by Gregor Stronach 

Has it been a week already? My God, doesn’t time fly when you’re suddenly busier than the proverbial one-armed brickie in Lane Cove…
In the interests of continuing to provide some sort of preamble (and thus at least appear to be earning my money…), I shall now talk about keys, and their overall benefit to mankind. Or maybe not.
Ok. Here goes. Typing… now!

1. Macquarie Fields Forever

It’s not often you’ll find me writing this, but we – as a nation – could really learn something from the French. When they take to the streets with firebombs and guns, they really do it properly.

Examine, if you will, the current rioting in France – 12 days and it’s still going strong, and over 4700 cars set alight, along with God knows how many buildings. Now compare that with a dozen or so sad sacks in Macquarie Fields who threw a handful of firecrackers at police and torched a shopping trolley and two mattresses.

It’s an easy comparison to make, given their similar beginnings – a suspect or two, apparently being chased by police for whatever reason, end up dead and the kids don’t like it. So it’s out into the streets at night to light a few fires and make a point. Except in France, it’s spiralling out of control.

So either the French need to calm down, or the boofheads of Macquarie Fields need to undertake a study trip to the Riviera and the streets of Paris to learn a thing or two.

We know the government is big on study trips – after all, they spend countless thousands of dollars a year studying the effects of traffic lights on tropical island resorts and the introduction of new rides in Disneyland… surely they could spare a few thousand bucks to send our home-grown ratbags to France to learn to riot properly.

 

2. They should stop investigating Cheney NOW!

I’m sure that heading has given a couple of people cause for concern – but hear me out, because this one is really, really important.

The current fallout over the CIA leak investigation is just the tip of the iceberg – you know, I know it and you can bet your bottom dollar that Cheney knows precisely where this one is headed as well… after all, we all watch the West Wing, and we all know that the Vice President’s Chief of Staff would never, ever break a massive law like the one that protects the CIA without authorisation from above.

But – and it’s a big but – I feel that the investigation should probably stop where it is. Scooter Libby looks set to be hung, drawn and quartered over the scandal – and so he should be, too – but if the investigation continues, it’s likely that Cheney will also find himself in the soup.

On the surface, it’s good news. In the short term, it’s awesome news… but in the long term? It’s terrifying.

Here’s the scenario – Cheney gets busted and removed from office, at which point the President, desperate for some good PR, starts groping around beneath himself for a replacement Vice President.

It’s been postulated by some that the replacement could well be Condoleeza Rice – a natural disaster waiting to happen. And before anyone gets on their high horse about me being racist or sexist, it’s not either of those things that are making me say this.

It’s because she’s just flat-out awful as a human being that she doesn’t deserve a crack at the VP spot – she should stick to telling lies on behalf of other people, and not even dream about doing it for herself.

Although it might make for an interesting fight should Condi find herself in a position to run – the obvious candidate to stand against her would surely be Hillary… now there’s a political stoush that could well be worth watching.

 

3. Hippies are killing the planet

This is the best thing I’ve heard all week, because of the superbly delicious irony of the situation. Ordinary Australians have never really been any good at organising their recycling bins.

If you can imagine the confusion caused by having to sort recycling, and then compound that with the added confusion of trying to do it whilst stoned… yep, you can probably see where this one’s headed.

One thing Australians are good at is being resourceful. Hence, we’re probably ranked in the top three countries in the world when it comes to making bongs out of juice bottles and garden hose – the juice bottles, of course, being recyclable.

So when our friendly hippy stoner types decide that the bong they made a few months ago is probably past its best, it goes straight into the recycling – garden hose and all – which leads to all sorts of foul-ups at the recycling plant. One piece of garden hose can render an entire load of recycled plastic completely useless.

So – for all you pot-smoking long hairs out there, see if you can keep this particular environmental message clear – ditch the stem before you pitch the bong, ok? You’re fucking up the environment for the rest of us, man…

 

4. The ACTU is secretly laughing

The ACTU must be quietly pissing its collective pants with glee at the moment, after the Howard Government’s introduction of its workplace reform legislation. Here’s how I figure it.

Over the past ten years, we’ve heard a lot from the unions – and, to be frank, not a whole lot of it has been all that effective. The current ACTU leadership team has done its best to keep itself in the news, but the last time we saw anything of particular value was during the waterfront dispute – a stoush that the union movement arguably lost on points, and then a TKO.

Suddenly, after those ten years of squealing like stuck pigs every time there has been a minor attack on worker’s rights in this country, the government decides to barge ahead with its agenda, which it has quite clearly been working towards in a very piecemeal fashion this whole time.

The result? Australia once again has a union movement that is relevant, with a genuine issue to fight for. The Howard Government should also have realised that such a direct and massive attack at this point was a colossal mistake in that respect.

The only reasonable explanation is this: John Howard is a union salt – a deep cover operative working on behalf of the union movement.

After all, there was no possible way in a million years that the unions would ever be considered germane again if it weren’t for Howard’s reforms…

 

5. Shit shit shit – I did it again…

Gawd… it’s only the second week in and I’m already churning out yet another apology, this one to yet another friend who decided to get hitched on the weekend – and whose wedding I missed through severe drunkenness.

This time, I have no one to blame but myself (and the several other people I was with the night before – most of you know who you are) and the fact that this wedding, like last week’s effort, was being held in the middle of fucking nowhere.

However, despite being corralled into a $45 cab fare, with yet another of the world’s grumpiest cabbies, and despite arriving at the wedding look worse than when I left, it was a remarkably pleasant afternoon - the only real problem being that I cannot, for the life of me, remember much of it.

But thanks to the lovely, happy couple for inviting me – and next time either of them get married, I’ll remember to be on time. I promise.

 

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