Somehow I don’t think ScoMo actually likes TISM….

We obviously have some reds under the beds at the moment.

Our Prime Minister has described the deputy opposition leader as a Manchurian candidate.

I assume that he expects that most people actually have seen that 1950s movie – personally I have not.

Let me put on record that (surprise surprise) I dislike Richard Marles. He is a posh git who went to Geelong Grammar or some similar school which makes him a stereotype for the odious bankers in the Alex Cartoon rather than somewhere relevant to the people who actually live in Labor held seats.

So… I believe that when he recites cliches about labor related rhetoric about the workers, he has trouble keeping a straight face. That does convince me that he is not going to be able to believe or recite any Maoist twaddle.

I try to be honest and earnest (sic) in this blog. Intellectual honesty is important to me, especially as I get older and I see how despicable and dishonest are people supposedly voting the same way that I do.

When we talk about Manchurian candidates, how about we look at some retired Liberal Ministers first:

Alexander Downer – a director of Huawai – a company which is now regarded as not suitable to be involved in Australian telecommunications due to national security issues.

Andrew Robb – who as a minister made the decision to sell the Port of Darwin to the communist Chinese company Landbridge and who then took up a $880,000 with Landbridge immediately after retiring from Parliament.

Santo Santoro – who as a lobbyist after he had retired as a minister successfully lobbied for the family of a billionaire regarded as a risk to national security to be granted citizenship.

These over-superannuated has-been politicians sicken me. I think that they sicken most Australians. If the current Prime Minister wants to start playing games about reds under the beds, he first needs to explain why these ex-ministers should not face charges for treason and the like.

I think that most of us will welcome the opportunity to see these overprivileged avaricious rent-seekers face justice.

American essayist and gonzo journalist P.J. O’Rourke has just passed away and I am a little sad.

From around 1989, when I discovered his collection of essays ‘Republican Party Reptile’, there was a period of about a decade when I would eagerly buy and devour his books as soon as they were released. He could be very funny.

Take this extract from his article ‘Myths Made Modern’ on page 21 of ‘Republican Party Reptile’:

‘Penelope was the wife of the war hero Ulysses, who had been an officer in Vietnam. He was overseas for a long time and Penelope felt like he was never coming back. So she had a lot of suitors. But Ulysses did come back, and when he did he killed all of Penelope’s men friends. And he would have gone to jail if the jury hadn’t decided that he was suffering from post-Vietnam Stress Syndrome and therefore had been temporarily insane.’

His car hoon essays republished in that collection, ‘Ferrari Refutes the Decline of the West’ and ‘How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink’ are classics of gonzo journalism.

He did decline as a writer and a character. Old age does get to us, and after about 2001, his books became far less frequent and less funny, and less popular.

When he published a new collection of car related essays ‘Driving Like Crazy’ in 2009, he had to include ‘How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink’ as it was probably his most famous essay.

However, in early old age by then and with a brace of teenage daughters himself who might read his pearls of wisdom and get the wrong idea, his writings from when he was in his mischievous prime about being high on drugs and picking up teenage girls in a fast car made him rather nervous, so he included a disclaimer that he had made it all up and that people should not take that essay as canonical.

And that disclaimer summed up the last 20 years of his writing career.

All the same, tonight I might pour myself a glass of Cinzano and soda and reread my favourite passages from ‘Republican Party Reptile’ for the first time in many years. Vale PJ.

Let’s face it, ScoMo’s ukulele solo on 60 Minutes last night was rather cringeworthy.

Besides which, he and his advisors might not have thought through the common associations most people have with the words ‘ukulele’ and ‘Hawaii’, as in ‘Hawaiian Holiday’, as in ‘Hawaiian Holiday during the January 2020 bushfires’, as in ‘Nero fiddles while Rome burns’.

It does not really matter what song he chose to inflict on his TV audience, although Dragon’s “April Sun in Cuba”, a 45 year old retro classic, might be much better than at least one other of Dragon’s songs (more on that in a moment).

The band Dragon have reached out, partly from beyond the grave, to express their dismay at the Prime Minister’s choice of music for his performance.

The indignation that Dragon have expressed (they were the singular Dragon then too, as well as now, when all of their members were alive, although right now being called Dragon in the singular is probably more apt) seems to be mostly around ScoMo falling to know most of the words to the chorus of the song. They gently remind us that if he had spent more time on that Hawaiian holiday, perhaps he would have learned that chorus properly.

But perhaps we should be grateful that ScoMo chose that song instead of others from the Dragon back catalogue.

The PM is accused of being tone-deaf, and not just in his musical talents. But it could be far worse.

You see, Dragon was, in its time, very into sex, drugs and rock n’roll, to a level that someone so Godly as our Prime Minister would feel uncomfortable about if he thought about it. The other really big song Dragon is known for is the hugely inappropriate 1978 hit “Are you old enough?”, which would, if the PM had played it, have put a lot of kerosene on the current fire Grace Tame is fanning around him.

Perhaps Dragon should be grateful that he did not choose that song, and remind people of the stage performances put on by lead singer Marc Hunter accompanying it. Late 1970s rockers could get away with a lot more than they could in 2022.

I like to play the lottery whenever there is a big draw. I know that the odds are microscopically small (over eight million to one in the case of Tattslotto and even less for the other two major lotteries), but it is unlikely that there will be any other channel through which I will acquire wealth far above my station as a member of the lower lower middle class.

Vaccines are another form of lottery. The odds of suffering a very serious side effect from a vaccine are very small, but still much greater than that of winning the lottery.

I am lucky in that regard. The only side effect I have had from my three Covid vaccinations is a sore arm. I do strongly encourage people to get vaccinated against Covid, as, when you look at the numbers, the odds of illness from vaccination are much lower than the odds of illness (or death from Covid).

But that is not to say that one size fits all is an appropriate position. Over a decade ago, a friend of mine was pressured by her employer to get the flu vaccination. The result for her was lasting and serious neurological illness due to her reaction to the vaccine. I am aware she has some work insurance claim, but that is theoretical and basically worthless. No lump sum and definitely no payment/reimbursement for physical treatment, which is standard and required for her injury.

Which is a way of opening a discussion on vaccine policy and what to do about the people who might suffer from an adverse vaccination event.

The Coalition, who are not regarded as champions of the workers, have actually taken steps to create a compensation scheme targeting vaccine hesitancy, which directs taxpayer money at those which might actually suffer adverse impacts from the Covid vaccination. Of course, this does not help my friend, however it does help people who have a covid  vaccine now.

The position of the Opposition, and the union movement in general, has been much less nuanced and responsible. The ALP has offered a suggestion of $300 per person who gets vaccinated – a blanket spend of taxpayer money which will go to all those who get vaccinated, whether or not they are going to suffer an adverse impact. This position pretends that adverse vaccination events do not occur, or that if they do, they are so rare (or irrelevant) as to not warrant a policy response.

This is despite the union movement (and by extension the Labor Party) knowing full well that serious adverse impacts to vaccination do occur, and have done so in the past. This is because, in its role of advocating for workplace safety, the union movement hears from union members seeking assistance when they suffer adverse health impacts from a vaccination.

In doing this, turning a blind eye to the suffering of this small cohort of industrial injuries (ie workers who have had a vaccination due to work requirements and then been permanently harmed by their bodies’ reaction), the union movement has failed in its duty of care to those people. It has abandoned workers and left them to suffer alone.

Does this surprise me? The union movement, and its parliamentary representatives, is increasingly removed from the ‘shop floor’ of the workplace. The days of decent men rising from the shop floor to the leadership of unions is gone. It is more likely that people like the infamous Kathy Jackson will move into full time employment in a union office, after an elite private school education followed by a few years at university, with no time working in the occupations represented by their union.

I have lived in Avondale Heights about 19 years now. I like it – and whilst I am not particularly Italian, I feel comfortable living in the most Italian suburb in Australia (20% of people here claim Italian descent – compared to 3% in Australia and 4% in Victoria overall).

Just over the Canning Street bridge to the east is the Maribyrnong Explosives Factory site. This is a 124 hectare location which takes up a very large part of the suburb of Maribyrnong. Until 30 years ago, Maribyrnong and surrounds hosted three major Defence factories – the Footscray Ammunition Factory which is now Edgewater, the Maribyrnong Ordnance Factory which is is the weirdly named Waterford Green, and the Explosives Factory.

The Explosives Factory has been closed for a very long time, and I was reading in the Herald Sun early last week about the lack of progress on developing the site. As it turns out, the Federal Government starting talking about redeveloping it as a new residential suburb around 19 years ago, when I moved here (FYI, I used to live in an upper level flat opposite that site on the eastern side in Maribyrnong).

After 19 years of prevarication where are we? It will be at least another 2 years before that site’s fate is decided and development may start.

One of the big problems is that it is hugely contaminated by all sorts of heavy metals and chemicals from decades of explosives production. Cleaning that up is not going to be easy.

There are also a lot of annoying heritage overlays over the site. Apparently run down factories which have been abandoned for decades have important value as part of our industrial history, rather than being easy targets for a bulldozer.

During the time that I have watched and waited for the development of the site, the number of residences on it has increased considerably – they are now talking about 3,300 residences and 6,600 people – which is double what they were talking about originally.

Given that I hate congestion and crowding, especially on the buses and trams that I take which may come to gain many more passengers on the Cordite Avenue stops than they do now, I am happy for the development to be delayed much much longer, say, another 19 years?

But I doubt that will happen. Wests Road, which runs south from that site, is now bookended by two high rise apartment towers. I expect that the warehouses along Raleigh Road south of the factory site will also turn into high rise towers in the coming years, extending Maribyrnong’s skyline.

If decontaminating the explosives site is too expensive and takes too long, I fully expect that instead of low rise housing, we will see much taller high rise apartment towers built on that site (hopefully leaving most of the mature trees extant).

I used to think, as a child, that Norman Gunston was real. Not even his parody song Kiss Army in 1980 at the height of Kissmania disabused me of this illusion.

It was only much later that I discovered that Norman Gunston was a fictional character, just like some others nurtured by the ABC, such as the other classic 1970s comedic creation Aunty Jack.

I find it reassuring that the ABC has not abandoned its sense of humour, nor its desire to nurture comedic talent in Australia. This was revealed this week when, on its show The Drum, the ABC introduced us to the fictional comedic character ‘Professor Noreen Young’, an excessively woke individual to the point of hilarity, whose back story includes a close friendship with our loveable and (until recently) cuddly Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, and who makes broad declamations of an ersatz Marxist variety.

On the recent admission by the Prime Minister that he eats white bread rather than sourdough or multigrain, our new comedic genius ‘Professor Noreen Young’ told viewers the follow pearls of wisdom:

“I think the comment about white bread was really interesting. Who eats white bread in this country? Anglo men. I come from a working class background.

“We had brown bread because we were healthy. I think it shows a deep lack of understanding about who works in this country.

“I think that there’s a deep intersection of race and class… I do think that there are some politicians who understand what the working class looks like. It’s not white anglo men.”

I look forward to more utterances from this great new comedic creation.

I am certain that she is a fictional creation because she claims to be close friends with Anthony Albanese. Until his recent weight loss, it was quite clear that Mr Albanese was excessively fond of eating white bread, yet Mr Albanese is Italo-Celtic in origin, not Anglo at all. Yet much as she is so clever about nutrition, she is not claiming credit for the loveable Albo losing so many kilos lately. A real person, rather than a fictional character, would be talking about that quite proudly.

Otherwise, the thought processes behind a real person dividing bread into the woke (ie brown) and not woke (ie white), does descend from the risable into the seriously disturbing.

And not for the cultural appropriation of what it means to be working class, something which Professor Young can no longer claim to represent.

Do you know what a Kulak was? They were independent peasant wheat farmers in the Russian Empire prior to the Russian Revolution. At the time of the Russian Revolution, the new regime twisted the term to mean people who withheld their grain from the new regime. Lenin and Stalin came to denounce and persecute them.

As many as six million were murdered by the Soviet regime, and millions others imprisoned or deported to Siberia.

All for the crime of growing wheat for making bread.

Bread, and the grain we used to make it, is a matter of life and death – of plenty, or starvation. To talk flippantly of class hatred, and smugly of whether a bread fits a politically correct line, whether of race or class, is to ignore the historical lessons of the past, where matters of race and class have led to the withholding of bread, or the killing of those who make it.

And so it is for that reason that I hope that Professor Noreen Young is a fictional character, not a real human being. For if this Professor Noreen Young really exists, with her ignorance of history and her clear hatefulness towards those different to herself, then it truly marks that we still have those walking amongst us with the zealotry to inflict the sorts of horrors seen in the workers’ paradise of the Soviet Union.

I received an email this afternoon advising me that the Kiss End Of The Road Tour has now been delayed from next month to August (it was originally due to occur last November).

The reason for this latest postponement is Premier McGowan’s announcement that he is keeping the WA borders closed indefinitely.

Thank you Premier McGowan, for ruining this for the rest of us. As JRR Tolkien once wrote, you cannot fence the world out.

I am not exactly high brow in my musical tastes, and I have a very sentimental place in my heart for Kiss. I was in grade six when they toured Australia for the first time, to promote their totally misleadingly named Kiss Unmasked album, and Kissmania swept the nation in anticipation of their tour.

Much as there was such great hype, the band actually was imploding at the time. Peter Criss appeared in the film clip for Shandi, but did not play on the album due to his infatuation with the bottle, and he was sacked and replaced by Eric Carr before the tour started. Ace Frehley did not last too much longer in the band – just another two or so years.

But there we were in 1980, and as primary school age kids we were all oblivious to those intrigues. There were Kiss cards to collect – three different sets of 66 each (if I recall, number 65 was almost impossible to find, which made getting the set very challenging), the last set of which featured the exciting new face of the replacement drummer and therefore caused renewed enthusiasm for collecting!

The school music room (and probably a lot of the classrooms) was covered in Kiss posters, and kids wore their Kiss t-shirts to school.

Then the concert came, and about six weeks later, school ended for the year and then Kissmania was over. Forever.

Many years later, in the middle 1990s, I went to the Kiss Reunion tour, when the four original members played again. Then, just before the Kiss Farewell tour (rather misleading as it turns out), Peter Criss tried to hold out for more money so they got Eric Singer to put on the Catman makeup. He probably did a much better job than Peter Criss anyway on the drums.

There is just something about Kiss, this manic kaleidoscopic clown circus of rock music, which fascinates so many of us. Aside from the nostalgia for 1980 Kissmania, I have never quite gotten what it is for me.

Perhaps it is Gene Simmons’ unquestionable Will To Power and New York Chutzpah that drives the band onward like a perpetual motion machine.

Maybe it is the great live stage show. Gene’s fire breathing act never gets passe. Nor did Ace’s guitar shooting rockets after he riffs Beethoven’s 5th on it (yes, I do know some classical music, I am not a total philestine!).

And possibly the music is good. I know that I enjoy it.

But whatever it is, I am looking forward to the concert, whenever it happens.

About 18 months ago, I admitted that watching The Australian edition of The Masked Singer was one of my more juvenile pleasures, and that I had speculated on whether embarrassed (rather than disgraced) former politician Sam Destyari had been the person inside the Wizard costume.

The Masked Singer is one of those shows which is so abysmally bad that it is good, the sort of crony TV where D-list celebrity has beens both ‘compete’ and ‘judge’. You can reflect on the desperation for cash and media attention which has caused some of these people to agree to inflict themselves upon the viewing audience once more.

In the USA, the current edition of this show is going to feature former New York mayor and trial attorney Rudy Giuliani. His reveal last week during filming caused ‘judges’ Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to storm off the set – the type of free publicity which would have caused the producers to rub their hands together with glee.

This is just the latest stage in a very sad behavioural and reputational decline on the part of Mr Giuliani. His work as a legal representative of President Trump in seeking to get the 2020 election results overturned in court underlined the start of that decline.

As the porter in Macbeth (Act 2, Scene 3) put it when describing the legal profession:

Who’s there, in th’other devil’s name? Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven…

Lawyers sometimes get paid to argue that night is day and the like, but they do not get applauded when they do so, particularly where the impacts of such arguments could have serious far reaching consequences, and so it went for Giuliani.

At the time he was doing such laudable public lawyering, he also allowed himself to become the figure of ridicule when newly applied hair dye started to stream down the side of his face, and he engaged in some bizarre on camera behaviour with a young actress who was involved in the new Borat film.

So now, he appears on The Masked Singer and causes someone like Robin Thicke, whose most innocuous recent behaviour involved a public twerk with Miley Cyrus, to storm off the stage in indignation. What is going through Giuliani’s mind and why is he behaving so erratically?

His legacy as mayor of New York at the time of 9/11 and his previous prosecutions of mob figures is now buried by all the bizarre behaviour of his dotage.