oh yes, just as I chuckle about the good old days of
cash for comment. How absurd to declare a conflict of interest, or advise of a regulatory issue.
Could that club message have anything to do with those bastions of the private sector, the pubs and their breweries and their grip on politicians, and their reluctance to allow people to avoid membership folderol and drop into their local club to drink and gamble as they will (
Registered clubs amendment act 2006).
Like as if that's all the fault of the nanny state do gooders, as opposed to a turf war between the private sector's best and brightest advocates of pissing on and pissing away your money.
Oh I alright, I give up. For the life of me, I can't explain just why children aren't allowed in to the poker machine ares of clubs or have a beer when they're twelve. Must be those bloody nanny state do gooders.
At least these messages are not as silly as some of the safety warning campaigns run on public transport, especially the ones reminding the elderly how to board a bus.
They've been doing it for decades. If anything, they should be instructing others.
Instructing others? On how to catch a bus? Because they don't how to? Because they persist in driving into the CBD? Phew, lucky you like to catch public transport James, especially as it's a bit tricky in the CBD at the moment, what with the silly season:
8:30am No more than 30 seconds after stopping in the CBD to drop off a boot-load of Christmas hampers, I receive a $174 parking fine from a stone-faced Sydney Council ranger, representing Lord Mayor Clover Moore's widely-known hatred of cars (and suspected hatred of Christmas) made flesh.
Oh right, yes, of course, it's the right of everybody to drive into the CBD and act like a goose because their personal need is greater than the need of others - Xmas hampers no less - while tempers fray and road rage takes hold, and everybody knows that the CBD is way under capacity when it comes to handling cars and buses, especially in peak hour. What we need in the CBD is more cars, the more the merrier, on urgent Xmas hamper missions.
Who could foster a hatred of cars when it's patently clear that private cars should be able to frolic and gambol through the CBD at whim and will, parking wherever they like and dropping off Xmas hampers like dogs drop shit in parks to satisfy the whims and needs of their personal owners? (Shit in their own back yards? Why, when they can shit in public?)
8:45am Pull into a car park to leave the vehicle for the day. More than half my exorbitant fee will go to the State Government's parking levy, generally recognised as the highest in the nation.
Luckily that has nothing to do with Sydney being the biggest capital, and its CBD being under the biggest planning stress, and with failing public transport, not helped by gherkins who persist in using their cars and jamming everything up the
wazoo.
But here's a thought. Why not head off to Adelaide to live? We'd be short one whinger, and the parking's way cheaper over there in the middle kingdom.
This policy is designed to get us to use the city's world-class public transportation system. Plugging the state's sieve-like coffers has nothing to do with it whatsoever.
No, and nothing to do with controlling private gooses in their private Hummers raging through the CBD, and trying to put a disincentive on gooses driving toorak tractors in to the CBD to ostentatiously display their wealth.
12:30pm Over lunch, I worry that regulations have already been passed outlawing those bunk beds before I've had a chance to chop them up and burn them in the . . . oh, wait. I'm not allowed to do that either. Guess I'll just wait for the midnight knock from the bunk squad.
Oh dear, running out of things to say? Got to recycle the old bunk bed routine?
How about this to help you out?
Over lunch saw a cockroach running up the wall. Thought how much that would disturb the nanny state do gooders when they realised that their attempts to keep restaurants clean in Sydney were like spitting into the flames of hell. When a rat emerged to munch on some left overs on the floor, I was charmed by the little feller. To think the do gooders want to interfere in this kind of metropolitan big city pleasure. Nothing like a little Sydney food poisoning to sharpen up the system. And if you get over it, you'll be a healthier human being for the experience.
12:40pm Have a look online at some properties, thinking it might be good to get a bigger place before the Greens get their ideas up about legislating for smaller houses, or regulations are passed in favour of dribbly low-flow shower heads and against airconditioning or a suitable number of bathrooms for a growing family.
A bigger place? For growing families? Nine billion on the planet not enough? Ever thought of going to live in New York for a little while and see what rat holes are offered as palatial living, at a handsome rent, up against the fight for a rent controlled place, or life on the street? Don't forget to take your very substantial wallet with you, as you moan about lifestyle choices and your love of MacMansions - for surely you must love MacMansions, and are only worried about whether they should be spelled with a Mc or a Mac.
Second thoughts, why not head out to Kellyville today? Something to suit every vulgar taste, and well away from the latte sipping chardonnay swilling swine in the inner west.
I tell myself to stop being so paranoid but then I remember that I can't buy any decent light globes any more . . . thanks to rules passed by a Liberal government.
Oh dear, and they took away fly paper as well. How awful of them to take away short life light bulbs when we were so much happier in yellow tungsten light that burned brightly and then required another trip to the supermarket the following weekend. Ever wondered about the benefits of '
daylight' lights?
3:30pm Ducking downstairs to pick up an energy drink, I wonder how long it will be before I have to show ID to do so, as state minister Ian Macdonald proposed recently.
What's that? Guess if you write like a petulant crabby twelve year old, mebbe you look like a twelve year old, or people mistake you for same, and yet somehow you're with kids!
Guess it's wise that they ask for an ID. As for all that talk of some of these shots having between 12 and 15 times the level of caffeine permitted under the food standards code, why next they'll be talking of taking away a nice crunchy snortable bit of speed or a tab of E from the kids.
6:30pm Returning home I check the letter box and wonder why no one has organised a holiday street party. Maybe it is because councils across town now make it nearly impossible to do so. At least one requires thousands of dollars to cover deposits, traffic management schemes and even an environmental impact statement.
What? Why don't you just go out to a Carols by Candlelight concert at Halliday Park in Five Dock, and have a bloody good time. But be warned, those bloody pecksniffian do gooders and spoilsports of the nanny state are likely to give you a good tasering. Suppose that's better than the good rogering they used to give in the old days (
Man tasered at Carols by Candlelight).
7:30pm Finally I head out for a beer with a mate and am thankful that a ban on buying shouts is not yet in force, nor a ban on vertical drinking (ie standing up with a beer) as is in place at some pubs in the UK.
Yep, ain't it great. The Australian male still has the right to drink themselves into insensibility, and behave like a dickhead, and even get on a motor bike and try to ride home while drunk as a skunk. Thank the lord the high court has decided that they're the dickheads at fault, and not the poor bloody publican or the bar staff (yes I used to work the bars, and see the dickheads shouting themselves into insensibility).
Over drinks I hear a story from Queensland involving being forbidden, due to health and safety, from carrying a beer from a pub's downstairs bar to its upstairs terrace, and am grateful that such madness has not yet travelled south of the Tweed.
Yep, and I'm personally grateful that I don't frequent pubs where shaggy dog stories amongst whinging right wingers is the staple diet of the conversation. I much prefer to stand out in the street, having a quiet, jolly beer and shouting drunken abuse at passers by. I hear the nanny state do gooders are trying to stop it, but we'll see about that.
These are only a few of the rules and regulations which hinder and annoy us.
Um, you left out just one thing which really hinders and annoys me. Being forced to read whinging crap from whiners, usually about regulations and the nanny state.
Ever driven on a Sydney road lately? Try finding a cop as we speed about at whim. In much the same way as you can go about your business largely unimpeded in many areas, unless you happen to be a goose, who happens to think it's your god-given goose right to park in a no stopping freeway zone after 3 pm, as peak hour kicks in. No stopping? That means stop here, right?
You know, the price of living in a big city is an attempt to keep things civilised.
In America politeness is inbred - well after all you never know when a loon might pull a gun on you and blow you away for some perceived impoliteness or lack of civility. But no one talks about the amount of regulation to hand in a town like New York, even when people are herded like cattle into Times Square pens for new year's celebrations, all in the name of civic order.
No it's left to colonial gherkins in the antipodes pick up the teabaggers' chant and rabbit on about the infringement on their personal liberties, on their right to act as personal gooses, and the right to let their bloody dogs slobber all over other cafe users, because we all just love doggies. As if we need to embrace their dog as a bloody human worthy of a seat under the table, because otherwise dog owners are being deprived of their right to have their dog with them at all times, as befits people with emotional disorders and a frustrated need for constant doggie love:
Whether it is rules concerning whether dogs can sit with their owners in outdoor cafes, regulations forbidding property owners from cutting down trees on their own land, or demands that one pay more for electricity to save the planet, red tape is multiplying like rabbits in NSW.
We are even more apt to be treated like thoughtless children by the Federal Government: internet filter, anyone?
Hooray, at last we can agree. Oh dear, do I alway sound like a whinger whining on about Senator Conroy and his do gooder nanny state intertubes filter?
Never mind, fuck Conroy. Now back for the wrap up:
Meanwhile, in the case of issues like problem drinking, calls for new regulations take place even as perfectly sensible laws already on the books are only sporadically enforced.
So what is the point of all this?
Some of it, surely, is motivated by a sincere desire to make life better, safer, more pleasant.
Um, well what's the point of this rant? I suppose it's motivated by a sincere desire to make life better, and the intertubes free for all, without a filter, but why does it have to be written in the smug tone of a whinging four year old?
But in watching bureaucrats do their thing, one is often reminded of a four-year-old trying to pet a cat: clumsy, well-meaning, but rubbing the target the wrong way.
Oops, sorry, that's your line. Guess you rubbed me up the wrong way, even if we agree on Senator Conroy.
Some of it comes from a sort of specious reasoning that looks at every negative aspect of life and demands something, anything, be done.
And your column isn't a petty negative litany about every petty little thing that's wrong with the world?
Why, could it even come from specious reasoning and specious whinging about how everything's the fault of government and bureaucrats, as if they somehow aren't people too, when in fact most of the stuff that goes wrong with the world is surely attributable to the dummies and the whingers and the whiners who don't listen to the do gooders, and manage to crash their cars, or fall off a bus, or fall in front of a train, or who eat the wrong food, or who get pissed as a parrot and hop on a motorbike, or who otherwise just ... act like gherkins.
Well I guess if that's the case we wouldn't be able to do the wrap up without a tea bagger rant, as meaningless a guide to ordering the affairs of a city as might be offered up to a bureaucrat given that Sisyphean task ... and not helped by being written by a gherkin who think it's his god given right to drop off Xmas hampers how and when and where he likes, and bugger the world and its petty rules:
For politicians, what that something is is generally less important than that it is something. And some of this desire to regulate stems from a mindset that sees government, whether on the council, state, or federal level, as the preferred vehicle for any activity.
This world view is threatened by the values embodied in lemonade stands and block parties. At its worst, this attitude doesn't care so much if the state is liked so long as it is feared, and regards the rest of us as subjects rather than citizens.
And the best way to accomplish that, of course, is to make everyone guilty of something.
Or better still, fine them 174 bucks. Because you see the cost of a personalised parking service for geese who think the world is there for them to do how and what they like - in a no standing zone in the CBD - is these days a cheerful, hearty 174 bucks or more. Because we no longer live in a town of a couple of million, and as it gets bigger, the pressure on space also gets bigger, and the rubbing of shoulders breeds the odd bit of tension ... not to mention those bloody dogs cavorting all over the place.
Got pinged hey? Bet that hurt, hey James? Here's a tip. Don't get pinged. You see, this town has always, ever since the days of the Rum Rebellion, been operated by convicts, past present and or future for the benefit of other convicts, or ex-convicts.
And there's only one golden rule. Do what you like, but don't let them catch you at it - like the man I saw pissing in the park last night - and whatever you do, don't get pinged.
That's about the only sensible regulation, and you broke it. Now go forth, and teach the bureaucrats a lesson, but don't whatever you do, get pinged. But if you do get pinged, don't whinge, not when it's a fair cop.
Meantime, can we cut back just a tad on the whinging and the whining? Maybe stick to Senator Conroy, who deserves it?
You see, it ruins the mood of a quiet tungsten lit dinner using my last old fashioned lightbulb, which provides the mellow yellow glow my cockroaches and rats just love ...
(Below: I'm afraid as Morrow has disturbed my repose peace and mental safety, he's breached the code, and he'll need a hundred and seventy four smackeroos to keep him in our good books. And by the way it'll be another 174 buckeroos for the smart arse who drew up the sign and could only manage 'prohibbitted'. Or is it nanny state do goodism to expect an attempt at decent spelling and the use of a spell cheker?)
(Below: and what is it with men always talking about the nanny state? As if caring for your brood is somehow wrong, even if they're goslings. Why not talk about the daddy state? By golly, in my day, a governess knew how to take a boy in hand, and teach him the essentials of respect, and thereafter fear the power of the matriarchy. Yes nanny, no nanny, three bags full nanny, and none of that whining after a good paddling delivered to the pants).
