“Hell is truth seen too late” – Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

If, in some sort of twisted social contract, people were to consent to live in a technocracy with the removal of most of their rights and liberties (including much of their freedom of speech), you would expect at least that the technocrats running that system to be competent at delivering the safety and security which are the trade offs for the loss of all that freedom.

I think the philosopher Hobbes, who could be considered through his Leviathan to be the post-Platonic pioneer for such technocracy, would see that as the alternative to a life which is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

In the failed technocracy which is the Peoples Republic of Victoria, we do not have that sort of assurance from the elected and appointed technocrats ruling the state. Life is solitary, as we are all more or less forbidden from leaving our homes; it is (for many small business people) poor due to the obliteration of their livelihoods; it is nasty, for the police are hassling elderly ladies in parks and arresting pregnant bogans in dawn raids for the major crime of advocating the right to protest; it is brutish, for similar reasons of autocratic overreach; and, due to the failure of the authorities to contain the Covid, there is the threat of it being short.

The groundswell of questions around the failures of the Andrews Technocracy, both to contain the covid in hotel quarantine, and in the harsh measures supposedly deemed necessary to address that failure, came to a head on Friday, with the resignation of the Health Minister after the Premier’s evidence to the enquiry pinned all the blame on her, something she evidently disputes.

But it appears that no one has actually taken responsibility for the various decisions and errors which led to this renewed outbreak and the disastrous lockdown. It is a case of Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and ultimately Nobody, as the old saying goes.

This became clear a few weeks ago, when the curfew, which was ordered by the Chief Health Officer Professor Sutton, was questioned. Professor Sutton denied responsibility for recommending it, and gave no public justification for it, showing a failure to turn his mind to the issue at question, and therefore leaving it open under administrative law for people to wonder whether he had actually lawfully made the decision to order the curfew (administrative law requires that you actually turn your mind actively to considering the questions rather than just signing whatever is put in front of you). At the same time, the Police Commissioner denied all responsibility for recommending a curfew.

So who ordered the curfew? Premier Andrews does not have the legal power to do so – all the emergency powers actually lie with the Police Minister and the Chief Health Officer, and he cannot order them to make a decision, they have to make the decisions themselves. If one or other of them followed direction from the Premier in this way, then they would not be actually exercising their powers lawfully.

We also now have the situation where former Police Chief Commissioner Ashton has denied in front of the current judicial enquiry, that he had a preference one way or the other for the use of private security in the hotel quarantine. However, the evidence trail contradicts this.

Similarly, there has been a lot of denial by state officials in relation to the offer of Defence Force personnel to enforce the hotel quarantine.

Indeed, success has many fathers but failure is an orphan.

The consequences of this ineptitude have been extremely serious. Victoria has now been in lockdown for a further three months, which will result in serious long term economic cost. It also will have human cost – there are close to an extra 800 Victorians unnecessarily dead directly as a result of the Covid resurgence. Then there is the indirect human cost – the rise in the suicide rate and the deaths of those unable to access their usual elective and other medical treatments (for example, my elderly mother’s appointment to have her pacemaker checked appears to have been delayed, which puts her at greater risk).

The unwillingness of the police leadership to commit to enforcing hotel quarantine, combined with the failure of the State Premier to accept the offer of ADF help (and to lie about it), has cost this state. It would have been better for the police to enforce the quarantine than what they have done since, ie hassling elderly ladies on park benches, arresting pregnant bogans in dawn raids, and handing out thousands of fines to irresponsible idiots. Is this what policing is there for?

When you look at the answers of ex-Commissioner Ashton to the enquiry this week, you have to wonder whether he has perjured himself. Combine that with his involvement in the Lawyer X saga where the police appear to have perverted the course of justice on an industrial scale, and you do have to wonder about whether or not the next dawn raid Victoria Police should do might be to arrest him on charges relating to those matters, rather than trawling through Facebook to find bogans wishing to protest.

That would send a better message to our inept technocrats who are busy abusing their emergency powers that no one is above the law, and especially not insipid pocket despots like themselves.

His lips move.

I think the answers of our technocratic premier at the enquiry into the failures of hotel quarantine do show a lot of short comings in terms of his judgement and his veracity.

Yet thanks to Fiona ‘Yar Yar Binks’ Patton, he retains emergency powers to abuse for the next six months.

And abuse them he has, and will.

You know, there is only one movie I found so bad that I weighed up the lost cost of my ticket against the lost cost of sitting there for another two hours to watch it that I actually got up and walked out.

That film was Ellen Degeneres’ 1990s screen vehicle Mr Wrong, which seemed to rely on a dated psycho slapstick vibe where crazed stalkers are funny. I think I lasted about 10 minutes into the film before I decided to walk out, just when the overacted phone call from said slapstick stalker occurred.

That, closeted as she then was, Ellen might be the perfect choice to play the lead in a heterosexual stalker-rom-com is something that I leave to the verdict of history. It did not occur to me at the time, and I have never given the more ironic merits of that film any further thought.

[I would say that there are some other films I wish I had walked out on. Jim Carey’s star making hit Ace Ventura is high on the list. And some which took so long to go nowhere that I wish I had known that in advance – such as Johnny Depp’s sci-fi horror flick The Astronaut’s Wife and the low budget alien invasion film Skyline.]

Mr Wrong would be the outer limits of my direct exposure to Ellen’s screen presence – either big or small. I never saw her sitcom, nor the talk show which is currently doing an impersonation of the Titanic after it struck the iceberg (now that is a film I only went to see because 4 hours in an air-conditioned cinema looking at icebergs was better than putting up with the 40 degree celsius heat outside that day).

It seems that at the moment, Ellen is the latest target of the me-too movement. Her public image has been one of a loveable goof, who always tells everyone ‘Be kind to each other’.

Apparently this public image is as genuine as a three dollar bill, from the avalanche of stories which have come out about her behaviour to crew on her show, and to lower status guests (yet no one is awarding Ellen an Emmy for her acting performance). Being friends with George W. Bush is also a bit like putting a ‘kick me’ sign on one’s back in terms of preserving popularity amongst the woke and other undead (or is it ‘cultural’) marxists.

So Ellen’s show is in trouble and no one really believes her authenticity when she gets up there and gives a scripted apology to viewers about mistakes which might have been made.

How is her show to be saved? Not that I really care, as I do not watch talk shows and such rubbish, but like everyone, I have an opinion, which I can and will share with the few readers of this blog (especially my avid readers in the PRC, who make up 10% of my readership).

That is, Ellen needs to embrace her nastiness. Stop pretending to be nice and start showing everyone the true Ellen, the mean spiteful vindictive creature which her crew know and fear. Don’t bother apologising and revel in being hated and feared instead.

After all, the best Shakespearean plays are the ones with a virile villain whom you can really barrack for, such as Macbeth, Richard III, and Iago. They are so evil and ruthless and clever and full to the brim with Nietzschean Will To Power that when they finally get their comeuppance, you somehow feel that something is wrong in the world, that weaker beings with all the insipid goodness of Dudley DoRight have somehow triumphed through dumb luck.

Be a villain Ellen. All the world loves to hate a villain.

On the day after the 2016 Grand Final miracle, after leaving the celebration at the Whitten Oval I had a few drinks (very limited choice as the pub had almost entirely run out) at the Victoria Hotel in Footscray with a friend who had crossed the Nullabor to see the game.

He had spoken to his six year old son in Perth on the phone and his son had said: “I’ve waited my whole life for this.”

So too had his dad, to put it into context. A whole life that had been forty years longer.

We supporters of the Footscray Football Club, as we prefer to call the team trading as the Western Bulldogs, are a resilient bunch. 2016 was the first grand final our team had played in since 1961, and the first premiership since the solitary first one of 1954. I watched us get smashed by Geelong in the 1992 preliminary final, and get robbed by a point by Adelaide in the 1997 preliminary final (which hurt even more). To say nothing of those other prelims in 1985, 1998, 2007, 2008, 2009….

There has been a long while there when winning one final in a series would make the season seem like a success, albeit still the disappointment of falsely raised hopes. But it is our home town team, and we love it, just as we love our home town Footscray, with all its quaint charms and shortcomings.

And then we had 2016, when the theoretical possibility of winning four sudden death finals matches in a row to seize the premiership became a miracle reality.

It is September, and a Victorian football fan’s mind turns to the AFL finals, especially when his team has squeaked in.

We do not quite know whom the Bulldogs will play against in the first week of the finals, whether it will be St Kilda or West Coast. That depends on whether Collingwood wins the final game of the home and away season and leapfrogs past us into 7th spot.

But that we made the finals fills my heart, and that of every Bulldogs supporter, with optimism. 2016 was a miracle premiership, but when something can happen once, it can happen again, particularly in this topsy turvy strange year of 2020. And the team knows it – believing that you can win is the first real step towards winning, something which never really was the case before 2016.

As our Grand Final t-shirts put it in 2016:

BELIEVE

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BULLDOG

As I have indicated in my blog on various occasions, whilst I am far too conservative to participate in demonstrations, I do very strongly believe in the right to protest as part of what makes for a healthy democracy.

That people (bogans are people too) have been arrested in their own homes for simply advocating holding protests in the current state of disaster in Victoria, under emergency powers which suppress freedom of speech, makes me very concerned about the conduct of the technocrats currently ruling Victoria.

So, I am not going to do anything to break the law, or to encourage bogans to do something stupid.

What I am going to do is express my dismay with the technocratic and authoritarian conduct of Premier Andrews by placing my boots at the front of my home. “Give Dan The Boot” is a civilised and lawful way of protesting, as it is to discuss such passive protests online.

Whilst we still have some freedoms, let’s use those that we still have to advocate for the return of those which have been taken (hopefully temporarily) from us as soon as possible. Especially the freedom of speech and the right to protest.

About 15 years ago, an acquaintance of a friend ran for the Maribyrnong Council on a mostly sensible platform around cutting waste and rate payments. I say mostly, because he had a fixation about permanently reopening the public toilet on what was then platform 4 of Footscray Station.

The one time I met this prospective civic leader and he launched into his tirade about this, I did mention that this was not a council issue, it was possibly a state issue, or more likely a metro trains issue, as they manage the station (and you can’t have an open toilet on an unmanned platform, particularly at night, without spending on the salary for at least one station attendant). He ignored this, and continued a rant about how people need that platform 4 toilet reopened immediately.

Sadly, he did not win, and Maribyrnong City council rates remain proportionately much higher than most other council areas in greater Melbourne.

And that toilet remains shut. (I did wonder about his obsession with public toilets.)

It is approaching council election time across greater Melbourne, and the campaigning has started already. Compared to fifteen years ago when contests were rather tame, property developer related interests means that in some areas (like mine), council seats are more fiercely contested than seats in state or federal parliament.

But that distant acquaintance is not the only prospective councillor with an overreach as to where his area of municipal responsibility may lie. My mother has started receiving campaign leaflets in Maribyrnong, including from the endearing Marxists at Socialist Action, whose platform appears to consist solely of two planks – retain and increase JobKeeper, and increase childcare.

How demanding those will translate into civic leadership in the city of Maribyrnong will probably transform Footscray into the sort of annoying woke hub that Brunswick is (I got delayed by a big climate protest in Sydney Road 13 months ago one Saturday).

But I cannot help but like the policies of one candidate for my ward here in the City of Moonee Valley, whose leaflet was placed in my letterbox today.

His public transport policies include:

. extending the Route 57 tram over the bridge and up Military Road til Buckley Street (excellent idea, which has been talked about since I was in high school and ignored by local state politicians almost as long)

. digging a tunnel under Avondale Heights and having several underground rail stations en route to the airport (another excellent idea, which the Federal Government supported, but which was kiboshed by Chairman Dan a couple of years ago in favour of the Sunshine route).

These are excellent policies, although not exactly within the ambit (or budget) of local councils to implement. I have given up hope of course of having a rail tunnel under Avondale Heights, although it still seems like a fantastic idea to me, even though I would be long retired before it could come to fruition, but I do still think that the extension of the Route 57 tram would not be anywhere near as expensive and really should happen (I do love trams).

His nature and biodiversity policies are also welcome. He wants a 50% canopy cover over Avondale Heights by 2050. I love the idea – why else did I plant two gum trees (as well as my many citrus trees) when I moved in? His website talks about encouraging native fauna back into the suburb and limiting development so as to preserve green space and wildlife. The website also has a photo of that monstrous development on the west ridge of the Maribyrnong, overlooking Solomon’s Ford, which is currently being built (I see that eyesore every time I walk to the corner of Canning Street).

I wish that candidate luck. It is almost 15 years since I last saw a live kangaroo near the river, and although I have seen a kookaburra and and owl this year, I cannot take those for granted in the future.

Let me start by saying that despite self-identifying as a Catholic every 5 years on the census, I am not a superstitious person.

However, since Sunday morning, something strange has happened five times in my home. My shaving handle (Gillette Fusion Power) is battery operated, and it has somehow turned itself on five times in the past 60 hours. Quite strange. Once it happened just as I was walking past the bathroom.

As I am now five months into growing an isolation beard, I am not shaving at the moment, and do not plan to until some sanity returns to daily life. Perhaps the spirit world is telling me I should shave.

In any event, if this is the only nuisance that this poltergeist is going to cause in my home, they are welcome to share it with me.

I, Robot is the sort of movie you watch once in the cinemas and then mostly forget about. I cannot remember too much about it except it had Will Smith in it and that actress who was one of the barmaids in Coyote Ugly (yes, I have high brow taste in film).

With the restrictions that have been imposed on Victorians by Disaster Dan, and which continue to be imposed on us for the next few months, I cannot help but harken back to when I saw I, Robot so many years ago.

From memory, I believe the sinister agenda of the Artificial Intelligence controlling all the robots was to ensure that no harm came to any human – resulting, in this case, in Asimov’s Laws of Robotics taken to a logical extreme (suffice to say that my working knowledge of science fiction writing is at nerd level). So, at a pre-determined moment, all the robots trigger their secret agenda and place all humans individually under some sort of house arrest.

After all, if you keep people confined to their houses, they can’t go out and get into traffic accidents or murdered by street thugs, or any of the other things which create greater risk than staying home.

These atypically non-killer robots do not appreciate that in keeping people safe in that way, they are depriving their wards of any joy that they may have in their lives – such as the ability to lead a life. No frolicking in the park, or eating high cholesterol food in steak restaurants, or drinking fine wine in a bar, or going on a date to the movies, or the simple meaningfulness that comes from having a job.

And I wonder about how long, without being able to go to the supermarket or engage in any economic activity outside the home, before all of the humanity guarded by those robots would starve to death. The freedom granted by the robot-protectors is only Hobbesian in its nature – the absence of actual physical restraints (and that itself is arguable).

The premier of Victoria, with the unprecedented technocratic emergency powers which he is now exercising through his minions, seems to share the same agenda as the robots in I, Robot.

And the same amount of empathy as those robots.

Essentially he wants to protect people from themselves and from living their lives. Freedom of movement, of religion, to earn a living through normal economic activities, and now even of speech have been suppressed to a very large degree.

The only freedom is to stay in one’s home, a very Hobbesian form of freedom.

And that itself is limited. Those bogans who have been ‘inciting’ public protests on Facebook etc have been arrested. After all, freedom of speech and the right to protest has been severely curtailed under emergency powers. A pregnant woman has been arrested and handcuffed in her own home for simply putting something mildly stupid on Facebook. Two elderly ladies sitting on a park bench have been arrested for sitting on a bench.

After the Hotel Quarantine failure which caused Victoria alone of all states to have the Covid pandemic resurge and take on new hideous momentum, the technocratic architect of this debacle has been accelerating the use of the agency of state power to restrict the freedoms of his victims, the citizens of Victoria.

This is all to keep us safe from the Covid. For how long? Do the measures now imposed by this unfettered technocrat in the past few days amount to a road map to the economic and social ruin of Victoria?

Let’s face it, we will be locked in our homes for the next three months at this rate, possibly longer. The metrics which have been proposed to end this lockdown (the harshest in Australia and possibly the world) are very hard targets to achieve. In the meantime, people are losing their livelihoods and many of the more economically and psychologically vulnerable are losing the will to live.

And people have lost the right to protest. Taking away the right of dissent, and to protest and express legitimate concerns, is the action of an autocrat, not of a democratic elected government. That last week cross bencher Fiona Patten was foolish enough to entrust the Premier with six more months of unfettered emergency powers was immediately revealed to be a huge mistake.

I must admit that I was looking forward to seeing the live action remake of Mulan in the cinemas earlier this year, until the pandemic resulted in the closure of cinemas. Mulan, the latest Bond film, Black Widow, and Bill & Ted 3 are all films I have been keenly awaiting.

Mulan has a great trailer, promising an action packed and inspiring story, with great visuals – perfect for seeing in a cinema. And it is, whilst set in China, in English, which makes it easier for me than having to concentrate on subtitles, like I did for Crouching Tiger and Hero (incidentally, Hero is an amazing story told extremely well – do yourself a favour and watch it).

However, Liu Yifei, the star of Mulan, has made various comments in support of the Hong Kong police during the civil unrest last year. Now, with the communists on the mainland causing more withdrawal of legal protections from the people of Hong Kong, the subject is becoming a hot one, particularly as concerned people all over the world are starting to see the secretive communist regime as a threat to world peace and freedom. not just to the people of Hong Kong.

The release of Mulan on Disney+ for a premium fee of $34.99 in Australia does now mean that it is available to watch in the comfort of your own home. However, does a couple of hours of enjoyment of such a film warrant overlooking the stated views of the star, which are very un-Mulan-like in their apologetics for a repressive regime?

Sadly, I will not be watching it. I am too worried about the state of the world and the potential extension by stealth or aggression of tyranny. If not watching it is one small step towards causing business and political leaders in the western world to wake up about the menace the government of the Peoples’ Republic of China presents to the world, then it is well worth it.