The missus was back at the dentist yesterday and on the drive back home she told me about the conversation she was privy to between the Doc and the nurse. They were trying to calm her down I guess by playing at idle banter and I reckon they may have had the same conversation 3 times that day already. But anyway, the Doc asked the nurse what she missed most during the lockdown.
Browsing in shops apparently, and the Doc said he missed his best mate’s wedding. He missed that, and he hates feeling like a criminal every time he takes a stroll with his kiddies.
In the car on the way home, my missus told me, mumbly-numbly that she missed Op Shops.
It got me thinking too about what I miss most.
Normalcy, I miss.
Not life without a coronavirus, I mean life with its fickle ups and downs where you plan, strategise, labour, strive. A life with choices you got to make for your own good, the family’s good, for the industry, the market, Australia, the planet …whatever.
Choice is gone and has been replaced by clumsy autocracy.
1 person per 4 m2 … like it’s always been? I see in the news today that, in NSW if you find yourself locked up/down in a council flat … it’s rationing. One six-pack, per punter, per day.
That’s not normal.
Trust, I miss.
The Doctatorship has become doctrinaire and while their gibbering mantra refers endlessly to the science, nothing scientific can be accessed. We’re looking into it says Andrews.
Still? Eighteen months later.
Hmm, that stinks because you aren’t actually asking us to trust science, you’re actually telling everybody to trust you. Your lot even held an inquiry into the Hot Hotel fiasco … and found no answers.
While Govt mistrusts, I miss trust.
Goodwill, I miss.
What used to be my company, my revenue, my bad luck or good luck, my equity, has been ever so subtly taken over and handed to the Commons. There’s an expectation that we perform on demand but without the previous autonomy or benefits. Good is now co-opted into an expanding narrative of the greater good. Whose?
Good, apparently, is doing what you’re told. These days being ‘essential’, I just feel like a slave. Every day I’m pressured into navigating the covid-strewn battlefield while the Nannas and politicians and captains of industry are all cowering in place. 18 months and I’m still not dead yet.
While Govt seems to feel successful or triumphant, I don’t feel good, I feel stupid.
With fickle and feckless abandon, our Governors have made every business dance. Comply or fail. Get on board or be turfed overboard. What would any of them know about running a gym, a coffee shop, a college, or deploying industrial computer control systems? Do they care?
See, at the same time, the Govs have taken it on, or shifted where our duties lie, what they haven’t taken on any responsibilities. Oh no, financially and legally you’re on your own there. Landlords, on the count 3, 2, 1 …suck it up. Bad luck mate.
They changed the rules and have effectively grabbed ownership and I’ll bet they’re all proud of how easy it all was to steal, and how necessary.
A Govt inquiry can’t even find accountability which, I guess is necessary if the ends are to justify the means.
Look into their dead eyes as they lecture you via television about how stupid we all are. “Can you tell the difference between a cough and covid cough…?”
Like staring down the barrel of a gun. “Well, can ya … punk?”
The Departments of Health and Justice need your stuff for the greater good but once everything remaining is inside The Commons, it will be a Commons full of empty things.
Nothing …
No value, no goodwill, or trust … not even hope.
I miss Hope the most.
Depressingly accurate.
I have hope that it will end.
A few people in my family have expressed that no capacity to plan, running on the spot feeling.
Grabbing at lockdown chinks, when they happen, and making the best of them, until we have to do it, all over again.
I miss faces.
What are faces, please?
Brilliant.
Doctors have finally got their wet dream: a fascist society commanded by government health orders.
With all that taxpayer revenue sloshing around the health system, there’s no room for a free market — or free choice. You will get what you are given.
I cannot see doctors giving up playing god. For them, political power is too much of a rush and those in the public service are the unemployable, incompetent dregs of the dregs.
My cross shift has literally just had he father die today.
Shes from Sicktoria and both her last visits (family, see new grandkid etc) have seen her caught with another outbreak and quarantine on return to Best Australia.
She quickly decided (I hope she changes her mind) she wont go back for his funeral as it will result in at least another 2 weeks locked down on return.
Shes Greek.
And shes been so broken she will miss her dads funeral rather than be locked down like a dog in a kennel for weeks again.
Congratulations Sneakers/Dan & Morriswine you revolting moral black holes.
Having spent much of my first decade of my working life in the Public Health system, I still have yet to find a single medico of any stripe,
who does not take the thought or practice of their patients dying (or worse, not improving) while under their care and advisement as a grievous personal insult.
How dare those nasty ‘sick’ (because it is not always the case) people not do what they have been told is for their own good…
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a happy people, a free people. And…they could go outside with nothing on their faces.
They laughed and pointed at those others. Letterboxes!, they quipped as they merrily went about their daily rambles and picnics and other fun stuff. Why would anyone want to cover their face? It’s wrong and so un-happyfarawaylandian! They look as if they are owned by someone.
Then one day a wicked thing happened. The rulers of the land decided that they liked the idea of covered faces. It meant that the people could be just like those others, but this time the rulers would own them. So they made all the people wear blue papers on their faces. They frightened them, and punished them, and locked them away until they did as they were told. And they did. And no one ever saw a face again.
And that’s the legend of “faces”.
What happened to
‘And they all lived happily ever after ‘
🙁
shamelessly stolen … from The Spectator I think
I miss my grandchildren.
Can’t you tell? 😀
I know it.
That’s an expression my US friend uses.
I like it.
I genuinely hate this country now. In a past life I represented us in sport. I’ve lived here my entire life. Now I hate it. I hate how our systems have been used against us. I hate how we have no trust. I hate how I have been socially isolated for 12 weeks now thanks to Gulag Gladys. There is almost no redeemable feature of Australian society left.
I miss my grandkids .. 4 on the Central Coast & 3 in Victoria and cos I ain’t getting vaxxed, apparently it’ll be awhile if ever before I see them again, same with swimming, don’t drive so use the local pool, but the Unclean won’t be welcome and op-shops, I miss op shops .. running out of books might have to endure ebooks shortly .. !
Shatterazz
Are there little free libraries around where you are?
They still operate and while choices are obvious limited you might find something.
I miss not having to exist in the bastard child of east germany and bloody china.
Brilliant post, MT.
I miss rationality and risk analysis.
It got taken out the back and beaten to death by the media and socialized medicine.
The Australia that my father, grandfather and assorted uncles fought for, has been stolen. I am so very glad that none of then lived to see this.
I can recall a time when the only reason you interacted with a Policeman from one year to the next was when you went to the local Cop Shop, to renew your driver’s licence or similar. The bloke behind the counter was friendly and helpful. If you saw him out and about, he was your friend.
Not so now.
Government has long been potentially problematic, in the way that working in the yards with cattle could be. Large creatures, prone to erratic movement when some unexpected thing agitates them, you had to keep your eyes open, but it was rare that they were actively hostile. Now we know that the government is hostile to anyone who isn’t a good little serf.
The signs were there in 1996. As someone who thought of himself as a good citizen, as well as a firearms owner, I felt a responsibility to do my research and respond accordingly.
I found that there was no evidence supporting the Howard gun-controls.
I found that it was not a legal loophole that allowed Martin Bryant to own firearms, but a failure to enforce already existing laws.
I found that neither John Howard, nor any of his Government did any research.
I found that John Howards definition of consultation – which he had promised in writing to undertake – was to tell us to shut up and listen to what he was going to do.
I found that the media of the day was simply not interested in publishing counter-arguments.
I found that anyone presenting counter-evidence was villified, demonised, and disenfranchised.
I found these things because I was a member of that small minority that actually cared about results.
……. and here I am again.
Thanks CL … high praise indeed
Doctors have finally got their wet dream: a fascist society commanded by government health orders.
Sadly, I’ve just come to realise that just as just under the (subcutaneous fat) skin of every policeman there’s a bully who has just had the license to pull on the jackboots handed to him by our quisling Gramasci Government, the GPs of the nation have thrown their patients over to the vascillating visciousness of the stasi state. It’s more than the easy money of Medicare bulk billing, it’s the willingness to make the incisions and wash their hands of moral culpability.
I’ve had two bad runs-in with GPs lately- one a newish grad who was corrupted enough, with or without coercion by the federal police, to first fabricate a phonecall in a written statement, and then later alter clinic notes of a consult to make the fudge halfway respectable.
The other was more heartwrenching, because it was our- yes, our family’s- GP, a bloke who had nursed us through inexplicable back pain, recurring tonsilitis and tonsillectomy, fertility struggles and then geriatric childbirth, elective vasectomy, childhood eating disorders- all with humour and intimacy, and with what used to be an amusing mutual casualness with open-ended prescriptions.
But when I asked him if there was any circumstance where he would grant a patient an exemption from mask wearing- asthma? emphesema? psoriasis? autism? claustrophobia? PTSD?- he would not say. That lack of guts, and/or lack of honesty, and/or lack of trust in me as a longtime discrete local bloke, was pretty shit to witness, and I thought, well that’s it.
So that’s what I miss: egalitarianism.
Well,when NSW gets it very limited freedoms back I and my partner will be second class citizens.
Today we received mail from the Federal Government signed by Morrison, Hunt and some pubbo dubbo urging me to get vaccinated.
Was it a general ,ail out or do the powers that he know my status?
Bit of a worry.
Anthro – I’m a refusenik (with a very “under the radar” medical history) and haven’t yet received the admonition. Needless to say, once I do, that pair of despicable fascist maggots will be receiving a very rude and abrupt response.
Was it a general ,ail out or do the powers that he know my status?
I’m in my 70s and haven’t had a letter, yet .. feeling left out .. LOL!
Are there little free libraries around where you are?
Nice thought … LOL … but out here in a drug addled HC enclave English is a 6th language option .. plenty of non fiction stuff (military & ancient history) but do enjoy my fiction .. that’s what’s running out .. usually had an op shop run coupla times a week to replenish .. habit of hard cover reading .. but have several thousand ebooks I’ve downloaded so ….. old habits die hard … like FREEDOM .. LOL!
I sometimes miss a lot of my friends and acquaintances, and I’ll never get them back, because I have discovered that most of them are dickwads. So I miss them less when this realisation occurs.
When all you have, everything looks like a nail. This is why specialists are almost never leaders. They see all solutions through the prism of their expertise.
A true leader is someone who sees these fallibilities in others and understands that there is no place for such biases in decision making.
*is a hammer*. Whatever happened to what I wrote? Grrrrr…
Summed up by “The New World Order” of NSW
Gladys Calls 57% of NSW Population Unclean
At the 9 September media nonsense, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian revealed just how twisted and unprincipled this policy disaster has become.
I predicted something like this as a result of exploding breakthrough cases. But it’s now. It’s just to coerce vaccination…and vindictively penalise people who don’t comply. You know, Deplorables.
This, despite the clear knowledge that the double-vaccinated can catch and transmit SARS-Cov-2. That for controlling the pandemic, there is only a short term and limited difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Just look at Israel, Hawaii, Iceland and Singapore. And that shops have been serving the unvaccinated for the past 18 months, apparently with no problems.
This is straight demonisation based on misrespresentation. Scapegoating of the worst kind. And she had the gall to talk about personal choice several times in the conference.
…I myself would not want to be anywhere, hehe, with someone who’s not vaccinated…[10secs]
We can’t afford to have unvaccinated people mixing with vaccinated people. [57secs]
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Media Conference, 9 September, 2021 (Concerned about context? Video below)
It is a call to a caste system based on clean-unclean.
Breakthrough infections will come. And there is less reason for a vaccinated person to fear the unvaccinated than there is for the unvaxxed to fear the vaccinated. Why? Because the unvaccinated do have a higher likelihood of severe illness if they get sick. Even if vaccine protection declines quickly over time. The unvaxxed are taking on the risk voluntarily, in an informed way.
And Berejiklian even said if there were a breakout of cases in specific regions it would be because people were unvaccinated. Like Israel doesn’t exist. Again, just to demonise the unvaccinated.
https://cairnsnews.org/2021/09/09/hazardous-hazzard-the-deranged-nsw-health-minister-wants-out-from-a-supreme-court-action/
and
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/09/09/australian-covid-restrictions-get-more-draconian-as-health-officer-mentions-new-world-order-n440436
There are 22 or 303 things I miss the most. Funnily enough my dentist always had the ABC on the overhead TV. I asked him to change to to 7Mate, Ch73 which is pretty blokey in the morning. Next checkup he laughed and said he couldn’t keep it on that channel cos it was too distracting, all those blokes, fishing, hunting, chopping, digging, forging, trucking and so on.
I don’t hate my country. I hate what it is becoming
I utterly despise the slugs who are transforming my country from the wonderful place it used to be into a divided, totalitarian gulag.
Please don’t hate our country, hate the vermin who are stealing it from us – if we let them.
Start living that parallel life, build it, nurture it, grow it!
Good comment bushkid.
I think we are feeling despair that our fellow Australians have swallowed the alarmism.
That manifests as anger at those who caused the despair.
I don’t see Morrison or Palletchook or any other pollie as our leaders, as they are so often referred to as.
Some of them are merely leaders of political parties, none of which I am a member of.
None of them could lead a dried out dog to water.