You've got me in a spin

Kevin has me in a spin – not the Kardashian Kevin kind that leads me to fawn and adulate, nor the bowling type that we could use in the ashes, or the how can I get a disguise so that none of my friends recognise me now that Collingwood has been beaten by the Gold Coast Suns sort, but the Abotesque vacant stare, stuttering, kind of spin that comes from so much so quickly that I don’t know which way to look. 

Just when I think I will blog about one thing – along comes another. 

Gonsky has dropped from the lexicon, Carbon pricing falls off the table.

I spent a whole morning trying to devise an amusing take on the refugee issue.

I listened as Les Murray, Soccer commentator, not poet, on Adam Hills Tonight thanked the people who helped smuggle his family to safety after the war and mused about whether the latter’s lines:

This cloud-roof country reminds me
of the character of people
who first encountered roses in soap. 

captured the same feeling that Les the commentator recalled in his anecdote about arriving in Hungary to be greeted by the locals with: Welcome, you are free. 

Last week I happened to catch The Bible on TV. I was a bit flummoxed by the producers decision to go with the topic, but gave myself a bit of a slap and remembered that it was coming out of a god fearing country and I shouldn’t be surprised. 

To get to the point: This episode was the bit about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and I was left wondering whether God /Moses was a people smuggler? After all, here was a persecuted group trying to escape and helped in their efforts by a man who had been promised heaps if he led the people to freedom- oh, and yes, coincidentally, he did that by sea. 

The preview tells me that when the Israelites set off after the mass drowning of Egyptians, they will attack Jericho and kill many to achieve their promised land. There’s one for the conspiracy theorists.

But, having spent my concentration time on this topic Kevin goes and announces his amazingly canny relocation and resettlement agreement with Papua New Guinea; that he has successfully negotiated with Indonesia to delete the automatic 30 day visa for Iranians; and that he is calling a Pacific conference to discuss a regional approach to the refugee issue. End of story!

Now, I’m not casting aspersions on action, and I can understand that when you have half a blink in which to prove you can make a difference you want to make maximum impact. But what I am worried about is the law of physics that says every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and what that all means for our future and desperate people.

Tony of course was gobsmacked and used stop the boats three times in the space of a four sentence response.

I felt a bit like Tony – now that’s scary!

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Art work of the week

Just a tiny topical sketch today

You've got me in a spin.  Pen and ink on paper.