ONE STEP FORWARD TWO STEPS BACK

All governments speak with forked tongues to please their corporate masters and collect as much ill-gotten revenue as possible.

As an example of this trade in hypocrisy we might look at Australian gamblers. The government profits massively from gambling through its taxes and then makes half-hearted attempts to warn us that gambling is a big problem or the big pharmaceutical companies who bribe doctors to prescribe opioids and then we have the health system saying we have an opioid problem. Why not just send Medicare money through to Sharp, Stick and Dome directly, buy up their product for destruction and save a million addictions to start with.

Lately a three pronged assault has been made on the alcohol industry. First the impractical 0.05 and lose your licence, secondly all the health warnings about two standard drinks in four hours is healthy but three is binge drinking, finally in a bid to get outlets closer to home the Victorian government has launched a program to help cafes, bars and school tuckshops to get a liquor licence.

Where do we go and how do we throw out these morons before they get totally consumed by taxes on vice.

‘DON’T LEAVE EXPERIMENTAL PAPERS LYING AROUND FREE-THINKERS’

The Astonisher has always had an unwritten policy that when making decisions that they should, as often as possible, be either left to sheer chance or never made at all. A decision delayed keeps ones mind busy and can’t hurt anybody unless you’re a surgeon.

I came to this conclusion a dozen or so years back when I was accidentally browsing through some papers that my ex-partner was reading then about ‘Conformity, Compliance and Acceptance.’ What caught my eye was some experimental data from tests applied to a different range of people to record their reactions under certain circumstances.

One of the tests showed that when giving electric shocks to a subject, the more distant or detached the subject the more severe the shocks could become before the person applying the treatment refused to go any further. The voltage applied was less severe when the subject was in the same room than if they were out of sight. So it was that the idea that our public servants, including politicians, don’t give a fuck about you or me is that they don’t have to come face-to-face with us and can apply as much pain as they want without consequence.

Obedience to instruction also varied depending on whether the person applying the shocks were on their own or in the presence of a ‘perceived’ superior authority. There was less compliance to instruction when it was received over a telephone. So if the Town Clerk is standing in front of you, with the power to make your life a fucking misery, then you are bound to do exactly as you are told.

Another test showed that people tend to conform to those around them, adopt the same corrupt and unethical practices and will even follow orders that under normal circumstances they would find morally repulsive. This might explain why large bureaucratic structures, with volumes of instructions on how one should act under different circumstances, will inevitably, and sometimes inadvertently force employees to follow certain procedures that may be an anathema to an individual acting alone. And so it in confrontations with local councils they will act immorally in favour of a council contractor regardless of the best interests of the ratepayers.

Other experiments showed that some people assisted in the consensus process of decision making either ‘because they didn’t want to upset their peers’ or ‘ wanted to be liked’. Extreme examples of this same phenomena can be applied to Hitler in WW2 Pol Pot in Cambodia and Australia on Nauru.

What breeds ‘obedience’? Physical and emotional distance from the ratepayer, closeness and legitimacy of authority, institutional authority by way of Acts and other instruments of control, the way the group is packaged and who is supporting who, and the liberating effect of group influence emanating from the Lunchroom all effect a persons responses.

Several experiments reveal that someone who punctures unanimity deflates its social power and observing someone else’s dissent, even if it is wrong, increases our own independence. So the Astonisher has become, in a small way, that instrument to debunk the bullshit that comes out of local council offices and other concrete-minded entities. As a result of this we hope that the readership will be more likely to make the right self-determining decisions if they feel someone is on their side.

Add to this the fact that people once publicly committed to a position, seldom yield to social pressure. Umpires and referees rarely reverse their initial judgments in footy matches, and neither do we. People conform based on desires to fulfill others’ expectations and often to gain acceptance. Conformity is greater when people respond before they can reflect. Conformity results from acceptance of evidence about reality. We conform because we want to be liked and approved, or we want to be right.

So I recommend, as I am often pulling myself up for not doing it, that if we want good things to happen or to give honest answers we need to consider who is around at the time, who holds the authority and is the balance of power between us and them equal?

Each of these tests showed, as it is applied against good practices in management, that real face-to-face involvement in decision making was most likely to create a more honest environment, more likely to happen, and thus lead to more positive outcomes.

If people don’t want to participate then we are at fault not them.

FOR EVIL TO FLOURISH IT TAKES GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING

In a sense this is why the bureaucracy get away with so much. If there were to be a Royal Commission into every government entity we would have a revolution on our hands within months.
Winston Churchill once said that 'never has so much been done by so few' and, in a different context he was right.

Governments can never be seen to make mistakes, they fear retribution from the people. How many times have we been told that it is better not to know, that keeping secrets is important to the security of the nation.

Well they are wrong. As children we are constantly told not to lie, what the consequences of lying could be, that lying is a sin, and so on and so on.

How can we be such hypocrites when lying becomes the norm, where Teachers lie to our children by feeding them all the rubbish our governments want them to learn. They bullshit about democracy and the rule of law yet democracy in this country means what is good for the rich and the rule of law changes depending on who you are.

A person robs a service station of $3000 he could spend years in prison, an executive can steel $3 million and all that happens is he loses his job.

A footballer might bite another player and can't play the game for a few weeks, if you or I did that to someone we would be up on serious assault charges. What is the difference with biffo on the sporting field and biffo between two business moguls.

Where the crowd stands and either cheers or jeers while the businessmen suffer extraordinary media exposure and are condemned for their behavior.

What I am trying to say here is that despite the fact we are all supposedly equal in the eyes of the law, it is the very lawmakers who abuse the law and get away with it with impunity.
Golden Plains Shire is no different. It suffers from the same bureaucratic inequality, where to challenge them means they close ranks and will tell blatant lies even to other government authorities to make themselves look faultless.

In my case I believe it borders on corruption.
I have tried by several different means to find justice, I believe their is direct collusion between council, it;s employees and its contractors to feather their own nests at the expense of we ratepayers.
Every excuse to adopt a new regulation means the possibility of extra staffing. In government circles the more staff you have the bigger your salary package. So we possibly have several executives in council receiving 6 figure salaries for doing virtually nothing.

The bigger the salary the more sway you have, the more power you have to direct others to break the laws that don't suit.

Where an old boy network still tells our elected officials what to do and our elected officials go along with all this corruption because they don't want to make waves.

Our dilemma is that we are too comfortable with the ways things are and do not want to see what is possible, we don't want to rock the boat, stir the shit up from the bottom of the barrel or throw a spanner in the works. We are happy to work and play blinkered by our desire to just enjoy a happy life.
To come back to where I started and perhaps say it in another way.

FOR CORRUPTION TO EXIST IT TAKES COUNCILLORS TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY

POLITICIANS OR POCKET LINERS?

It is well known that Big Business and Government Departments are really those who govern us. It is not government by the people for the people. We don’t decide who we want to represent us. We are told who to vote for by the political parties because it is parties we elect not people. If we voted for competent intelligent individuals we would not have half the morons in Government that we have.

I think it was in the movie ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ where I heard the quote. “I’m not a thief, I’m a lawyer. They’re similar professions anyway”.

What goes on behind closed doors we may never know and what is said over a gin and tonic at the Melbourne Club we are not privy to, but it does make one wonder why politicians with a particular interest always end up retiring (before being voted out of office) into very well-paid positions that do not require too much energy or thought. It’s Mates Rates in a different form. It’s lovely to be able to massage yourself into a future job but it should not be at the expense of the taxpayer. How can politicians complain about the megabucks made by the private sector when they vote megabucks for themselves?

Politicians all employ spin-doctors, they use all the hype of private sector advertising even to the point of blatant misrepresentation. They can’t say what they honestly feel else they may upset the Party Leader. However, sometimes things go wrong. Some party functionaries have been a little careless and ended up behind the bars they thought everyone else should be behind. Some have felt themselves beyond normal morals, like some sports personalities, and have maybe fumbled with something they shouldn’t have, others seek out all manner of means to enhance their financial assets.

Most politicians end up corrupted either morally, politically or financially. There has been over a century of shenanigans inside the walls of government and big business which we ordinary Joe’s or Jane’s will never be able to penetrate or expose. Recent polls in regard to what professions people respect Doctors and Teachers were inexplicably at the top but more telling are the bottom three ‘Real Estate Salesmen, Radio Shock-jocks and Politicians.

With elections coming up in September we have our chance to put the politicians in their place. Make sure that you discover and understand the policies of each party before you tick any boxes.

Has Labor gone totally to the centre of politics and forgotten whom they are supposed to represent, have the market economists taken total control of the Liberals, do the Nationals really represent the country voter any more or are they just the coat-tails of the Coalition?

Will Katter and Palmer take votes away from the far right of the Coalition and make it harder for Nationals to be elected? Will the Greens benefit from the left wing voter leaving the Labor Party box blank?

Our feeling is that there are so many parties vying for the conservative vote that they could jeopardize a clear victory for the Liberals and give us an unruly Senate of inexperienced do-gooders.

I don’t know about you dear reader but the term ‘Junkyard Dog’ seems to be appropriate to describe some of our politicians. After apologizing to all dogs I think I’ll go and have a root on the Astonishers credit card.

Maddas Alhell

Addendum:

Recently ABC Four Corners did an expose about the collapse of Prime Investments (to invest in Nursing Homes). Dr. Peter Wooldridge the ex-Minister for Health in Liberal Governments was on the Board of Directors when it collapsed after $140 million of the $500 million put in by investors was distributed to the Board and the C.E.O including a staggering $32 million fee just to list itself on the Stock Exchange. Honest politicians?

This same Peter Wooldridge also approved Medicare Rebates (For US readers this means TAX FREE) for MIR Scanners in Private Clinics and Hospitals but not the Public Health Sector. As a result private patients get scans for nothing while public patients (taxpayer funded) have to pay around $240.00 for the same privilege. Handing government money straight to the private sector or looking after your mates?

SMOKE AND MIRRORS NO LONGER CONFINED TO MAGICIANS

Duty, Levy, Toll, Tariff, Excise, Charge, Fine and Rates are all the variations used to circumvent the use of the word Tax. The only upfront use of it is when it is combined with Goods, Services, Income and Payroll. I’m not sure what they call the motza derived from the dozens of forms of legal gambling that they pretend to rail against.

I believe that it is time that all levels of government fully disclose before every election how they intend to raise government funds, in what amounts and where they intend to spend it and how many people they will need to spend it. No longer should we have to put up with the smoke and mirrors of what they will spend over the next four years. Like the banks it screens the real income and expenditures from scrutiny.

Each year they announce a four-year spending plan which is the same money they announced three years ago. Four years is also the distance between elections which gives them the chance to announce another expense over four years which will never be spent because it doesn’t exist, it was called something else the year before.

The Stimulus Package was the same. A Billion Dollars promised by the Federal Government to build Public Facilities just happened to be the same Billion Dollars that the State Governments promise to build Public Facilities and the same Billion Dollars that the Local Councils claimed they were going to spend on Public Facilities. Nobody knows whose money they are spending and that’s just how they like it.

To put in a Carbon Tax as an excuse for us to cut the country's carbon emissions while at the same time scrap subsidies which allow ordinary people to cut their own carbon emissions is just another way we are being hood-winked out of our money by rapacious politicians and public servants bent on moving public money into corpoarte supporters pockets.

It's about time we got off our fat behinds, me included, and started to take back control of our own country. Now where did I put that bloody speed camera ticket?

GOVERNMENTS CANNOT MAKE MISTAKES

It is impossible for Governments to make mistakes. That is an awful truth that even they will admit.

I would be a strong supporter of any political party that stands up and admits their mistakes. I would be an even stronger supporter of any politician or party that includes in any Act of Parliament a clause which allows anyone damaged by a law (thereby admitting fault). The Government cannot be sued. Therefore the Stolen Generation, the woefully abused Children in State Care (which still occurs), the Children denied an adequate education because of some smart-arsed theorists who think they know what’s best for children but only manage to succeed in stuffing up the system. The children denied adequate and accessible medical attention in remote rural areas (both black and white).

Where are the paedophiles now that used to be employed at the State Children’s Homes (Mittagong as an example) when they were closed down. The excuse was a matter of economics the truth was more like they were so riddled with child-abusers at every level that they were closed and the abusers shuffled off to some other department away from children. All in the name of ‘the government does not make mistakes’. The only thing the government has admitted is that their care workers fuck children but deny it still goes on.

On a lighter note - Did you know that the highly publicised dog restraints in cars act was quietly rescinded recently because it contravened the ‘Cruelty To Animals Act’. Goes to show lots of fanfare to bring something in and nothing said when it goes out. .

But get ready to still be pulled over. It is against the law for dogs to have their nose out the window (the same as your arm or elbow). Now I’m no lawyer but I believe this is a blatant act of discrimination agains dogs with long noses. Anyone want to start a class action on behalf of everything from Whippets and up?

Of course it could be worse. We could live in America.

BUREAUSPEAK

Any bureaucratic structure, constantly on guard against being interpreted too literally, needs to develop specific words and phrases that at first sight may appear definite, on second reading may give rise to a different interpretation. This is a protective practice that shifts blame from them onto someone else if things go wrong. In legal circles this gives rise to argue a whole range of different interpretations for one word, which extends the time in court cases and in turn inflates both the egos and wallets of legal practitioners.

There is also the practice to publish documentation so wordy and couched in such legal terminology as to hide – like a needle in a haystack – important salient points – deep within the vowels and consonants. One letter or one number hidden in such a way is a method by which important changes that are unpopular or undemocratic can be slipped through un-noticed. It’s a wonderful way in which corrupt prtactices can be concealed.

Every action has a policy, rule or regulations. The Police Manual in London for example on ‘The Use Of And Maintenance Of Bicycles’ is 93 pages long. These volumes contain millions of words and most normal people are unwilling to read the entire document and as a result things get approved without due consideration or take years to process through the system. My friends at Golden Pains Shire Council are no exception, they can tie you up for three months getting aspproved for an additional wheelie bin.

From time to time we may receive a letter that contain some of these words or phrases.

Courageous - An act we don’t agree with.

Popular - Doesn’t cause too much of a stir, the opposite of which is

Unpopular - Ordinary people like the decision but not your superiors.

Team player - Does what they are told without question. The Captains always right.

Priority -It’s in the In-tray and I might get to it within three months. If it’s Top Priority then it’s at the top of the In-Tray.

Urgent -Its gone to the pending tray and might get done within the month. If it’s Very Urgent it will get done within a month.

Immediate - It’s reached the Pending Tray.

Consider - we will think about it at an appropriate time in the future

Future - if immediate it will be after your next birthday, if near it will happen before you retire, if distant it will be in the next Millennium.

Confidential - Doesn’t go any further than the lunchroom, sometimes the gents toilet cubicle.

Secret - A good word for not providing information. Top Secret nobody has the information.

Commercial in Confidence - Another way not to provide information, usually involves money.

Active - It’s on the desk somewhere.

Actively consider - Someone else has got it on his or her desk.

Matter of time - It’s filed

Filed - It will take a month to find a copy, we threw the original in the waste paper basket.

Archived - Something you’ll never hear about again in your lifetime. The Dead Sea Scrolls were the result of good archiving.

Pending - Endless cycle of inactivity.

Out-tray - Pass on to a higher authority.

Pigeonholed - Great idea for next Century.

Cross-referenced - A way of losing it in several different places.

Intending - We might think about it.

Impending - A decision is imminent.

Imminent - We thought about it but don’t know whether we should tell you.

Implications - We might be blamed.

Legal implications - We are looking for a law that prevents us from being blamed.

Supervision - Someone is watching to see if you get too close to be ethical.

Take On Board - And throw it away on the other side.

Stakeholder - Part of the problem.

Community Partner - Do what your told.

Transparency - Nobody knows its being done.

Accountability - Acquire receipts from anywhere

Counselling - Have been told how to avoid being caught again.

Compliance - Ensure that the customer jumps through the flaming hoops.

Spreading the risk - Ensure that no one person gets the blame

Flexibility - Any answer is bound to be right

Red Tape - Its been bound, gagged and shoved down in the garage.

Flagged - There’s a piece of paper sticking out of the file marking the right place.

Coffee Breaks - Where all the decisions are really made

Gone to a committee - You’ll wait 12 months.

Forming a committee - You’ll wait 3 years.

Considering a committee - Don’t hold your breath.

Consult - We’ll ask the boss.

Consulted - We asked the boss but he has to ask someone else.

Consultants - People that bosses use to create a pretty report that only says what he decided the very moment you asked him.

Meeting - Spending time discussing things not on the agenda.

Case Meeting - Convince them that we are right. Client leaves meeting knowing what you did on the weekend.

Appoint - At least one member of staff will be employed to sit at a desk with the appropriate label.

User Pays - This inevitably means you have to pay to receive a service which will include tea breaks, smoko breaks and time spent playing Solitaire on the computer. Public servants must account for every minute of their day as we taxpayers would expect. As a result tea, smoke and games get lumped together under the heading ‘Research’ and you are charged accordingly. Even complaining can attract a fee if they’re handled right.

Restructuring - a damn good way to put decisions off.

Litigation - Give us a try it’s not our money and we’ll use every bit of it to destroy you whether we’re right or wrong.

The latest and most misleading is the use of the word ‘efficient’.

It will be more efficient really means it will be so complicated nobody will try or it will cost so much nobody with any sense would be able to afford it. It might also mean employing more government staff to make things go faster, staff meetings go quicker or even that steps can be missed that might be informative to the customer. It is a wonderful word that can be misinterpreted any which way one wants and still be right.

Now you can translate the next letter from your local council.

General Counsel

Solicitor for Kebab Cross

NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL ARRIVE

WHAT WE SAW AND WHAT WAS PLANNED WAS NOT WHAT WE GOT

It’s a bit of a mixed bag with the new Town Tourist Precinct. Actually we like the fact that people are already stopping and enjoying the facility and, at least on the day that I was down there, stopping about three or four families and preventing them from having a picnic somewhere else.

It is still to be seen if Kris and Mal benefit from the new facility or whether the highway traffic, still doing 80 kph by the time they ‘hit’ the area, will be slowed enough for pedestrians to cross safely with their Chico Rolls and it will be some time before we notice any increase, if any, in the main shopping precinct atop the hill. Rarely do people stop twice in the same town unless they’re fat lazy buggers.

We got half of the original design. As Golden Pains Council had decided that it would come in on time and on budget and they didn’t have to pay for the States largesse. The project kept getting smaller with each new tender, and from what I hear, it had to be re-tendered several times due to errors. One error being a declaration that there was definitely no water on site but it was later miraculously divined and the replica rooms became much needed toilets. They did not read the Dial Before You Dig publicity.

The horse troughs went, seats went, signs were reduced, the platform reduced in length, a picnic rotunda wiped off the map and imaginative crossing barriers, which could have been a great safety feature migrated up the hill under a set of bushes and only a token of their original size.

Only time now will tell whether the State of Victoria has used its money wisely, or as usual, pissed it all up against the wall inside the toilets. For a newsletter that is famous for its whinging, whining and self aggrandisement I think we should shut our mouth for a while until the town, the tourists and the intoxicated pass their judgement.

TENECE ANYWON

ABOLISH THE PARTY SYSTEM?

ne place where one learns all the tricks of the trade, how to outgun your opponent, sidestep his strategy and demolish his defence is to work with a left of centre law firm like Slater and Gordon. Of course left of centre is where all potential antagonists gather, so if you want to piss off the establishment left of centre is a potentially a lucrative position to argue from. One very successful graduate of Slater and Gordon was our ex-Prime Minister Julia Gillard, but some would argue that she is not really someone S&G would be pleased to promote.

Julia, having learnt all about manipulation of intangible knowledge, through various cases involving both big business and politics, was in an ideal position to outgun, sidestep and demolish anything or anyone that stood in her way. She is a master at political strategy, constantly threatening her supposedly supportive colleagues into doing what she wants and not what the country needs. In the end the knife she was wielding was turned against her and with all the aplomb of a vanquished leader left politics altogether, but, not without a nice prime-ministerial pension to sustain her. Now of course she will be passing her vitriolic message to the dumbo’s studying law in Adelaide.

I always thought that the Liberals were the masters of ideological pile-driving, where the ideals of the party bulldozed away any ideals for Australia. But apparently Julia duplicated some of these strategies of the Liberals as Tony had begun to realise that the politics of fear, as practised by One Nation, could be just as useful to the Liberal cause. It is also this ‘fear-mongering’ that keeps the National Party compliant. All three major parties Liberal, Labor and National have really moved to the centre so that voters are confused over which policy really belongs to which party, and the three minor parties decided that one would go to the left (Green) one would go to the right (KAP) and one would move away from the Catholic Church (DLP). We don’t consider Palmer (P.U.P) as going in any direction.

Lets face it a party that represents only a proportion of the electorate is doomed to oblivion and the Nationals unfortunately appear to be taking that path. They are moving, like Labor, away from their heartland, and unless they revert back to the founding principals will find themselves caste out like lepers from their country colonies.

On another note this scribe, who has always been an admirer of anything so far to the left that I’m nearly always outside the common room, and probably the only true socialist in Linton. This is not to be confused with Communism as invented by Joseph Stalin. who like religion was high-jacked by the power hungry mongrel intent on enriching only himself, Stalin did do one good thing. He established that the representatives of the people and the employees of the people government would only have to obey one rule. Rule # 1. Always please the boss. I suppose in an Australian context Julia also adopted this all encompassing rule.

The party system is broken. We have gone the way of the United States and allow self-interest to dictate the countries direction. America admits its system is broken, and like Australia, is being run by chance, luck, happenstance and the everlasting incompetence of the bureaucrats. If we know the U.S system is broken and can’t be fixed unless by the hand of God, then why do we slavishly keep following the U.S and not govern in the interest of Australia and our neighbours rather than some sand-locked god-forsaken corrupt and religious divided backwater that no sensible person would even fly over let alone visit.

Lets get rid of political parties. The only parties to legally exist shall be where we can dance and be happy and get off our faces. It won’t be the chaos that some predict, nor shall the nation become ungovernable (politicians don’t govern) the state won’t collapse, although States should.

When a Private Members Bill comes up, as they do now from independents, all the other members of the house either agree or disagree with it, not on party lines but on what they believe their electorate would want and would be advantaged by. Groups of similar minds would band together to adopt, amend or defeat the law or policy. Nobody would be standing over our representatives,

Parliamentary Secretaries, Ministers and Prime Ministers would be elected by the both houses as with one example put forth by Republicans for the selection of a President/Governor General. The best woman or man would be elected to the most appropriate positions and the one most suited to their talents. There would be no free for-all but mini-elections within parliament itself.

The beauty of this system is that the electors, you and I, would be voting for somebody we potentially know, somebody we believe has our interest at heart and somebody, if they don’t represent us that can be easily removed from office. The thing that keeps a politician on his toes is the next election.

THE PATH TO THE DEVIL CONFUSES TOURISTS

The Astonisher has always thought that it was only Americans who get really stirred up by the thought of going to the Devil. We were wrong. Several Australian tourists had voiced there concerns to the us about getting lost for several hours before finding the relative heaven of Cape Clear.

Even though there was an itsy-bitsy sign off the Linton-Naringhal Road (a.k.a Geelong Road) giving the right direction the sign that should get you to that point is AFTER the intersection and not before it. One complaint was even about the fact that whilst looking for the Devil’s Kitchen they actually ended up at St.Paul’s Anglican Church which seemed to have taken them in the wrong secular direction altogether.

We were aware that several representations had been made to council, one in particular related to town signage, and we had written to council regarding this problem as well. It’s no good endeavoring to get tourists into town if we leave them only confused and eager to leave. I’m not sure that council would be too happy if, after completion of the expensive Town Entry Precint, all the tourists ended up at the Snake Valley Hotel as a result of incorrect signage.

We were astonished that Golden Pains Council continued to ignore the error, probably because it didn’t take people to Bannockburn.

Good on Damien Waite of Golden Pains Council.

Last year as part of the community consultations over the simulated railway station the Astonisher made a point that the Devil’s Kitchen sign did not point the way to Devil’s Kitchen. One would end up at the rather loftily named Linton Recreation Complex.

Everyone should note that the main sign has now been relocated to the corner of the Linton-Naringal Road (Geelong Road to some) and smaller signs placed on poles to support changes in direction for tourists.  It only took Damien a year, but it took council eleven years to move the sign 100 Metres.

On a really positive note now we know that there is at least one person in local government that is not entirely incompetent and this leads us to believe that this year we might finally get to sit on the platform of an impressionist station and wait for a non-existent train.

Still on our TO DO list is the special rack for the Railway Hotel and a big skip in which to dispose of all our old things.