The real reason John Howard doesn’t like the Worm. Monday, Oct 22 2007

John Howard hates the Worm. Ooh, he hates it. With a desperate, cable-tugging vengeance. The despicable little critter throws his shoulder into a ticking frenzy of tickerdom, chews his dentures to a pulp, and straight-ahead screws his day for good. Why? Because it shows that his opponent, that faceless apparatchik from Rudd-istan, is more popular than he is. When John isn’t being loved, he gets livid.

But there’s an even deeper reason why John Howard hates the Worm. It shows that he no longer controls the political debate. At this point, John ascends to the vitriolic. It doesn’t take a Freud to see that John detests being out of control for even a second. That little shoulder of his hides such a tantrum potential as would gobsmack Rumpelstiltskin. I pity his poor parents, who no doubt copped the brunt of a tirade of No! No! No! ever since that first surgical arse-slap of his brand-new life.

Now get your bathysphere out, we’re going deep-diving. If we peel back the layers of the pungent onion known as Howard, we can see an even more general reason why he hates the Worm. This one is going to sting, because we’ll be removing the skin of bullshit from the carcass of politics with the flint axe of cold hard reason. This is the dark heart into which Howard fears to peer. So let’s watch on his behalf for a while.

There’s the Worm, all abstract in the dark. The Worm turns; it twists, it dives, it floats to the top. It responds, and it voices an opinion. It represents the shifting thoughts of a collective of viewers armed with a simple piece of input technology: technology that’s about as complex as the paddle controller on the old-skool Atari consoles that you used to play Pong with – if you’re my age, that is.

All in all, it’s a pretty simple device. It’s cheap and easy to make one. You and your mates can use it to collectively control the Worm, all the while watching the pirated Sky feed of the debate over at Ray Martin’s bachelor pad. It’s this simple device that makes John Howard hate the worm more than anything else.

So what is the deep fear in this gizmo for John? It’s this device, not the Worm itself, that gets Howard most heated up. Surely no? But it’s just a paddle! You turn it one way, it shows approval; turn it the other way, and you show disapproval. How can the device be more horrific than the Worm itself? After all, if they like you then it’s a positive tool, isn’t it?

Easy. Just imagine one of these paddles in every home in Australia. Hooked up to the Sky Live feed from Parliament, both House of Representatives and the Senate. Every. Single. Sitting. Day. And we won’t stop there. To every doorstop interview outside the House entrance. To every 7.30 Report. To every Ministerial appearance on the tube. To every Press Conference. To John in general, even when he’s off-screen.

Yes, you got it. We have the technology to run the Worm over the whole damn shebang. Now, think about John Howard with the Worm tracking his every speech in the House. What could be worse? Now there’s an idea that EA Games could make a stackload of cash off. Better keep this idea under wraps – else John shakes himself to pieces, Rumpelstiltskin-style, with his stamping foot stuck firmly through the floor.

Leave a Response »

 

A Minor Suggestion: Let’s Privatize Parliament. Monday, Oct 22 2007

It’s often said that the most efficient way to take care of any economic activity is to privatize it. Go anywhere in this land of neo-conservative policy, and you’ll find a monumental statue of Ayn Rand holding out the severed hand of Adam Smith. Gone are the days of the social welfare state: today’s informed Objectivist knows that selfishness is good, because it forces you to reap many damn fat cheques, enabling a bogan empire of noblesse oblige-me.

Now, I’m just as big a believer in the efficient as any of you peeps out there in economy-land, so pay attention. I have a minor suggestion for making life more efficient. I reckon this suggestion might just save us some dollars and thus enlarge our wallets; at the very least, it could make for excellent telly.

You see, I love that word efficient. So often stated, so rarely thought all the way through. And the one thing that’s most often not thought all the way through is just how weird actual efficiency often looks against assumed, theoretical efficiency. And in the case I’m about to discuss, this has never been more true.

This suggestion concerning efficiency touches on our beloved Federal Parliament. I have to admit, this is close to my heart. I’ve always loved a good Question Time; like any other red-blooded male, I find it hard to control my manly thoughts when confronted with Hansard (Grrr, Tony Abbott. I’m licking at you). But recent developments in Parliament have dented my affections. Idiots as dense and poisonous as Strontium-90 have gained control of the house, stifling constructive dialogue. Clueless, feckless trogs have infested our institutions, tearing passers-by to pieces in Bluetooth-headset co-ordinated, blitzkreig naughty-monkey attacks. Bloodless, unimaginative mechanoids have gained ministerial privilege, clogging up the works with ill-conceived misplans and aborted pork. Is there any way we can rectify the situation?

Given the problem, I think about what I would do, if this were a concern under my own sway. If I were the setter of the policy agenda. If I were a rich man, diddle didle… One solution springs to mind. And it’s sure a doozy…

I reckon that we ought to privatize Parliament.

Now, you might be thinking: What? Stick it to all those green-jacket peeps, the ones who pass out the water glasses and carry the mace, and let Spotless Catering run the show? Get the House cleaners on $3.25 minimum wage and bus in the scabs to break the inevitable tea-lady picket?

No. I reckon we ought to privatize Parliament itself.

Now the penny drops. Yes, there’s the very idea. Let’s put the government itself out to bloody tender. Why? Well, we all know that competition is the very soul of efficient management. Why? Because the Mentoks over at the HR Nicholls society will it so.

So, rather than have just one federal Parliament, let’s have several competing Parliaments, fighting it out amongst each other for your precious tax dollar. In fact, I propose that we let anyone with a valid corporate structure and a reputation start a parliament themselves and begin collecting taxes for rendered services.

You might think I’ve taken leave of my senses. But why not? After all, we all know (thanks to the past 30 years of conservative realpolitik) that 1) Privatization is inherently and necessarily better without exception 2) Competition is better than monopoly without exception and 3) Markets should always set the tone, without government interference.

So, what better way to achieve all three than to simply convert Parliament into an object of market freedom? What better way to ensure good policy every time, than to have multiple Parliaments compete for my tax dollar! And what better way to make sure that everyone gets the Leadership they want, or – even better – that they can drum up some angel capital to provide the kind of Leadership they feel should be available on the Parliament market. Not only that, we’ve just created a new industry to soak up all that under-utilized labor we know is really hiding behind those magical unemployment figures. Yes, you too could have a Jim’s Parliament franchise out Keilor Downs way! Live the Aussie dream!

Sounds good. Now, just imagine what our outgoing PM, Ming the Miniscule and his disloyal deputy Captain Smirk are thinking right now… I bet you any sum of money you choose to name that they would wet their pants in terror if confronted with this process in all its anarchic glory. That they might have actual competition? Holy crap. You can’t be serious, Batman.

….

Well, I’m not. And there you have it: the rationale for this piece is simply to pop a bubble. You, the astute reader, knew this was a shit-stir from moment one above when I sprung the trap. Andrew Bolt, on the other hand, was halfway through forwarding the link to the HR Nicholls Society when he realized what was up (at last…)

You see, one thing that economic rationalists will never contemplate privatizing is their own power base in any given Parliament. They’ll argue some bunk such as: Privatiztion is Not Suitable for Parliament, because of (insert sanctimonious hypocrisy here).

But if that very institution itself is considered unsuitable for privatization, despite the obvious superiority of privatization which they incessantly preach, then this question follows:

Then why should privatization be the necessarily superior approach in any other field of activity?

You see, if you won’t do it to Parliament, the most important and inefficient of all our institutions, then what justifies this approach for anything else in society? Or does the inability to apply it to Parliament simply show the dark stalking horse here: that privatization is an ideological choice, and not necessarily the best option for anything?

Leave a Response »