1941! A great year for Ford. Ever since, it’s been downhill. (Editor)
1941 Ford light truck with Boyes Anti tank Rifle. (a precursor to GPS)
You’d think the closing down of Ford’s Broadmeadows plant would be an opportunity for this slightly left of centre mouthpiece to have a go at the Federal Government. You’d expect a diatribe directed at some of the politicians who wiped their hands of sixty years of auto manufacturing and just walked away. Those same politicians who’ve never done a real job, and talked of ‘lifters and leaners’. Well then, we’ve got a surprise for you, we’re just not interested. And in fact ‘WE’, the editorial department would like to congratulate Joe Hockey in particular. Joe proved that you can rise through the ranks of student politics, stand for nothing, listen to your lobbyists and generally, kill manufacturing to get the top job in Washington. Joe would tell you that he’s worked bloody hard to attain this distinction, and we , (the taxpayers) should feel glad that we’ve given ‘Big Joe’ (as they call him in the states) the lifting he needed to get a sinecure for life.
The Flathead V8. Unsurpassed beauty!
Rather no manufacturing so that we know our place. And for planned economies, education, health and environment, we need more people like Joe. As evidenced by all the people sleeping rough in the streets of Melbourne, his hand is staying the tiller of destiny. A guidance to the eternal truth. Get rich, or kill yourself. The car industry required more federal funding. Every other country on earth does it. But we’re pure. And our economic rationalist pollies who’ve never filled out a BAS form know better. And besides, Real Estate is what makes this country great. The taxpayers should not fund failing private enterprise.
Pollies pretending to shop at the local supermarket.
But rent-seeking enterprises are different. That’s why we’re intrigued by the call from Coles for the police force to assist at the automatic checkouts. What a wonderful use of taxpayers money. Here’s a company that has shred its staff, caught dairy farmers in a death spiral, screwed its suppliers, and indulged in a duopoly for years and years. Some might say well learnt behaviour akin to that demonstrated by the major banks. And now with staff, both literally and metaphorically skeletonised, they’re asking the police force for assistance. Picture this, rather than; ‘product enquiry, on aisle seven‘. It’ll be ‘suspected shoplifter area twelve’, and the combined might of ‘Victoria’s finest‘ swooping on the kiddy trying to knock off a mars bar. It’s the thin end of the shopping wedge, if the thin blue line is required to keep the integrity of checkouts intact. There’s no sense of irony clearly by Coles directors, who we must assume get paid banking sized salaries. They’ve created the problem, eschewed the public and like public transport paramilitary who run stations.
Welcome the new checkout Gestapo!
New Checkout Control Officers trialling new uniforms
Three years ago after a sojourn in Yuendumu, Cecil and I remarked, “ Ya know mate, all this militarisation of life in the Alice, armed guards at the checkouts, police patrolling the streets, the incarceration. If we don’t watch it, this aboriginal stuff, (the stuff meted out to the non white locals) will become mainstream’. Well, it’s happened.. And we’re letting it happen. Because enough of us don’t give a stuff!