Reposted from 5/10/2013 – So little has changed.

This story has a number of facets seminal to Passive Complicity’s reason for being.  Government secrecy, profit making from refugees – not just “people smugglers”, and the ways ‘do-gooders’ can exacerbate the problems they are addressing among others.

Not your typical Refugee report
by Antony Loewenstein
First Published in The Guardian Wednesday 2 October 2013

In Melbourne, I visited two advocacy groups working around the clock to help refugees. They do big things with little resources in a hostile political environment, and we should listen to them

Blind compassion is killing the asylum seeker debate. While Tony Abbott entangles his new government in megaphone diplomacy with Indonesia, upsetting our biggest neighbour in the process, refugees are struggling to survive closer to home.

Vast swaths of the Australian public remain hostile towards asylum seekers, and the advocacy groups supporting them need to ask if the strategy they employed over the last decade is partly responsible for it. Accusing the bulk of Australians of racism and discrimination, a common catch-cry of the left, has done nothing except harden hearts and allow media and political elites to ramp up cruel policies towards the most vulnerable souls landing on our shores.

The previous Labor government instituted a harsh regime of dumping asylum seekers out of detention without work rights, and the Coalition is set to deepen the problem. As a result of these policies, asylum seekers require community support. But according to Sri Lanka-born Ramesh Fernandez, CEO and founder of NGO Rise: refugee survivors and ex-detainees, this is not happening nearly enough. I met him last week at his organisation’s office, a small, bustling space in the heart of Melbourne.

As new arrivals visit Rise for legal advice on their refugee status, mass persecution continues in Fernandez’s birth country – despite the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, claiming otherwise. The Australian ran a fawning profile of Bishop last week. In it, she stated that on a trip to Sri Lanka this year she neither saw nor heard any evidence of persecution against Tamils, although statements by human rights group around the world proves the fallacy of this allegation.

Fernandez was released from mandatory detention in 2004 after spending time on Christmas Island and at the Baxter detention centre in South Australia. He says that he’s proud of the fact that Rise is the first asylum seeker organisation to be run by ex-detainees and people of non-white background. Rise is not funded by the federal government, and routinely refuses offers by the department of immigration to apply for grants.

Fernandez is outspoken and unforgiving towards the vast bulk of asylum seeker support services. Just this week, he sent out a press release damning the Uniting Church and human rights lawyer Julian Burnside for pushing for temporary mandatory detention. “Will the Uniting Church or any other organisations or community groups ever have the courage,” he wrote, “to call for humanitarian reception centres and hostels used in the past in Australia that assist in the rehabilitation of a group of people who are fleeing from situations of extreme trauma and cruelty, rather than advocating for the detention and security industry and stop compromising the lives and wellbeing of the refugee community for the sake of PR?”

The group has released a list of the companies making a fortune from privatised detention, and also didn’t spare community groups receiving federal government money, such as Anglicare, Wesley Mission and the Salvation Army.

“All human rights groups in Australia use unhealthy emotional attachment to refugees,” Fernandez tells me. “I’m against the stereotyping of refugees with sad and crying faces. White guilt is rampant, which often causes people to act to make themselves feel better rather than empowering asylum seekers. I want refugees to have a voice in this debate. I hate how refugees are often told at refugee rallies, by asylum seeker groups, “thanks for coming”, which is patronising and crazy when it’s white people saying that to brown and black people. Australia is one of the most racist nations in the world. Australia has never accepted that it has a racist past.”

Rise hosts a food bank, hip-hop concerts by asylum seekers, English classes, legal advice, publishes art and writing by refugee survivors, has a library featuring books by primarily non-white authors and a drop-in centre for children and adults. There are now 1,060 registered refugees with the group, and the need for such services has never been higher.

One of Rise’s volunteers is Nazeem Hussain, a Muslim comedian with a Sri Lankan background who performs with the group Fear of a Brown Planet and is the star of the SBS skit-show Legally Brown. Hussain tells me, “I grew up in a community of refugees and Rise is the only group I know that has the understanding of what they’re going through. Too many people are involved in the asylum seeker movement to feel good about themselves instead of helping refugees. Australia has a huge problem with racism, affirmed by both major sides of politics. The intervention against Indigenous people in the Northern Territory is mostly ignored because the racism is accepted.”

Over in west Melbourne, I visit the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC). Community team leader Jana Favero shows me around the three story office building. She fears the coming three to six months under the Abbott government will tighten the noose around refugee rights and reduces their ability to source legal and community care. ASRC’s funding is mostly from private donations and philanthropy, with only 5% from the Victorian government, which ensures they’re not at Canberra’s mercy.

Favero worries that the “Abbott government could put pressure on the immigration department to discontinue our mostly good relationship between us and them, helping individual refugee cases.” ASRC never has enough money for the daily assistance in food, legal advice, housing, english and children’s classes and job hunting (for refugees allowed to work). Thousands of asylum seekers remain in limbo, on visas that don’t allow them full rights and unsure when that status will change, if ever.

Every day, volunteers cook up a lunch meal for up to 150 asylum seekers with donated food. Refugees have access to a large storage room for food, soap and healthcare products thanks to a needs-based points system. Refugee families are also given assistance in cooking healthy meals. During my visit, I meet Hazara men and women, African asylum seekers and, since it was during school holidays, a few rampaging kids. ASRC becomes an unofficial child care centre at various times during the day, and its office now opens into the night a few times a week to cope with the huge demand for services.

The ASRC’s Pamela Curr worries that the new federal government will only increase the secrecy around asylum seekers, a policy ably challenged by the Australian’s Mark Day this week. “I know of government-backed contractors signing confidentiality agreements and NGOs forcing staff with poor english to sign agreements with no legal standing”, Curr says. “They claim that speaking out in the media is not the way forward, private engagement with the immigration department is better, but it’s not born out by the facts.” One year after the re-introduction of off-shore processing, she despairs as she still hears stories of young men being raped and abused on Manus Island.

Resistance to the Coalition’s policies, coupled with outlining viable alternatives, is surely the best way to reform Australia’s dysfunctional relationship with asylum seekers

Dear reader, it is with some regret that we at pcbycp  are the first to break the tragic news. The Deep Cave rescue has been a dismal failure. Though it has been central to the 24/7 news cycle, the rescue operation team has finally admitted there is no hope. Speaking to the press outside the entrance to the cave mouth, the leader of the multi-national rescue team had this to say;

Tony, the leader of the group of boys. His scout master described him as “determined and slightly delusional about his own intelligence”.

Elon Musk demonstrates his mini rescue submarine, (“the Kiddie fiddler”) to an adoring press.

“We don’t know what drove these plucky little boys to venture into this cave, but whatever drove them, we can only surmise as being a misguided attempt to both find and secure the shibboleth of “Clean Coal”. Like Lasseters Reef, we all know there is no such thing. But I’m afraid little boys have wild imaginations, and sometimes I regret to say their ambition gets ahead of them. I can only surmise that if they refuse to come out, after all the help we’ve offered, the most up to date technology and I might add, the assistance of none other than Elon Musk, this operation must cease. 

Tony’s Mother Mary, urging him to come out and stop being silly.

A rescuer, overcome by clean coal fumes DIES!

Poetically, rather than accept the fact that clean coal does not exist, and may not (and I use this term advisedly) EVER be part of a National Energy Guarantee, they feel, like their belief in Tinkerbell the fairy in Peter Pan, that to recognise the facts would destroy their entire world view. We have clinical psychologists on hand who describe this incapacity to accept reality in any shape manner and form as “Cognitive Auric Adolescent Lapse Syndrome” (COALS) in which the respondent  via a process of self delusion and involuntary cognitive thought processing dissonance (common amongst Catholics and Queenslanders) actually believes that Coal is akin to Gold. The sufferer, actualy believes that all you have to do is hold a lump of coal in your hand, think about execution of gays, mass incarceration of First Australians, and the unquestioned principle of Manifest Destiny and the Coal will turn to GOLD. 

Major Farqueup decides to abandon the rescue attempt.

That’s what lured thise kiddies here, part greed, but moreover, to fulfil a delsuional sub-set of principles, a bit like the way the electorate think they still have a say in the running of government and the principle of privatisation. In the end, the urge to prove the correctness of their viewpoint is so overriding in spite of all the evidence to the contrary they’ll push themselves, willy nilly into a cave, a coalmine, a coal seam just to prove by association that they’re right and the rest of the world is wrong. 

In the end, we can’t help them. The Elon Musk miniature submarine will not be used, they rejected it out of hand as being “Renewable” and worried about a non refundable deposit. We have pleaded, cajoled, even sent Rolf Harris  and Cardinal Pell down there to frighten them and make them come running, but it hasn’t worked. They’re determined to stay and nothing we can do will get them out. In the end we are finished with this sad affair. They’ll be entombed for ever! Incarcerated by their curious ideology.

Last photo of one of the  little boys lost in the cave complex talking to a briquette.

Sadly, all that‘ll ever come out of this will be a sense of hopeless negativity. And that’s a burden we all have to shoulder. 

As a society it all comes down to a three letter word. 

NEG.

ANU Staff at work in developing Australia’s first ever MARS MISSION.

Still more enquiries flood in. Unable to cope with the flurry, we’ve clogged the NBN super highway, and had to run down to Army Disposals and get two new morse sets, a heliograph and a native runner just to keep pace with the information. It’s information overload, and there seems no stopping the urgency, particularly from up north where the good folk of Queensland are inspired by the Worlds’ first coal powered spacecraft. And to be perfectly honest we’re inspired too, because we’ve been doing quite a bit of research after leaks supplied to us by the Peoples Republic of China via their ANU portal. The News is STUNNING! And proves a giant Leap for HUMANITY!

Artists Impression of Mars Base Rinehart, 100 percent COAL POWERED.

The Space colony itself is to be completely COAL FIRED! 

The biggest question related to the worlds first ever coal powered rocket is how will the Mars colony survive? We have the answers to these and other vexed questions frorm our Minister for Science, Coal and Fundamentalist thought, Mr Canavan. 

Australia proving it’s credentials in converting space into REAL ESTATE! Artists Impression of new space suburb CANAVAN.

“That has been worked out on two fronts. To make the Mars Mission viable, several government departments will be exported lock stock and barrel to Mars. We’re particularly interested on exporting the Department of Environment, Science and Innovation to Mars. They’ll be able to monitor the Earth more objectively from there. The colonies will then support themselves through a combination of biofuel and harnessing their own expatriated gasses’. 

But we at pcbycp know that Bio-fuel and recyclying is not enough. We felt tempted to ask the Minister; “What is being done on Mars to assist Queenslanders in their struggle to be free of the tyrrany of reason and intelligence”?

He did not answer, but with much gravity picked up a chunk of coal and declared his faith in this vital resource. 

We’re glad to say there’s an answer to this bigger question, A question that will determine the destiny of this bold enterprise. You  may ask: “Will renewables power the Mars base”?After gleaning all the information sourced from the ANU Files we can comfortably answer that problematic question

Certainly Not!!!

Even as we speak we know that work is underway to equip a fleet of space barges. 

More from the Minister;

Australian geologists making CLEAN COAL on Mars.

‘WE shalll ship coal to Mars. We’ll call the coal handling port “New Newcastle”. The worlds first Bulk ore space extractor will take coal mined from the Carmichael Basin and Newcastle direct to Mars. Thus providing a proven reliable source of energy. This is a huge project. Only coal can provide a reliable power source. A project of this scale and vision demands the input from the Australian Taxpayer. Though profits will be siphoned into the mining companies for taking the risk of thinking about this project we see it’s only fit that it be 100 percent Taxpayer Funded. Think of it as a ‘Snowy in the Sky’, and you see how important it is to our global image. 

On Oxygen? We’’ll mine the surface ice for water. We’ll then use the oxygen to burn the coal, and the carbon we’ll release into the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect. It’ll make Mars warm, and as Tony Abbott said; “coal and a warmer planet is good for humanity’. 

We asked the Minister: “and once you’ve  you’ve used all the water on Mars as a resource? 

How long will it last. ?

He answerered,

We at Pcbycp wish to acknowlede our team at Pcbycp Shenzhen branch in giving us this SPACE EXCLUSIVE! ( File image courtesy ANU Communications Dept).

“At least one earth electoral cycle. Beyond that, as you well know, no one gives a stuff’. 

Today we celebrate Lionel Fogarty with this poem “By a Virgin Man”.

Lionel says that people – ‘Mothers, father, brothers, daughters’ – don’t start out as racist but catch the disease from society.  Virgins, like babies, speak pure poetry; the poet is a ‘virgin man’ who purifies the language.  Lionel tells us that this poem has been translated into Dutch by the people who translated the lyrics of the Beatles’ music for the first time in Holland.

By a Virgin Man

Let the the virgins have a say,
    Have a right to write.
Let the blues not be far virgins
Centuries many virgins are healed.
Not all virgins are boys or girls.
Reduce the age of space to the lands’ lovers
Re trench the hurt virgins when the mind is small
    And despair of hearts.
Don’t tragic the virgin’s path
    Man of mad breeds.
All virgins are poets.
Let no woman say they are not
Give the virgin garden of silents
Aloud enough to bring down devils
Of butterflies’ talks.
Let the virgins vote the government out of the entirely
Laws they made.
No episode sun shines without a virgin’s cry in the rainbow
Of moon of lips.
The sexes of virgins are sacred,
Ashes to lasting always was the virgin earth
But the bodies run human transforms.
By a virgin mans

Lionel G Fogarty.

Today’s Musical Dispatch from the Front continues to tackle stereotyping and its nefarious results with the second part of the dispatch first published 23 June 2018.  

Myself, I have often made fun of ‘matters German’. A group of Germans telling jokes: “Drei und vierzig (43)… Ha Ha Ha , neunzehn (19)…Ha Ha Ha…achtundzwanzig (28) …Ha Ha Ha… und zo weiter”
Not to mention the German Coastguard  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0lWICH3rY

Very funny Frank. On reflection this is based on prejudice and if most Germans were brown or black it would be called racism. Over the years I may have unwittingly hurt many a German’s feelings. Of this I’m not proud. Prejudice without pride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw

In my prejudiced opinion the choice faced by Ukrainians in 1940 is not all that different to that faced by Picts around 60AD in present day Scotland, Jews in Portugal in 1497 or Iraqis in Iraq in 1990.

Many more examples of whole populations being placed between a rock and a hard place abound in history. The present and future are not exempt.

We’re in the same boat,
On the same sea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qge8BIgPB7s

Remote Aboriginal Australians are in such a hard place.  At what price do you surrender your identity and dignity?  What price do you put on self-determination?  What price a language?  What price a weltanschauung?

At the start of the Intervention (2007), John Howard at Ntaria declared that “Aboriginal Australians, to have any future at all, will have to join the mainstream” This assimilationist paradigm hasn’t shifted several Prime Ministers (if you count Kevin Rudd twice) later. The upcoming election is not likely to change anything in this regard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn1o4MijvHA

Ntaria’s (Hermannsburg)  own Warren H. Williams is standing for the Greens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvbgTQIWw_4 in the Senate.
Rosalie Kunoth-Monks is standing for the new First Nations Party.  I wish them well and will be voting for them (the beauty of the preferential system), but you’ve heard about the snow-flake.

До наступного разу

(Google translate- Ukrainian)

Frank

Matt Canavan, Minister for Space, Coal and Sacred Queensland Values stands proudly in front of the Townsville Space Port.

Since releasing the images of “the Bradman”, Australia’s first ever coal powered interplanetary spaceship, we’ve been inundated with requests for more information. Respecting the great tradition that science knows no borders we have obliged with the following fragments that may asist in developing a more complete picture of the heroic task the Australian Government is about to undertake. 

Mr Canavan, Minister for Coal Futures and Space was proud to display the test rocket. 

Mars Base was originally going to be called “Abbott Point” in honour of his services to coal, but was overuled by “the creator” John E Howard.

‘Just like our greatest hero “the Bradman” is 99 percent Australian made. The rocket nozzles have been designed by Qualcast. The motors by Victa. The Martian explorer by Furphy, and reusable rocket pods as a joint venture by Coca Cola and Vegemite. Leaders in space nutrition. The astronauts helmets and suits were designed in co-operation between Prue Acton, and  Ken Done. A bit more colour for the red planet. 

First ever Coal Powered Interplanetary spaceship. A joint venture of Victa, Qualcast and Vegemite.

The rocket being fully coal powered is expected to get to Mars in 2029. The four year journey though longer than  the six months planned by our competitors will give the crew time to adjust to zero G and long periods of protracted boredom “just like living in Canberra”. It also gives time to convert the gas emissions to cleaner coal in the void of deep space. In doing so we’re contributing to the space enviroment and it is hoped that with terraforming and utilising the ancient organics locked deep beneath the Martian permafrost we’ll be able to do to Mars what we’ve already done to the Great Barrier Reef and the Murray Darling Basin. These tracts we can then terraform into new housing estates to prove that we’re not only leaders in space exploration but Real Estate subdivisions in the middle of nowhere. 

We plan to make Mars just like Australia. “Ramsay Space University” with attractive visa packages for overseas students will create rivers of gold to keep it sustainable.  And teach only western civilisation as seen by our creator John E Howard. The core principle, “No poofters, no wankers and no intelligentsia” will see it prosper without the input of troublemakers and ratbags.

Prototype Rocket Ship undergoing testing in a secret Queensland location.

We’ll be the first to export our values to the universe. And, (amid laughter) if there’s any indiginies on Mars the we wont make the same mistake, it’ll be full bottle Terra Nullius. 

Enthusiastic Queensland Young Liberals and Nationals patriotically volunteering to be on the first Mars Mission. To “create a better world”.

But seriously,  the real aim of the space base is to allow mining to go unimpeded by “Green Tape”. We have three mines proposed for the entire planet, “Rinehardt, Forrest and Palmer”. In recognition of the outstanding contribution these magnates have made to Australian society. And yes, they’ll put all the profits of this venture paid for by the Australian taxpayer into their own pockets. And, the silver lining? They have promised to set up philanthropic trusts to channel as much as one percent of their profit into pet projects, research into tackling domestic violence, poverty and the preservation of expensive cars. 

The honour of being first, to infinity and beyond we give to our creator, John E Howard. It is the great mans wish that the Mars Base be dedicated to his legacy.

To go where no man dares……… to the other side of everything’. 

Gone Ape-Shit!!!

We’re a bit pissed off about Hanson Young having a go at Leyonhjelm. She’s a sheila and a shagger and she’s just gotta get used to it. And why should Ljeyonhelm apologise? It was on the floor of parliament. It used to be a sheila-free zone, and Hanson was holding the floor on some ridiculously pathetic piece of legislation, Violence against women, save the Great Barrier Reef or something, and Leyonhjelm quite correctly opportuned as a he wasn’t doing so well in the argument; “You should stop shaggin other men” and she gets all arked up. 

Bugger me dead, what’s wrong with this sheila? Just another one who can’t take a joke. What a sour puss. And the what does she want in return? an apology? Leyonhjelm was just doing his job. And there’s nothing more important than the privelege to say  what you can’t say anywhere else if you can’t say it in Parliament. And if you don’t believe us, we refer you to chapter five from Lord Rupert of Murdoch, “if it sayeth by the old white man it musteth be true”. 

Leyonhjelm, enjoying the limelight.

So for chissakes for the sake of freedom of speech and the right to say whatever you like on the floor of parliament get off Leyonhjelms back. He’s standing on principle. The principle that it’s beneath his god-ordained principles to apologise to a lefty wanker. And way way too much to ask him to apologise to a leftist greenie sheila human rights activist wanker. 

Leyonhjelm upholds core values of Australian society. If he didn’t have a go at Hanson Young and want bigger guns we wouldn’t even know he existed. Like we used to think the DLP was irrelevant, before Tony Abbott became Government. He’s making a simple point, If you don’t like it you might as well just go Hong Kong Bookshop and BUGGER OFF!!

He stands up for good ol values, dissing sheilas and shooting.

Which brings us to Andrew Robb.  He’s going crook on the spat between China and the U.S. He reckons we’re the proverbial chop suey roll in the middle of the chicken chow mein, and he’s quite right. Andrew knows about leadership, leaves parliament and gets paid 700 k plus for being on the board of Chinese government proxy where he doesnt have to do anything. That’s good Governance, let business run itself and keep away. Don’t ever bugger up a good thing, and Andy is onto a good thing.

Nicky Winmar, Famously couldn’t take a joke either.

If Andy has a conflict of interest after leaving a government portfolio as a highly taxpayer funded ex minister, he should go into bat for the power with the bigest wallet. It’s a free country. In the olden days he’d be working for the slave traders, the Belgian Congo overlords, the satraps, makes no difference to Andrew. That’s how the market place works. It’s an echo chamber devoid of the irritating influences of ethics, morality and fair mindedness. That’s where Andy and Ljeyonhelm have got a lot in common. Decent older  white blokes defending themselves from snide comments, And might we say defending the core Australian values of a Fair go! 

What did Voltaire say before he invented the electric kettle?, “I fucken Hate what’s comin out yer gob, but I’ll punch any left pooftah faggot greenie lezzo wanker who denies youse the right to say it”, 

BRING IT ON!!!

That’s what Parliament’s for….

And besides, no  one’s listening. 

Local residents seeking CCP FIfth Columnists under orders from John Howard.

Dear reader. For three weeks we’ve been experimenting with a new technology of the internet age. We’ve opened up a foreign language bookshop. You might think that opening up a bookshop is a bit of an anachronism, but we think that bookshops are about to have a renaissance. 

WE feel this so strongly because we did a little test the other day. We spent a whole day reading all the web news sites until we suffered an attack of “WUO”. WUO is not a Chinese Government telecommunications giant, it is the simple acronym for “Web Users Overload”. A simple diagnosis for users of the web who become disconnected from reality. It’s a common affliction for those who have everythng at their fingertips and yet know nothing. It’s the guiding principle of governance the world over, and because of its spreading creep, we thought the bookshop offered a stable rational platfom from which to re- assert the value of the written word. 

WE looked all around Melbourne for a suitable location. We employed social anthropologists, business development research assistants and demographers to establish the most likely place for a bookshop to succeed. We wanted to make our bookshop an “open forum” for political and social discourse. Though we were tempted to stock the complete Mills and Boon, we started purchasing deep thinking tracts on society and change. We felt an urgent need to give the public at large a vehicle for which to question the platitudes of politicians, and re- evaluate all the stuff that they digest unquestioningly from Rupert, Lord of Murdoch on a daily basis. 

Eventially we settled on Doncaster.

In a sub-literate society you’ve gotta believe in something. Melb Uni declined our invitation to come to our bookshop launch.

Doncaster you say? Where the newly rich occupy anodyne antiseptic apartments all in shimmering whiteness?.. You see we liked the “feng shui”, as our Taoist philosopher Le Tzen told us, “it’s good for the soul”.  And besides, he said, whisking his pigtail from over hs shoulders, “an elevated place is best to give rise to elevated thought”. 

Sought advice from Hong Kong booksellers, but they’d disappeared.

That week we took on a new lease, and “New Directions” bookshop was opened. The first week we did a feature on Germany, and whilst Nadia the lady from the bakery across the mall plied us with apfel strudel and kirchen, we sold books on the new Germany and it’s struggle with reintegration of the one million asylum seekers, the EU and the problems with Brexit. WE sold quite a few books and the tourist guide of Rhine cruises proved very popular. The next week we did a theme on Spain and sold quite a few Borges, Marques, and framed Goyas. The public began to queue outside the shop before opening, and we believed we’d struck upon a winning formula. We’d proved the public still had an apetite for reading. Then, last week we explored the theme of China and Xi Jinping.  No one came. We couldn’t sell anything. Even the spring rolls we prepared for the launch of the last testament of a Hong Kong bookseller before his organs were harvested for political re- education couldn’t do it. We were stuffed. We were dumbfounded. We were pole-axed. 

John Howard (GPME*). Keeping us “SAFE”.. from evil fifth columnists from ccp, terrorists, lgbti stirrers, republicanism, journalists, jay walkers, outstation aboriginal communities, etc, etc

We had no answer till last week. It was on the news. John Howard (arguably our greatest P.M ever) summed it up. The fifth column of the Chinese comunist party. Their expatriate citizens are acting as Chinese nationals to take out society over. Under orders from Beijing. Start with fish and chip shops, real estate, then work outwards into restaurants universities and then… you guessed it bookshops. Learn Mandarin or Perish. And he should know, the  man who still protects all Australians to make us SAFE. Thankyou John for warning us. We’re moving, back to North Fitzroy. Where there’s an apetite for people like us. And it’s SAFE from foreign interference. Doncaster, and the bamboo curtain stretches now right across the middle ring suburbs. 

We stand united to stem the flood, 

But the river is red. 

And it’s rising from the east. 

• GPME, (Greatest Prime Minister EVER!!)

Another poem from the wonderful artist Edwin Tanner

GODS

(They are legion still)

If I were compelled to accept one
I would choose LUG:
For LUG is the god of workmanship
He doesn’t bullshit
Nor cackle about,
Plagiarise,
Tell lies,
Make ridiculous promises,
Nor create flies.

LUG himself has no god.
He uses his hands,
And his loaf,
He’s wise:
He needs neither piss-poor followers
Preachers
No!
Not even spies.

LUG is too sane to be a god really
He is not worshipped now.

EDWIN TANNER