This Dispatch was originally distributed 20 January 2013.  The post has been edited.

Amicos romanos popularium commoda mihi auribus vestris,

Like the owner of Pangur Bán the cat, (google it sometime, you won’t be disappointed) I love words.  (Ed note: See tomorrow’s PCBYCP Poetry Sunday for this poem)

The antonym of ‘benign’ is ‘malignant’ (from the Latin: Mali bad).

‘Malignant’ succinctly describes the 2007 NT Emergency Response that in short order became known as the ‘Intervention’.

The Intervention has rapidly metastasized.

The body of remote Aboriginal society has been invaded by numerous rapidly spreading cancerous growths which its cultural immune system is being overwhelmed by.

‘Closing the Gap’, ‘Generation One’, ‘FaFT’ (Families as First Teachers), ‘Stronger Futures’, ‘PAP’(Public Awareness Program), ‘READ’(Read every available day), ‘Every Child, Every Day action plan’ to mention just a few.

A much prescribed range of medicines come under the heading ‘Law and Order’. The most often prescribed of this range is increased policing. The Territorial and Federal Pharmacists have not yet realized that these medicines are  highly ‘incarceragenic’ and should be withdrawn, or at the very least the dosages should be much reduced.

….don’t you send me no doctor, filling me up with all of those pills…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IfEx6p4Ces

Near the end of the 18^th.Century (14^th.Dec.1799) George Washington died after having been bled the previous day. Bloodletting as a cure retained some adherents as late as the 20^th.Century.

The Intervention has reintroduced bloodletting to its ‘client’ (Aboriginal Australia). It also makes copious use of leeches.

Medical practitioners pay very high insurance premiums to cover themselves against being sued for malpractice (there it is again the ‘mal’ Latin root)  and misdiagnosis which on very rare occasions they are found guilty of.

Malpractice and misdiagnosis however are inherent in the Intervention and its plethora of derivatives. Their bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired. Misdiagnosis comes as no surprise, whenever the ‘client’ says ‘pillars’ they hear ‘pillows’.

From the ‘Singing Detective’… this clip says it all….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDOe7Npinl4

The Interventionists are answerable to no one but themselves.

The assimilationists are mining the cultural pillows of Aboriginal Australia whose society is in danger of collapsing.

The strength and potency of Aboriginal anti-bodies is evidenced by the fact that despite the sustained multi-pronged attack not all of remote Aboriginal society’s structures have caved in.

Took my body to the doctor
He said son you won’t last the night
Took my body back to mamma
She said Jesus going to make it all right

Always thought of myself as a hunter
Lion out on the night
But I turned all my weapons in to mamma
She said Jesus going to make it all right     

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi8Dau0l4Vs

Usque ad proximam tempus

Franciscus

PS- an omen… the Intervention’s first Surgeon General was called Mal.

Our cub reporter Bert. A gift to pcbycp courtesy of Nick’s 66 mil.

At last in deference to the energy policy leadership vacuum, (this weeks feature article) some encouraging news from the media front. There aint gonna be no rule. That’s it folks, there aint gonna be no rules restricting ownership of media entities. You can have all you want, and more. And that’s just what we at pcbycp want to hear.

Our cub reporter getting to know miss Coltart in the typing pool at pcbycp

We know that we have established a niche in publshing, and thanks to the intercession of Nick Xenephon, there’s some federal funding for small media providers. We have an established readership of six. Our time has come. Up to 66.6 million is on offer to establish allowances to train journalists and cub reporters. We went to the zoo in search of cub reporters and were advised to attend the next meeting of the Parkville district scouting association, only to be told that we needed a police check to verify our bona-fides. This meant we had to provide testimonials. As we only had two each, we deferred our search for a cub reporter, and settled for just a plain old reporter.

And you’ll be delighted to hear, we found one.

Down at the Waterside Hotel. Bert, as he calls himself, one of the last of the old breed journalists was on hand to greet us. Bert, dispatched when the Truth closed down is now an orphan of journalisms early days. Bert was delighted to hear that the old style reporting was being actively encouraged. He was suprised when we told him that ‘Truth’ was gone from the public scene, and before asking the price of a cigarette, mourned the loss of days spent covering the last days of Billy Snedden.

Bert in happier days.

When journalism was “Truth”

Still, he expressed his enthusiasm in no uncertain terms, stating that there needs to be new life put into journalism. The police rounds, the tip off, on the turf, and the race to find the latest scoop were regaled to us. Berts eyes glazed over with pure nostalgia; “and they used to employ carrier pidgeons to get the leaks out before budget papers were released, and you’ve got no idea what used to go on in the glory days of six oclock closing’. Sadly, we had to interrupt his reverie, when we informed him that ‘ol style journalism’ was dead. Replaced by reality television and info-tainment. Bert was confused, till we rationalised his dillemma. ‘You’ve gotta understand Bert, it’s like this, you know when the adverts were just the fluff around the features. Well nowadays its just adverts. There is no investigative journalism, just adverts and product endorsement from the owners. And on the ABC it’s just Qand A’. He cried, looking up to us; ‘Who are they? These owners you speak of? Fairfax, Issacson, Packer’

WE tried not to laugh; “Nah mate, its all Murdoch”?

“So Keith is alive”, he queried,

“Nup, it’s his son”.

Bert ghasped, ashen faced he cried over his Craven A. Empathy overtook us, “Bit hard for you Bert. It’s a bit Darth Vader for you. Rupert is sole ruler of ALL media’.

Bert piped up; “But he’ll never own the wireless”.

“Nup Bert, he owns that too”.

Bert was flummoxed. ‘Well then I spose at least you’ve got the ABC’?

We laughed.. ‘Oh.. I get it’ Bert sighed; “so Rupert’s got that too?

Happier days at pcbycp

‘Yep’, we replied; “all owned by Rupert”

A quiet historical narrative ensued. At the end of it Bert soliliquised

“We used to be family in them ol days. And now the family is gorne. No family, but you tell me now I’ve got a brother. And you told me before I was ‘journalism’s orphan’?

‘Yes you have Bert. We all have.

Welcome to your family Bert.

We call him Rupert.

He’s your Big Brother.

Bert, before despair and alcohol set in.

We all call him Big Brother’.

Designed by someone from anywhere else than Australia, bought to you by autocad, Massive Public Sculpure is what Sydney really needs.

Inheritors and custodians of the Cultural cringe. To thwart Philistinism and ensure sinecures for really really dull public Art installations.

We at pcbycp are not Philistines. Indeed, our journalists, acting on an initiative due to the unforseen outbreak of philistinism, during the term of the Abbott government, drew the ‘Dunstan line’ across the central half of the continent. When asked by a forum of artists, curators, and dubiously nominated “Arts professionals”, our curator, Lord Clarke, (No relation to Sir Kenny), described the Dunstan Line as “epithetic of our time”. He said; “Art is like a micro-climate, and it requires a whole range of specific environmental conditions in order to survive. Without nurturing, it perishes. Therefore in recognition of this, we’ve drawn this line, and as you can see, bit like the Goyder line, it’s in retreat. Not due to global warming, but to the virulent and excessive growth of Phiistinism, aided, by a strange and unforseen vector, the Arts administration middle manager. This species, the middle manager is the Crown of Thorns Starfish to the Australian art scene, and it’s not, and I make this fact clear, not an index of global warming or climate change. We fear it is a direct conesquence of media ownership. With the latest concessions to media owership we see artistsic thought, imagination and culture, under threat of EXTINCTION’.

More Bad Art. It must be DOCKLANDS!

As a consequence, we at Pcbycp who regard ourselves as the virtual school of Athens in the media world, applaud the controversial cloud sculpture for Sydney. WE believe the cost of this object is immaterial. Great art should not have a price tag, (unless it is owned as collateral by a hedge fund manager). Futhermore we would go as far as to say without great art, a species is unable to replenish itself. True, some great art is the spirit of the city itself. Take Venice for example, there is not so much public art, but just a profusion of architecture, art, sculpture and topography which all constitutes a superb vibrant organism of art. Which incidentally is being destroyed by mass tourism.

But Sydney has none of this connectivity. It is a city founded on the principles of greed, short termism, and corruption. What other vehicle to express this new age of “bugger you jack”, than a very expensive sculpture. The homeless will wonder at it, the plutocrats will admire its shininess, and ordinary folk will stand in stupified wonder. To wonder, like the energy policy vaccum, how it came to this. And the final question. Is it fun?

Really BAD ART. It has to be DOCKLANDS!

It must be, cos the curator, says so.

PAMS. Public Art Mortality Syndrome. Unfetterd Public Art will cause Sudden DEATH.

In Melbourne there is no such issue with public art. It has Docklands. An elephant’s graveyard for public art. Public Sculpture. Massively over-sized public sculpture is used to offset the depletion of humanity. Art is not a link to an inner aesthetic being, but a corporate statement. And for a while it seemed to work. Whilst people baulked, financial institutions flocked there. The sterility of everything, and the Stalinesque voidism of Public Art gave them certainty. But now a new debilitating condition threatens the micro climate’s very existence. Another Crown of Thorns Starfish, the curse of the middle manager you may wonder? No! Something Much worse. It is a conditon describes as PAMS. A four letter word, ‘Public Art Mortality Syndrome’.

Yes, folks, Public Art, most of it bad, Is killing people. The incidents of suicide were non existent at Docklands before 2000. Now they have skyrocketed. There is no other viable explanation. Public Art, like renewable policy , (according to Craig Kelly) is killing people.

Sydney, you have been warned. Public Art will kill you.

Joel and Josh make the Carbon Policy Vacuum entertainment.

Dear reader, it’s encouraging to know that whilst the context of leadership is a known unknown in the Australian political context, we have so many amusing opportunities to make fun of what passes for informed comment. Where is policy you may ask?

Indeed as metrics for education are an undisputed part of our intellectual framework, so to speak, it’s comforting to know that by the time they get to politics, our elite eschew all rational thinking for the one hit wonder, the cheap shot and the last word.

Whilst Josh and Joel spat, at least one light remains on. Thanks to the Policy Vacuum

So focus now, (we beg you) on the vexed question of carbon. luckilly Australia has been kicking goals in pretending carbon actually exists as an issue. There is no issue with climate change.

We stand united, on the environment, marriage equality, carbon,everything, in being dis-united.

Yes indeed it’s all one big policy vacuum.

The policy vacuum is really really big. They reckon, just to keep it going requires the full-scale equivalent of fifteen coal powered electricity stations. That’s fifteen, just to get the policy vacuum started. And to keep it cranked, just to keep the bugger going, it requires another ten. That’s ten folks. Ten major coal fired power stations , working, flat-chat. providing BASE LOAD POWER.

This was the prototype Policy Vacuum before testing.

Without that Base load, Policy Vacuum, she no work.

It’s all very well to talk of renewables. All very sanctimonious to talk of renewables as some bloody saviour, but they just wont work. Yes, we admit they’re cheaper, they’re possibly more reliable, and we admit they are the way of the future. But, and this is the most telling part, even Elon Musk, can’t counter this. The Policy Vacuum can run only on coal.

Yes indeed, good ol reliable coal.

The New Policy Vacuum is much bigger and incorporates a Space- Age Design principle of concealed chimney and coal conveyor.

And you can fume all you like about policy moving forward and any other brain dead oxymoronic platitude designed to keep your lobbyists happy, but the truth is there for all to see. There’s no point in moving forward. Looking forwards is being backwards, and the 1960’s policy direction is the here and now. Back coal. It’s safe, and stupid, though it does have a voice in Parliament. These are the fundamentals the policy vacuum was designed for in 1965. The Liddell power plant was built in 1972, It’s clapped out, a worthless piece of junk. But to the energy provider shareholders, it’s GOLD. Cos with the Policy Vacuum at work the taxpayer will pay squillions against the advice of the bean-counters themeselves, just to keep it going.

And the PM will thank them for screwing the taxpayer just that bit harder. That’s how the policy vacuum works, It’s an ideas free zone. It’ll just suck , suck suck. And it’s “Super Suction”.
So next time Josh and Joel do battle in the corridors of power, thank them that there’s any power at all, cos with the policy vacuum at work, It’ll require this world, the next world and any world just to keep it going.

And in the end it’s not about climate change, the environment or people’s Livelihoods. It’s all about entertaintment. As Lord Rupert says’ Beyond the Policy Vacuum, it’s beer and circuses”.

Housewives, untarnished by same sex marriage, thrill to the efficiency of the Energy Policy Vacuum.

And it’d be Un-Australian to disagree.

This is the fourth and final of four parts revisiting Oliver Goldsmith’s  The Deserted Village which, with commentary from our Poetry Editor Ira Maine give insight on our social condition.

Goldsmith, friend of fellow Irishman, the statesman Edmond Burke, (the father of modern conservative politics) and  dinner companion to most of the London literati of the period; James Boswell and Dr Samuel Johnson who hardly need introduction. David Garrick, the greatest actor of his day, of whom it was said that his interpretation of the Bard was so intelligent that it was like watching Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.  The Irishman Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who owned the Drury Lane Theatre in London and wrote ‘The Rivals’ and ‘The School for Scandal’, plays which are still essential to a modern English education. Incidentally, people were aghast to discover Sheridan calmly drinking wine in Drury Lane as his much loved theatre burnt to the ground.

“Surely a man can take a glass of claret by his own fireside?’ he asked of his critics.

It was the influence of Sheridan amongst others which finally gained for Samuel Johnson a permanent pension of 300 pounds a year from George the Third.  Prior to this the great man had been confined to the debtor’s prison on at least two occasions.

Dr Johnson first launched his London dining and literary group ‘The Club’ in 1764 at the prompting of the major English painter,  Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the Royal Academy.   Before it was wound up, long after Johnson’s death Johnson’s ‘Club’ had numbered amongst its members Edward Gibbon (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) Joseph Banks of Darwin and the Beagle, and Charles James Fox, one of the most influential Whig politicians of the period.

What companions Goldsmith had! How splendid their dinner tables must have been! Still, it is a very well established fact that if you put half-a-dozen bright Irishmen together, or even two or three… or just one…

Incidentally (and I have this on good authority) the dinner table was provided by yet another Irishman, Henry, the Duke of Rathcoole (west of Dublin) at de Burgh House in the Strand, and presided over by his step daughter, the renowned beauty, the Lady Juanita Gilles-Beaux,who, fluent in both Gaelic and French, was a not inconsiderable poet herself. Her portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

But enough of this frivolity.

Now that the horror of enclosure has happened, the familiar made desolate, even Auburn’s pub;  ‘… Where nut brown draughts inspired, 

And grey beard mirth and smiling toil retired…’ is no more.

The school,‘Where many a time he triumphed…’ has ceased to exist.  The church, houses, barns, stables, the forge, all that went to make up the rhythm and pace of Auburn’s country life has been levelled, razed, brushed aside and hidden, as if the magnitude of the sin committed were too great to bear the light of day.

Goldsmith addresses the ruined village;

‘…One only master grasps thy whole domain.
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain.
No more the glassy brook reflects the day,
But, choked with sedges, works it’s weary way.
Sunk are thy bowers, in shapeless ruin all.
And the long grass o’er tops the mouldering wall.
And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler’s hand,
Far, far away, thy children leave the land.

These vast new fabulously profitable farms grew wheat almost exclusively during the Napoleonic Wars.  Europe, devastated by its wars with the French could produce little food and looked to England to feed its troops.  Monoculture, as we all know, provides only briefly intense seasonal work.  This cropping, on a scale never seen before, was hugely profitable for the landholder but, to a peasantry denied access to their traditional lands and way of life, it was a death sentence.  This system, designed without regard for a centuries old way of life, was calculated to utterly break the spirit of the people.  It did precisely that.

Now Goldsmith addresses the country itself and informs its government that, by their actions they have sown the seeds of their own destruction;

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
Princes, Lords may flourish or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made.
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

Princes and Lords are ten a penny, not worth tuppence, and are easily bought with thirty pieces of silver.  Destroy your own peasantry however, and the spiritual coinage of the realm is utterly and irretrievably debased.

Famine, the result of denying the peasantry access to land, meant that millions of people literally starved to death throughout the British Isles in the slump following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. When relief in the way of grain arrived by ship from America, British authorities would not allow it to land because they thought it would cause the price of home grown grain to tumble. People went on starving to death. They called this abomination ‘Laissez Faire Capitalism’.

As he walks about the seashore, the poet observes the crowds on the strand, queueing to get on board emigrant ships.  Goldsmith is aware that he is observing the veins and arteries, the life blood of the British Isles being lost forever to the sea.  An entire way of life being contemptuously thrown on the mercies of the ocean.

‘…and thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid;
Still first to fly when sensual joys invade,
Unfit to these degenerate times of shame
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame.
Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe,
That found’st me poor at first, and keep’st me so;
Thou guide by which the noble arts excell,
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well.

The Muse, that ‘loveliest maid’ the great creative force, cannot exist in either this ‘degenerate’ time or this ‘degenerate’ country. Neither can the ’nurse of every virtue’ stay behind when its people depart. The gift of the Muse, the Muse itself, the capacity for joy, for laughter, for originality is inseparable from the people and must sail away with them.

This conceit of Goldsmith’s; that the muse, out of shame, would wholly abandon ‘degenerate’ England and instead offer her favours to the New Wortld, was quietly prescient, it also demonstrates Goldsmith’s belief that a peasantry, by recreating itself in these new locations proves;
‘…self dependent power can time defy..’
and that countries in possession of a people;
‘…that states of native strength possesr
though very poor, may still be very blest…’

Nowadays some of the most creative people on the planet are products of these new worlds.

Nevertheless, Goldsmith hopes that as time passes and people learn, the Muse might;

This truth, this inevitability, this abandonment of  ‘degenerate’ England by the Muse has Goldsmith hope that as time passes and people learn, the Muse might;

‘Still let thy voice prevailing over time,
Redress the rigours of the inclement clime;
And slighted truth, with thy persuasive strain,
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain.
Teach him that states of native strength possest,
Though very poor, may still be very blest.
That trades proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As oceans sweep the labour’d mole away.
While self dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.

Essentially, this is a poem about the destructive force of greed, of ‘trades proud empire’, and its devastating effect on the vast majority of a country’s population.  It also suggests that a country’s long term stable future can only be guaranteed if the ‘self dependent power’ of the peasantry is firmly established.  That is, a non-aspirational, well grounded, self-sufficient people who are absolutely independent of the deliberately manufactured ‘aspirational’ blandishments of our corrosive consumer society.

We still have some way to go.

Ira Maine, Poetry Editor.

Bon Soir,

Back in the black and white television days (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask an old person) I recall some very funny comedy sketches.

Red Skelton marching through the middle of an American Civil War battle field bearing a flag which had the Confederate flag sewn onto the Union flag. Both sides held their fire whilst cheering him on. Until the wind changed and all hell broke loose.

In another sketch big burly Raymond Burr bearing a full black beard and a fur cap is sitting at a table in a log cabin manacled to little Flip Wilson in a Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniform. Outside a blizzard is raging. Flip is holding up a poster featuring a full black bearded fur cap bearing Raymond and proclaiming the latter is “Wanted dead or alive”. Both the poster and the manacled Raymond are staring menacingly at Flip who keeps switching from looking at one then the other whilst shaking his head and muttering “Ahhh don’t know” “Ahhh don’t know”. In the end he blurts out “They’s all look tha sayme to me”

The last Dispatch which dealt inter alia with difficulties experienced by Aboriginal Australians in obtaining ID, elicited several anecdotes.

My favourite:

“ …..there was another occasion when a troupe of Maningrida blokes were off to Japan for an opening.  One of the guy’s mother died the night before their departure. Without batting an eyelid they recruited a replacement didgeridoo player who effortlessly travelled to Japan and back on the original bloke’s passport….”

Grace Slick THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOAM7LrdW-E

And this one… (Pourquoi pas?)

Jimmy and Mama Yancey – How Long Blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw9tMRhKEak

A bientot,

François

Barnaby, the best un-Australian polly the lobbyists can buy.

“We will just have to take people head on,”

“Those people collecting the tax deductibility to fight us, take them head on, and start selling back to the Australian people the economic message ‘this is how you are actually going to survive, this is how you are going to win as a nation’.”

And he’s right, he’s not even a real Australian, but the deputy (pending the High Court decision) is absolutley right in holding the line and stopping green groups, who are benefitting fullly from charitable status from putting the blockers on progress. Though he was not there to talk about what kind of progress, we gathered it was all about taking money from the Northern Australian Infrastructure Fund, and giving it to an overseas mining magnate, for free. And ensuring that this smooth passage of taxpayers money was poured unfettered.

A non voting lump of coal holds the floor in Parliament.

Which makes good sense because Mr Joyce is 100 percent overseas himself, and obviously has a great deal of sympathy for other foreigners who wish to tap into the “rivers of gold” gifted to them from a supine, unquestioning australian public.

We at pcbycp abhor environmental groups. We abhor their constant guilt campaign directed at shaming those who cannot destroy natural resources for short term interest. We abhor the puritans amongst the conservation movement who decry the loss of the Great Barrier Reef for a few short term mining jobs. And we abhor those who protest the use of the Artesian Basin, the greatest resource this country has, for a short term buck and taxpayer funded free ride. We stand in lock step with Barnaby, Australia’s most Australian un-Australian, for assisting a few cotton growers in diverting the entire resource of the Murray Darling basin so they can make a killing. And as the philosophy goes, ‘bugger the silly buggers downstream, and fuck the environment’, Cos it, (the environment) don’t go to church and it don’t know how to lobby, for foreigners like Barnaby.

Barnaby and George. Conservative Brains trust.

We want Australian taxpayers to jump on board and give Barnaby a go. Give the stuff away, and stop those greeenies for harping on the sidelines.

And he’s right, whilst the Minerals and Energy Council don’t receive tax breaks directly, their membership does get a nice kickback for explortation, diesel, depreciation, and mining. Basically everything. Up to 100 percent if you’re looking for really valuable stuff like gold. That’s why just the environmental groups should be singled out. Someone’s gotta do the heavy lifting.

Churches get the full charity status tax break and as a minority, they’ve stymied debate on same sex marriage, enforced a very narrow view of religion and reinforced the conflict between church and state. The spectacle of a PM pleading with business execs in the power industry for adopting the business model successive government’s approve indicates that with charitable staus comes the right of few, to extert their viewpoint on the majority. And make them PAY. And as Barnaby so lucidly said:

Twiggy, diverts what would have been his tax burden into philanthropic ventures of his own choosing, like footy clubs.

“Now we are still fighting. Still fighting to this day. And they fight it in the most ardent forms, right in your face.  In fact many of the groups that fight you have tax deductibility. They’re charities, apparently. A charity whose job it is to completely destroy the economic base of Australia.”

Joyce said that conservation groups fought projects with “green tape” (a reference to environmental litigation), “red tape” and “black tape”, Aboriginal activists. (Guardian)

Black, Red and Green Tape. Barbaby must be an Afghani.

And we heartilly, agree, green tape, black tape, red tape. It’s not right and as a foreigner he should know. Its the colurs of another persons flag. Perhaps it’s Barnaby’s national colours? At heart he’s a warm and fuzzy sentimentalist.

God bless him.

Sir Atney. When not committing anecdotes to posterity, hard at it on federal energy policy

Dear reader, just to demonstrate the completeness of our “new age” and whollistic approach to modern physiology and in particular, the regulation of the intensity of physiological reactions we present to you, this, (hot off the press) piece of self-help advice from that luminary of the lower intestine Sir Atney of Emo.

Stand with us and exult as he delivers some expert advice couched in an anecdote which puts light on our previous corrsepondents condition.

And may we suggest if this condition persists we urge you to contact our hotline and consult the eminent physician, Dr Erasmus Windtschlapper (late of UTRECHT) who will expedite a cure. And we also advise a caution for minors who may find this description offensive. Sir Atney suggests:

My advice to the ‘Petomane of the Aisles’…

First, I’d be careful about trying to offload onto a guiltless fellow-shopper the ownership of one’s offensive effluvia, simply to divert the odium usually attached to such odoriferous outrages.

The Horse, “Blossom’.

Your stratagem could so easily backfire, for example…

Many years ago, in rural Ireland, a nun hired a horse-drawn jaunting car to convey her from the train station to her convent.

After jogging along at a sedate pace, the elderly nag strained to climb up a steep hill, then slowed down – and eventually stopped.

The the horror of the jarvey (the driver), the horse slowly lifted its tail… and vented a rumbling, drawn-out flatus.  Within seconds, the driver and the nun were enveloped in a warm, musty cloud of methane and hydrogen sulphide – prompting a paroxysm of coughing and breathlessness.

Having thus relieved itself, the horse once again strained against its halter and resumed its slow plod up the steep incline.

Josh Frydenberg pretending no one has noticed.

In an agony of embarrassment, the jarvey turned to the nun, who was still dabbing her streaming eyes.

“Faith, Mother Superior, I really don’t know how to apologise to you for that appalling incident,” he stammered. “Sure, and it must have been something that was eaten…”

“Now, don’t feel at all embarrassed, my good man,” replied the nun.  “Breaking wind is a natural, often involuntary act…. As it happens, until you apologised I had actually assumed it was the horse that had farted!”

Alternative ploys:

– Stick an over-ripe camembert atop your trolly

– Place an Odor-Eater (or charcoal bag) down the seat of your track pants

– ‘Accidentally’ loosen the cap of a bottle of Jeypine

– Walk closely behind a dishevelled geriatric of the ‘Old Fart’ description, holding your nose and grimmacing

Other underutilised energy sources abound in the “Clever Country”.

Hope that helps!  (Works for me.)

Sound advice. And in the absence of any overarching coherent Federal energy policy, perhaps a pointer to where future energy storage lies.

The pcbycp polyvinyl poof.

Dear reader, it’s difficult keeping step with the spirit of our time. Not since good ol ’38’ have we seen such a seismic shift in international power relations with another little tin-pot dictatorship sabre rattling to the world at large. Just the other day a dirty great blockbuster bomb, unexploded was uncovered in Frankfurt, There after all these years, just to remind us of how bombing made some cities really dull and uninteresting.  And right across this pulsating globe there’s change and dire predictions. It seems as famously described by the cartoonist David Low, the world is about to either explode, implode or just vanish in a poof of smoke. And speaking of poof of smoke, whilst the whole globe gyrates to this crazy era of uncertainty, back here in Australia we shall devote trillions of dollars and hot air to the vexed question of poofs in general. Incidentally the polyvinyl poof at pcbycp headquarters was interviewed, and was only capable, (when pressed) of letting out a barely audible sigh. Such indifference.

So from a scribe from the near north a message that makes some sense of the crisis, and invests us with the dignity of good manners, sound advice, and civic virtue. He writes:

To whom It may concern,

Our Glorious RAAF. Making jobs for urban designers and civic planners for the next 70 + years.

Wholly involuntarily, reaching down for the Black and Gold rolled oats, without effort, without encouragement and without preliminary or indeed warning of any kind, with a strangely strangled note vaguely reminiscent of a child’s first violin lesson ,my body, utterly indifferent to one’s hitherto unsullied public reputation, broke hopelessly irretrievable, screeching wind in the cereal aisle at IGA.
The initial and singular advantage to winter clothing is its capacity to contain the resulting parfum for long enough for one to escape the site of one’s red-faced faux pas. But this is a double-edged sword. The disadvantage is that your faux pas, temporarily contained within one’s winter garments is, at least ’til the air clears, always with you.
And there is no escape! You can’t immediately approach the checkout lest you asphyxiate a member of staff. Neither can you, in all good economic conscience, abandon your hard-won discounted purchases in the middle of the aisle and bolt out into the night. One might be judged demented (not to say incontinent) and barred from entering the premises ever again.They might even insist, (horror of horrors!) should they allow you back in,  on a public check of your incontinence trousers!.
The only way, in this circumstance, to avoid losing face in the face of the general public is to do as others do. 

The Crime Scene.

Allow me to explain. 
Have you ever noticed there is always, in the supermarket, somewhere amongst the aisles, and in the midst of the most horrendous trolley jam, an ill-mannered and frightfully pushy person who insists on pushing through? Who barges past, arms akimbo, trolleys and baskets knocked to right and left without thought or feeling? Is there any reason NOT to consider that this behemoth, this human battering-ram is about some business other than a hurried shopping spree? That he (or she) before the winter coat fails in its duties, this person must at all costs, keep up a lively clip about the aisles lest the Harris Tweed betray one’s condition BEFORE it finally releases the last vestige of intestinal inadvertency to the air conditioning system?

On the other hand, I may be wrong about all this, but do,I implore you, keep careful watch for the hurried shopper lest the miasma following in the shopper’s wake cause you to faint entirely away.
You have been warned.

M.R.L. Doyle

We wish M.R all the best.

This is the third of four parts revisiting Oliver Goldsmith’s  The Deserted Village which, with commentary from our Poetry Editor Ira Maine give insight on our social condition.

One of the important things to understand about this poem is the pace.  The poet is remembering his home village, not only as it was in his youth, but how it will be when he comes to retire there.  Villages in the 17^th and 18^th century, tucked well away in spectacularly beautiful parts of the countryside, hardly changed from one century to the next.  The poem is written deliberately to match this unchanging pace and demonstrate the unhurried nature of village life.

I have chosen random lines and phrases here to show how the poet  remembers his boyhood village.  To get the full flavour of this account, a proper reading is essential.

Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain…
Seats of my youth, where every sport could please…
How oft have I paused on every charm…
The cultivated farm…the brook…the busy mill…the decent church…
The seats beneath the shading hawthorn bush…the bashful virgin…the reproving matron…
The sport…the singing…the dancing…  

Then quite suddenly,the poet introduces a darker, less Elysian, much more forbidding tone.

But now the sound of population fail,
No chearful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,
No busy steps the grass-grown foot-way tread,
But all the bloomy flush of life is fled.
All but yon widowed, solitary thing,
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced, in age, for bread,
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,
To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn,
To seek her nightly shed, and weep til morn;

What on earth has happened here?  Who is this ‘matron’, this ‘..widowed, solitary thing…’  forced to sustain herself by her wits, by scavenging, in the ruins of what had been a thriving village?

In the wake of whatever calamity consumed the village, she appears to be, on the surface just another penniless casualty of that calamity.  On the other hand, I suspect the poet intended much more for her.  The matron is surely intended to represent the spirit, the very essence of the village itself, and her paupered condition, her ruined circumstances, reflects exactly the present state of that village.

The village of Auburn has ceased to exist.  The animals, the barking dogs, the blacksmith, the wood-men, the farmers, the geese, the women and children, the barber, everyone, all gone.

There was no famine to kill them, no plague, and no war.  At least not in England.  There was however, the American War of Independence, which was followed closely enough by the Napoleonic Wars.  Soldiers needed bread and the demand for flour was insatiable.

Land in England, as little as 200 years ago, did not belong to anyone.  The idea of ‘owning land’ simply didn’t exist.  You couldn’t buy it and you couldn’t sell it.  However, industrial cities were growing and their workforces needed food.  Enterprising industrialists, like the famous Coke of Norfolk, seeing an opportunity, took wire and fence posts and enclosed thousands of acres of land to grow wheat.  These ‘Enclosures’, when they enclosed villages, gave the encloser the right to consider the inhabitants of these villages as his property!  He could then demand a percentage of every scrap they produced!

The government of the time consisted of the King and a few of his aristocratic cronies.  The King essentially didn’t care what industrialists got up to as long as he got a cut.  Landowning, not industry, was the mark of a man, and peasants didn’t matter.  So when the same Coke of Norfolk in the 18^th century, infected as he was with the fashionable notion of a Great House, needed not just a stately home, but hundreds of acres of well manicured ‘grounds’ to boot, he enlisted one Joseph Paxton who promptly littered the place with hunting lodges, fountains, parterres,and lakes, not to mention statuary, waterfalls and spectacular ‘vistas’.

If you allow for the fact that these vast land enclosures were like small countries then you will understand why the great ‘landscapers’ of the period, Joseph Paxton and ‘Capability’ Brown amongst others, much more than occasionally found villages, hamlets and whole towns inconveniently situated amidst their grand plans.  Now and then, a little compensation was offered.  Sometimes a whole new village was built and the people moved en masse.  Much more often the peasantry were simply driven both out of their homes and off the land then left to fend for themselves.  Their houses were pulled down to stop them coming back.  This is why to this day we have people on the roads in Europe called “tinkers’ or the ‘travelling people’, as distinct from gypsies or Romany, who took up this peripatetic existence as a result of the notorious ‘Enclosure Acts’ or later, in the 19^thcentury, because of famine.  Enclosure drove people off the land and into the industrial cities, where so many of them died of disease it became a national scandal.  Thousands more died en route to Canada, America and Australia on what were referred to as “coffin ships’.  The usual ever present exploiters dispatched their desperate passengers on overcrowded, unseaworthy vessels.  Some of the vessels simply sank, drowning everybody, while others made it to their destinations, overloaded and weeks behind schedule, with no food left, disease conditions rife, and many passengers already consigned to the sea.

I feel we might stop here. Nothing I’ve said is untrue. Every example of callous exploitation I’ve used here may be verified.

Oliver Goldsmith was appalled that the wholesale destruction of an entire, wholly self-sufficient country way of life was allowed, indeed encouraged, in order that a handful of men could become fabulously rich.  This was at the expense of almost the entire rural population of the British Isles.

Is it any wonder that the workers who remained fought for over a hundred years thereafter to be allowed form unions?  To form societies to protect themselves against this band of murderous curs?

I shall continue next week when my equanimityis restored.  In the meantime, beware; these same murderous curs are with us still.

Ira Maine, Poetry Editor.