Not Happy Jan!

Every morning I open the newspapers, look at the media on line and switch on my radio. And every day I grow more angry. 

Today I’m angry about being continually lectured to by big business and oligarchical elites about what is good for me and what my obviously distorted, selfish  views and opinions are doing to the Australian economy.

When I last looked we were still a democracy – and that means that as a citizen of this country I and any other ‘sectarian interest group (to quote Tony Shepherd, chair of the Commission of Audit) has a right to voice my disgust, discontent and despair about government policy that is destructive of our whole social fabric.

Why is it, a thinking person might ask, that so many groups who are normally quiet and compliant, are suddenly voicing protest and objection to what is seen as a budget that favours the wealthy and business at the expense of the 20% most disadvantaged in our country?

And why am I supposed to be happy that Tony and his mates will take a 12 months wage freeze, and high wage earners will have a temporary levy impost, while pensioners, students, the unemployed, the chronically ill, struggling families, youth and our most disadvantaged will face real, long term and ongoing cuts to their often marginal standard of living  imposed by a draconian and pernicious budget?

Why is it that when ordinary, everyday people try to tell the story of the projected impact on their lives of this policy, they are met with platitudinous weasel words that look at the ‘average’ and ‘big picture’ that we all know does not tell it all? It reeks of meanness and indifference supported by a PM who thinks it’s OK to wink and smirk as he takes a call from a middle aged grandmother who has had to take on telephone sex work to supplement her pension to the tune of around $85 a week .

Why do I have to adopt a presbyterian austerity approach, to suck it up for the good of everyone, when in fact I am being asked to suck it up so that corporate giants can continue to rip out great profits at the expense of the general public, without taking their fair hit?

I’m over Christopher Pine thinking that he can orchestrate the universe to conform with his perverse nihilism (sic  instructing the speaker of the house to raise to her feet to stifle debate), and the vipertude he speaks when describing those who dare voice their disagreement with his views and political opinions. I’m sick of the self-satisfied supercilious smirk that is his trade mark response to anything he disdains, and the assumption that we mere mortals are so far beneath his intellectual standing that we could no more understand what he is saying than dance naked in the streets of Iran. 

Beware of hubris I say.

The fact that a large slab of the general public is in distress at your recent proposals should tell you something – and that something is not that we are stupid, it’s that we are not happy Jan!