verging_on_random

The battlers struggle on

December 12, 2006 on 8:56 pm | In Uncategorized |

It’s too early to tell yet but I hope Kevin Rudd makes one important improvement to national political discourse by scrapping this bullshit of Kim Beazley’s about his ‘compact with middle Australia’. It’s bad enough having to put up with Howard’s crap about the battlers who can’t afford a new Toyota Landcruiser unless they defer their Austrian skiing holiday without Labor getting into the act.

Sometimes it seems that politics in this country is all about pandering to shallow rednecks whose sole interest is in getting as rich as possible as quickly as possible. Movements in interest rates are the focus of the media because they affect the ability of these ‘ordinary Australians’ to pay off the loans on their three investment properties.

These somewhat sour thoughts were prompted by reading today that the average Australian will spend $857 on Christmas presents this year. Eight hundred and fifty seven fucking dollars … most of it on useless rubbish that will not be appreciated by the recipients, but at least it will let those who give show that they’re as capable as the next man of wasting their money on empty gestures. It will give them a warm inner glow as they relax after Christmas dinner and moan about the iniquitous amounts of tax they have to pay so the government can coddle dole bludgers, single mums and overpaid public servants.

Eight hundred and fifty seven dollars … that’s about three weeks’ total income for someone on what many ‘middle Australians’ sneeringly call ‘welfare’. Eight hundred and fifty seven dollars squandered on ‘clothes, toys and DVDs’ … well hey, middle Australians need a shitload more clothes, toys and DVDs. I mean that’s the magic formula for true happiness.

At office Christmas parties now it seems to be accepted practice that everyone kicks in 10 or 20 dollars to buy someone a present that is deliberately, purposefully useless. It’s all terrific fun don’t you know, all in the spirit of the festive season, except that the joke wears a bit thin after the first 10 stupid presents get opened and chucked away … it gets even thinner when you suspect that a few members of staff who really are battlers had to cough up their 20 bucks with a forced smile, because that money was earmarked to buy some prawns for Christmas dinner as a special treat.

At the risk of sounding like a killjoy, might I suggest that middle Australia’s obsession with endless consumption has evolved into sheer mindless self-indulgence. The wind is being sown …. prepare to reap the whirlwind. OMG i came over all Old Testament there for a minute.