“The Dunning Kruger effect and narcisso-sociopaths in Cyberspace” – or “Gone Doolally”

Categories –

Value judgement

Perception

Rationality

Self-assessement

Keeping up with the Jones’s

Would he go away if I ignored the prick?

Fatal mistake even thinking it - maybe he has a point after all?

‘Miraculous Mutha’ knew best

If ‘the Age of Reason’ is past – then what do we have now?

Is eugenics REALLY an option?

Who stole the milk money?

‘Sustainability’ – what does it mean?

Does the ‘elephant in the room’ need feeding?

Popular catch-phrases and applied methodology toward their extinction.

Topology – space demarcation/optimisation – interior design – making room for overlarge pets

Can’t the cat look at the queen?

What is it about some people?

If you invited him home would he drink all your booze, smoke your cigars - then still piss in your fishtank?

The ‘Alpha Male’ – should rutting behaviour be confined to his flashing ‘Bling’?

‘Situational awareness’ and its ever decreasing utility in the ‘Nanny State’.

Is the ‘Alpha Female’ the ‘elephant in the room’?

Image – Jealousy or contempt? Attitudes. The camera catches all. Meanwhile what the hell does she do with her olive pip?

Author - Arthur

‘Miraculous Mutha’ was first, knew best, and ---- the rest.

Her advice to the lovelorn in ‘Easyriders’ magazine had us all chewin’ the carpet in the nineteen seventies.

Dorothy Dix wasn’t in the race.

‘Miraculous’ wasn’t into feminist assertiveness ‘cos she refused to lower her status.

She was just GROSS.

Unlike Mussolini’s niece just thinking about it wouldn’t be enough. She’d know where to spit the pip of her martini olive.

She won the hearts of at least two generations of bikers around the world.

Don’t worry, I tried googling her and she’s out there if anyone remembers her but apparently Conroy’s goons have been at Australian biker sites already and we’d go the same way if I attached the one page of her Q&A I found overseas.

But what the hell - http://45dgree.com/?p=2518

Hey. Maybe Conroy was advised that ‘Miraculous Mutha’ was ‘the elephant in the room’?

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/elephant-in-the-room.html

Then OGRI arrived.

http://www.paulsample-ogri.co.uk/Strip%20cartoons.html

http://www.paulsample-ogri.co.uk/SlideShow_assets/SlideShow.html?lang=en

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/4750371/Legend-of-Ogri.html

Gross they may be but nonetheless someone’s children.

What made them ‘acceptable’ back in the 70s but not in this century?

Is it maybe because their creators introduced us to reality?

Did they broach subjects that were kept ‘under the carpet’ by officialdom in the past?

Weren’t they pointing at those ‘Elephants in the Room’ – dealing directly with societal taboos by tilting stereotype toward complete absurdity.

There’d be more practical counseling in one of Miraculous Mutha’s columns than within lifeline’s entire philosophy.

Her rather Hobbsian attitude to life was reflected back to the reader in ways that made plain that if life was going to be nasty, brutish and short it’d be those trying to cause herself and her correspondents grief who’d cop the flak in bucketloads.

Miraculous Mutha should be required reading for bullied schoolkids.

Not only could she tell you how to turn the other cheek – but which cheek and how to flash it without being caught.

Though contemporaries, Miraculous was a California girl while Ogri  was born in the UK.

While Miraculous used words to convey her message Ogri more often made use of action.

As the editor of ‘Bike magazine’ said  in 2001 – “In the Seventies he reinforced attitudes, now he creates them.”

Image – ‘Strike me pink. Where did that olive pip go?

So what is it about these legendary characters?

They broke all the rules from first publication.

Miraculous would definitely be up on an obscenity charge these days in Australia.

Maybe Ogri would make it through if he had a shave, bought a car and demanded all the chics in his cartoon put on a bra.

But there’s probably not much dough to be made cartooning for the ‘Accountant’s Quarterly’.

There’s little chance they’d be given a slot in any wishy-washy modern publication.

Maybe it is a reflection of how completely dumbed down our society has become.

Nanny State, they call it.

A mob of bludgers expecting a careless government to attend to every annoyance and outlaw everything that distresses them.

End result – remarkably like bullying – everyone looking, acting and thinking the same – not because they want to – but in order to avoid attention from the officially appointed bully.

Well, Arthur will tell you something for free.

Many years ago I was stuck with a traineeship at a certain ‘workplace’ up here in God’s own country.

Just like our illustrious defence force there was a ‘culture’ of what is called bullying and bastardization.

Nine hours a day five days a week and it was like being stuck in the ape’s cage in a zoo.

It was an ‘occupational tradition’ to treat trainees badly to the extent that even the decent blokes there ‘turned the other cheek’.

Maybe schools should have run programmes in pre-vocationary foul language, weirdness and borderline sexual depravity.

But they didn’t, nor did I have the slightest clue that a group of supposedly responsible and highly qualified men would not only condone but actively join in with what these days would be condemned as criminal.

As I write this the defence minister and every other Tom, Dick and harry are yammering away on the radio about Duntroon still.

And the BIG question remains – why should anyone ever have to put up with that sort of shit?

So what, you want to know, is any of this about the title of this article?

Well, clearly, I didn’t have a clue what madness was waiting in store for me when I first started work.

If I had known I wouldn’t have gone near the place.

A bad decision made in direct result of inadequate knowledge followed by more bad decisions resulting from being contractually bound to that looney bin.

The ‘Dunning Kruger Effect’.

Do sane, well adjusted, adult males gratify themselves by perpetuating a regime of bullying and bastardization?

No.

But narcisso-sociopaths would.

So what the hey is this all about – this Miraculous Mutha and Ogri crap?

Simple. Round about the time I’d just about given up wanting to live I discovered these two fictitious characters.

Miraculous told me how to out-gross those slimebags at work.

She provided me with a succession of such astounding ‘put-downs’ that’d leave those dorks black in the face and speechless.

She taught me how to swear like a longshoreman.

She let me know how to get even with the turkeys

And most of all she let me laugh again.

Image – ‘Look ma – no hands.’

Ogri?

A role model?

I seriously doubt it.

Ogri was faaar too radical for most of the local bikers.

Mind you his scooter rattled and leaked as much oil.

No. It was more like in this land of pretend conformity populated by the sort of shithead a bloke had to endure at work - there was, at the end of the day, some escape from their petty churlishness.

Yeah – two dimensional cartoon characters despised by authority helped me laugh and escape for a few seconds from their brutality.

Without them I’m sure that many of us back then would have gone completely ‘DOOLALLY’.

Further reading -

http://www.nannystate.com.au/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolally

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/sep/22/gender.uk

“IS COPULATION COUNTER TO NATIONAL SECURITY?” – or - “An Officer and a Gentleman?”

CATEGORIES –

Prurience

Voyeurism

What gets people to read newspapers

Propaganda

The red herring

Official incompetence

Human rights denied

Rubbernoses

The biological imperative

Expectations

Put yourself (or your daughter) in her shoes

Make love, not war

Their hypocrisy

Our hypocrisy

Are they doing so badly in ’Ghanistan they need a diversion here?

Image – Well, you asked for it. No way are we going to even mention the name of the young lady embarrassed by the last defence fiasco. Better we publish one that reflects the staff for what it is; as they say, warts and all. Here’s Lord Kitchener and his ‘aide’.

Cute, isn’t he, the aide? Kitchener never would have stood for this sort of thing – besides which, he never could get his Box-Brownie to work.

Author – A-Non-Farmer

Old men hate young people enjoying themselves.

Old men perpetuate institutions.

Old men choose like minded sycophants to run their institutions.

Sycophants run institutions the way they’re told to by their elders.

When the workings of institutions go awry it is never the fault of the old men.

Old men who have forgotten what it is like to be young always blame youth for their own shortcomings.

One thing old men never admit is that it is jealousy of youth that mostly burrs them up.

Old men have enough trouble getting up in the morning without worrying about scandal.

Yet old men might prefer the confusion caused by a bit of scandal rather than be brought to account for real bastardry and incompetence.

And so it goes down through the ages.

The ‘media’ is at it again.

Bored stiff by nothing to write about and censorship – yet something has fallen into their capable hands.

Trouble is that as usual they’ve taken it from their grubby, squalid little angle.

A few years back Defence was moaning about a certain lack of volunteers.

To remedy that they introduced the allegedly, non-discriminatory, ‘affirmative action’, principle.

At the back of the old fart’s minds was probably the idea that they’d attract a certain TYPE of young man and woman (and hopefully dislocate the preponderance of gays the defence forces have seemed to attract way back before Kitchener was whelped).

Hell. I can see their ideal in my mind’s eye.

The sort of thing on those huge posters in Red Square for May Day.

Tall, healthy, sun bronzed co-ed idealists, leaning assertively forward, arms linked in common purpose – that sort of thing.

Yeah. As usual and just the same way they manage procurement programmes, they wanted an impossible ideal at bargain basement prices.

I’d say their good buddies in the Israeli Defence Force might’ve whispered in their hairy old ears too.

“Oyy, Ve’ve benn doing it for years now. The kibbutz, our common purpose against the foe.

Our young menn and vomen driving their tractors with a good Galil carbine clipped on the mudguard.

Vun week they are picking oranges; the next they are picking off Palestinians.

Iss good?”

What they failed to mention was that they’d spin a line of bullshit to anyone stupid enough to listen and that they’d had more than enough trouble with their cadres shagging themselves crosseyed for decades.

So what do these superannuated turkeys expect?

Stuff a warship full of boys an’ girls and send them cruising off to sea.

Even a complete idiot would see what will happen.

When have co-ed barracks NOT had tiny holes accidentally appearing in the walls?

But none of that is important.

Whoever first commented that “gentlemen never tell” it certainly wasn’t our media or those who okay the PSYCH PROFILE of young males admitted into ADFA.

I expect by now Angus will have had a spare five to think things through.

It would be ridiculous to segregate the officer cadets at ADFA.

He needs to nip the situation in the bud.

Once he takes the attitude that officers SHALL act as gentlemen then it shouldn’t take him long to work out who’s been acting contrary to that principle.

Oh bugger it why not just say it.

They tell me that there are six male officer cadets at Duntroon that are into ‘surveillance’.

There’s another who may or may not have set the girl up.

If I were Angus I’d have them doing their surveillance in Afganistan as private soldiers.

Then he could likewise deal with that officer who gave such kind advice to the cadet who was raped.

Then the Navy – then the mile high club -

Of course such action would be unpopular within the defence establishment and any defence chief who opened up such a can of worms would soon be out on his ear.

So, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston AC AFC, we extend our very best wishes for your retirement full in the knowledge that you will do the honourable thing.



“AS WE SAID – IT JUST KEEPS HAPPENING” – or “Delia Dooley’s grandfather writes to me”

IMAGE – Popular uprisings. When ideals get in the way of some important person’s bankroll anything can happen. It happened to these poor ignorant bastards over a hundred years ago. Look into their eyes and what do you see?

Idealism? Good intentions? Happiness? Or the grim, bloody-minded, intent of those who know themselves to be dead men walking?

Author - Calligula

What is the present state of the Nation?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/04/05/3182436.htm - this one says we have 8 million odd thickies on the books.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/11/3064081.htm - this one says that Peter Garrett will reach deep into his own pocket and give each thickie a whole three dollars for remedial learning.

Definition, thickie –

A government term for someone who cannot read or write. Garrett, ith his musical background was going to call them trumbies  (see - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/11/3064081.htm  ) but some Wong said that wasn’t white and therefore would be racist.

Could that ever lead to bother?

Some Australians who can still read (roughly three prerequisites, skill, inclination, time, to do so) believe it could.

It was distressing to hear a literacy/numeracy disadvantaged bloke decry his lack of opportunity, declaim that he’d, nonetheless, never been out of work, while insisting that lots of blokes would do perfectly well in the ‘trades’ without reading/figuring skills.

Delroy, as usual, steered that and further discussion away from any meaningful level while overtly agreeing with the poor sod.

Which just goes to prove that, INDEED, a person can DEMONSTRABLY be a tremendous thickie while earning good money in a relatively socially critical occupation.

 (Oh, I have a bit of concern about the ABC and their collective literacy standards. For example, the news girl has to read a script supplied, one assumes, by a qualified/accredited journalist.  Reporting that Libyans being fired on with live ammunition, then shot at with bullets and killed by gunfire is a sort-of technically accurate but rather long-winded overkill. Not only does it demand editing but leaves an impression that the journo isn’t quite up to the job in so many ways.)

As to the assertion that ‘trades’ are the highest level to which a thickie could aspire – such does not explain the number of ‘em dotted throughout society.

Could nepotism be the cause?

Are those of the ‘professional’ class allotted scribes if they belong to the right secret society?

These days trades and professions in certain critical disciplines and industries have become somewhat melded.

‘Australia’ has typically ignored or derided the European, merit based, approach to industry accreditation and skills classification - which tends to reinforce the cynical view that our decisionmakers are outstandingly stupid, clannish, discriminatory dolts hellbent on systematically destroying decent education – firstly by diluting its quality from pre-school onwards – then by denying the client of this excessively costly and defective process the very merits of bothering to stick it through.

It seems that education itself is no longer a pathway to status in Australia.

Being born into a well paced family works.

Having the right parent in the right business who can provide their child a job is a guarantee to a career

Any form of nepotism will do, the lodge, a union, some church or other, someone in government or a ‘good government job’ – blackmail.

If there is one damned good reason to create a republic it is to rid ourselves of this darkest perfidious aspect of the old empire.

Until we do every one of you who has succeeded here has had to swim against the unseen current of this inequity.

Ms Gillard, as does Ms Bligh, tells us to ‘keep looking forward’ never ‘look back’.

I say bullshit to that.

Age may not always offer wisdom but most certainly does provide experience.

History, and the ability to read it, offers wisdom and experience – else the human race would never have needed to learn to read, write, and figure sums.

What could happen when a population suffers the adversity of ignorance and exploitation to a cause they cannot understand?

It happened to a mob of people in South Africa just over a century ago.

They copped curry simply for being brave, situationally unaware, and mainly because they were there to be exploited.

They were conned into engaging in a war of attrition with Queen Victoria’s army.

Vicky, having led a good protected life was canny enough to fall off her perch a few months before her star-general anticipated Hitler’s Germany by setting up concentration camps.

Genocide by default is still genocide and Kitchener oversaw that genocide by pulling exactly the same cheap stunt our politicians pull constantly.

‘Plausible deniability’ -

He refused to visit the camps and unusually for such a control freak micro-manager – delegated the paperwork to his subordinates.

Enough of that

In - http://calligulashorse.blogspot.com/2011/03/consequence-of-untrammelled-lunacy-or.html#comments –

You met Delia Dooley, future premier of NSW.

Here’s a letter from her grandfather and my reply to him below –

“Calligula old chap, Herr Dooley here. Look, all I try to point out in my comments to this and other blogs is the elephant in the room – you are doing all this blogging in the comfort of a liberal democracy. Here’s where I struggle with your (professed) ideology.
If you do succeed in fomenting revolution against the evil forces of capital what will replace the system of participatory democracy that underpins the liberal democratic model you appear to despise?
If it is substantially the same system of democratic society then how do you ensure the same evil forces of capital do not simply assume control of the Parliament democratically and return society to a capitalist model?
If it is not the same system of democratic society how do you ensure we do not become enslaved by a totalitarian model?
Answer these questions and you might be viewed as more than a middle class navel gazing society.”

G’day Graham,

That elephant in the room told me the other day that he’s become typecast and jaded.

He wants location work and some fresh air.

He’s been talkin’ with that Rush fella about a role in a remake of “Passage To India”.

He does enjoy rolling about with a good, sweaty, memsahib or three.

But what professed ideology of mine are you talking about?

The only ideology I have is that the peasants always get the chop.

My life EXPERIENCE has ably demonstrated why that is, a fact supported by lots of boring reading.

At our humble workplace we simply hate exploiters.

Some exploit for ideological reasons – some just to make an extra dollar – some because they enjooooy doing it.

Very few set out to exploit others for the good of the exploited.

Such is, shall we say, counterintuitive – a bit of a no-brainer.

The way I see it aligns with what the ABC told me recently – that near half our population is functionally illiterate.

I read the cause and effect of that to mean the fact of that was planned and the result intended.

The really interesting bit was the talking heads telling me that despite the appallingly bad literacy/numeracy standards – these millions were mostly quite intelligent people.

What happens to intelligent people in a literacy/numeracy based society if they are denied outlets for their intelligence?

Well Bucko – they become adept at operating in ways alien to the mainstream.

They become somewhat FERAL.

Since Homo-Sapiens is the most dangerous predator this planet has evolved and since an intelligent, feral human might be exponentially more dangerous than the average couch-potato – then several millions of ‘em are likely gearing up for their chance.

I don’t know where you rest your tired little head every night and what security you have in place or how rapidly your local walloper reacts when something is clawing at your door – but not too far away from us is a tiny part of a strip all along the East Coast Hinterland.

It is something like a dispersed mega-city yet it lacks almost every sort of urban amenity or facility.

There are all sorts living there – salt of the earth most of  ‘em, I’m sure.

But some of them are right mean bastards and where they live are no-go-zones for any sort of authority.

Funny thing about it is how difficult it is for the wallopers to keep track of them and their transactions.

For some reason they buy with cash and rarely write anything down

When justice need be applied they usually resort to what Breaker Morant called ‘Rule 303’

.

So Gra , old pin, if I’m gazing at any navel – or pit of any sort it is one that definitely does exist.

I’m not sure if you consider yourself a capitalist at all. Perhaps you simply enjoy a good stir.

But I tend not to blame any political ideology – just the amoral suckholes who set themselves up for winners of the compulsorily enforced raffles they pretend are elections.

Australia has always had punitive governance systems roughly based on the Rum Corps.

The modern ‘beneficiaries’ of that corrupt system are no less cross grained and compromised as their forefathers - so it is no wonder that their efforts to dumb down anything that risks touching their cosy tontine is written by them out of existence.

Hence they write out education.

Hence they write out a reasoned ballot.

Hence they write IN populism and the fifteen second sound grab

Hence they debase their own standards (what they ever were) to the same level as the illiterate masses they pretend to manipulate.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

By God it’ll be a bloody bunfight when the cack does hit the fan.

Recent historical precedent – South Africa, 1898 - 1903



“CAN A COCKROACH DRIVE A CAR” or “Why is it every time we publish something, (sh)it happens?”

CATEGORIES –

The Occult

Reverse necromancy

Philosophy

Cause and effect

The ‘Dunning Kruger Effect’

Drink a glass of milk with your prozac

Buy your DIY AlFoil Cap Kit at the ‘DACKs R’ US’, franchise, soon opening near YOU

Do not, repeat, do not, buy a kick start Harley if you are a ‘bad back’ pensioner

Governments make laws whenever they see a buck

Author – Arthur

Seems that whenever we publish something – it happens.

We published an article about bees a few months back – bingo, we have the invasion of the slightly aggressive hornets.

Score -

Hornets – 2

Calligula’s Horse – 0

But what the hell, even hornets have a right to protect their nest.

Yesterday, Django wrote that item about getting out on a limb.

Dawn today, the demented widow next door expresses her political view by having her favourite team of chain-saw murderers in for a bit of a pruning session.

She’s made it plain that she’s a Christian and therefore has domain over he beasts of the field, fish of the sea, fowls of the air and most importantly to any goddamned twig out of place or blade of grass that displeases her.

For a person who claims to be a caring gardener she seems to have a sicko approach to the welfare of the local flora.

Of course, it isn’t all her own patch that’s being culled. It’s her neighbour’s trees copping the bother.

Oh, hang on. You think I’m bellyaching because a mob of chain-saw toting maniacs are attacking OUR trees, right?

No. Wrong. That’ll happen next week.

It is 2.30 pm, they’ve been at it all day over the other side of her property overseeing the chain-saw frenzy up in a mango tree that almost made it to its 100^th birthday.

Yeah. I know the bitch hypocrite can do “whatever she wants on her side of the fence”.

Heard her say that to the boss last time he tried to reason with her.

When I was a kid there were square miles of little housing commission houses and worker’s cottages surrounded by nothing but parched, dead grass and chainlink fences.

Walking down the street you could often see for quite some distance.

If it hadn’t been for all those bloody fences getting point to point around this four-square town on a pushie would have been an easier chore.

We used to jokingly call ‘em – ‘fields of fire’ – ‘cos that’s exactly what they looked like and unfortunately sort-of were.

These were (usually) the dwellings (blockhouses?) of the ‘returned soldiers’ (who at least had an excuse), the strange, those who usually hated kids.

There would be the occasional oasis amongst this desert, people of another generation or attitude.

The ubiquitous mango, Queensland nut trees, citrus and passionfruit  grown by people willing to self-interestedly share the fruit of overburdened gardens for the simple reason they’d never eat the lot themselves.

In fact that’s exactly what used to be next door to the office. The old bloke was a bookie who’d do silly things at xmas like fill his old wooden trailer with watermelons packed in ice.

The local kids (including me) would be around there like flies the second they saw his old Ford Customline tow that trailer into his yard.

But he and his dear wife have been long gone.

Now there are few kids, no trailer, no ice – oh except that ice with which she packs what passes for her heart.

It is now 4.20pm and what I thought was the old over the fence demand “cut it back, haaaard” from that greenie next door was something else.

This time it was the execution order. One hundred years of growth snuffed out just-like-that because like the shell-shocked and paranoid of a past generation she likes a clear view from her little peep-holes.

It’ll probably be our turn next week.

There’s a tree planted outside where I make the coffee.

Beautiful view really.

Through the security screen it sort of looks like a corner of a Japanese garden, ferns down below and these tiddly vines everywhere.

Best part is it blocks the view over next door.

But like I said, it’s a fair bet that there’ll be another dawn strike in the next week or so.

Of course she won’t knock on the door or even phone to let us know when the next chain-saw massacre is on.

Nope, that’s not her style.

In fact she’s really quite consistent. Sprays agri-chemicals she steals from work over hell’s half acre, grows what our dear Gov would call noxious weeds then bellyaches through a third party to her neighbours that they should pay for their removal for her benefit.

She’ll tell off the least crazed of “Team Massacre” to come over and let us know what’ll be goin’ down ten seconds before they start.

This time the Boss is borrowing Plonker Riley’s twin Rottweilers for the week.

They’re normally quiet cuddly guys but for some reason go completely troppo at the sound of a whipper snipper.

These are the only dogs I know with kill-marks tattooed on their butts.

So sometime next week the chain-saw fiend from hell will knock on the office door at about 6 am.

What he doesn’t know is that there will be no humans behind that door – only two fierce hellhounds that don’t bark; they don’t bark at all, but they hate two-stroke motors with a vengeance.

By the time we arrive at ten or so the wee puppies will have boned up on their chain-saw disassembly manual – starting with the bit about dealing with the operator/owner.

Of course she’ll have her bloody minded way, the tree will be pruned and in about two weeks the Boss will be getting complaints about me, Arthur, perving through HER open bathroom window (YUCK) while he’s making coffee for smoko.

She’s a deep thinker, this one.

I suppose you’re wondering about the title?

Well, she can drive a car.

It’s up to you to decide whether she’s a cockroach.

What has us all bamboozled though –

When we say bees – someone gets stung

Trees – one beautiful old oxygen producer/carbon absorber gets the chop.

So how about that squeezer,Greg. He owes more money around town than the US treasury.

How about all those greedy bastards out there supporting the likes of Greg and the annoying self-centred, creature next door.

Some call their sort ‘oxygen thieves’ – and guess what?

They are right.

And guess what?

There are millions of ‘em out there.

None of us in this office ‘believe’ in ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ mainly because it is squeezers like Greg and the harridan next door out there making money from people’s gullibility.

There is a ‘stream’ through life.

Actions leave skid marks.

Skid marks leave a visible trail and a certain amount of pollution.

In a real society concerned about the environment the ‘system’ would provide effective and timely ‘stop’ notices for stupid people destroying their neighbours trees.

Interstitial suckholes like ‘Greg’ should be pruned instead.

And their useless associates polluting life with their bad attitude, thoughtless actions and mere presence should at least attract a ticket whenever they choose to do, what they so often do.

A good place to start would be here in front of the office.

We decided the new owners of the fish and chip shop over the road had turned into a meths lab when some of the local constabulary ARRIVED with little packets under their arms and LEFT without anything at all.

Then when normal cooking smells turned to a pong of burning bakelite steeped in boiling turpentine we really began to wonder what the hey they were up to.

But that’s okay. Maybe the just never change their grease.

No. It’s the dickheads who leave their 4WD shitboxes parked out front running at an idle of 6000 revs – their ‘free air’ running for half an hour while their vomit is warmed up inside.

Compared to them the meths lab or whatever it is – is just neighbourhood ‘colour’.

In a way it is much better, leastways one helluva lot more interesting than it used to be.

When I was a kid that shop turned out fish and chips. Everyone took ‘em home to get sick there.

These days they’re rolling in the gutter and speaking in tongues (only way I can describe it) before they even start eating.

Just thank the f—king stars that all I have to do is make the occasional coffee and churn out the odd sit-rep like this.

“THAT ARTHUR WILL HAVE US ALL IN THE DOO-DOO IF HE KEEPS SPEAKING THE TRUTH”

CATEGORIES –

Political correctness

Political expedience

Politics of hate

Politics of cowardice

Politics

What we need to do to escape notice

What we should do to keep our job

Never attract the attention of wowsers

How to avoid control freaks

Staying alive

Narcisso-psychopaths in the workplace

Why should we sweat just because a hothead commandeered the blog?

If they keep behaving this way – then why were Hitler and Milosevic wrong??

Keep your head down. It has to stop someday.

If you think it’s bad now – watch out after the next ‘election’

Sorry Tony – he’s ONLY the teaboy

Google search – ‘Contacts – give the LNP a BIG FAT CHEQUE’

Author – Django Reinhardt, Associate Editor

Arthur has strong opinions such as may not readily be tolerated by those with whom he finds fault.

We sacked him when the complaints started rolling in after that last article but he refused to give back the office keys – turned up this morning by walking THROUGH the door – then ignored everyone while he brewed up some dynamite coffee. Looks like we’ve all been sent to Coventry for a few days.

(Which in a tiny way puts shit on Abbott’s drivel about the lower deck not wanting to work.)

We know that Australia has avoided the worst of the ‘Global Economic Crisis’™ and that somehow ‘Halliburton’ and a few pivotal firms of that nature (the gods be praised) have escaped the sort of ‘perfidious nastiness’ that has happened (surprise, surprise) to all those firms that innocent ‘mom and dad investors’ invested with.

Whichever way you look at it - that Kevin Rudd had to go because he so effectively managed a counter to WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN TO US.

On his watch Australia had to deal with an immediately unfolding financial disaster.

Somehow the dill pulled our coals out of that fire without scorching his digits.

They reckon Kev was a workaholic, a hard driver, a perfectionist, abusive and arrogant to his staff when he found them lacking.

Someday someone will dig up some documents proving he was full-pelt against a workload that usually kills.

Someday, someone will give him credit for that and for burning himself out in the process.

He was up against a crazy opposition that refused to believe it was no longer ‘in government’ and demonstrated that by staging a rather counterproductive, internal coup.

They wanted a ‘strong-man’ to ‘lead’ their shower.

Apparently intelligent or principled men don’t count.

Meanwhile this Queensland boy still had to deal with his own team AND the unprecedentedly hateful politics within the factions of his own ‘team’.

Is it any wonder that the lad lost it occasionally?

Is it any wonder he might have needed a break?

Then when the poor bugger believed he could leave the detail of much needed taxation reform to number-crunchers and policy geeks within governance – his own team staged a coup upon him.

Unbelievable – and we’ve all been wearing the consequences ever since.

This, above, is the background to my logic as I write this article by way of determining Arthur’s fate.

Yet whatever I write SHALL be accurate and truthful according to the code of journalism.

So what are we dealing with here?

One half of the team want to sack Arthur.

The others want to give him a medal for saying what needed to be said for a long time.

We decided the only way to go was to leave the decision to a conservative minded person who would make a decision about Arthur’s fate according to Mr. Abbott’s rules.

One thing we’re not short of here is conservative voters – or people who claim to have voted that way in accord with their own ideals.

Put it this way. The incumbent LNP federal blonk has been road-tested and found wanting.

Let’s say he’s almost impossible to start, is unreliable and his steering is definitely awry.

Second last time in his office he fell asleep in meeting.

The last time his chair broke under him (fact) and as he dragged himself up out of the wreckage, he asked – “Where was I?”

So we can’t ask him.

The state LNP was a cop before he put on his suit. He just doesn’t have anyone in his office except his er, associates.

He wouldn’t let us ask him.

But down at the local pub we found a bloke who said he voted for both of ‘em.

So we did it on the cheap and asked him.

His name is ‘Greg’.

Firstly we asked him a few questions to establish his CV.

Things like –

Name –

“Greg Creedey”

Address –

“Chrissakes, I lived next door to you for thirty years”

Occupation –

 “Aaah – used to be a clerk in ‘Justice’ until –“

Until what? –

 “Never mind”

And you vote conservative? –

“Yep. They look after me.”

How? –

Grinning - “’Cos I vote for the winners here in town.”

So you’re right into winning these days, then? –

“Yep. I like winning. Make my living from winning.”

How? –

 “ Well, I keep investing what I make into bets on horses and sports.”

Okay, fine –

You agree with Abbott about coming down on CentreLink clients? –

 “Oh Yeah. No problem – scum of the earth.”

But aren’t you a CentreLink client?-

 “Yeah, but I’m on a disability pension; that’s different.”

Explain what you mean –

“Well, I worked in Justice – the courthouse as a clerk, then as an assistant magistrate until I was sa – became redundant. About eight years set me up though.”

So if that set you up why are you on a pension? –

 “Oh, I blew all me dough on this be – on an unfortunate investment and did me back in just after. Didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

And now you vote LNP because you hate bludgers? –

“Yep. If they don’t want to work and don’t vote for the party that gives them the best break in work they should move aside for people who can make an opportunity from what is offered from the system.”

You’re serious about that, aren’t you? –

“Break eggs to make omelette. You know the score.”

How long have you been ‘retired’? –

 “Since you ask – about thirty years.”

Your age? –

“Ummmm – fifty six”

Okay, we can call you a mature age disabled person whose hobbies are calculating probabilities and games of chance.

“What?”

Like another pot and Bundy chaser, Greg? –

 “No worries.”

Anyway, didn’t want to intrude into your personal life but what do you reckon about Arthur’s article? –

 “Wasn’t Arthur that fat kid we used to beat up? He wrote this? Harleys for everyone, even women?

Tell him to get off. How about the resale value of my Harley if government brought in a scheme like that?

He’s causing trouble again, isn’t the big shithead. Why don’t you sack the bludger?”

Come on Greg you worked for ‘Justice’, you know the score – ‘put yourself in the other fellow’s shoes’, et cetera.

For instance, you have elderly parents. Wasn’t Arthur sticking up for them? –

“I see ‘em every few months. Phone the old bloke once a week, the old woman’s in a home now and the government picks up most of the tab for that anyway so what’s the problem?”

Well, Greg it might be your problem soon. The people you vote for want to put you out to work in amongst a bunch of other ‘initiatives’ including sorting out ‘problem gambling’. They’ve got the laborites on side about that too.

“Well, they can’t make a bloke work if he can’t work an’ my bad back stops me from working. I make my money my own way and you know, I know, gambling wins are tax free.”

Okay Greg, for the record then – you reckon Arthur’s a bit of a bludger because he’s got a soft job with us – that he should get the sack for stirring the possum too much in his article? –

“Yep. That’s right. He always was a know it all lazy prick. Even that bike he rides has got electric start.”

Oh well, I’d better get back to work if that’s all you want to say.

Oh, by the way is that your new bike out there?

“Yep. 58 Panhead, custom hardtail frame, fully blueprinted.”

No electric start, I see.

“Nope. At eighty cubes she’s a bitch to kick over too.”

Okaay Greg, thanks for being honest. I reckon you’ve said enough to help with our decision.

Seeya then.

So what motivates the conservative minded ‘man in the street’?

Clearly age old principles seem less important than they used to.

He wants Arthur sacked – not because he disagreed with what Arthur had written.

He couldn’t disagree because he refused to read past the bit about free Harley motorcycles.

He knows Arthur and admits to roughing him up when they were kids.

He opines that Arthur was and is a know-it-all and a bit of a softie merely on the basis of his riding a high status motorcycle with an electric starting system.

He claims to dislike Arthur still and urges us to dismiss him from employment.

A reasonable person would suspect that Greg just wants to cause harm to Arthur any way he can.

Meanwhile he appears to have a deal of difficulty differentiating their respective status and merit.

Leaving aside value judgements about their occupations, activities and circumstances, Arthur appears to be clearly ahead as a ‘doer’ while Greg’s own commentary tends to place him as a ‘user’ and ‘taker’.

Arthur sees the world his way and doesn’t mind saying his piece.

Greg, perceiving Arthur as having temporarily put himself out on a limb has, to all intents and purposes, volunteered someone else to cut the whole tree down for him.

The episode does raise questions.

For every Arthur and Kev out there putting themselves out on a limb there are countless thousand Gregs killing each other for an opportunity to hack away at that tree trunk.

Arthur would agree and relate it simply. Believe I’ll save him the trouble.

Here goes.

People like Greg are wannabes. Most importantly they wannabe on top of the pile.

They wannabe on top of the pile, any pile, at any cost.

They judge everything and everyone by their own values.

Which means they operate entirely within an inflexible, self-imposed, adversarial system of their own making.

They mistake their own aggression for assertiveness and condemn assertiveness and forthrightness in others as aggression.

They deem anyone touching upon a matter within their notice as a competitor –

and cannot accept that a person walking the same road might be an ally.

It may well be true that the populace gain the government they deserve.

Who will government complain to when they finally gain the populace they deserve?

Or like Greg – is that a bit too deep for you?

Hey Arthur. 50% pay rise starting tomorrow.