Isembard and fellow directors at the launching of the Great Eastern. Note absence of high visibility jackets, safety helmets and actual mud on boots and trousers.

Dear reader, many of us, have been reading the most stirring accounts serialised in ‘Man as Machine’. The heroic chapters, inspired us with the great thinkers, children of the Industrial Revolution. Great individuals possessed with technical expertise, vision and experience. Individuals who dreamt big, and took on incalculable risks to ensure humanity became the beneficiary of their wisdom, imagination and tenacity. With the likes of Stephenson, Watt, Newton, Brunel, Lister, Faraday just to name a few. And the great lateral thinkers, Rousseau, Burke and Punch. The ‘Satanic Mills’ were compensated in the long run by the enlightenment of books, education, and wonder to exploit these gifts to bring about its apotheosis in the post war socialism. To enshrine a basic egalitarianism and an opportunity of all people within a society to get the best possible start in life. My favourite Nineteenth Century industrialist was Isembard Kingdom Brunel. The man was destined for greatness, he didn’t just think big. He thought HUGE!!! The Great Western cut travel time to New York by weeks. The Great Eastern was so HUGE it was sixty years before it was bested in size, tonnage and breathtaking Big-ness. The Great Western Railway and the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the London Underground, all massive feats of engineering, imagination and art. They took huge risks, but were able to carry the public with them, as all were caught up in the romanticism of ideas. Thinking Big bought HUGE rewards to society.

In my part of prvincial Victoria, the head of just one branch of the local health service earns more than the Prime Minister, that’s over 600 k. Now you’re thinking for that money he must be a modern day Humphrey Davy, a veritable Lister, a personification of Florence Nightingale, up all night and tending to the sick. Well you’d be wrong. Instead, he gets paid that much just for being a head of a Corporate Services wing of a public department. He’s nowhere near the coal face. Of loonies running amuk, the deranged, ice addicted, the hopeless cases. He’s so insulated from what’s happening on the street it ensures as far as he’s concerned it’s all about metrics. They’ve got a very appealing annual report though. It turns all this sadness into stunningly beautiful bar charts and pie charts.

Rise of the bureaucratic polymath. Former P.M K.Rudd in plasticene. His enduring legacy yet to be determined by focus groups moving forward.

Same for the CEO of the local Council. He doesn’t get paid for being innovative, edgy, risk taking, pushing the envelope, he just gets paid that much for being there and ensuring he never ever ever sticks his neck out!! Similarly there’s a whole raft of new companies wrapped up in Private Public Partnerships who get paid squillions for just being there. In the public realm it’s called ‘rent seeking’, screwing the taxpayer. In the private realm it’s called ‘Opportunity Development’. That’s why prisons are booming, because it’s good for the shareholders. It’s big business to deliver road contracts we don’t need, that’s also good for the shareholders and private housing produce the same deregulated rubbish they have for the past sixty years, unchallenged, and inviolate. It’s the luxury of developing a system of economy that doesn’t reward thinkers and innovators, but brings huge benefit to those who ensure the status quo remains unchanged.. So next time someone tries to tell you that feudalism died out centuries ago think of people like Sir Rod Eddington. He now heads Major Projects Victoria. What has he built, designed, engineered? Nothing!! But he got a knighthood for improving British Airways. Excuse me, i’ll have to say it again, “ British Airways!! And who gave it to him? O.K. You guessed it Tony Blair. They’re the real supermen of contemporary society, They sit on boards, pretend to make decisions for the public whilst we pay them, (unelected, unrepresentative) huge salaries that would make Stephenson and Brunel weep. Hang on. That’s cultural versus corporate memory. Stephenson and Brunel? Who were they?