Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Saturday morning slacker

It's a fine Saturday morning to be doing something useful, but I can't think of what.

Cleaning the barbecue is probably an option. We cooked a bit of rump steak last night. Every time we cook rump steak nowadays I think to myself it might be the last time. Inflation in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Australia is still making food prices soar. Not that he's worried. He's still prancing about overseas telling other leaders how to run their affairs.

I've been watching some of the hysterical behaviour of protesters as the Olympic flame is being shunted about from country to country. They're demanding independence for Tibet. If there's one thing which won't work in their argument, it's the screaming of insults. Even the Dalai Llama reckons the protesters need to calm down, but they've been making so much noise they didn't hear him.

It be interesting to shove a piece of paper in front of every protester and ask them to draw a map of the Tibetanese territorial claims. I wonder how many could meet the challenge? I wonder too if they've read the Wikipedia entry? That's full of useful information about how miserable life in Tibet used to be in the past.

I'd think it can't be easy running a country like China with a diverse population of 1.3 billion people, all wanting a bigger share of everything.

The Chinese have expedient ways when dealing with criminals and corrupt officials, a bullet in the back of the neck. The sensitive folk outside China say this is inhumane - they reckon criminals and the corrupt officials have rights, just like the same sort of parasites do here. In Australia with a population of twenty million we have burgeoning crime, corruption, and social collapse. Possibly far more on a pro-rata basis than China.

I'm sure there's a lot of things the Chinese could improve, but screaming at them over the Olympic festival is probably not the way to accomplish much at all. Imagine whatit would be like if we had the organisers of these protests running any country.

Gotta go, our youngest daughter has just been accidentally struck by a boomerang thrown by her Bart Simpson-like brother. Apparently nothing serious.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!