KATTER AMONGST THE PIGEONS

The Right Wing Leads

ABOUT PROVENANCE AND ALL THAT

If you have watched 'The Collectors' on ABC or 'Antiques Roadshow' on a commercial channel? You have? Then you will have heard of this word.

prov·e·nance  (pr v -n ns,-näns) noun
1. Place of origin; derivation.
2.
a. The history of the ownership of an object, especially when documented or authenticated. Used for artworks, antiques, and books.
b. The records or documents authenticating such an object or the history of its ownership.

Here is a surefire way, if you are a Second-Hand Dealer or the operator of a Craft Shop like Country Comfort, or actually make Handcrafted Goods to enhance your sales, increase interest in local producrs or to add value.

People who buy antiques or home-made products have a real interest in where it came from, it's history, how it was made and who made it. You will also know that good Provenance with an object also increases its value many times over. A handkerchief is just that, but a handkerchief that may have been used by Bill Clinton to mop up stains will have additional value because it's a one off, or at least we hope so.

If you want to increase an objects value, even after its sale to someone else then a photo of the maker (yourself?) and a quick biography along with dates times and places would be a great advantage, especially if the photo is of the person actually making the object at the time.

If you are able to I would suggest if you have any knowledge of an object, even if you still have it at home and don't wish to part with it just yet, that you sit down at your computer, Open a write program and record concisely all that you know about your favourite object. Who made it, when it was made or when and where you acquired it. Any historically accurate data that comes to mind.

Having done that you should print it out and store it somewhere safe, preferably with the object. Pasted to the back of a painting is one place or folded up inside that vase or piece of pottery.

Have you ever tried to describe something and ended up looking more like a Marcel Marceau impersonator. Claiming for Insurance can be a nightmare so if you have any valuable objects then I suggest you extend a Provenance to everything of substance in the house.

If you are computer literate and have a digital camera it is also great for Insurance purposes to have a photo of all your valuables as well. Print out a copy of the provenance, insert the image and file it in a place safe from fire and water damage. Note serial numbers and any other identifying marks (this helps if some miscreant decides they want to relocate your valuables to a Pawn Shop.) I have even thought about committing everything to a USB stick and leaving it with relatives. So might you.

Finally. You might have purchased the object just yesterday. But what happens if it lasts longer than the five years things are made for these days. That empty Pickle Jar you collected rather than recycle will, somewhere, sometime, somehow be worth something to somebody. It has provenance already with the 'Use-by-date'. Good wine and even the rubbish wine come to think of it has a vintage or a bottling date for just that reason. Wine Buffs like me who pay anything up to $6.99 for a good bottle of wine set them aside for later consumption maybe a day or ten years later. The longer you keep wine it will either increase in value or tend to morph into Vinegar.

If you cannot do it yourself then I might suggest that paying me around 10 grand to do it for you might be a bit expensive for you but very advantageous for me.

Do it now or forever regret it after you survey the burnt out wreck that used to be your home.

Buyer be sure BUTCH 

DANCE TALENT AT 13

SEEING THE LIGHT

A new discovery has been recently marketed as quick and effective 'Tangible Light'.

It is a simple inexpensive device that can be fitted to any existing meter even if it’s not ‘smart’. However one customer we interviewed had a complaint about the product. “The moment I turned the bloody thing on I couldn't move my hand away from the light switch, in fact I couldn't move anything, it was like being stuck in an ice-block.”

When we asked a spokesperson he pointed out that “the inability to move once light had become solid was a bit of a drawback”. When I tried to walk around in it myself (on just half-power) I ended up bruised and battered by constantly bumping into its rays and I'm not sure if it will catch on.

The spokesperson said that one positive outcome was that it could be the end to war and terrorism. When I asked why he replied “You can't get anything to f.....g explode in it”.

Alfred Newman stuntman, test pilot, human guinea pig and host of the ABC show ‘The New, New and even Newer Inventors’ decided to test the non-explosive theory by clutching a grenade to his chest and pulling the pin.. His remains will be cremated today at Linton Cemetery on a C.F.A sponsored Bonfire.

In other news the ABC apologised for the break in their Inventors Programme. It was caused by an electrical blackout which lasted 5 minutes, a reserve generator failed to materialize and the intangible light device had been unintentionally disconnected.

REFUGEES ARE GOOD FOR US?

(An article from Seymour Glass)

I’d like to go to Auckland, God knows why. If I buy a boat and set sail in an easterly direction their Navy will eventually pick me up and tow me into port. It’s a great way to travel, it’s cheap and they’ll pay for my accommodation at least until they wake up to the fact that I was only running away from the Maori Tribes in Bondi and fly me back here again.

It was way back in 1770 when the idea first arose that we should be stopping boat people from landing on our shores. But we fart-arsed around and let them wander about converting us to their religious beliefs and imposing upon us the British equivalent of Sharia Law.

Since then, especially after 1840 when 5 million foreigners swarmed into New York Harbour and stayed, we have been fending off any other new arrivals in particular until 1972 anyone with a different skin colour (not counting the original inhabitants which weren't counted until 1965)

America leapt ahead economically with more than a little help from God and his Mormons, but we insisted on staying as a laid-back economic turtle quite happy to let sheep do all the work for us.

It was in the 1990’s that Honest John Howard, the Sheriff of the Pacific, made it possible for us to get rid of our guns and embrace new immigrants as long as they came via a Pacific Island. So 6,423 refugees ended up in New Zealand and in the same year 26,710 New Zealanders landed in Australia.

Perversely, part of this migration debacle was caused by an identified lack of skills in the Aussie work force and the economic guru’s (also defined as big business) making the decision that it was far cheaper to import skilled workers than it was to train our own. Normally quite rigid thinking politicians referred to as ideologues fell under the spell of political donations and hollow promises of power. We could cut back on university spending by importing Tamil doctors who were quite comfortable living in the bush, and defending themselves against marauding city-slickers.

The other problems facing the country was that there were still too many reds under the beds, so we really needed a few fascists from a white South Africa to balance them out. Then of course we still had the yellow peril and the black curse both of which nearly made up 2% of the population. The fact that we quite happily fell into the Chinese numbers racket at our local take-away and set up cancerous tanning salons so that we could blacken ourselves and not need to import so much tanning lotion and needn’t import that actual skin colour at all.

Let’s be really straight here. Australians just aren't rooting enough. The average of 2,3 children is just not enough when you take into account that the population is 10% gay. The resulting 2.07 percent is further reduced by our habit of running each other over with our cars and locking up criminals for so many years without women that they waste all their reproductive energies on each other.

Lets face up to some hard facts. If we stabilized our populations, we would stablilise our use of resources such as water, gas, petrol and salad dressings.

Eventually enough of us oldies would drop off the twig to take up the slack in unemployment and save a fortune in English lessons. The money we saved by not having to pay artificial training services to pretend to train our young people could be ploughed back into the general economy. We could then live within our means and not have to worry constantly about whether our iThis or iThat are the latest model. A steady inflation rate and falling unemployment would prevent the rich from getting even richer.

Then there is the other side of the coin. As the population ages we are going to need a lot of people to wipe our bottoms. By necessity we are going to have to either root more or import more young people to empty our colostomy bags, change our external catheters so we can’t be seen wetting ourselves and wield the brickies trowel to apply the make-up on our faces. We would just end up sitting in a puddle of our own drool if we didn’t have some ‘Fresh Off Boats’.

Gays, Blacks, Chinese, Muslims, Jews, F.O.B’’s, Scientologists, Short People, Wankers, Spankers and Bankers need all come under scrutiny to ensure that we all mix in together for a better society as a whole. Intolerance will not be tolerated except for bloody smokers.

In summary, like crime, this problem will always be with us while we have a country that the world wants to occupy because we have it so good.

Australia has benefitted from the last 243 years without an enforced repatriation programme and will, in the great majority of cases, benefit from the next 243 years of boat people.

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You might be astonished to find that we can sometimes wander off into the world of fiction rather than report the real factual news such as trying to prove the existence of Hobbits at Happy Valley Crossing.

So maybe a regular column like that of Roland Rockyourdeli in the Miner might prove popular where we can constantly mention that we have a deceased Mummy. The fact that they were once head of Stalin’s Secret Police seems to be irrelevant.

Make sure you also read his column in ‘The Miner’ and get the honest opinion of two aging old pundits regularly referred to as two old women’s private parts.

(Editor)