The experiment is over, it is done, and the results are in and they demonstrate in no uncertain terms that the age of middle-class management of all structures of governance and social security have failed and failed completely and dismally.
In all the major spheres of English speaking democracies..: The UK, The USA and Australia, the middle-classes have held control of all major decision and authoritarian arms of governance for more than two hundred years. They have both controlled and made the laws of jurisprudence, war and defence, the modes of finance, production and distribution of commerce, the ways and means of educational management and the management of man-power training and distribution of the workforce and arbitrated on the levels of wages and conditions of their populace…..and they have failed in all these spheres of control.
From the very first, it could be seen and indeed it was seen and warned against by any number of worthy people, from the lowest to the highest educated that the bleedin’ obvious intent to use a countries resources, natural environment, population and accrued commonwealth to centralise all industry under one policy of “production toward profit” was going to be a massive gamble…as indeed it was , and as with most forms of gambling, the winning hands were held by those who dealt the cards…The rising power of the middle-classes always made sure it was they who dealt the cards.
When we look to Australia, we see a upper-middle class fumbling and failing to deliver and secure many if not ALL responsibilities of governance and civic enterprise.. And it has been the middle-class who has constructed and put in place through its control or connivance all these governing principles…Let us get that straight!..It has been the middle-class and ONLY the middle-class that have made and instituted these principles..not the working classes…NEVER the working-classes..it is only the middle-class who is responsible and who has to answer for this massive failure of management of administration.
In resource management, it has been left to the private sector to dig out, ship out , smelt or filter the major mineral resources of the nation. These resources were rarely discovered or “proved” by the private sector though…THAT was always done by a government Department of Mines. It was this government department that explored, drilled test holes and did the initial analysis that proved the existing lodes of minerals around the nation…the private sector then expanded on the proved deposits and capitalised on the lodes. It was this department that discovered and proved the existing resources of artesian water supplies that the private sector, be it food or commodity production draws upon.
The means to transport these commodities from points of production to ports of export or markets of manufacture were always supplied by government transport facilities, be they roads or rail for heavy industry.
The lines of communication via telephone or cable were put in place by taxpayer owned government authorities.
Likewise the energy production to supply power to the mine-head and ports or smelting sites…These power stations were all government owned, supplied with fuel and delivered mechanisms of energy to the private enterprise facilities for their use.
In all those other essential utilities that make for a stable society..: Water supply, Sewerage and civic engineering, Health, Education, Social Services for every citizen regardless of status or wealth, these services were worked, maintained and delivered by everyday workers in a national interest infrastructure investment that suited the vast majority and delivered to that vast majority ; Hospital and maternity services, public education, even a moment of free tertiary education, a well-managed immigration program that delivered the multi-cultural ideal that we once appreciated and still benefit from…there was employment and apprentice training that was secure and permanent through those government infrastructure facilities. There were taxpayer funded social endowments for those who warranted it or needed it for the public good..for the social good.
. . .and then came the Private-Enterprise Profiteers . . .
These Middle-class, elite, private-schooled educated speculators, embracing the psychotic philosophies of degenerates, losers and opportunists, The Wakefield, the Rand, The Hayek and the Friedman acolytes..saw profit to be made in the destabilising and disruption of a once smooth-running bureaucracy and civil structured society. So once they gained power through the implementation of a fear-based electoral program delivered by their associates in the Main-stream press…mostly from the Murdoch enterprises..they set about selling off those reliable infrastructures and regulators on the knowing and deceitful ideal that the “private sector” could deliver the same services faster, more efficient and cheaper…I don’t think I need demonstrate in ANY sector where these services have been privatised how much of a gross, complete and abysmal failure the private sector has been.
“ Wars and panics on the stock exchange,
machinegun fire and arson,
banckruptcies, warloans,
starvation, lice, cholera and typhus :
Good growing weather for the House of Morgan” (USA..John Dos Passos).
In Banking, there was once both a federal bank and each State has its own bank…these financial houses were a good and stable foil against the more rapacious “free enterprise banks” and provided finance and dependable home loans to a workforce reliant on honesty and integrity to secure for them those monetary needs way beyond the average persons understanding of accountancy and book-keeping…With the fumbling miss-management of these government banks…more likely on unwritten instruction from their free-enterprise cousins to “waste the structure”…these banks were to fail and then be sold off in a fire-sale auction to those very banks that managed their demise.
All these above civil structures, all those once government owned and managed industries and infrastructure that were turned over to the private sector in what must be seen as an ultimate betrayal of public trust and in some cases like the NBN., a complete treasonous action!..In all these cases, it has been instituted and managed by the middle-classes..no matter it be a Liberal/National party governance or a Labor Party governance…it has always been a move by the middle-classes of both those political institutions whilst in a position of power. Never has the working-class been in sole position of decision making power to oversee the destruction or disposal of valuable or social necessity infrastructure or institutions….NEVER!
The Middle-class has failed. The middle-class no longer has either the moral, ethical or intellectual capability to manage governance. The middle-class cannot even draw in the more reckless and irrational of its speculators who are now hell-bent in destroying the last resources of the natural environment in its endless and unchangeable rush of “production for profit” ideology. The middle-class is depleted of vigour for a new vision for humanity…it is devoid of any sense of morals or ethics in its now base and exposed religions…it is wanting in its capacity to regulate the greed of its shareholders and investors who have driven the price of the basic necessities of life almost beyond the capacity of a worker’s wages..IF..that worker even had a full-time, permanent job..The ideal of a “normal’ family lifestyle now of little more reality than the fantasies delivered by commercial producers over the streaming services of a debased and unreliable communications network that we were assured would be ; “Better – Faster – Cheaper”…
Yes..the middle-classes are now a defunct class…the equivalent of “trailer-trash” in the social status stakes. They must take responsibility for the visible destruction of a once stable, reliable, all-inclusive multicultural society…and they must voluntarily step down from that failed leadership position and hand the reins over to a now better educated, more organised and vigorous working class, who could now be relied upon to deliver those services in governance, regulation, industry and training that will once more bring a sense of decency and stability to this volatile and divided nation.
The middle-class, in ALL orders of management is now incompetent…NOW..: “Step down or be taken down!”….for going by historical example, sooner than you think, the choice may no longer be yours.
For anyone to blurt out : “There is no such thing as society”, is to admit to a cynicism on the path to nihilism.. But for a National Prime Minister to put such into words with a rider of attempted soft-soaping her belief like Margaret Thatcher did..
” And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no governments can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”
Is to flag intention to de-construct all those social frameworks put in place to stabilise a society for the collective good of humanity…To deconstruct it for the benefit of neoliberal, free-market opportunists. To destabilise and demoralise her own peoples for nothing more that a laissez faire capitalist economy, that will benefit the few percentage who can network to plunder the nations peoples and resources.
The economic rationalism of most western countries is nothing more than an expression of the cynical nihilism of that class of Right-wing people running those nations…From Europe/ The UK to the USA to Australia and now many Asian nations, the infection of nihilistic cynicism has taken hold on the perception that only free-market economics can lift the people out of poverty. A delusion of stratospheric immensity.. for how can the poor shrug off the burden of debt when it is their corporate inflicted indebtedness that is the very foundation of the vulgar wealth of those who promote such a philosophy?
How can the labourer get ahead when the master demands he cart more bags of produce on his already burdened shoulders, with the promise that the master will grow his business through the labourer’s hard work and thereby give the worker more work and so by percentage increase his earnings from his more work?…Does not the labourer have a limit to the capacity he can continue to work?…does not a person have a limit to the hours they can work in a day, a week..a month, a year?…Yes, but then, that labourer can draw on HIS assets to increase his output and thereby increase his earnings..yes! he can put his spouse and his children to work…a whole family then being “supported” by the “innovativeness” of the Master and Capital…Indeed, there will then be no such a thing as society..there will in effect be only slavery!
This false philosophy of neoliberal nihilism has to end…not just because it drags whole sections of a population into poverty, but because it spreads through contagion the false belief that even the impoverished individual has command of his economic destiny through his own entrepreneurial speculation. I have yet to meet a worker who has built a corporate dynasty through only his own work with his one pair of hands..the employment of other workers at a percentage rate that enriches the employer through their labour is a trait of barbarism inherent from the days of archaic militarism, where a King will employ troops to guard his person, his claimed kingdom and his plundered wealth.
There is very little difference in the attitude of the Corporate Fascism of these times. The raw wealth of such organisations reaches far beyond the bank accounts of their shareholders, it reaches right into the guts of Conservative governments..it’s well-oiled fingers buying the favour of individual politicians in strategic portfolios to allow plunder and rapine of a nation’s commodities and peoples.
The Corporate Fascism of these times is legitimised through the age old system of selective and elite Private school education, they are playing the “long game”, where the principles of neoliberal nihilism is inculcated into the tender minds of their wards so that at the time of graduation, a whole generation of “the enlightened” are released into the community with little intuition of human destiny, no residual knowledge of human history and very little concern for any but their own and their class enrichment! Theirs is a world of great self-belief and NO faith in the collective belief of humanity.. In their world, there is only their corporate class and losers..theirs is the distorted motto attributed to P.T.Barnum : “There’s a sucker born every minute” (in actual fact appropriately first said by a banker)…of course, excluding themselves from that demographic!
Time to pull the plug on this neoliberal nihilistic destruction…it has failed to lift the poor from poverty and instead, it has created a new demographic of the “working poor” a conclusion inevitable from my explanation of the hard-working labourer above. The worker can only lift themselves out of poverty if his wages are sufficient to cover his everyday needs and have a little left over to build the prospects of his family..but when private corporations gain control of the basic utilities needed in that living, like water, electricity, communications and health..and proceed to wring more and more profit from what should be a public service, and yet then use their corporate wealth to corrupt and bribe political representatives to restrict regulation on their criminal activities, then you have a totally corrupt and totally nihilistic governing class…neither fit to hold corporate responsibility nor morally and ethically fit to hold public office!
Australia now is in the clutches of both those infections..and like a bacteria that is immune to anti-biotics, it ravages the body social in its drive to prove Margaret Thatcher’s brutalist pusilamity that in HER pathetic wrenching of power : “There is no such thing as society”…well, she is wrong…the neoliberal economists are wrong..the free-market acolytes are wrong…and their prophets of nihilism are mistaken, because there is in the heart of humanity a greater want than mere money..wretched mammon…Because in the heart of humanity there is a great room that can fit ANY AMOUNT of fellow humans into it and they have mutual needs and the one fantastic and unassailable desire…
The desire for respect and love.
And Neoliberal nihilism has neither weapon nor courage to destroy it.
Rather, it is time to arise one and all and destroy neoliberal nihilism!
The large, plate-glass window of the lounge area of the “River View” aged care home overlooked the willow-lined banks of the Murray River in the centre of that regional city that had been home for him and his family for these many years…known for its fruit and wine industry…Mr. Daniel Flannigan lay quiet in a parked palliative care bed placed in an advantageous position that gave him a full vista of the passing river. He lay quiet in what could be describe as a pensive mood, the latest results of his advanced condition giving little to no hope of continued life expectancy. His pensive mood was not from a state of depression, no..for at his advanced age of eighty six, he was more in a state of reflection of past events that most satisfied and pleased him in his long life.
He was thinking of Moira.
After a long marriage of sixty years and two children, Danny’s wife, Moira, passed away three years ago, leaving him lonely and listless with little will to live longer than what life ordained, so when a diagnosis of terminal cancer was pronounced upon him, he quietly greeted the news as a kind release from an empty life. Now, as the river slipped away past the window, so too did the last breaths of Danny Flannigan.
Yet, not a week ago, did he get a long visit from his son…; Sargent Tom Flannigan, resident and sole officer of the Mallee Region police patrol, that oversees an area the size of Scotland. The visit was a combination of regular “touching of home base” and an inquiry into his father’s knowledge of where he was raised as a young man back in the ‘fifties. Tom was seeking Danny’s insight into a puzzling case that had come to Sgt. Flannigan’s attention with the recent discovery of a skeleton unearthed beside a lonely stretch of road just east of the town of Sedan.
It was an interesting conversation between father and son. The father, because it touched upon his main considerations of the moment, being his reflections on his life lived with Moira Kenneally, how they met and how they married. The son, the police business of wanting to get to the bottom of this mysterious skeleton. But in reality, both father and son knew the solution to the conversation was already resolved, the only missing ingredient was the crossing of the “t’s” and the dotting of the “i’s”.
Sgt. Tom Flannigan entered the private room with Danny’s care attendant who brought in a plate of soft food for lunch..Following a minor stroke a year before, Danny had lost the dexterous use of his right hand and so it was usual for the care attendant to help him with his eating, in case of a minor “spill” with the food.
“It will be fine if I help him, nurse…” Tom quietly spoke.
The nurse looked to son then father and with a nod of approval from Danny, the nurse placed the utensil on the tray and made out of the room. Tom went behind her and softly closed the door. He then pulled up a chair next to the bed and attended to the food on the plate.
“Is the tucker good, Dad?” he asked.
“It’s alright….most days..” Danny replied cautiously “depends on the cook, which days”…he narrowed his eyes a little as he watched his son’s demeanour…there was more to this one visit than the others, he was thinking.
“Everything alright, son?” Danny asked…Tom raised one eyebrow inquisitively…he pursed his lips and blew a bit of breath.
“Phoo, yeah…..” he thought a moment..” Still can’t get Gloria to come live with me permanently…she’s not fond of the place.”
“Oh…well, that’s women for yer…if they don’t like it..that’s it…best to know in advance…otherwise could be trouble further down the line.” And Danny took a spoon full of the food.
“Yeah, well…”Tom wiped a smidgen of mashed potato from his father’s chin “ We’re both not getting any younger…an’ it would be good to settle down to a married life……” and he thought for a moment before he finished..” like you and mum”.
“Would’ve been sixty three years this month” Danny sighingly said.
“Yes…I suppose so….she was a tad older than you, wasn’t she?” and Tom looked down to something on the floor as he spoke, not that there was anything there, but so as he wouldn’t appear to be gazing too hard at his father as he asked him the question. Danny wasn’t fooled by the evasiveness.
“Whatcha want, Tom?….There’s a choke in the pipe and you’re not getting it out.”
Sgt. Tom Flannigan stroked his chin several times and decided to come to the point of his visit.
“Was called by Jack at the council office to go look at something the road crew found there at the “Seven Sisters Junction” around a month or so ago…They were widening the intersection there because of a accident between Heinie Shultz coming home after a few at the hotel and a grain truck of “Slammers” that tipped over trying to avoid hitting Heinie’s old Ford ute..There’s a bit of a blind spot..apparently and the council road crew were there widening the intersection to make it safer to see any oncoming traffic.
“And..?” Danny had stopped eating and stared at the downcast face of his son.
“And”..Tom breathed “ They unearthed a skeleton that had been buried there…sometime back in the fifties.”
“How do you know it was the fifties?” Danny asked.
“There was a wallet amongst the remains with a money order in it.” Tom now looked close to his father’s reaction….”You used to work in the post office there in Sedan back in the fifties, didn’t you?…when you were a young chap” Tom stared hard at his father’s face.
Danny did not reply, but just slowly spooned the food off the plate and silently chewed.
Tom took the moment of silence to dab again at some bit of food on his father’s cheek. Danny stared back at his son before he answered.
“Yes..I did…Friday night through to midnight Sunday..for Mrs Glastonbury..She ran the Post office and there had to be someone there twenty-four seven for the telephone exchange..She took back over midnight Sunday as it was the start of the new week.”
“And you used to sleep there under the front desk..right?” Tom casually spoke.
“That’s right…I had a pull out mattress…but I’d hardly call it “sleep”..I had to answer the telephone if a call came through..”
Tom changed the subject.
“A lot of blokes there in the harvest season in those days, I’d say.”
“Yeah..heaps…it was all labour-intensive those days…and you had to get the harvest in quick-smart in case of bad weather…or locusts.”
“Hmm..” Tom again touched up a morsel on Danny’s face “ I suppose there was a lot of drinking and celebrating going on at the hotel too in those days?”
“Too right there was…” Danny cautiously answered.
“And I shouldn’t wonder if a woman was brought in to do some singing some nights as a bit of entertainment”….Tom quietly added.
Danny paused in the lifting of a spoon full of the dinner…he replaced it on the side of the plate. A tenseness had risen between them. He then confronted his son with his own query.
“What’s this getting to, Tom?…This is about that skeleton I suppose?”
Tom shifted in his chair, the creaking of the frame and the sound of the rustling of his uniform in his movement dominating the stillness of the room. He reached into his pocket and took something small out…something the size of a bulbous button. He did not display it to his father just then.
“Yes…I’m afraid it is.”…He then leant in closer to Danny.
“You see, I was the first one there to examine the thing…The backhoe had exposed the bones and the men just downed tools and left it as it was for me to have a look at. I got there and poked about with a small rod just to see if it was an aborigine or what…and I found a bottle of cheap sweet-sherry there..along with the shoes and clothing mostly rotted away from the length of time..after all, what would it be…fifty..sixty years or so…so not much left..” and then Tom gently placed the item he had taken from his pocket right in front of Danny on the dinner tray..” . . . and then there was this ..”
The item was a locket of soft gold…it was tarnished and marked, but whole…Danny was speechless, his mouth a little bit agape as he stared and stared at the golden locket..He reached for it, but Tom placed his own hand over the locket..Danny looked to Tom and saw his meaning. He leant back onto his pillow.
“Where did you find that?” he asked. Tom moved the locket away a little closer to himself on the tray before he answered.
“In his hand.” And Tom tilted his head as in curiosity. Danny sighed and then softly laughed..
“I always wondered if it had just been lost on the road in the scuffle and some lucky person had come across it and took it away….God!..how long and how many times I looked for that treasure”.
“So I was right in my assumption then…the locket did belong to you?”
“Well, in truth..not really mine…I gave it to her.”
Tom lifted the locket and with his fingernail edged a tiny clip at the top..it opened and Tom read from an inscription there…
“To Moira from your Danny Boy”…he stared closely at his father..” that’d be you, I suppose?” he asked.
“I reckon..” Danny replied.
“Yes…” Tom left the open locket on the tray “ And I reckon if we looked closely at that lock of hair remnant there, it could be yours as well?”……Danny nodded, keeping his eyes glued to the locket…Tom shifted in his chair and brought his hands together on his legs..” You see, dad…when that locket fell out of those bones of his hand…sans chain..my experience in this game straight away told me that here was a moment of anger..an act of grabbing and ripping away of a necklace and an attack on someone…I’ve been to enough fights and fracas in front-bar and footy-club to know what this means…” Tom then lifted one hand and pointed a finger onto the inscription…” and It didn’t take me many days, what with the money order scrap and the location to run down the people around in those days…” Tom then sat back in the chair “It’s amazing the memory of those old people for those old times..clear as a bell some of them….Old Kevin Rozenswietz, f’rinstance…he remembers a young woman sang there in the hotel in those days….says he was sweet on her..as was many a young man in the town…why even…he says…yourself…” Danny remained silent throughout Tom’s soliloquy, his eyes still fixed on the locket…Tom continued..” Took him a while to remember her name….rang me just yesterday, in fact ..to tell me…” and Tom then leaned in close to whisper the name to Danny…
“Moira Kenneally”…
Danny sank back into his pillows on the bed and looked like he was going to pass away there and then…Tom sprang to his feet and called for the nurse..there followed much fussing and Tom had no further opportunity that day to follow through with his inquiry..He recovered the locket and waited for his father to recover his strength.. a few more days wouldn’t matter.
It was when Tom came at his father’s request a week later that he saw the difference in him..Danny had a more relaxed look and attitude..he looked..serene..is the word Tom would later use to describe that meeting.
The first thing Danny requested from Tom was that he let him hold the locket taken from the dead man’s hand…Tom hesitated at first then realised the absurdity of his reticence, so he held out his hand and Danny took the locket and taking from a small box at his elbow, a fine gold chain, he passed the links of the chain through the ring at the top of the locket…he then held the completed set up in front of them both.
“I had the chain all the while..I found that on the road where we struggled and I’ve had it repaired..I was always hoping against hope that I would get that locket back..and now here it is..so I can tell you the whole story of that time.” Danny held onto the locket and chain as a kind of talisman while he regaled his son with his and Moira’s story.
“It all started with my going outside for a ciggy and a break from the post office. It was a very clear night, with the only intrusion being the usual raucous from the pub over the road..The harvest was going full tilt. Then from somewhere inside the hotel, a piano started playing and the hubbub started to die down and a woman started singing….and in the now silent night air, that voice sounded to me like the voice of a free bird…her lilting and sighing a joy to my ears…
I flung the cigarette to the ground and crossed the road to look through the window..I was too young to go into the bar, besides, I couldn’t leave the exchange for long in case a call came through. Looking through the window I saw Moira for the first time..To me, her face shone even in that smokey bar-room light like the morning sun on a new day, and her raven hair shimmered and shone…her body lithe and full..she was all that my awakening young male body desired in a woman…already I was in love..
She looked a beauty then and I was to get to know her much better in the weeks to come.
The first time we spoke was through the door of the post office. It was late Saturday afternoon after closing time and she was at the front door knocking and making appealing gestures to be let in. Unknown to her, it was with a trembling hand that I opened the door to her.
“Ah!..thanking you there my good man” she gushed with a beautiful smile “ could I be troubling you to write me out a money order to send to my sister in the city this late in the day?”
“I…I’m afraid the post office is closed now..I’m sorry.” I mumbled out apologetically.
“Yes..the post office is closed, but I see you’re still here…and it would be you who could do me this favour” she smiled cheekly..
The upshot of it was that she needed to send the money to her sister as a payment for caring for Moira’s young child while she; Moira was there earning some money. A single mother could lose custody of her child in those days if the authorities deemed her not capable of “supplying for needs of the child”, and as Moira was paid on the Saturday afternoon, she wanted to get the money to her sister as soon as possible..
Of course, I wasn’t supposed to, but how could I refuse..both because of her parental situation and then because I already adored her as a young man’s heart can adore. So I sent the money..she was genuinely happy that I did her the favour and even kissed my cheek as I leant over the desk to give her the receipt..I did indeed blush deeply.
“That’s to say thanks” she smiled “It means so much to me to have that one thing out of the way…but could I ask that same favour of you every week…I’m sorry for bothering you, but I get paid every Saturday and we live so far out of town..?”
Of course, I would gladly do her the favour..any favour…but I told her to come to the back door and call in for me so no-one else would demand the same service.
“And to whom do I call?” she asked.
“Danny..” I stammered out..”me..I’m Daniel..”
“And a fine Irish name that be too.” Moira smiled again..”I’ll be asking for you then..my Danny Boy!” and again she smiled that beautiful smile.
And that’s how we got closer and more easier in our relationship over the following weeks. Moira would come into the back room and call a cooee and I would attend to her money order and she would sit and chatter while I did the paperwork..sometimes I’d get her a cup of tea or she would light up a cigarette with me just outside the back door while she waited before it was time for her to go to the hotel to sing…and we talked of each other.
I remember early in this arrangement Moira suddenly asked me;
“How old are you?” I shot a quick look at her, trying to judge her motive…
“Seventeen..nearly eighteen” I hastily replied..” And yourself..if I may ask?”
“Cheeky!..she admonished as she stubbed out her cigarette…”if you must know ; twenty one next week!” and she then slipped away with a teasing laugh..God..she was my delight at that time…my utter delight.
Through all this harvest, she and I became close pals..that’s all..just pals..as we used to say..though there is a point in the relationships between men and women where that line of friendship, once crossed into the realm of affection, can never be reversed..and it can grow like a blossoming flower, slowly, yet intensly…so that you aren’t completely aware of it at all, till one day, one sudden look, one lingering hiatus of intensity tips you over the line….But there was one cloud on the horizon of our friendship and that was her “man”…a brutish fellow named Bruce Dobson..an itinerant labourer that followed the seasonal harvests around the country…a man of around twenty eight or nine years old..a loner, a scrapper, rather handsome in that hard-chiselled way..not someone to cross swords with..if you get my drift. But he was a problem external to Moira and my regular Saturday meetings. He would be working or at the bar drinking when we would meet at the post office. Strange how some men hold their relationships with women more as a trophy, a possession, rather than a loved one.
“Danny!?” she’d call through the back door and I’d call her to come in. Oh how I loved hearing her call my name and how I adored saying her name in return..I recall a quiet moment having a ciggy there by the back door one evening just before she went to do her stint singing that night, she quietly said..:
“Danny…would you like me to sing a song for you?” I flicked the ash off my smoke nervously and replied;
“Oh..well..yes..that’d be nice…very nice..I’d like that..thank you .”
“Well I finish my stand at the piano there at eleven o’clock..if you come to the side window there by the planter-box and look in..I’ll sing you the last song.”…
I mumbled and blushed my gratitude and she touched the side of my cheek with her hand, smiled a gentle smile and walked away..I can still hold the memory of that touch..the warmth of her hand..for it was more than a casual gesture..it was the passing of an affection between us..it changed our relationship from that moment on.
The song she sung to me that night was “Danny Boy”….oh how my heart sung along with her..and every now and then she would look to me..straight to me as I stared through the smudged glass of that window where I’d rubbed a round spot with my sleeve..and sing those most tender words to me..only to me…
“. . . But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow, Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow, It’s I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow, Oh, Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so! “
And with those last sung words, she then looked straight to me…straight into my heart it seemed..oh the power a woman has to grasp and hold a man’s deepest desires, whether she is aware of it or no..it is a power so all embracing, so strong that sometimes only death can release him from her hold..And so it must be in return..with a man to a woman..I don’t know what that hold was to her from someone as meek as myself, but Moira saw a strength in me that touched and held her heart likewise..a bond supreme…and it would prove to be a bonding extreme, for it became a point that at the end of her Saturday night session, she would finish with that song and I would make it a point to be there at the window, peering in and through that smokey world, Moira would finish every time with those lovely words whilst staring right into my eyes..into my soul.
As Moira told me, her birthday was to be soon, and I knew the harvest season was coming to a close. Already some of the contractors had terminated their season in the district and moved on, so would Moira and Bruce move away, I presumed. My heart was suffering from the thought of never seeing her again, so one day that week, I grabbed a lift to the city from a local and went to a jeweller and bought a golden locket on a chain for Moira’s birthday..it took a goodly amount of my savings, but I could think of no better use for them than this gift.
That following Saturday, Moira came knocking at the back door as usual..We went through the regular business of her posting the money to her sister and then went to have our usual smoke by the back door..I had the locket and chain ready in my pocket.
“When did you say your birthday was?” I broke the ice. Moira looked slightly askance to me.
“ I didn’t…but since you ask..it was two days ago.”..she took a drag on the cigarette and then continued “ why do you ask?”
I stubbed the smoke out and reached into my pocket and removed the locket nervously..I wondered now if it was not too presumptuous on my part…perhaps the locket and chain looked too cheap..many doubts now crossed my mind.
“Because I..I brought something for you.” And I held up the locket and chain. I mumbled on nervously and quickly “ it is a special locket where…if you look here there is a tiny clip that you can unlock with your fingernail and it opens up and you can put a keepsake inside….”
Moira left the cigarette fall to the ground and turned and clasped the locket in both her hands like it was a fragile thing. Her eyes glowed with delight at the gift…she then turned her face to me and gazed with the most deep affection.
“And I had it engraved inside ..if you don’t mind…here, see?” Moira read out the words..:
“To Moira, from your Danny Boy.”
“Oh, Danny..it is so wonderful…truly beautiful..thank you.” And she then took the locket into her hands and gazed upon it..” Could you clip it on me, please?” and she held it to me. I took it and she turned around and lifted her hair so I could fix the clasp on the nape of her neck..which I did, but so slowly as I wanted to see and touch her skin there..my finger-tips absorbing the warmth of her body..I closed my eyes and took in the moment..I wanted to totally absorb the feeling of her body there..the soft touch of her hair and the colour of her skin..the tiny follicles of hair on the nape of her neck as I fixed the clasp of the chain..I was trembling..I was enthralled.
After I had finished, Moira turned to me..she lifted the locket to look closely at it then she suddenly let it go, threw her arms about my neck and kissed me passionately on my lips…I drew life there and then from that kiss..oh..that kiss..I held her so tight with my open hand and fingers spread so as to touch and clasp as much of her to me as possible..I had then embraced a joy complete..we kissed and kissed.
Before she left just then, she went and took a pair of scissors from the counter and coming back, she cut a tiny lock from my hair and placed it into the locket…we kissed again and she went to her work.
It was the commencement of life for both of us.
Of course, it did not take long for Bruce to notice a change of heart in Moira..for her heart was now given to another and such a shift of the soul cannot go un-noticed. Bruce’s jealous spite took command and even though she had told him that the locket was a gift from her sister, he was fouly suspicious…even more so than we had suspected, and it happened one night as I was making my way home up the “Sleeper Track Road” at the Seven Sisters Junction.
It was the Sunday night a couple of weeks after I had given Moira the locket. It was a foul night of the big storm that took down the telephone wires all around the district..so the exchange was out of action…Mrs Glastonbury came in and told me to go home as there was little chance the exchange would be up and running any time soon. I had walked almost to the junction when I saw a utility parked ahead…there were no lights on and after coming closer, I recognised it as Bruce’s ute…and he was there with Moira..I had the feeling he was waiting for me. True enough, for as I got close, he stepped out of the ute. He had a swagger in his step..I stopped..
“Took you a while to get here boy…I been wanting to have a little talk with you.” I could see that “talking” was the last thing on his mind. I paused and did not answer, not really having anything to say and I knew what his intention was.
“You been playing at sweet-talking to my girl, I believe..”
“I..we just talk of things.” I weakly said…” just things”
“Yes..just things..I should imagine..” Bruce approached me at the back of the ute “It’s those “things” I want to talk to YOU about now…..with my fists!” and he slowly stepped toward me..I stepped back from the ute…Moira had got out of the car and came around to the back of the ute..she grabbed Bruce by the shoulder and pleaded with him..
“Leave it Bruce..he’s only seventeen..he’s no equal to you in a fight..” Bruce gave a sudden reflex jerking away of his shoulder from Moira’s grip and swung his arm at her and hit her with a back-hander, yelling at her..
“Hold off woman..don’t tell me how to deal with this little shit!”
I leapt at him and connected with my fist with one blow..he spun back and grabbed me with both hands and flung me easily to the ground, Moira recovered from his blow and went for him as well..he grabbed and held her and then yelled to me while I was still prostrate on the ground..
“What the hell do you think you’re playing at..eh..eh? trying to muscle in on my life…my woman!?” he yelled..and then he saw the locket there swinging on Moira’s neck..he flung her away grabbing the locket as he did so and tearing it from her neck..he held it in his fist right in front of my face and yelled..
“You think this will make me go away?…hey?…You think this trinket will force me to say ..Oh..look..my woman’s been stolen by another..so I’ll just leave them to it..?? You think so ?..hey!..well think again!” and he grabbed me by my shirt front and struck me full in the face with the fist that held the locket and he was about to land another when suddenly in the flare of a flash of lightning, there was fast moving shadow and a WHACK! and Bruce fell off to one side of the road and rolled down the edge to lay dead still on the ground. Moira stood above me holding the bladed spade that she had struck Bruce with..It happenned that fast and was without the tragic intent that resulted…but I think that’s how many of these things happen..we both were silent and the storm raged.
Upon examination, we could see that the edge of the spade blade had almost cut through Bruce’s neck and he had quickly bled out..he died quickly and we were there in the wild storm and darkness of the night in shock and with no idea of what to do. We were just a couple of young people caught up in an uncontrollable situation.
After some short while of consoling each other and attending to our own selves, we started to formulate a plan. Considering that while it was in truth self-defence, it would look awfully suspicious if it were to come to the attention of the police and Moira would for sure risk the custody of her child in the process..We were fortunate that day of the week and the violence of the night storm kept all traffic off the back roads..so we set to with a plan…it is a wonder how quick the mind focus’s on a problem when the cause demands it..everything we needed to do just fell into place in that short space of time..
“ You take the ute and go pack yours and Bruce’s things and make it look like you both have done a runner..it happens all the time with itinerants, drive to a distant city and leave the ute by a river or the sea with Bruce’s gear in it only so it will look as if he has topped himself…with all those sherry bottles it will not be hard to imagine..I’ll bury him here where he fell and look after this end of things..”
Moira was shaking and tearful, but her natural sensibility soon got control..
“Yes..yes..I will make sure of my end of things and get rid of the car..I will have to get a bus back to Adelaide and act as if Bruce threw me over for another..I can do that..” she wiped away the tears..
“Moira..” I, I held her shoulders and said regretfully..”we can do this if everything goes right..you are both temporary workers, so you will not be missed…I…I have no known connection to either of you so I will not be considered..but we have to not be in contact with each other until such a time as it seems there is no chance of us being found out..we cannot see each other again for a long time…a long time..some years perhaps..and it’s hurting me already..”
Well…we kissed and held each other and kissed again and professed our love together and swore that we would meet when the time was right. And as Moira drove away in the slanting rain of the night, I truly wondered if I would ever see her again..but there was this deed to do and I set to work with the very spade that killed Bruce, to now bury him.
As I moved to do the job, in a flash of lightning, I saw the chain of the locket on the dirt road at my feet..I picked it up, but could not see the locket itself..and though I looked desperately, I couldn’t find it and the urgency of the moment made me attend to the digging of the grave.
Fortunately, the sandy soil there allowed me to dig a deep hole in a short time and I tipped the body into it, making sure to place some heavy rocks on top of the first layer of soil to dissuade any animals from digging down to the corpse…I also took advantage of a road-kill kangaroo just down the track a ways to drag it to place it on top of the grave so as to cover any decaying smell from the buried corpse. I then made my way home in the filthy weather up the sleeper track, confident the driving rain on that isolated stretch of road would wash any evidence of the night’s deeds far away…
The next few months I lived out in trepidation of suddenly being grasped by the arm by a police constable and arrested for the killing of Bruce…but no..nothing happened..not then nor ever over the next years..of course there was some grumbling in the district of Bruce and Moira doing a runner while owing a small amount of money to the local store and rent for the cottage they stayed in..but that was the only gossip that came to my ears…I was never considered connected to the couple owing to my position and age…About six months later, my family changed address over to the Bulldog Run about five miles north of the Sleeper Track, so I never went that way again…so the months and the years came and went with no longer a mention of the couple and the town went on with its life..
As did I…albeit with a melancholy sadness lodged deep in my heart. “
Danny continued…
“ It was five years to the month before I heard from her again..It was getting near to Christmas and now I was permanently employed in the post office…five days a week and Saturday morning..Mrs. Glastonbury got another lad to man the exchange over night and the weekend…It was getting near Christmas, as I said, and I was serving old Gladys Auricht in the shop …she wanted a page of stamps so as to send her regular batch of cards and she was fussing with her purse and contesting “the price of stamps nowadays”…
“I don’t make the prices, Mrs. Auricht..they’re printed on the stamp by the government..” I said.
so I was busy attending to her wants and though I heard the bell over the front door ring that told me another person had entered the shop, I only quickly glanced up to see and then went back to Galdys’s fussing…What I did see, was a head of red hair..a woman..who went to the far end of the shop there, for it was a gift shop along with the post office…so I didn’t give much thought to her. Then Gladys gathered up her stamps and purse and things and left the shop and I would have gone to attend the other customer except, as fate or chance or call it what you will, intervened and at that moment there started to play a treasured piece of music over the radio…only the music..no singing with it..an’ it was the tune of “Danny Boy”….I must’ve been tired or a tad sentimental at the time, because I forgot all about the other person there and went into a kind of daydream..and the music just played softly and seemed to caress me..like even now, sometimes over the speakers here they play “Danny Boy” and I go into a kind of dream..and then too..and it was playing through the tune till it got to that part in the singing where it goes…: “So come ye back when Summer’s in the meadow….” And I thought I was hearing things, ‘cause I thought I could hear a voice softly mouthing the words..softly singing along with the music..; “. . . or the valley’s hushed and white with snow” …and I suddenly became aware that the other person who came into the shop was singing those very words..and singing them with the same inflection of voice that I remember from so long ago..and then I saw her…I saw her…she lifted her sunglasses and I saw her eyes..and she sung those beautiful words along with the song..but oh so softly so affectionately..to me she sung…only to me as she looked into my eyes..reading me deeply…” I’ll be here….in sunshine or in shadow….” And then she almost whispered breathlessly, those last delicious, delightful words…” Oh Danny Boy…Oh Danny Boy….I love you so….”
There was a quiet in the room so solid and deep that when Danny next spoke it was almost as in a prayer..
“I can’t tell you the feelings that came over me with the seeing of Moira there…right there in front of me…and hearing her say those words to me…enough to say that we threw ourselves into each other’s arms and held and held each other like we would never let each other go again…I pushed my face into her hair just to breathe in her scent and how I wept..how I wept..how WE wept..” Danny stopped at that moment and took a deep breath before speaking again ..”. . . and that was when I saw her again…”
Tom sat through Danny’s talking, quietly and impassively…for what ever the sentiment, he had to close this episode…this file…He broke the silence..
“Well…whatever the circumstances of your relationship with this lady..this Moira, I have to find her if she’s still alive and talk to her about this death..”
“You’ll not find her this side of heaven, I’m afraid, Tom….she’s gone.”
“Oh…and you know that for sure, dad…you kept in touch?” ..Danny raised his eyebrows a little. Tom persisted…” Well, if you do know her last address, you had better tell me so I can at least go talk to her or her relatives.”
“It’s no use, Son…she changed her name by deed-poll before she came back to Sedan that day..She became a different person.”
“You seem to have a close knowledge of the situation…tell me then what she changed her name to”. Tom was getting impatient.
“She changed her name I tell you, Tom…Moira Kenneally became Mary Kennedy!” Danny burst out.
“And just where does this Mary Kenn . . . “ and that was as far as Sgt. Tom Flannigan got, because his thinking had just caught up to his demanding…Tom slumped shocked back into the chair, staring blankly…Danny continued his thoughts for him…
“Yes, Tom…she changed her name, Tom..Moira Kenneally became Mary Kennedy…..your mother, Tom..your mother!”
From that moment on nothing really mattered to Daniel Flannigan, he was comfortable where he was, the feeling was all warmth and embracing…the afternoon sun, the river silently flowing past, he clasped the locket and chain tight in his hand and for the life of him, wasn’t that music he was hearing over the speakers an old favourite…wasn’t it “Danny Boy”…yes!..that’s it…Danny Boy…and even the cries from Tom calling for a nurse to come quickly and all the scrambling around and over his person and Tom calling his name over and over..all fading away..nothing could now stop Danny from his long anticipated assignation with his only love….Moira.
At sixty eight years, I am retired now from my trade as a carpenter..and yes , I draw on the aged pension..and no..I have no investment property, no portfolio of stocks or shares, I draw no extra dividends from any sort of financial investments…What you see is what you get I’m afraid. No..I am just your average retired boomer-generation tradie who started work at fourteen years old and finished at sixty-five…still functioning in health if lacking some of the more attractive physical attributes that are the markings of our youth…and I’ll leave THAT there!
No…I have no investment things at all…after all, what could a working person afford on a living wage that left little over at the end of a year except to take the family on a short holiday down the coast or to the alps (on a good year)?….that or in the family home we must bide. No, the working/producing classes of this nation have always been too busy earning a living wage from dawn to dusk in one work-platform or another, in sunshine and shadow, too busy and not wealthy enough to invest in anything more than home and family…two integral structures that support a healthy society that now appear to be more and more out of reach of this post-modern casualised workforce.
Yet, I see these “committees” of the LNP. doing a travelling circus routine up and down the east coast, gathering together so many “self-funded retirees”(has there ever been more a misnomer?…”self-funded!!” what! Do they print their own money?) outraged at losing so much soft/ill-gotten gain at the expense of the taxpayer..holding so much money and assets that is more than adequate than the average retired citizen ever earned on a “p-a-y-e” wage in their lifetime..and STILL wanting more?…and care little for the rest of the citizen body who struggle on like some flowers dying.
Where has all this hunger for wealth and greed come from?…All this financial insecurity so that one must aspire to the wealth of a Croesus before one reaches an age where they have time enough if not health enough to use it? If it is true that the lower strata of a society take example from the behaviour characteristics of those above them in status, then we have to look to that class that gives example and ethics to the rest of a nation.
And what do we find?
Given that the upper-middle classes control the financial houses of the nation, the politics of the nation, the security, policing and judicial authorities of the nation, the corporate boards, the public utility authority boards, the control of the major communications, health, education and river and water management boards of the nation…etc…and given that there is hardly ANY ONE of those above authorities, boards, banks and political institutions that have not been corrupted, out-sourced, damaged and in some cases sold off and destroyed….one is inclined to inquire..: Just who the hell is in charge of this nation??
And of course..we need look no further for the answer than those self-promoting “Lounge-lizard Lotharios” growing fat on the proceeds of taxpayer funded junkets and property portfolios so generous that a legion of lobbyists, accountants, lawyers and journalists are kept in full-time employment making excuses for, securing the position and boosting of these loathsome leeches on the State body corporate…at least SOME are gainfully employed! These upper-middle class politicians, speculators and entrepreneurs now as thick on the ground as an Autumn frost on the slopes of mount Baw Baw.
Just WHO did buy all that gold that Costello sold off at a bargain basement price?…anyone YOU know?…and what did happen to all those gigalitres of water that DIDN”T run into the Murray-Darling Basin?…do YOU see any of it? …Did it just…..evaporate into thin air?….and that bit about the Great Barrier Reef dying and the half-billion dollars paid to some obscure mob to “fix it”….and the continuing soap-opera of the NBN?…and why is my Telstra “Mobile Broadband” bill still one of the biggest monthly expenses when I still cannot get a half-decent/reliable broadband connection that gives above 5mbps download and our mobile phones can neither send nor receive calls or emails unless we run about the house, inside and outside tyring to find that elusive “sweet-spot”?….and is the chaos of “private public transport”, aged care, disability care, electricity, fuel and general pollution still under control of the marvellous miracle of private ownership in the city?…it’s not out here in the regions, because we have little of those things that even resemble uniformity or usability!…out here in the sticks, it would almost appear that you are on your own and the devil take the hindmost!
So who are the “brilliant minds” and organisers running this cockamamie enterprise?…Oh!..that’s right..those same : Private wealth, Private educated, private enterprise but with public authority ponces who have risen like a chancre on the backs of the working/producing classes. Those same pustulant boils that ooze verbal slime from their lick-spittle lips that lie more proficiently than railway sleepers on the Indian Pacific stretch on the Nullabor Plain and work just about as often as the same.
If you want to know the actual names of all those who have sold our gold, our commodities, our utilities and services, downgraded or on-sold our national infrastructures – roads, transport, water usage, communications…who have undermined, destabilised and demoralised our national psyche, our national integrity, our national code of decency in human relations…who has corrupted and infected the operation of our Parliaments State and Federal, made our foreign relations intentions a laughing-stock on the world stage and in general delivered our once rightfully honourable nation to the feet of the gods of war and waste, then you need look no further than the “Who’s Who” of Australia past and present editions, the gilded names on the panels hung in the Board of Directors rooms of any number of corporations national or international, the LNP members of The Houses of Parliament or simply consult the charters of enlistment in those exclusive private schools and colleges of the nation….they’re ALL there.
Yet, will they come to the assistance of those whose living standards lay dying?
This..OUR nation has been sold off piecemeal in both body and spirit, heart and soul, in sunshine and shadow by the upper-middle classes for their own and ONLY THEIR OWN benefit. It has NOT been the petty middle-classes of the skilled trades, it has NOT been the semi-professional workers or the small agricultural producers and family businesses…We have been betrayed by that class of society that has structured its own higher-echelon network to embrace those most suited to their deviousness and greed and excluded those from their ranks who show the first signs of honour and decency…these upper-middle classes are NOT the employers of Australian workers, rather, they are the “Judas Iscariots” selling the heart of our nation for a paltry thirty pieces of silver…leaving the working poor to be crucified on the cross of penury, sickness and homelessness…instead of honouring our national needs.
Now, with an election coming up, it is becoming time for all good people to come…NOT to the aid of that party of robber barons…but to the aid of our country, for while the spivs, spielers and speculators are come and gone with their ill gotten gains, the solid citizenry will still be here..as the song goes…..”in sunshine or in shadow”… after all, where else would we want to go..for this is our home.
Now every citizen who wants to be considered a decent citizen must look less to their own selfish needs and instead look to the health now and for the future of the nation.
AND REMOVE THESE BASTARDS AND THEIR FILTHY LEECHING CONSPIRATORS OUT OF OUR LIVES AND OUR PARLIAMENT!
Back in my first marriage, when I was “encouraged” to attend many spiritual “workshops” in that miasma of “new age” enlightenment, run, in the most part by self-proclaimed wanker gurus from the legion of reformed middle-class hippie escapees of the “Leafy Suburbs”, The formula for discussion was to take one’s turn of holding the “Talking Stick” and then and only then quietly and serenely make your point or tell your story to the group…I don’t think I need tell you the actual jargon-stacked sentences that preceded and followed each “talker” as they held that sacred icon of conversation : “The Stick”…..I think the series ; “Kath and Kim” demonstrated such contrived jargon with fair and considered accuracy.
In short, we can differentiate between the social classes by the methodology of conversation practice used. There seems to be a bias toward what the middle-class calls “polite manners”..”polite conversation”..where one waits one’s turn while the incumbent “converser” talks their talk to the very end of what THEY wish to talk about…no matter the length, tediousness or delusion of their conversation…: “THEY have the right to be heard”…Whereas, in my experience in the building trade, any conversation of passionate expression held on site and carried over by habit to the front bar, has to be called out in a loud, firm voice, somewhat peppered with colourful expletives and colloqualisims..whilst in the action of doing work, that echoes between rooms and perhaps between floors of an empty building…the many conversations competing with other machinery sounds or even different conversations…so a regular cacophony of shouted points and counterpoints..layer upon layer..is the methodology of debate and this gets carried…as I said..over by force of habit and location into the front bar or back-yard BBQ where the surrounding noise of the other patrons/family groups or the several televisions playing different sports at the one time in a bar has to be competed with….THAT is the natural order of working class rhetoric and political debate..the pointed finger, the half eaten sausage on bread..between sips of wine or stubby..a kind of chaotic logic, where the most vitriolic voiced opinion will sometimes win the day, depending heavily on the passionate belief of the speaker…No nice manners here..and the proving of the point you wanted to make was encased in the solid belief in what you wanted to say…if you didn’t have the strength of voice to carry your convictions, you lost the conversation…simple as that!
And this is where the domination of the middle-class in matters of opinion and politics controls the MSMedia and the Parliamentary debate…it is no more than a continuity of that “well-mannered talking stick” holding the floor and delivering a one-sided, bias toward that class that has drawn up the rules-of-discussion, the conditions of loquatial intercourse, where the short-patience, the tumbling-out of thoughts in a sudden envision of idea and schematic implementation with an unruly manner, the speaking over another less enthralling speaker to get one’s point across while it is fresh in the mind, like a spring zephyr…and not to have it suffocated under the oppressive boredom of another’s sermon of mind-numbing middle-class impotent drudgery.
Now with social media, we hear those same middle-class voices calling for censorship on the more rudely expressors of political contradiction to satisfy that pompous, pontificating, self-righteous endless rambling to nowhere conversations of the middle-classes…F#CK ‘EM I say!…I had a gut-full back in that first marriage of waiting for the “talking stick” that had to do the rounds of pontificating and patronising jargon before it got to you, and I won’t now, as an experienced adult stand in some f#ckin’ middle-class mannerism queue waiting till they have finished their waffling chatter…a seemingly endless stream of obfuscation and fillerbustering…one might as well wait for the blowing of Gabriel’s Trumpet sounding the end of the world!…And don’t they manipulate the “taking of turn” to have their say, using every methodology and trickery learned in debating class or from their cadgy mentors to hold on to that “right to be heard” until time or the subject matter is talked into oblivion…and so having succeeded by default in exhausting the subject where they had no capacity to actually do the job in the first place.
If we look back to the time of Barnaby Joyce’s faux pas with his paramour, we heard so many “finishing-school pontificators” demanding we “rude and noisy” people not criticise the minister on his degenerate behaviour, because : “It’s the rorting, not the rooting…you see?”…when all the time it was the betrayal of moral and ethical standards of the family and community that he represented..all the time!..and yet so much momentum was wasted of those flatulating commentators demanding we :”Don’t call her/him names..it’s not fair..” or wtte and now we see just how “fair” it was with that bastard colluding to run the Murray-Darling basin into the ground…literally!…Barnaby would’ve been castigated if not castrated if we had pinned him on the moral issue instead of the stupid pursuit of the rorting issue…a commonplace action amongst so many in his position..useless waffling middle-classes..a bunch of chatterers!
And really..it is no more than those medieval overlords forbidding the Irish to speak their Gaelic language, the forbidding by the mediaeval bishops of the translation of the Bible from Latin to English to stop any commons understanding of the religion, the attempts to squash the indigenous languages by stopping the spread or talking of such languages..by any other name..a tyranny!…WE..will speak in the language WE best know, WE best communicate with and which WE best understand!…The working classes don’t need middle-class lessons in debate or eloqution, for what eloquence we have lacked in the past, we will make up with our own vernacular…and believe me..we have more than enough colourful colloqualisms to describe bastardry behaviour than the proverbial Inuit has to describe snow!
Time for the working classes, vulgar as we can be, with our shouty rhetoric, our noisy demands to be heard, our earned moment on the dias and deserved voices to call in united yell to those bastards who THINK they hold both the Right to rule and the Floor of the Parliament to have their pathetic whinge hold pride of place in the vocal annals of humankind.
Social media IS the “common voice”…IS the crude instrument, IS the majority voice of those who have the lungs to shout from social “room to room”, from “house to house” and from “floor to floor” the message that will not be heard if we have to wait our turn for that strangely elusive “talking stick” so gratuitously and patronisingly “gifted” to us from the middle-classes.
NO!!….Here we are and we now take the floor…and by the living Christ..you will hear what we have to say..and YOU’LL..take your turn to remain silent till WE say it!
Two of the most prestigious private colleges in Adelaide were originally initated, set up and managed on the board of directors by one of the most egregious scoundrel land speculators of the early province. This man’s cunning and outright audacity in coercing and manipulating the price of broad-acre real estate essential to the farming settler’s survival across some of the most valuable regions of the State are notoriously legendary.
Legendary, not in an honourable way, but rather in a collusion with, but also in competition with those most grasping and greedy speculators of the day…: The South Australian Company, board of directors.
Charles Flaxman was employed and sent to the early settlement as George Fife Angas’s “Confidential Clerk”…a position where he was to quietly obtain favourable and opportune parcels of prime broad-acre land for his master at a cut-price rate to secure a handsome profit for his master. THAT was the initial understanding of his employment. The old adage of ; “Honour among thieves” was the friable cement that held the “confederacy” together…a situation that was destined to fail once Charles Flaxman saw the golden opportunity to secure his own percentage of parcels of that rich land for his own profit.
In those early days of settlement, South Australia was a property speculator’s dream, a paradise originally conceived as a property management ponzi scheme where the sale of grabbed land with or without the indigenous owners permission was to be sold to the first migrants to the new province and the money used to bring out more prospective land purchasers to buy more grabbed land…this went on until someone worked out that food was needed in a hurry or the new colony would starve to death!…So the hardy farmers from the East German valleys were brought out to till the soils and provide stability for the money hungry speculators.
Even then it was a close call as the province went into receivership only six years after the first founding, owing creditors in England over 300,000 pounds and the entire kit and caboodle was seized by the British Government in lieu of debts and the British taxpayer bailed out the entire failed enterprise..an early example of “Private profit – Public Liability”….Except the original instigators of the schamozzle were left “in-situ” to continue their speculation..except now, they had to form a lobby-group to push their enterprises through a real parliament…arise the : “National Defence League”…the incubus of the Liberal Party of Australia and “safe-harbour” for all the white-collar crooks and spielers in the nation.
And of them all, George Fife Angas and his “confidential clerk” were the brightest, “bravest”, and most devious of them all.
An example of Flaxman’s sharp intellect and swiftness of action can be demonstrated in his becoming aware of some prime land north of Adelaide in what is now The Barossa Valley. The German surveyor; Johann Menge made note of the water and soil quality of this wide valley so that it attracted the attention of Flaxman, always on the lookout for land parcels for his master. So taking the surveyor; Col’ William Light with him for company, he went on horse-back to surreptitiously inspect the country…once there, he found another couple of land speculators in company with Johann Menge..; a Mr. Torrens and companion who foolishly confessed to Flaxman an intention to claim the land once back in Adelaide, within the twisted rights of a perverted piece of legislation of what was called ; “Special Surveys”, where a parcel of 4,000 acres of land could be claimed with a deposit of 4,000 pounds, which then allowed the “purchaser” right of purchase for the surrounding “surveyed land” of 12,000 acres for each block of 4,000 acres…once the price of land was then dropped from one pound per acre to 12/6 pence per acre…it became a speculator’s wet-dream!
On hearing of this intention from Mr. Torrens, Charles Flaxman excused himself from their company, pleading to set up camp away from them for the night, when in fact he left Col’ Light there and rode helter skelter back to the Adelaide lands office to reach it just before closing time to submit his own claim to that very valley that Mr. Torrens thought he was entitled to…A legendary ride by a desperate entrepreneur…BUT..there was a sting in the tail to his action..Because while he did claim that initial four parcels of land of 4,000 acres each, a total of 16,000 acres with right of purchase for another surrounding 48 thousands of acres, he claimed three of them in George Angas’s name and ONE PARCEL of 4,000 acres in HIS OWN name..thereby securing a quarter of the total for his own profit…and not only did he double-cross his master by this covert action, he then had the audacity of forcing Angas, on threat of dropping the entire claim (Angas was in England at this time) unless Angas paid also for HIS : Flaxman’s quarter share!!…The audacity of the man to play Angas at his own game was seen as the ultimate insult and though Angas did wincingly fork out the money, it broke the employment contract and started a vitriolic litigation that lasted for many years.
So THIS was the sort of person that later desired to start a “Propriety School” for the education of the children of his peers in the province…for all the like-minded, like attitude, like cunning members of his own class…a private school that would inculcate the intentions of gaining, securing and protecting their ill-gotten wealth . The fore-runner of those public-funded, private screened, profiteering poltroons of a future white-collar criminal class, that now holds by far majority major influence in our institutions of law-making, judiciary, corporate boards, government political appointments, politicians themselves and higher echelon authorities in the land….a corruption complete of every institution of governance by a coterie of like-minded philosophied religious/capitalist indoctrinated “consciousness of kind” pusillanimous buffoons that have steered this nation and a few others in the West to the situation we find ourselves in now…teetering on the verge of economic, physical, social and environmental breakdown…AND STILL having no desire or perhaps no idea of which way to go from here except to encourage feral bogan elements in our midst to clamour and cry for a new Fascist order to protect and secure those ill-gotten gains.
The entire private school system has to be blocked from any future funding by THE State Government and left to fund themselves..We ; the people can no longer afford to pay for their private fantasies. They have to be left to grow up or get out!
Forget the links, the oft’ quoted academic tome .. forget the reams of verbose railing against this or that “Authentic History” .. ”Researched Paper” or PhD on the subject … I’ll give you a rock-solid run-down on the course of events in both South Aust’ history and the formation of the Liberal Party on what will here be the equivalent of a beer coaster sketch .. the “Pub Test” if you will … like a coupla’ mates discussing the pros and cons of a tradie-ute I am flogging to you.
Right .. let’s start with why we need a new history .. NOT just of SA., but the whole of Oz … It is because the Victors and their lackeys in the academic circles have controlled the access to and the writing of those histories for too long and the publishers, coming from in many cases the same “breeding circle” as those types, have selected what THEY thought ought to be published .. ie ; a nice, white, sugary confection of “suitable for Primary education schools “ story … and in many cases a fiction story.
Here in South Australia …
Take the founding of the idea of the State .. keep in mind SA. was NOT a colony..it was a “Province”..a speculative enterprise by a company with specific restrictions encumbered upon it by the king of England and the British Parliament in what was called : “The Letters Patent”. https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-did-2.html ..We are told – alongside portraits of a stern but proud Governor Hindmarsh-that a group of “enterprising, courageous men” , risking their lives, reputations and capital came to this “frontier of struggle and hardship” to found a colony based on “hard working individuals who wanted to advance themselves” in a free market environment … and these governors and administrators were just the people to give them that chance …
Fat chance!!
These scum … these trash who even betrayed the original Royal and Parliament decreed agreement undersigned by THEIR OWN PARLIAMENT AND KING, that have claimed naming rights to streets, avenues, towns and counties alongside their ruthless driving out of the indigenous peoples to the point of many recorded and so many more unrecorded massacres .. their subterfuge in financial dealings and rapacious land-grabs of broad acres that were first at their own request, reduced in value from the stipulated ; “One pound per Acre” to a more salubrious speculator’s price of twelve shillings per acre and THEN when the so called ; “Special Surveys” (a polite name for an outright swindle) were “arranged” with the South Australian Commission … in effect themselves, as THEY or their agents were on the board and commission of every administration post in the settlement, or had the ear of every official resident in the settlement, and then the “surveyed” land purchased at that knockdown price was immediately offered to those migrant German settlers at TEN POUNDS AN ACRE!! … an outrageous opportunity that had to be stopped by the British Authorities once Pastor Kavel protested on the penury it would place the settlers in.
Such criminal opportunists are called “The Founding Fathers” of the state … and when their wings were clipped by the arrival of a more reputable court of petty sessions and legal advocates, they immediately set to organise a lobby group to place ministers and representatives in the Legislative Council of the new Parliament to manipulate the laws on their behalf … This is when “The National Defence League” was born as a deformed mutation of a rapacious and cruel, lying and thieving conservative political party representing those monopolies that saw great advantage in profiteering in commerce rather than loyalty to country .. for while they spruiked enthusiasm for Federation, it was not solely for the good of national unity, but more for the control of shipping of commerce and profit of their enterprises.
The National Defence League recruited members with deceit and subterfuge, relying on subtle eloquence of language to sway the more gullible to back their enterprises .. a fore-runner in conception to The IPA and in eventual existence to The Liberal Party. This “party of patriot profiteers” preached the same rhetoric on taxation, the same rhetoric on minimum wages, the same rhetoric on property rights and enterprise as its most modern evolution .. this most modern evocation of an age old swindle : The LNP. Read here..: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/92862209
On taxation, it abhorred the idea of a Land Tax that encouraged the breaking up of the huge estates of those original land-grabs by claiming that the tax was in effect a imposition on the “poor widows” the “hard-working small-farmers” and the working men of the country … The idea of a minimum wage denied the right of the employer “who created employment” of owning his choice of who and when and how many to employ and would curtail his “capacity to manage his own costs” … The Customs Tax between the states created a tariff that slowed the exchange of commodities between markets and disadvantaged the local producer .. hence the benefits of Federation … NOT for the people en-masse, but for the profit margin that could be gained.
A profit margin that excluded ANY consideration of the native peoples .. THEY were considered an inconvenient and unfortunate inclusion in the original decree of intent of the Letters Patent, that had to be provoked and coerced into confrontation so that a police or military “reprimand” could put their tribes down and keep them suppressed.
This was managed by driving thousands of stock deep into their hunting grounds and tribal territory, replete with wagons and drays and shepherds and their chattels, ruining the Aborigine’s food and fresh water sources. Pushing the boundaries of tolerance to such a point that confrontation was inevitable … I leave the reader to imagine the damage done when thousands of sheep and hundreds of cattle are driven through virgin territory and water places. Then when confrontation was inevitable, we see the appearance of the troopers meeting spear and waddy carrying warriors with a barrage of bullets .. NOT from old powder and shot muzzle-loading muskets, but rather with the surreptitiously imported most modern breech loading Snider-Enfield or Martini-Henry rifles … a massacre!…Another method of genocide was to encourage disease contagion by admitting contact with infected persons from newly arrived migrants from Europe and elsewhere, knowing FULL WELL from the recorded experiences of the Spanish in Sth. America and the invaders of the territories of the Nth American Indians, what the “kill rate” was among those natives previously untouched by such volatile contagions as small pox, measles, whooping cough and other insidious diseases.
Of course, all this killing and genocide was done “at arms length” from the sight of the proud administrators whose hands were “kept clean” by claiming accidental “oversight by subordinates” or “administrative mistakes” like when the medical inspectors were quickly withdrawn from quarantine inspections of newly arrived migrant ships after the first few months when it was discovered that deadly contagious diseases were coming in with the first ships…and such migrant single men were soon in contact with native women…one can see the glint in the eye of the “tied-hands” of those Speculator-Administrators when this opportune solution was dropped straight into their laps!..a “gift from God” too good to pass up!…..and so the deed was done…call it what you will, thousands of the Kaurna, young and old, died by contagion of these diseases, as then did their right of ownership of their lands…..it was genocide by ANY name.
What started out as a colony of speculative adventure of cashed-up cowboys ended up by the turn of the twentieth century as a conglomeration of venture capitalists with the same interests as capitalists the world over .. : “While all rivers glisten in different colours, a sewer everywhere looks the same.” … Their criminal activities worked with the same percentage profit margin expectations and with the same principle of “Private profit-Public Risk” … and don’t give me that old chestnut of it being a symptom and accepted practice of the times, as that original Decree signed off by both the British Parliament AND the King of England made specific provision and clause for certain social and humanitarian statutes that were both sworn to loyally on their “Christian faith” and then immediately abandoned!
No … it is time enough to no longer tolerate the liars and fabricators of this false history … a fraud of monumental proportions .. If we as a nation wish to stand tall and proud of what we WILL WANT to achieve in the future, we must let go of that brutal and rubbish history taught more as political propaganda than social education and damn well write anew in words of sincerity and inclusion a new dialogue with the truth of multicultural society and indigenous ownership of country EMBOSSED ONTO the document of a new constitution … :
freef'all852 