It all began, with good intentions. SCOMO invited an ‘ungrateful’ and ‘bad-mannered’ Australian of the year to his barby.

Trying to prune a pile of “stuff” (an ever-accumulating pile of “can’t bring myself to throw stuff away”) I came across this from 2014:

Turns out she and her squeeze didn’t like what was on the menu and suggested SCOMO ‘shove his barbecue tongs up his constituency’..

  (Another scintillating piece from our scribe from the distant north.  In this-un Frank asserts that in foreign affairs it’s a tangled web of alliance and counter alliance that makes no sense at all. Perhaps he’s talking about the luminaries who lead publicity on Australia’s Covid policy messers, Kelly, Christiansen, Palmer and Roberts?  But there’s more. In Yuendumu, they’re in complete lockdown but free to come and go wherever they please. When is a lock-out not a lockdown you may ask? Only when it’s remote and in a realm of public policy as absurdist as the pan global alliances described hereafter. Is there a hereafter? You’ll have to ask the aforementioned big four, luminaries in the Australian body politic that only with some Grace we might Tame. The editors would also like to apologise for the formatting as Frank sent his latest missive as a coded and locked format, which our experts are unable to un-lock. We live in an un-lockable era that is either locked-out, up or down. Frank writes…..

“Are you confused about what’s going on in the Middle East? Let me explain.

By Aubrey Bailey, Fleets, Hants

We support the Iraqi government in the fight against the Islamic State. We don’t like IS but IS is supported by Saudi Arabia, whom we do like. We don’t like President Assad. We support the fight against him but not IS which is also fighting against him.

Scomo says to her; ” I’ve had a gutful of uppity and ungrateful sheilas this last year, here’s a wad of cash and can you go and do a Tudgey’s secretary and “be a good girl and just quit yer complainin’

We don’t like Iran but Iran supports the Iraqi government against IS. So, some of our friends support our enemies and some of our enemies are our friends and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies whom we want to lose but we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win. 

If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less. And all this was started by us invading a country to drive out terrorists who weren’t actually there until we went in to drive them out. 

Do you understand now? 

So, you may have noticed in between the Covid-19 and Australian Open tennis news that in the Middle East, shenanigans continue in the same vein as described 8 years ago by Aubrey Bailey.

Islamic State (IS) have attacked a Syrian Jail to free IS prisoners. They are being fought by U.S. backed Syrian Kurdish led forces. After Yemeni Houthi rebels mounted a drone attack on a key oil facility in Abu Dhabi, the Saudi-led coalition retaliated with an air raid on a Yemeni Prison. Iran is being accused of smuggling weapons to Yemen. Meanwhile in Afghanistan IS are mounting terrorist attacks on the Taliban whose assets have been frozen. Do you understand now?  

Are you confused about what’s going on in remote Aboriginal communities in regards to Covid-19? Let me explain.

Scomo then invited his mate over, and together they tried to tempt Grace and her squeeze with some Tim-Tams and Jaffa- cakes, but Grace, (who is uppity and ungrateful and ill- mannered) wouldn’t have a bar of it’, so on Grace’s suggestion they went to a local pub.

Up to 8 p.m. yesterday (25^th Jan) there had been a total of 142 cases of Covid-19 in Yuendumu.
Yuendumu is in lock-out. They carry out “targeted testing”. No one has come to my door to test me since the Yuendumu outbreak almost a month ago, obviously I haven’t been targeted. There are no roadblocks preventing people from entering Yuendumu. Close contacts are asked to isolate in petri-dish houses with a dozen or so residents.
In a nut-shell, the authorities that should be pro-active are merely reactive and persist in blaming the residents for the dire situation which they triggered by slacking off on border controls.

And then there is the matter of Scomo (our Prime Minister, Scott Morrisson) being snubbed by the 2021 Australian of the year Grace Tame.

Turns out the pub, (Would ya flamin believe it?) was out the back of buggery, and there was NO BEER! Not even a shandy on-hand for the sheila’s in the lady’s lounge!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwT3om4hJ9w

Australia is divided on this. Myself I consider that photo-opportunity Scomo, that virtuoso of obfuscation got what he deserved. It reminds me of when a former Prime Minister, photo-opportunity Howard, that virtuoso of the dog whistle, visited Louise Barry in Hospital. Louise, a victim of the 2005 London bombings, spoiled John Howard’s moment in front of the cameras.
She linked the bombings to our actions in Iraq.

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته

(alsalam ealaykum warahmat allah wabarakatuh)

Frank

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jUvhJ_Tgzw

That’s when SCOMO had enough and told her; ” Listen girl, you’re an ungrateful little bitch for all I’ve done for you’. And Grace said to him, ‘you’re just another fucken old white-man who’s outta touch”. They then had a blue. Good thing the ABC was on-hand to blame Covid and the locals who weren’t even civil enough to have a beer. PM reckons ‘Grace needs to be taught manners, and learn to behave’, As for the locals? I arks ya?

The Electric Light Orchestra- Confusion

Housing affordability? Isn’t that the Elephant in the room?

Dear reader,

We return to our documentary, two noble individuals, Ces and Quent, stuck miles below the desert sands of Maralinga, waiting, waiting ‘refugee-like’ for a determination. For their freedom? That would be too simple. Just waiting to see if …(Godot-like)…after all their struggle, anything makes sense. 

( read about it in their autobiography “ Mein Kampfenwagen’, or the bowdlerised version, Jayco’s campervans will be as good as it gets for the two generations of Australian’s who can’t afford a house in any Australian Capital City’). 

Having a roof over your head is a luxury many can’t afford, because they’re lazy.

Whether they can emerge into the bright sunlight freed from Australia’s second-most powerful woman Sophie, ‘Is that a husband of mine who has been gifted pre-selection for a safe Liberal regional seat”? Mirabella, and her destiny as Xi’s chosen one to: “Make promise good for inevitable annexation of southern lands for optimisation of twenty-first five year plan’, is up in the air, or buried deep underground.

Five year plans? That’s what state government’s call public-private partnerships, in which the taxpayer always picks up the tab. Who’s tab? Don’t ask, it’s none of our business. That’s what rent- seeking is all about. Business knows best. Just ask Robert Maxwell, allegedly he may be dead, but he’ll tell you about “Life in the fast Ghislaine” and it aint all dead-ends and overpasses. If you’re in it long enough you can run a toll-road.  From thereon the lights are always green, but we digress.    It’s like  asking Exxon and Transurban to pay tax.  Which is like asking an Uighur to take back his organ..Or masterplan?  It’s all heads up, or heading back to Sophie. 

That’s why many Australian’s prefer to “sleep-out’!

So satrap yourself in, and wonder why there aint a Federal ICAC, because after all is said and done, bit like housing affordability, it’s all too hard. And as a consequence it  belongs in the other basket. Not the deplorable basket, but the ‘all too hard basket’. 

We return to our stygian encounter between Sophie and Dutto..

‘Isn’t that Terry Lewis on the phone”? She laughed as Dutto gave an involuntary flinch.  Though Terry had been dead for years, she knew that an instinctive response was deeply embedded in the Qld police DNA.  It was like being tasered for jay-walking in Victoria. it was deep and it was intrinsically tied to the cultural norms. What were the cultural norms we hear you say? 

Xenophobia, smugness, insecurity, anti-intellectualism, cultural cringe?

Homeless people like to be close to public transport.

Or is it all just the personification of Norm, the good ol days archetype of the ‘Life be in it” adverts, now older than Sandy Stone and more insecure since compulsory superannuation and the looming catastrophe of a twilight spent in a special accomodation home dawns as a Kafkian reality.  We may never know. But re-assured, if there’s money involved, Sophie will know. And she’ll make it WORK! It’s a sort of nation-building on a micro scale. And, not to make a too fine a point of it , best left to those who understand how to run government. Though Australia has slipped down the international corruption index, it’s comforting to know that no one in government is unduly worried. Cos being an international index it’s not worth worrying about anyway… 

Dutto recoiled, and then countered; ‘ You’d know that Sophie, that’s why your old man has got a shoe-in for a seat in Federal Parliament it’s all about who you know’?

Sophie recoiled at the suggestion that her husband had been slotted into a safe federal seat just on connections.  She was about to mention all the public spirited things he’d done since marrying her with Bronwyn. Such as taking out the rubbish, wearing an ex-military uniform on Anzac Day, driving the kids to swimming, looking sombre and reverential at the Shrine, and standing in the queue at the footy, when Dutto opted for a new line. 

Homeless people like to be grounded

‘Is it then? You surprise me Sophe, but then you’ve always been full of surprises’, 

‘You’ll see’… and for further insult, she spat out…  ‘Baldy”. 

Such vitriol had no effect on Dutto.  In this respect he was impervious. All those years as a Queensland copper had made him harder than tungsten and armour-plate. Call him “Potato-head”, “baldy’, ‘chrome dome’? Anything? And it was useless. Words just bounced off him. In that regard he was just like ‘Fortress Australia’, impregnable. And feared by would-be law- breaking refugees.  And the more intellectual and learned your riposte was, he , as custodian of the culture wars and cultural norms he would put you down.  Not by a witty riposte, not by a well rehearsed slither of invective, but a flat and phlegmatic NOTHING! 

If you make the grade you can afford a home and be eligible for an AO

In the end ‘Dutto’s’ strength was in NOTHING!  He was after all the embodiment of the great Australian “NOTHINGNESS”! And for that we should be made to feel GRATEFUL!

If you want to get ahead it helps if you know the right people

But Sophie, as Fair Work Commissioner,  would have none if it, and returned his ‘Medusa-gaze’ with a spitting epithet, “ at the end of the day Dutto, you are nothing more than a Queensland copper, and you’ll always be a Queensland copper, and because of that you’re more endangered than the Great Barrier Reef…and I’m the CROWN OF THORNS, and after I’ve finished with you, you’re in for a BIG SURPRISE”!

And if you work hard and know the right people you can buy a home wth harbour views!

What surprise has Sophie got in store for Dutto? Will it be a Pandoras box of trouble or just another surprise of the God anointed kind? Find out in our next exhultative episode, “No Prizes for surprises”, or….. “Surprise party, I had no idea you were actually DEAD’!

Flt Lieut F.Barda, (Croix de Guerre, Legion d’Honneur, Pour le Merite, Iron Cross 2nd Class, DFC, MC, DSO (with bar) inspects the special Corona transport capsule in the fuselage of his Tiger Moth ” Spirit of Depletion” before making another ‘RAT-drop’ over remote communities. Rat- Droppings have become ” part and parcel” of dealing with the Corona Scourge in outback communities.

Another stellar dispatch from our correspondent from the distant, but not incomprehensibly distant near north. In this piece Frank suggests to us that the acronym YLEMCRG stands for something completely different from what we thought it was. ‘ You’ll Love everything money can reasonably get’, an initiative by the N.T Government to drive enterprise bargaining and start up businesses via the collective wisdom of the Fair Work Commission and their stellar representative Sophie, (‘is that another federally funded sinecure coming my way?’) at Yuendumu. Though there is no work for locals, this initiative plans to instil business best practise and reward for enterprise as a core set of values for building better communities. Which doubtless is achieved on a daily basis by the innumerable NGO’s determined to turn the remote community into ‘rivers of gold’. So that the status-quo may never be changed, please read from this point wherein, for ‘Frank’s sakes’…vetted and approved via We-chat and our operatives in Beijing.

Frank writes, with deference to our friends in Sth and Nth Korea…

Meanwhile, down south, authorities at Tennis Australia have been alerted to the scourge of ‘free speech’ at the Australian Open.

굿데이 프렌즈

Someone defined the function of bureaucracy in a nutshell:

a)    To take credit

b)    To assign blame Depending on the outcome.

I’ll confine myself to bureaucracy, and try not to mention our politicians nor our Prime Minister in this Dispatch, as they already receive saturation exposure and put many Australians to sleep with their bullshit.

It was through an article in the Guardian, that I found out that we in Yuendumu have a Yuendumu local emergency management Covid response group. The article which relies in part on provided minutes (yes, they take minutes) of a YLEMCRG (!) meeting, also informed me that some of the close contacts from the initial outbreak who were evacuated into quarantine in Alice Springs, were flown back to Yuendumu on completion of their quarantine period. They returned without warning (Police and Health Clinic were not notified) and not tested on arrival and released into the community, only for them to be tested the following two days, and some found to be Covid positive.

In accordance with Public Safety Acts and Civic Compliance acts 23, 34, and 55 A, Wilful displays of “Freedom of Speech” were ruthlessly tracked down by Victoria Police and removed for the event.

In colloquial Australian this is known as a “fuck up”.

When Wendy returned to Yuendumu, as a fully vaccinated “essential worker” and resident, on the Centre Bush Bus, she was RAT tested before being allowed on the bus. This is in sharp contrast to when Centre Bush Bus brought the three Covid positive passengers to Yuendumu resulting in the initial Yuendumu outbreak which set the cat amongst the pigeons.

Before Wendy was due to return from her holiday break, I spent an hour reading the NT’s Chief Medical Officer’s Covid-19 Direction (No.10): Directions to lock out Yuendumu and Yuelamu.
All 22 pages of it. Pages 15 to 22 are taken up by a Schedule of Essential workers who are allowed to enter Yuendumu. The list of enterprises and endeavours whose workers are considered “essential” includes:

‘Another Disruptor before arrest and incarceration via prisoner exchange with facilities to the distant north have been processed via the Glorious Organ Transplant Initiative of the eighteenth Five Year Plan’, (ed: Peoples Daily)

Fishmongers, liquor retailers, pet stores, faith leaders broadcasting services, port operations, blood banks, consular and diplomatic services, Commonwealth agency services including Australian Border Force, organisations that provide urgent services… including snake removal services. Enough is enough, suffice it to say the list includes just about everybody, except “unqualified” Aborigines.

The list brought great joy to me. Most pleasing of all was the inclusion of:
“… a member of Parliament or anyone required to ensure the function of the Legislative Assembly or Commonwealth Parliament.”

So you can you imagine my ecstatic reaction when sometime later, someone handed me the 14-page Biosecurity (Emergency Requirements- Remote Communities) Determination (No.1) 2022.

I was pleased to see the Commonwealth Government’s “essential activities” mirrored the NT’s “Essential workers” Schedule. I was however disappointed by the Feds omitting snake removal.

I’m much more optimistic about the light at the end of the tunnel. I think all these bureaucratic activities will stop the virus in its tracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnDcD7rtaV4

‘Prisoner prior to exchange and accredited (WBP) organ donation demonstrating degenerate tendencies, tattooing, non face- mask compliance, and tendency to Jay-Walk, (Victoria Police Confidential Report). ‘Degenerative free speech at the Australian Open and systemic flouting of Covid Public Safety Response Agenda”.

 

The Essential Worker Anthem 다음번까지 Frank

Tragic decision by the Johnson Govt to showcase the inaugural AUK-WARD meeting banquet with British Baked Beans. The subsequent explosion on untested Australian digestive systems was inflammatory.

An alternate venue, (and Menu) was found at Yarallumla for PM’s Barby.

We return to our description of a meeting between Australia’s most powerful man, ‘Dutto’ and his former aide, also very powerful in her own right, Sophie, ‘is that a professor in your back paddock’? Mirabella. With our heroes entwined, entombed and incognito, this could be their last chance. Will the dice roll in their direction? Or is the dice loaded? Or is the dice fluffy, hanging from the rear vision mirror of Sophie’s taxpayer funded Fair Work Commissioner car? Find out in the next implausibly improbable episode. Read on….

The two were in deep discussion.  They were particularly interested in the “ usefulness” and continued role of ‘Benny-boy’, who sat right behind us. And we pondered our fate. We all sat poised perilously high on perpendicular pillars placed prosaically parallel to a place perceptively pronounced in our penultimate paroxysm of our pending personal and professionally plausible predicament. 

Side-ways view of four most powerful people since the Yalta Conference determining that none amongst them were personally responsible for the baked beans incident nor the fall of Singapore.

Sophie was conferring with Dutto on the future of Australia’s, greatest soldier, (EVER) 

‘Yeah, but he’s changed, and I think  he knows too much’. Sophie tapped the butt of another sobrani as she methodically offered one to Dutto, ‘Perhaps he might be liquidated with em’. 

Four most powerful people in the South Pacific ‘per se’, at this point of time sign the AUK-WARD agreement and the Southern Pacific Economic White- paper, (SPEW) before enjoying the PM’s Barby.

Dutto accepting her offer, sniffed the cigarette and engaged his own lighter, a gold piece with “regards Twiggy” inscribed on the case, “What about the driver’? He looked at Terry who sat stone- like and impassive at the controls of the light rail conveyance. Terry didn’t flinch. But presumably he could hear the conversation as well. ‘He’s the one who picked you up didn’t he?  Does he know too much also’? .  Sophie turned towards us again, before blowing a perfect smoke-ring of blue-tinged vapour that lofted listlessly into the crepuscular gloom. “You could be right, when he picked us up he knew a bit about the 1950’s, and not much else, but I think he’s wise to the fact that we no longer represent the atomic energy commission and the government. As far as I can see, him seeing you , and Benny Boy with those idiots he’s perhaps a bit of a liability also”. 

Dutto nodded, and from his left hand breast pocket he produced a little notebook, Names? He commanded, Sophie interjected; “Oh I’ll tell you, but I can assure you thinking of the recent decision to appoint another military has-been  to a higher office, these people, are of no consequence.  But first let’s deal with the preliminaries.  I’ll liquidate them provided you give me the formula my agency had been looking for’.

‘Still working for Xi? I see’ , smiled Dutto.

Sophie was quick to counter with a savage; “ just like Queensland police in the old days everyone has their price”? 

PM’s barby was a great fancy dress occasion that ran to schedule without any stuff ups, ( attributed to PM being absent as he is at other crucial moments in Australian political and social life).

Dutto sneered, and flicked the ash from his lapel. Don be too cocky Sophie, Ive got a file on you as long as a waiting list for Covid Antigen testing. My mates in ASIO would be eager to air some dirty laundry, and by the looks of it, your laundry basket is pretty full’. 

‘Well then Dutto, Ive got a file from what you were up to in the good old days before Terry Lewis left the Queensland’s finest that’d make Prince Andrews anticipated memoirs look like a preamble to Noddy. As to what really happened, so don’t come the prim schoolboy wth me Dutto. You were happy to get involved at the start and didn’t care where the money was coming from’!

‘Yeah, but that was before your mate Andrew Robb sold the port of Darwin, that was a step too far and we’ve been back- pedalling ever since!

Another great quad leadership team, Noddy, Big- Ears, Mr Plod and Biggles save the people of Toy-town from the naughty non- law abiding Golly, (an anti Vaxxer from Queensland) who after all we’ve done for him, is still ungrateful!

Yeah right! Sophie changed her tone by back pedalling forward;  ‘long time you’ve ridden a bicycle Constable Dutton. Much reform with the  Qld Police force these days’? 

Dutto resented the constant slur Sophie made against the Queensland’s finest. It made Dutto’s dome glow more vividly in the pale light. . ‘There is if you have the right connections’, and sneering at Sophie, tossed a half drunk can of XXXX at her. It was a significantly Queensland-ish kinda way of showing disapproval.. 

Dutto’s can of FOURX, though corroded through intense radioactivity encountered at Maralinga is now part of “Preparing for war exhibition” at AWM.

What are Dutto’s connections? Will they be enough to save our heroes from Sophies MP40?  Or are they a prelude to something worse. Find out in our next plausibly implausible episode; ‘It’s a bald-head and a bald-faced lie that wont lie straight’, or, ‘Polish a chrome dome and it’ll out- shine what’s held within’ ….

Tweedledum encourages non infected to board last plane outta Yuendumu

Once again, our scribe from the not too near, but then again, reasonably distant north sends us an update on the unfolding crisis amongst the indiginies on our doorstop.  As the health dominoes fall and the measures taken collapse under the unyielding weight of the Covid Catastrophe. Nurses fall like flies, and Doctors unable to stem the onslaught, must walk away and accept that what is written in the sands is most probably illegible. A catastrophe of untold proportions simply through the fact that nobody will be left to tell the tale.

The airstrip at Yuendumu

Editors note: We at pcbycp are indebted to the editors of Sky News who’ve gladly lent their assistance on an effort to increase our flagging readership. Both Sky and the editors of pcbycp would like to express our deep regret that we were unable to graft a fragment of Australia’s stunning victory over a third world country in the Ashes, but nonetheless express the delight in the recent announcement by the Victorian Government that this state will be hosting the 2026 Commonwealth games. This event to be held in conjunction with the Asia Pacific Police games will be the first to  include, synchronised tasering, active jay walking arrests, domestic dispute intervention , and public order response activity as new events. We look forward to Victoria’s finest competing against the stellar greats Russia, China, and the Minnesota Police Department. And not to be forgotten our expected thrashing of Lesotho, Tanganyika, and Botswana, in the limited overs cricket completion. Advance Australia!

As a postscript to these wondrous forthcoming, “Nation Building events’ we return to our regular correspondent Frank, from up north. He writes;

Freunden,

Nonetheless in Yuendumu, cases of the virus now total 66 (9 more yesterday) and I’ve heard the Flying Doctor plane take off at least twice today.

Body-bag being airlifted out of Yuendumu under cover of whiteness

Frank

Frank and inspector Clewlis of Yuendemu police watch last plane outta Yoonda before lockdown.

Mrs Culthorpe our Tea-lady before her defilement as an intern in our nations parliament stands outside Australia’s highest office.

Dear reader, we return you to the  perilous journey being undertaken by our heroes Ces and Quent as they delve to get to the bottom of who or whom perpetrated a heinous act under their very noses in the corridors of the nations parliament. Still not able to find the penis-wielding oppressor who defiled their tea- lady Mrs Culthorpe. They seek in vain. But this vein has deep thrombosis. Like imagination in public policy, it is dead, moribund, atrophied, fossilised, desiccated, and doomed. With  no new evidence coming to light, they are plunged into the impenetrable dark. Captives to Australia’s second most powerful woman, now board member of the Fair Work Commission  is that Sophie, “who’s balls are they in the air’? Mirabella. Who defiled their tea- lady? What is Dutto doing astride a Special Public response vehicle on loan from the Victoria Police? And what is it they are suspended above,  miles beneath the desert sands of Maralinga? Is it too implausible to countenance? No less plausible than Coalition climate policy? We return to our stygian soliloquy’s in seconds flat as Sophie, stiletto’s in hand makes her way to a deep-down assignation with the head of Border Force, the Army and Australia’s future. 

Read on….

In the ether, without wind or atmospheric disturbance we could hear their conversation clearly. 

A giant of a man, demonstrates the power of Australia’s AUK-WARD pact in stemming an “Uppity” China.

We watched her tepee, bean-bag, rhombozoid silhouette, as it waddled towards the special response vehicle. We admired the halo of dull light reflecting off the dome of Dutto’s scone. And we listened as the stilettos tapped out her passage poised perilously above the pencil-thin girders and tracery of steel that held this rail track impossibly high above the grey-grim void and the subterranean city of the nether regions. 

Sophie stopped at the grill of the special response vehicle, and her head, craned upwards towards Dutto. He just stood there in the cupola, and neither flinched or offered her a greeting. He looked imperious and in his Border Force uniform of pure black and the lightning registers on his collars looked a force to be reckoned with. 

Sophie, ever the pugilist was the first to talk, she began the proceedings with a rhetorical flourish, contemptuous and off- hand, and drawing upon Dutto’s special powers as for who and what shall be allowed to enter into the sovereign borders of the world’s densest continent, gave a brief salute.  

 ‘I suppose you think i’ll say; ‘anyone for tennis?”.

Dutto harrumphed a monosyllable reply and a smile coursed across his reptilian features.  “Well timed as always Sophe, good to see you’ve got company’! He made a sneering glance in our direction. ‘Always knew at the end of the day you’d be at the back of this.  We’ve been busy since we last saw you. And I’ve gotta tell you China has been getting uppity’, 

Sophie holds and admires the uncut, “Prince of the Pilbara” diamond before an adoring crowd.  Later, (like all who encounter Sophie), it was cut to pieces

With the word,” Uppity”, Sophie stood back to get a better look at Dutto and then raising her hand towards him, ‘Well you’d better get used to it. It aint all bad. There’s reward for those who are prepared to, how shall I put it’? She raised her forefinger, the middle part encrusted with the most enormous Argyle diamond which glinted menacingly in the gloom. ‘There’s always fringe benefits for those prepared to make …. sacrifices’. 

‘Only you could be so,. transactional’, Dutto smiled again, ‘Sophie I presume’?  

Sophie smirked, that greedy smirk she usually preserved for the law professor in the back shed on her property or for when she got Bronwyn to book the helicopter for her wedding. 

Dutto smirked; ‘at you service my lady’. 

We were shocked it was so formal, more formal than Prince Andrew’s interview on telly and perhaps more thought provoking. ‘You took your time’, Dutto asked of Sophie,

‘ I thought you’d say that’! replied Sophie, ‘cos I was held up by red- tape and turning to us for emphasis, and held up by those’….. she paused for full effect… ‘Idiots” 

‘Shouldn’t be much trouble for longer’, Dutto quipped, ‘is that is that Benny-boy still with em’? 

Benny who sat beside us impassively and had been remarkably quiet, let out a short grunt. ‘That’s good, glad to see he’s as talkative as ever, and whilst I’m at it, he hasn’t talked to them about it”

‘Not a word’, Sophie curtly replied, ‘otherwise all of em would’ve had a taste of my persuader’, she slapped the butt of the MP.40 with added emphasis. ‘I know how to make people keep real quiet’

Benny just sat and made no acknowledgement, it was a worrying sign, but Dutto and Sophie seemed oblivious to anyone’s feelings. They were so self-absorbed. We reflected on how that self-absorption, just like Jeff Bezos. That’s why they were the most powerful individuals in Australia. Even more powerful than other giants of the global stage, Craig Kelly,  Clive Palmer and George Christiansen.

More powerful than the world’s biggest diamond, a lump of coal (with assistance from an adoring Deputy PM) makes its maiden speech on the Coalition’s carbon policy on the floor of parliament.

We were irked, ‘Them” sounded ominous, and what hadn’t Benny Boy talked about?

Was Benny-boy still with us and to what ends? Will Benny be our undoing or our salvation? We were once again, poised above the precipice and looking either up or down seemed perilous. Taking inspiration from the Coalition’s Climate Policy we knew the best thing, under the circumstance, was to do nothing and pray for salvation.

What is there left to salvage? Find out in the next salvational episode; “ is this salvation or the Salvation Army band I hear”, or… ‘Three salvoes to salvation aint much of a salvation really’. 

Unbeknown to most readers Alistair Cook ( without an e) was also captain of the English test X1

Alistair Cook

For those old enough to remember Alistair Cooke,(with an ‘e’) this one is compelling because Alistair was in the US for so long he lost his sense of “English-ness”. So rather than project an english perspective on American politics to a non american audience, he began to increasingly project an American perspective to an American audience and members of that audience who might have harboured an English accent. In accent we refer to ‘Nuance’, the cultural underpinning that is characteristically ‘ English”. ‘What difference’? we hear you say. It’s all in nuance and language, which is what makes this reply to Franks recent dispatch all the more interesting.

Dominc Cummings, all ambition and zero empathy

In as much as Australian actors lose their idiom as they morph into fully fledged Hollywood stars, this instance outlines the peculiar and intense desiccated, sun drenched quality in Australian observation upon American culture. What is American culture ? Australian culture with confidence? Has this anything to do with America’s overt republicanism, fostered since 1776?  Possibly but more-so the unshakeable, (until recently) belief in themselves, and a belief, (very Un- Australian) belief in God.  And of course the spiritual splendour of  Hollywood. And of Dominic Cumings, a sociopath? Not really, just a very twenty-first century figure.

Cecil writes….

Howdy Pardner, or G’day Frank

I did find this dispatch (as with most of the others) thought provoking.  It brought to mind Eisenhower’s 1961 warning of the threat of the rise of the Military Industrial complex and it is quite clear that he saw that as a direct threat to democracy.  I think that my father was totally committed to democracy, and its inherent aim of diffusing power.  My fear is that democracy is all bet dead.  We are bound for a period of totalitarian, autocratic and fascist rule.   Michael Sandel’s “Tyranny of Merit” and Nancy MacLeans “Democracy in Chains” indicate to me that this is both the unintended consequence in the former and the absolute intention in the latter.  I’ve just read a commentary on Dominic Cummings which offers me little hope:

Ike

 

Lee

How exactly the British democratic state could be modelled on organisations which are anything but democratic is not something that much troubles Cummings. The fact that Singapore, hardly a bastion of freedom, is probably the most democratic of the ones on his list tells you all you need to know. Many of the alternative thinkers Cummings likes to cite are explicit in their contempt for democracy, which they consider close to obsolete. The world has moved on; asking whether something would be “undemocratic” is just sentimental attachment to a passing phase in human history. As elite technical expertise, both machine and human, becomes paramount, the idea of having to wait on public opinion to work out what to do starts to look absurd.

From https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/14/intoxicating-insidery-and-infuriating-everything-i-learned-about-dominic-cummings-from-his-10-a-month-blog

Dominics alter ego? Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang’s “M”

This post is sponsored by ‘Volley”, internationally FAMOUS in Australia!

Another musical dispatch from our sage from the distant north. The man who goes by the name “FRANK”. This dispatch requires no explanation, qualification or analysis, because unlike anything the coalition promises on climate, ‘law n order’, funding for research papers and the dim art of diplomacy, this one makes perfect sense.

In Australia the government encourages indigenous kiddies to get involved in sport

So, for those who are into tennis, it’s a perfect volley, and for those who can afford more expensive shoes than the Dunlop standard, you shouldn’t be reading this in the first place.

Amici,

I am almost embarrassed to post this link-

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-12/nt-covid-outbreak-yuendumu/100751370

Most if not all of you live in places where 24 cases of Corona virus is a low number one can only dream of. Well, that is the number so far in Yuendumu.

Sometimes they fall foul of the rules, this can get them into trouble with those who make the rules.

Meanwhile we in Australia have just been presented with a no-win situation.
Will one of the world’s most arrogant tennis players be allowed to stay in a country with one of the world’s most arrogant Prime Ministers? No matter what our Minister of Immigration decides, neither decision is something to rejoice about. Tennis and politics, sadly it is all about winning.
We are the losers.
Meanwhile those poor buggers Novax briefly shared accommodation with have once again dropped below the radar.
Blessed are the comedians. It’s been suggested Novak could end up winning the Christmas Island Open. Our friend Chips Mackinolty suggested Novak could become the Biloela children’s tennis coach.

Sports like tennis offer indigenous Australians the chance to travel

The rules must be very strict for our own personal safety

Many years ago (I think it was in Queensland) the authorities introduced a requirement for job seekers to prove they were actively looking for a job if they were claiming unemployment benefits. The authorities were swamped by claims from unemployed lion tamers.
This has made me think of a solution to the numerous refugees held in detention.
They should all claim to be au pairs.

Australian TV isn’t the greatest to keep up with what is happening in the rest of the world. It was on Spanish TV (re-broadcast on SBS) that I learned the volcano on La Palma Island had finally stopped spewing lava. It was on the PBS hour that I learned that today was the 20^th Anniversary of Guantanamo Bay receiving its first guests. Twenty bloody years, just ponder that.

And my favorite Cuban song: Veinte años (20 Years)

Ciao

In Australia successful tennis always depends upon strict adherence to the rule book. Failure to abide by the rules will get you incarcerated in Guantanamo, (if you’re overseas, (have a surname Hicks, or Assange) or in one of our excellent detention facilities.

Frank

P.M demonstrates forearm technique colloquially referred to as the ” Sledge- hammer”

Dear reader, back again to a tale that seems longer than the Coalition’s negation of a credible climate policy. But there’s cause for optimism, a whole two thousand words have elapsed since any mention was made of Barnaby, Tudgey or Christian. Is this a new dawn? Has dawn broken? “ Who’s dawn”? Dirty finger anyone, ? 

Not a dry eye in the audience, so read on about a dry time in the dry heart of the worlds driest continent where all the wet bits, as scarce as  they may  be, are owned by a man from the Cayman Islands they call ‘Angus’, read on..

‘Look Ces, down there’!!

The ‘Sledge- hammer’ is a desperate tennis strategy designed to bamboozle the opposition.

Quent nudged his companion and pointed to the vast array stretching below them. See that light way over in the corner, that must be a way out? I can tell Ces.  There’s a door, of immeasurable size, and above it, a green sign.  And above the sign the sign says ‘Exit’. 

‘You’re right Quent!” said Ces  who’s irrefutable logic was tinged with a tremor of anxiety.  ‘The only problem is how do we get over there when we’re stuck up here.  I feel like Houdini crossing the Niagara Falls and we aint even got a barrel. You’re right, but thinking of barrels, we do have Sophie in front of us’? 

It was typical of their stoic behaviour to make fun of the situation. Poised perilously above the abyss, in nowhere, above nothing, they could still see the funny side. It’s what made the Australians so appreciative of the bond of mateship and Anzackery that could equip them to survive worse scrapes or world wars and the nadir of Australian Climate policy. 

Played incorrectly it can mis-fire with disastrous consequences.

‘I dunno Ces, it’s an awful long way down, and even if we tried we’ve got that public order response vehicle packed to the armpits with electronic surveillance equipment, anti riot personnel equipment, water cannon, tasers and face masks for public liaison and school crossing supervision. They’d nab us in seconds and we’d be in a worse position. Perhaps you can ask Sophie, she seems to be calm, and clearly she had an expectation of something like this’. 

But. No sooner had the words left Ces’s lips that Sophie turned to us and said menacingly, ‘well boys….. you wait here, cos I’ve got some business to make and any false move Terry will trip the ejector button’. With her thumb turned upside down we knew what she meant, So frozen to our seats we meekly nodded. Sophie stepped out of the tram onto a duckboard between the two slithers of rail.  She then walked resolutely to the armoured and armed Public Order Response Vehicle.

Till it gets to the stage where it doesn’t matter what size your constituency

Her MP 40 hung loosely from her side, and in the grey grim gloomy glow she looked even more like an animated wigwam returning to its campsite. But we knew that was a false illusion, cos this was not North America. Sophie by not being a tea drinker was not inclined to tepee, and if she were a native American in America, (or Australia) she would be arrested on the spot for jay-walking, disturbing the peace, vagrancy, and for not knowing Bradman’s test average. We sat and watched, as Sophie was halfway to the armoured vehicle when the turret moved and the hatch opened. The sides of the hatch made a dull mechanic clunk which was swallowed by the cavernous space and from out perspective we saw nothing else but a faint light that shone from within.

After what seemed ages, from the canopy, we saw emerge a gleaming disk. It outshone even the blue light and the reflected a  halo of dust and still air. The disk grew in size like the martian tentacles in HG Wells ‘War of the Worlds”, and yet this in Australia, was  more a ‘war of the inner earth’. If Australia was ever at war with itself it would be deep down, where destiny was protected by the twin pillars of mining and  real estate. In a second we knew who it was, we hadn’t seen him for months, and yet as he emerged it was all dome, all skull and cranium, the visage of the cleverest and shiniest man in our Nations Parliament.  Peter “dutto’ Dutton.

‘It’s Dutto Ces’, 

‘Yeah I can see that’!

‘What’s he doing down here’? 

‘I dunno. But seems Sophie and him are still mates and that can only mean one thing. They’ll open up some more prisons and fill em with refugees or locals from outstations’?

You face the ‘WTF Moment’

‘Nup, it means that and beyond everything, we’ve experienced to date,  though  far-fetched is in order. These people are on our side in protecting Australia from the taint of foreign-ness, and that’s a great comfort. Even tennis players wont get through their web of raw steel’!

Dutto waved Sophie , and deliberately, the stilettos making dull percussive knocks upon the duckboards, she walked towards Dutto. 

Could be worse….Beyond the ‘WTF moment’ Tennis becomes existential.

Will this be Sophies version of ‘Mr Livingstone I presume’? What are we to presume? Presumptions aside you’d be a fool to miss a step in this plausibly penultimate episode, ‘Footsteps in the dark’, or ‘Mind those stiletto’s  and fish- nets, one slip and you’re a Downer’!